Ep #16 Deer blind build! 6x8 Shooting house

All right, let me explain what I'm doing here. I figured it would probably be easiest to go ahead and build a subframe, which is the exact bottom width of what's underneath that. I built the bottom of the shooting house, had a two by eights, and it'll look just like this, except it has cross bracing in it. So what I'm going to do is build this frame, get it squared up. That'll let me know exactly where to mark my corners on the ground, take it back apart. Once my posts are in, I'll erect the frame up on the top of the stilts. That way it'll square my whole structure up. I'll bolt it through, and then I can slide the shooting house down over some posts that I'll leave sticking up above this frame. So it'll guide it down and actually support the shooting house until I can bolt through the two by eights on the bottom of the shooting house. So this will be bolted through to the post. The bottom of the shooting house will be bolted through to the post, the two by eight frame, and then I'll attach this subframe to the two by eight frame on the inside. So it'll be tied together really well. This might be overkill. I could have notched the post and done some other things, but I've got to do all this by myself. I thought this would be a great way to layout mark the post holes exactly, as well as, like I said, square the top of the structure up before putting the shooting house on it. So there's a million different ways you could probably do this, but this is one of the easier ones that I could think to do since I'm doing this by myself. So I'm gonna go ahead and attach these together, lay it out exactly where I want the shooting house, get it squared up, mark each corner, take it out of here, and then now I know exactly where to drill my post. Now I like to really think and plan things out. So the thing that I like about this is, technically in my mind, this is my shooting house now. So I've got it set up to where it looks level with the tree line. I hate when stuff doesn't look perfectly level. Plus I'm able to figure out where I want to put it to make sure my steps are going down the center of the path, and I can kind of get in it like this and look out over the food plot, make sure I don't have a lot of extra trees or limbs my way if I need to go further forward back. I can also tell that I've got plenty of room to come by with a tractor and mow. So this is starting to look like the spot, and you can see how uneven the ground is here. So that's the other good thing about this. It'd be harder to lay out my post and measure with uneven ground. This, like I said, I'm gonna square the corners up, measure from corner to corner, throw some paint down, and now I know exactly where to put my post. And I'm gonna drill the holes oversized anyways so I can move the post back around and then take this apart, put it together back up about five foot in the air, square my post up, lightly pack them in, bolt it in, put the shooting house down on top, and then really tie everything together. So I think this is going to save me some time. I used a little extra lumber to do this, but I like the way it lets me lay out and get everything exactly where I want it. Couldn't do that again if I tried. I'm within 1 16th corner to corner. That's not even worth fooling around with for this project. All right, I think you get a good idea of what I've done. I just did a rough six by six spray paint there. I know to drill pretty close to dead center. Again, my hole's definitely oversized for these posts so I can work it around, but that just lays everything out nice and neat for you. So real easy to see. I know right where to back the tractor up to. I'm gonna put these posts around four foot deep in the ground. Make sure this doesn't go anywhere should we get any more hurricanes. A lot of people don't think Florida has all this dark red clay, and as you can see, this is pretty much what everybody knows is Georgia red clay. And if you were watching, it's anywhere from a foot deep to three feet deep. Some spots the clay is already the surface on this property, but it's usually a foot or three foot beneath the surface. I don't know if you've seen the way it was digging. It dug through old top soil just fine. As soon as it hits that clay, that stuff is like concrete. It is so hard packed, and it'll have to sit there and chew for a minute before it finally busts it loose. But you can see all the roots down in there. There's some rocks down in there as well. So I just don't know how I could do this without that tractor post hole digger. First post that I ever tried to dig on this property was a temporary power pole, and it took me and my father, I forget how long, with a pair of post hole diggers just to dig a four foot deep hole. We were wore out, sweating. It was like chipping through concrete, this old red clay pack, so hard. So got my holes done. Didn't take too terribly long. I've got my first post lifted up on the forks of the tractor here, and I just don't know what I would do without this tractor. It'd be impossible to do stuff like this. So I'm going to get this in the ground. What I usually do is lift up with the forks like this. I'll slide