LIFETIME 6405 Outdoor Storage Shed with Window, Skylights, and Shelving, 8 by 10 Feet

The building came in two large cardboard boxes (each one probably 200 pounds). It came on a small trailer truck, but the driver had a very poor handtruck with small wheels rather than large rubber tires. He had to leave it in my driveway, because his handtruck wouldn't roll on soft ground. I had to wheel it to the backyard on my own much better handtruck.The building is a very good product, and the price was much better than at big box stores. I assembled it by myself (74 yr old man) in a few hours each day over a period of several days depending upon the outdoor temperatures. I built a substantial treated lumber platform resting on concrete blocks to assemble the building on. Constructing the base took the most time and effort, because I carefully leveled its supporting blocks. I used five 10' treated 4 " x 4" posts as sleepers on the blocks, and then topped those with eleven treated 8' 2" x 4"s laid flat and then covered with two and a half 4' x 8' sheets of 1/2" treated plywood. I used the dimensions suggested in the instructions except for the length. I used the full 10' length to afford a step at the front door of the building. I assembled all of it with torx head screws - 2 1/2" for the dimensional lumber and 1 1/4" for the plywood. 1 5/8" screws would be better for the plywood, because treated pine is soft and the longer screws would pull the plywood down snugly. The 1 1/4" screws don't have enough threads to adequately pull the plywood down snug in some places.Assembly of the building itself did not take a lot of time or effort, but the assembly instruction booklet is almost entirely pictorial without any textual explanations to speak of. The packets of hardware are poorly labeled, and that caused unnecessary expenditure of time. The hardware packet labels depicted in the booklet are missing on about half the packets, and some unlabeled packets are included inside of other packets. But if you persevere, you will eventually find all of the hardware screws and parts in one packet or another. Careful observation of what size screws are needed will help you to find them. The description of screwing the floor panels together and the screws supplied for the job are ridiculous, but the rest of the assembly isn't so bad once you find the proper screws. Using the word divot to describe where to put the screws in the floor panels is confusing and misleading. They need to rethink the fastening of the floor panels together.The corner wall panels are the most difficult to install; don't try to keep the corner folded and push all the tabs into place at once. Push the tabs on one side into place, fold the other side around the corner and push it into place. A block of wood and a rubber mallet to pound the panels downward are good tools for doing the job alone. The piece of 1" x 4" block to put under the tabs is necessary to lift the flexible floor up to present the slot to the tab.Installing the gable end over the double doors is the trickiest task to do by yourself. It can be done with some clever planning, but having an assistant for that job would save time.The roof can be installed from the inside of the building by standing on a short step stool. There is no need to work from the outside. You can stand inside on the stool and push the roof panels down into place after placing one or two screws from below. It is a good practice to start a screw into each of the holes to tap the threads before hoisting the panels into place. That makes the screws easy to start with one hand while holding the panel in place with the other hand.Aligning the double doors so that they close properly after assembly of the building is better done with more substantial shims than the ones provided. I used pieces of the treated plywood that I trimmed from the base that I built, and I put them between the base and the blocks it rests on rather than inserting them under the rubber floor of the building. That makes the job a piece of cake, and actually works.With all of that said, I would recommend the 6404 building rather than the 6405, because it has large skylights in a couple of the roof panels. The skylights in the ridge of the roof supply some light, but not nearly enough. The increased cost would be worth it. I might order a couple of replacement roof panels with these skylights to retrofit my building. It shouldn't be a difficult task to take the old panels out and substitute skylighted panels.

We had to hire someone to assemble it because my husband is 73 and has COPD and several other health issues. It is a replacement for a metal 10' by 10' shed that we got when we moved in here over 7 years ago. At the time we did not know the requirements that our township has for sheds beyond 32 square feet, which is it has to have a rat wall and a concrete pad, so that one had to be rolled off it's place while the garage guy did the concrete work for the shed and then it was rolled back onto it's place. We were never happy with the metal one because you had to bend down to get in it and could not stand up even in the middle of it, and I am or was over 5 feet 6 at the time we moved in here. Plus it got rusty and it was either paint it or replace it, and my husband wanted to replace so I came to Amazon and looked at everything I could. We really wanted the Suncast 10' by 10' but I was concerned it may be more difficult and because we would not be doing the assembly, we would have pay someone for any extra time, so we decided to give up the extra 2 feet and go for this Lifetime 8-by-10 footer. It was delivered around 10:30 this morning and our assembler called before the delivery to ask if he could come out today to do the job, so of course we went with it all. He was out by 11:30 and they had completed it by 6 tonight. It was two guys that did it, he said there was some challenge, but the fact that they got it up so quickly speaks for how well it went together. When it was delivered they used a delivery company called Pilot Freight Services, and I was walking my dog around the I96 service drive like I do every morning, talking to my husband on the walkie talkies. He told me that they had to bring it up in pieces because the top box was opened, I did not understand what he meant until later and what happened was the guy in charge had a new assistant and he had cut the bands on the top box not knowing that what he was supposed to do was cut the bands that held the two boxes together so the top box popped open and they had to carry the panels up to the yard one at at time. I was on the other side of the freeway and my imagination ran wild, but when I got back I saw what happened and all was okay. The panels are screwed together so that part looked like it would not be too complicated. They did have to put the skylights on and the window in, so maybe that made it a little more trying, and that part took the two of them to complete it. It is a great improvement over our metal shed, and we will not miss the extra two feet too much because we had a sort of work bench made out of 2 y 4's and OSB that took a lot of space in the first shed, we gave it to the assembly guy. We used the bench for two window ac's that we got rid of earlier, and also some mulch bags. We could probably put some of the bags in the new one, but will be getting a small horizontal storage cabinet to put alongside this shed to hold the bags in the future. It does feel very sturdy and now we can just hose it down when we hose down the house once or twice a year. The house has vinyl siding.So as far as assembly time, that would be around 6 hours and 30 minutes, which includes taking down our metal shed. They had to unscrew that and load it up in their van, we had emptied it out before they got here except for the work bench that was inside. They took about half an hour to go to Arby's in mid afternoon as well.