Ever since 1967 when I took my first job as a carpenter I have dreamed of a shop that would house all my tools and give me a place to work regardless of the weather. I have had my shop in many locations in the 40 years since then, but in 2003 I launched a new project that would result in a permanent home for my tools. In the end it may not be the dream shop that you find written up in magazines, but this shop will in the end be what I have been looking forward to.
To begin we offer this small floor plan of the new shop. It will feature a garage space for storage of lawn equipment, ladders, and even room for a pick-up should we ever buy one. It will also have room for the dust control system for the shop. The room behind the garage will be the finish room area. This area will contain shelves for paint and finishing supplies and not much else. We hope to keep it clear of clutter so it can actually be used to apply finish without moving things around. The small room beside the garage will be the office area and of course the large area is the shop itself.
For your reference we have this picture of the existing shop we are using before we made any changes to it in 1992. This structure was built so long ago that the county doesn't have a record of its age but our best guess was the 1940's. It is a wood frame building with a slab on grade and is uninsulated. when we moved in it did not have any provisions for heating and the electrical wiring was dangerous at best. It was lit with a single 300 watt lightbulb in the center of the garage and the overhead service (actually on the neighbors power) was incorrectly wired resulting in a very strange voltage (cobbled off a 3-phase service for single phase power). The image below shows the shop after adding an addition to the front.
The shop has seen its better days, the siding won't hold paint very well, the shingles are in poor repair, and the structure itself has some problems with past renovations.
The project began with groundwork, which is always the toughest part of the project. We were able to use some powered equipment to help with some of the digging, but a lot of the material handling was done by hand. Early in the project we were plagued with a lot of rain delays so it was a pretty soggy project for a while. We wrapped up the exterior work by the end of November 2003, and by the end of 2004 we had the inside of the shop ready for its first heated winter. You can navigate the entire project by selecting the days on the calendar below:
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JANUARY - 2007 |
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