The plan

I went out back today and looked down the alley and saw that as it appeared in the picture I saw in the zoning office, all of the nieghbors' fences and the immediate neighbor's shed are in a nice line. I didn't bother measuring from the front of the house, I think it is safe to assume that that is the property line. Unfortunately that line is about 2 1/2 feet closer in then I thought. Fortunately, my new back posts (the old middle ones), are about six and a half feet from that line. That means that I cannot do what I originally planned and put all of the posts inside of the wall, but it is also not a huge problem. Here is an arial view with just the walls and posts:
My front two posts will exist inside of the bale wall and the back two will exist outside of it. That is not my ideal situation, because now my cross supports will intersect the bale wall, but I think that is going to be fine.

My next two steps are fairly straight forward. First I need to move my trench, and by move I mean I need to dig a new trench, shovel all of the gravel out of the old trench, then fill the new trench with gravel and the old trench with dirt. Then I need to take down the left most set of posts and the beam. Then for the other two beams, I need to take them down, cut off about five feet, flip them the other way and put them back up. Since I am not centering the beam on the posts I don't need to cut new notches. I just need to have the over hang on the other side. Carlton also recommended getting more substantial brace plates for the beam. The ones I have area a little dinky.

Once the beams are in their new position it it time for the cross bracing. I was thinking that I wanted to do this timber frame style with notches and things because it is really beautiful and also strong, but I think that it might be more work then it is worth. Actually I am not convinced that I think that. I am going to do some research on timber frame construction tomorrow and see what I find out. If I do it that way I think that the bracing will need to be done before the top beam is put back on. I cannot imagine how I would get the braces in place without the posts having some wiggle room.

Either way, my plan is to have another work party this weekend to move some beams and possibly notch some posts. I have some prep work to do before then, both with the trench and with planning.

Also, with my new plan I am actually under the 150 sq ft that allows me to build without a permit. That is exciting.