Seriously. I bought several books too, checked out more from the library, and also watched a ton of YouTube tutorials. It's all pretty easy if you pay attention, and makes intuitive sense, e.g., king studs carry the weight of the top plate (and thus roof/second floor), jack studs carry the weight of the header above the opening, and cripple studs carry the weight of the header below the opening, i.e. carry the weight of the window itself. Incidentally, cripple studs need a better name ...
The building inspector was impressed with my shed when he examined it. He said it was really sturdy, and superior in construction quality to off-the-shelf purchased sheds (which also cost a lot more than I paid for materials!).
That is awesome, I also had a similar experience with a inspector.
My parents house kept getting water in the basement because of soil being sloped towards their house. Neighbor was too high and their house was too low. I ended up designing a solution, which was a retaining wall and french drain system. The last inspection, two inspectors came out and asked if I do that professionally because they have been impressed by the drawings submitted and the scope of the job seemed unreasonable to be tackled by a home owner. The older inspector said I should do it for a living and he thought there was no way we would complete the project.
I had a similar problem (land sloping towards the house) with a much simpler solution. I got a free dump truck load of fill dirt from Craigslist and then graded the foundation correctly. Took an incredible amount of work by hand as I didn't rent a bobcat.
Fortunately the land was overall flat, other than the problem with it sloping in towards the house, so that was sufficient to solve the problem. It sounds like you had worse issues with your terrain.
Yeah. There was no way to slope away from the house because the house was built too low. We actually ended up draining the system into the city sewers under the street. So, I had to work with their contractors to connect it.
We removed a few tons of dirt by hand lol.....I regret not renting a bobcat.
The building inspector was impressed with my shed when he examined it. He said it was really sturdy, and superior in construction quality to off-the-shelf purchased sheds (which also cost a lot more than I paid for materials!).