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.

Arrived intact on time and Ang the two boxes were placed inside my garage. The instructions were very clear and the drowning acceptable. I’m satisfied with the outcome and the quality of the plastic.

While I'm not an expert at putting Lifetime Sheds together, this is my third shed from them. I have two 7x4.5 ft and this 8x10 one. I'll try to cover the main points that I had trouble with in both sheds with emphasis on the 8x10. It took us about a day and a half to put it together, we were able to do the smaller one in a day. We did 80-90% of the shed the first day, the second day was spent finishing everything up and making it pretty. The floor is supposed to have divots at certain areas so you can put screws in to help keep the floor joints together. There were absolutely no divots to be found. I had to just put the screws in the approximate areas as shown on the instructions, I have no idea if they will have any impact on the flooring. The walls just snap into place. If you are doing it on a dirt floor that is remotely uneven, this will never work. (To be fair it tells you to build a floor/foundation for the shed and not to just put it on bare ground. On the 8x10 shed this is extremely important, on the 7x4.5 shed, this is merely a suggestion.) There are 4 slots per wall section and as soon as you get one or two tabs in, they come out whenever you try to get the remaining tabs. The smaller sheds have holes and the tabs just go into, and then you use a rubber mallet to slide the wall section over so that it locks into place. We eventually just put the walls together and placed them on top of the floor without actually connecting the two together. After the shed was built we bought some L brackets from Home Depot and attached the walls to the floor. It appears to be pretty sturdy, but there's a gap between the floor and the walls that could be problematic when it rains, however it is nice when you have a breeze. The ceiling is amazingly easier to put together. The smaller shed has a bunch of L brackets that you have to put together and line up and the larger shed just has holes that you line up and drill in. Sounds similar in the theory, but amazingly easier in practice. The sunroof in the smaller shed is one 4.5ft white opaque strip at the apex of the roof. The larger shed has 5 thin brown covers that do allow some light in, but not as much as the white ones. You can also unscrew the sides of the sunlights to let a breeze in or more sunlight, but honestly it's a lot of work and probably not something we would do often. The window is nice, however you can only open it 1/2 way or the plastic "window glass" comes out. There are locking mechanisms included, but they are beyond my skill set to install without preventing the window from being able to open. I love all the shelves and hooks that come with the unit, however for the hooks/pegboard it seems like they were trying to give you a variety of hooks to show you possibilities rather than actual useful hooks. Be prepared to buy more to fit whatever you intend on hanging. Overall I love these sheds. They are easy to put together, they fit together well (for the most part) and they seem like they will last a long time. They have stood up to my cow scratching herself on it (that was before we added the brackets) and holds all our horse tack and supplies. The plastic is very similar to the "Little Tykes" quality. Thick double walled plastic that stands up to most everything.

I read the reviews on here first and decided to go with this model. It took a week to arrive at my house. Free delivery and they put the two heavy boxes in my backyard for me. I never could have gotten those boxes home, much alone moved them by myself. With the boxes in the yard, all that remained was unpacking and assmbly. My pad was already paved, so that lengthy step was not part of the process. I would recommend, if you buy this, go to Lifetimes site, enter the shed model # and look over the PDF of the instructions. That helped me. I didn't think I was going to be able to get it all installed alone, but I did. It took 7 hours the first day and another hour and a half the second to get it weather tight. I haven't installed the shelves yet, so maybe an hour of that left. The roof was the hardest to put on alone, but it is all done from inside on a ladder, so its a matter of getting the plastic panels to line up to be screwed in. It went ok. The last panel took some work to get on, and that was where another set of hands outside would have been a big help. So if you have two or more, this would be easy. Most of the work can be done by one anyway as it's simple putting pieces together, like the doors and gables. I took the advice of one of the other reviewers on here... the latches they supply for the left door ( upper and lower ) to stay shut are odd. Just go buy bolt latches and drill them into the hardware. Much easier. I'm very happy with the way it came out. It's really like putting a huge puzzle together and they did a pretty decent job with the instructions. I recommend this shed kit.

Looked at a lot of sheds, came down to this one. A friend had bought one from a big retailer, paid more but likes what he has. 1ST Amazon.ca excellent to work with and shipping was early and very convenient ( they called with date options and whenever my time would work) The shed went together like a dream, 4 guys at the lake, so beers may have been involved, but really follow the directions to the tee and there are no worries. I built a 2x6 deck for the shed, leveled it and threw it up. Look great, seems great, we'll see after a Manitoba Winter, I will be getting the snow load kit for the hell of it. Hopefully I can update this review in the spring:)

I like it but the roof has gotten all warped or wavey, don't like that and it doesn't look good.

It does what I need it for, it has lasted a couple winters now and is showing sings of stress. The roof could be build to take a heavier load.

Shed would be perfect if the doors lined up and closed. Erected by a building firm who say a door is defective