De-racking an old shed

Mrs P and I just bought a good block with an old house on it. We will be renovating/extending etc but in the meantime the house has nowhere near enough storage for our stuff. There is an old wooden garage which we will eventually be demolishing but we could temporarily use it for the car and for storage if we fixed it up.

The shed is probably close to a hundred years old and the floorboards and roof and walls are basically OK but its structurally a bit wonky. It's on wooden stumps which need work and I've posted a question about that on the sub-floor forum. Another problem is that at the car door end the structure is racked to one side. It's a wooden frame structure with a tin roof and weatherboard skin.

I was wondering if I could just:

1. put a few extra nail plates onto the joins at the garage end at the corners at floor and roof level between the top/bottom plates and joists and studs so that the whole thing doesn't fall to bits, then
2. get a winch and chains and put them across the garage door opening diagonally and tighten to take the strain, then
3. remove the fairly half assed bits of bracing that someone has (presumably) installed in the past to stop the racking getting worse, then
4. winch hard until the structure is pulled back into square
5. nail some rectangular structural plywood bracing into place to either side of the garage door opening and remove the winch chains

What do you think? Do you think it will de-rack or will the structure fall to bits or refuse to come back square? If I can get it back square will it stay there or is it likely to be so settled in its existing shape that it will resist now being righted?


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