Finally...a new shop at the house
 

I'm just getting started on my new home shop/building, so I don't have much to actually show right now. But, I have pics, so I figured that's a reason to post :metal:

Initial excavation for shop area has been completed. I have plenty of property, but most of it is below flood plain due to the Warrior river in my backyard. So to overcome that problem, we excavated an area to tuck the building in close to the house in the hillside...figured that way if I have to many :barn: I'll be able to get home :lol:.

Building will be 30x50' with a 20x50" lean too down one side for trailers and pending projects :).

3/3/15 Update: size shifted to a primary shop of 36'x46' with a couple of smaller add on areas...8'x18' & 20'x24' with a 16' wall height.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Post rough excavation. Going to let it sit for a few weeks and hope for some nice slow/steady rains to help settle everything in. Then I'll start on the footings and poured North wall...

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

a hole for your shop is something... something awesome :D

do you have any dirt down there?
i see rock and more rock :D:D:D

http://www.67-72chevytrucks.com/vboa...1&d=1410544100

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Nice. I have a 32x40 and it's great. Would love a lean-to to free up garage space at times but don't have the room.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

OMG...the rock was crazy. The good thing is that it'll keep the area stable...so a few extra hours in the skid steer and it's ready.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Alright Ed! :metal: Looking forward to seeing your shop get built. I'll drink a Shiner after work for you. ;)

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Have 2...OR 3 :). Waiting on some rain so I can assure myself that this soil isn't going to do anything crazy before I throw a bunch of concrete on it. I know I'll have to throw in a few piers on the east side of the site because of the amount of fill (don't want any crazy settling/cracking). But I'm 1 step closer than I was.

Now get back to work on yours :lol:

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Nothing picture worthy, but we've finally had plenty of rain to settle the soil and my nerves. The soil/site has stayed right where it should, so I pulled the trigger and will start grading the pad and digging the footings tomorrow afternoon.

Final size of the building will be 36x50 (eventually with a 10x50 lean too down the south wall). Footings will be 15" deep x 12" tall, and the pad will be 6" thick. May be overkill, but I don't want to risk it not being sturdy enough for anything I may want to do here in the future...

After that gets done, I'll start saving for the block work on the north wall...It'll be 50' long and 8' tall and I don't do block work so I'll be farming that out. It's got to be able to hold back the backfill so I want someone with more experience to do that part. ;)

I'll get some pics as I progress...

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

I built my house in 2000 and since we have underground utilities I went ahead and ran 300 amp service to the house in hopes of building a shop in back... but that never happened and now we're looking to get it ready to sell in a couple years. (youngest kids are now 20, so they all gotta get out of the nest)
Ive regretted not building the shop for years but I hope to get enough out of it to find something smaller with a shop ready to go down South. I gotta get out of Ohio, this place is killing me.

Good luck on the build and may you have many years of fun times in it.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

^^^ Thanks man. Out oldest is 16 & when she decides what she's going to do about college we hope to move to southwest Florida. Small house with a big shop :)

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

when we go south... i'm trying to talk my wife into buying a big shop and live in back :D

15'' deep footing is over kill? wtf??? :D:D:D
up here we have to build half of a building down, around here the frost line is 40'', footings here go to 48''
dat's a whole lot of concrete

i had to dig under my barn footing to get water inside for a sink, had to dig a 5 foot deep hole
i could have gone through at 4 feet but it's an old barn with a 2 foot wide stone/rubble foundation :D

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

What's a frost line. :lol: people here will literally pour just a 4" pad on top of a gravel base without footings. We don't have the freezing issues y'all have, but we do have rednecks, pretty country girls in skimpy shorts and lots of 'shine. :D

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

To dark to shoot any pics but after manipulating, calculating and such, the building will be 36'x48', but no good way to do a functional lean-to down the long side :(. Footings are dug and form boards are up though. I do end up with a good bit of space off the rear of the pad that I may add a lean-to on for just lawn mower & related storage, air compressor and such though.

Can't pour concrete until Monday at the earliest because of the d@mn rain expected this weekend. I needed rain for 3 months and got none...now I've had about 14" in 2 weeks. Hopefully this weekend will be minimal drizzle...

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Cant wait to see your building ,I need ideas for my next one .

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Just a couple of quick shots of the shop layout... One with the relationship to the house...