it over, and then forks have already got all the heavy lifting done for me, so I'll just pick it on up and let it drop in the hole. And that's how I wind up doing all these posts right here. So I'm going to go ahead and get one of them in the ground now, record that, and then I'll get the other three in. Then we'll get that frame up. Well, that was interesting. I know I'm already going to catch some slack from YouTube police on being out here in shorts and flip-flops, but it's over 100 degrees, people with the heat index. I'm burning up, so no boots and jeans today. Had a little problem with my generator over here. Never had a problem with it before. The first post, it was able to light that circular saw off, which is a 15-amp saw. It's pretty heavy duty, that old Milwaukee. And it lit it off fine to cut those posts. As soon as I get to this post, every time I would light it off, it would kill my generator. So I don't know why it would let me cut one post, but it kept killing it and tripping it out. So I had to finish cutting these posts with the Sawzall, which is not my preferred method because it's hard to keep it nice and flush, but they turned out okay. Hopefully I've got everything nice and level. I'm probably going to try to check that. I don't know how to do that. Do some more quick measurements. I might go grab a post and throw across the top, check level real quick. And I'm going to measure corner to corner, make sure everything's perfectly square. Make sure I don't need to pull nothing in. I can do that with ratchet straps. Then it's time to make a lift, put this on top. I've decided to do this a little different than I told you. I was originally going to move this whole brace system up and have it slide down to sit on that, but I built that floor pretty heavy duty. I think I'm okay to slide it down and sit it on those posts until I get eight pretty heavy duty half inch bolts through that post. And then they'll support the rest of the weight from here on out. So I think that's what I'm going to do. Check everything, make sure it's good. Then we'll make the lift and see if we can get the house on top finally after all this time. Holy moly. Well, that was very nerve wracking. This thing started getting way too tipsy on the forks. So that's why I went back and got those heavy duty straps that made a big difference running around all the corner posts throughout both windows. That made me feel a whole lot more comfortable about lifting this thing the way that I did, but there it is. And Lord, does it look huge now that it's up. Thing looks like a mansion on those stilts. Everything looks nice and level. All I had to do was take the hammer and just tap a couple of posts in. Everything wound up being really, really nice and snug fit. So I'm really happy that building this little frame squared everything up like it did. So very happy with that. All that's left to do now just to secure this. I don't like it sitting on the floor like this, but I use really like three quarter inch plywood for the floor. Plus you got the wall frame that comes out in here. So it's not like it's going to push it out of the way or nothing right now, but I want to hurry up and get two half inch bolts per post. I mean, that's big, hefty bolts. That should hold it. No problem. Then we'll get up in it, take a look and start discussing about how I'm going to do the stairs in the future. And just a few little things I got to do. Looks like a slight little bit of damage from lifting. No problem. A bit of touch up paint, but let's go ahead and get some bolts in and then we'll take a look at it and talk a little more about the future of it. Well, here it is. Hopefully y'all can hear me, not echoing too bad. I still don't have my design in place for how I'm going to hold the windows up. I'm playing with a bunch of different ideas, but I'll have that done here before long. But here's the view. Like I said, these windows will be up a little more. See the view out over there toward the feeder, over the rest of the food plot. So here it is on the inside. I can't remember how many times I've mentioned the video, if at all. It's a six by eight, so plenty of room for two roll around chairs. Still got to paint the inside later on and put a rug down. So when you're rolling around, it doesn't make a bunch of noise. You can see I've got two more windows here that should be able to open up here before long. And I ordered the deer view windows online. I really like these. These are aluminum frame windows. And the reason I've done that is so when I'm on the inside, say it's a breezy day or cool day or blowing rain, I can still set these down and see outside. Or I can just lift them right up. They're real nice, quiet, look real well made. So I've got four storm shutter windows, I'm calling them, to block everything out. Four deer view windows. That should be plenty. So here's the view out the back. You can see it's pretty long ways down there because there's a deep ditch. So I've still got to build some stairs across over to there. And that's the way I'm going to sneak in the back. It's six foot six to the ceiling, so plenty of room for me. And feels pretty sturdy on these six by sixes as well. We've