My Shop

A fortress of solitude, chaos and disorder.

My workshop is a 16' x 24' detached building (basically a large one-car garage) that I had built behind my house in March 2007. The ceiling is 10 feet high, so although there isn't as much floor space as I'd like, I can go vertical and store stuff up on shelves and cabinets. That's all the space I could get, with the small size of my lot and zoning limitations on building heights.

Here are the construction photos. First week of March, 2007: groundbreaking and pouring footings:

Pouring the first shot of concrete:

March 13, 2007: The foundation is done. Our neighborhood covenants require it to be brick to match our house:

March 19, 2007: They poured the floor:

March 27, 2007: Framing begins:

By the end of the day, walls were up:

First pictures from inside my new shop:

March 29, 2007: These guys work fast! Roof is on, side door and window are in:

April 4, 2007: They've got the front "eyebrow" on (purely aesthetic to match the style of my house and neighborhood) and most of the siding on. The color of the siding here is just the primer on the cement board siding. I had a lot of painting and caulking to do!

April 19, 2007: Front window is in, siding and roofing is all done (other than the caulking and painting of the siding, which was my job). The roof is DaVinci synthetic slate in "slate grey", and it looks great. It is hard to tell that it's not real slate even when you stand right under it and look up at it. It has a 50-year warranty, and the way these guys installed it, it will probably last 100.

May 4, 2007: They dug the trench for the utilities. The contractor laid a big conduit for the main wire out to the panel. I put in a water pipe so we could have a hose spigot just off the back corner of the building, plus cable for TV and Internet access, and phone line. Since the trench went so close to my wife's greenhouse, I put in a "T" off the water pipe and ran a wire in there os she could have a hose spigot inside her greenhouse and an outlet to plug in a heater or blower or whatever she needs for her plants out there.

Oh yeah - the yard looked like hell while this was going on.

June 6, 2007: I missed taking some pics for a while, but the electricity was hooked up, the trench was backfilled, and I had nearly finished the retaining wall surrounding the workshop. I installed interior lighting and roughed in the boxes and wiring for the exterior fixtures, which awaited the inspector, and I assembled and installed the garage door. I was going for that old-timey carriage-house look with the garage door. (Don't tell anyone, but the strap hinges are fake, and the two handles in the middle are purely for looks, although you can pull on them to open the door - it rolls up like any other overhead garage door.)

June 23-24: I spent the entire weekend painting the building. I must have gone up and down ladders 100 times. One coat of primer; two coats of Sherwin-Williams "Super White" gloss exterior. Installed the lights at about 8:30 p.m. Sunday. When I went to work on Monday, I could barely walk, my legs were so sore from going up and down the ladders so many times. That took most of the week to wear off. I just kept telling myself how much money I saved by painting it myself.

Here is what it looked like inside after I installed and painted the ceiling and walls. That's me putting the finishing touches on the receptacles just before starting to move all the machinery and stuff out there. It will never look like this again.