We are expectiong a bunch of rain the next 2-3 days, and the footings already have some water in them because it just keeps raining. Suppose to be nice next week, so hopefully I can get the concrete poured then.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Looking good. I know you're excited:metal:

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

You forgot Moma, trains and pickup trucks...:lol:

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wtf? no hound dogs??? :D

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

:lol:

Nah... I have Australian Shepherds. ;)

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

The wife and I are discussing a move sometime in the next ten years out of California to a place where land/housing costs are far more reasonable. Texas is the current front-runner. My dream is several acres and a big shop located far enough away from the house so that late-night wrenching and heavy metal blasting won't bother her too much.

Until then, I'll just follow this thread and live vicariously.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Haha... Well welcome to the board and thanks for following along. Tx sure does get HOT, I lived there before moving to Alabama and I don't miss the heat. Check out the Barnasaurus thread...that TX shop is AWESOME!

I'm trying to talk the wife into northern Idaho and starting to get some headway. Maybe when our youngest daughter finishes school next year?!?

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Just looked at the Barnasaurus thread. Yeah, that's pretty damn close to what I hope to have. Holy cow, so envious.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Yep, don't we all!!! ;)

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Finally an update. Let this do a couple of weeks worth of drying and then the block walls are next.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

block? i like the sound of that...
all block walls or just against the hill?

my neck has a kink in it :D

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

The "plan" is to go block walls up to the hill height, then stick or steel on top of that (haven't decided) for a total wall height of 16'.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Progress is always nice. Looking good Ed. Can't wait to see more.

BTW - Thank you for the kind words about my shop.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

We'll, plan has changed... Already going to start adding on :lol: adding a 21'x24' pad to the rear for a clean/paint room and a 20'x8' on the low side for a dirty room for the drill press, compressor, sand blasting cabinet etc. those will keep the primary 36'x46' freed up for my other crap. :D

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

I wish we didn't have rediculous zoning rules around here...if I tried to double the size of my project overnight, they'd seize my dang house.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Who is this zoning law folk??? We have no zoning laws out here in the land O' rednecks. :). Finally an advantage being stuck here :lol:

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

zoning is a mixed bag; without zoning you can do anything you want on your property
but... your neighbor can too, including putting a trailer park on the land next to yours
i bought 5 acres of paradise in the mountains of NC in 1982 and built my dream house and shop on it
i go back there every couple of years to see trashy old mobile homes filling up the mountain valley

now i live in se MI and they go over the top on what you can or can not do on your property
but... at the same time i'm ''protected'' to what my neighbors can do
sadly, there's rarely a good spot between none and full zoning

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Luckily we have 7"ish" acres and can only see one of our neighbors homes from our house, so I think we are good there.

I got a price for all of my block & delivery yesterday and I've decided to take advantage of the topography (and moving my tiny "shop" down to the new shop location to use as a clean/paint room) and make the shop a little bigger.

I was playing around on Excel today at work and decided to whip up a schematic of the new floor plan.

The 8'x18' (this will house a full bath, dishwasher & washer/dryer) and the 20'x24' (where my little shop next to the house with a sloped floor :( will move too) areas are the add ons. It will have an 8' block filled wall on the hillside of the building. Hope to start on this part in 2 weeks if weather permits.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Niped, that is going to be nice and the extra space will be really useful. Sounds like you will have enough height for a lift. Well thought out!

Starting in two weeks....our snow probably won't be melted in two weeks.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Yeah, 16' wall height in the main shop area is PLENTY of height for a lift...or 2 ;).

We had a foot of snow in the yard last Thursday, but it doesn't stay here long at all...it was 72 degrees today. :lol:

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Nice shop. Progress is always nice. looked at the date on my slab the other day and its almost a year old. only have part of the frame work up as of now but plan on getting back on it soon. I also like your thought process on a small house and big shop, my house is a small 24x24 and the shop is a 60x44.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Oh, my current house/shop, the house is WAY bigger (3700+ sq ft plus a full basement) but in just over a year we will become empty nesters and we will hopefully sell & move either south to Florida (wife) or to northern Idaho (me) and the small house, HUGE shop will happen.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Well, life has been getting in the way so I haven't gotten much done to the shop, but I finally made a little more progress. I got the rest of the pad poured and got the block wall (8'8" tall x a total of 90' long) up that's in the hillside. It's fun to walk around down there now and plan out the next step...it's starting to feel like this may actually get done.

I'll get the exterior of the wall sealed and the drainage lines in place in the next few weeks and possibly start on the last bit of block work.

Here are few pics...

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Going to be very nice. Did you do the block work?

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

No, I did the grunt work though. A friend knew a guy that I ended up getting to lay the block. Great worker for sure....I couldn't have done it nearly as nice and certainly no where near as fast. It took us 3 days to get all the block done.

Re: Finally...a new shop at the house
 

Looks good ,my second shop is on hold as I keep buying trucks .