got these windows here on the latching clasp. I should keep them nice and tight should we get some of these afternoon thunderstorms or a hurricane comes through. And I'm not going to close the door because you'd never be able to see. But you can see I just got a old standard lock style inside, same as the outside. So I could have done this a lot of different ways, no doubt. But for a shooting house, I'm pretty happy. Now I've got plenty of room in here. Plenty of room. All right, let's see what else we want to go over. I think I'm going to leave the bracing like this. It feels very sturdy. What I may do is carry this bracing another set just like it on up here because my plans are to eventually put some trellis on the outside of this. So as I'm sneaking up, I may even put a piece of trellis right here. So if there's something in the field and I want to sneak into the backside of this, I'll kind of be hidden. But man, it looks huge now that it's up. And I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of comments on why you did this this way, why you did it that way. Well, I don't know. I'm no master carpenter here. It's just something I built inside my shop. And that's one of the main reasons I did it and carried it out here and did it the way that I did was so I could build it inside, take my time over the last several weeks or really a couple months, build it as I had time, bring it out here with the tractor. That's the reason I did this specific size. You can see underneath, this is two by eight sides with a two by six floor joist. And the reason I did that was so I could put another two by six here, not only to support the floor joist, but to support the tractor forks. So I designed it from the get-go with the floor, just so I could tote and carry the weight out here. And it doesn't look like anything's cracked or buckled. So it carried the weight well. Again, on six by six post, six by eight with a six foot, six inch inside head height, plenty for me. These six by sixes are probably overkill, but man, it feels sturdy. And being that we're in a hurricane state, I wanted some good, deep, solid post. Went ahead and went with half inch bolts, which may be overkill as well. Three eights probably would have been fine, but eight half inch bolts should hold this thing down. And I still may put some long three inch screws in there. I don't know. Eight bolts should definitely hold it. Got a little bit of touch up paint to do. I don't like how unfinished the one by fours looked up there with the 10. So I might bring the old extension ladder out here and touch up paint that as well. But at the end of the day, it is a shooting house. So other than some trellis work, this is pretty much it. And it's been a long time coming, getting it down here. I'm going to most likely end the video here. Please drop any comments that you want and I'll answer whatever questions you may have because I'm not completely done with this yet. Again, this is how it looks walking up to it. I still have to put a long set of steps across this ditch up to it, and I'll be doing that in future videos. So if you would subscribe to the channel, I'll do stuff like this constantly, do little updates on the channel. If you want to see how this is going, you'll see me actually use this, see me work this land here. So this is the kind of stuff that you're interested in. You want to see tractor videos, mowing, building things. That's what this channel is all about. So with that said, appreciate you so much for watching. Hopefully I've covered all the basics of this. I'm sure I have missed something. And if there's anything else you'd like to see or like to know about this shoot now, like I said, drop me a comment. I'd be more than happy to answer it. Follow the channel because you'll be seeing me use this. You'll see a lot more updates on this, as well as the food plot behind me. So I know I didn't answer all your questions. I'm sure I missed plenty, but that's what the comment section's for. Hopefully I answered the majority of them. And I'm sure, like I said, a lot of people are going to look at this and go, why'd you use this material? Why'd you build it that way? Lots of reasons. Again, so I could carry it down here. Lowe's was really out of a lot of material. That's why I want this beadboard type. And it was supposedly rated for interior exterior painted. I used a real thick kind of barn type paint. There's a couple of coats there, actually three coats. Some of it's been scraped. So I got a little touch up to do. So it's not perfect. It's down here. Hindsight's 20-20. Probably would have done a few little things differently, but I think it's going to last me a long time. I think it's going to be plenty sturdy and hold up. Tried to build it out of pretty beefy material. So I think it'll last. At least get me a lot of good years of enjoyment out of it. So again, click subscribe. You'll see me in the house down here, watching the animals, having a good time. We have another channel that's our hunting and outdoor fishing channel. Link will be in the description below. So if you actually want to see me hunt out of this, click subscribe to that channel. Thank y'all so much for watching.