New Shop - Cost Per Sq Foot?

[Brent Dowell]

Hello,

Just wondering if anyone here can help me out. I'm planning on moving soon, and will be building myself a new shop once we move. I figure better to get the loan for the house, and tack some extra on for the shop now, rather than try and scrounge it together later.

I'm thinking about building a shop about 30'x40' with 10' foot ceilings. I'll have the exterior construction/rough plumbing/rough electrical done for me, but will finish the place off myself. (Half the fun in getting a shop is getting to help on building it, right?)

So, wondering if anyone has a 'rough' per square foot estimate for a stick built shop? I'm wanting to build it to roughly match the architecture of the house for aesthetics sake.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Brent,

Construction costs are somewhat localized. I had a 30x24 ..poured footing, wall and floor...2x6 walls....10' ceilings...3-3x4 insulated windows...10' insulated garage door.....36" insulated walk in entry door.....Hardiboard lapped cementous siding........Tyvek wall wrap.....an empty unpainted shell....cost me $16,160............

I insulated the walls to R-19...ceiling to R-40......I installed my own 200 amp 240 electrical service entry, meter box, and breaker box.........walls covered with 1/2" plywood....ceiling 5/8" sheetrock (mistake!)......I'm into to it about $23-25,000 total......

Good luck!

[Jim O'Dell]

Welcome to the Creek, Brent. Not sure I can tell you a price, because it varies so much depending on what part of the country you live in. If you go into the "User CP", above and to the left in the blue bar, you can add into you header your location. That way it pops up on your posts and we can have a better idea on how to answer questions like this. In fact, someone from that area may have a good handle on prices, or where certain things are that will help you.
You say you are moving, is it in the same location you are now, or to a different area? Have you picked out a house yet? If it is new, you might be able to get a price from the builder, or even ask the workers if they hire out for jobs on the side! :eek: Might be a good way to get a better price, but you'd have to be ready to be the General contractor, and that takes time.
Good luck! Remember, when you start building, we LOVE pictures!!! Also check the search engine above for other threads on people building shops. Marty Walsh has one going up right now, and Frank Pellow build his over the last 1.5 years I think. Both have some really good information in them. Frank even has a cd with all the posts and some other information he has sent to some in the past. Again welcome to SMC! I think you'll like it here. Jim.

[Marty Walsh]

Brent,

As Jim says, knowing your location would help us know if our estimates would be valid in the area you're looking at.

Also, as Jim said, I'm in the process of building my own shop. Here's a link to that thread in case you haven't seen it yet http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=36894

I wound up doing ALL the work myself because there's NO WAY I could even come close to affording the amounts I got as estimates. Here's what it would have cost me, but know that this is rural southern Georgia:

Slab, four walls, roof, everything enclosed, unfinished interior, no electric: $50-65 /sq-ft

Slab, totally finished including electric and plumbing: $75-100 sq-ft.

My new shop will be 40' wide and 64' long, so if you do the math, that's a whole lot of money. I'm hoping to have way less than a third of the finished cost into it in materials by the time I'm done. I'm doing the work alone, but I'm also doing it seven days a week, a luxury most don't have.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

Oh, and WELCOME to the Creek ;)

- Marty -

[John Bailey]

Brent,

I've recently built my shop and did it on the cheap. I scrounged everything and built everything myself, including the wood foundation and roof. It's 20x20 and I've got about $9,000 into it right now. That includes about $1,000 for tools that I didn't have before. I don't have heat yet and don't plan on water. Electrical and lighting is about half done. Originally I planned on $8,000. It'll be more like $12,000 by the time I'm done. That works out to $30 a square foot. Remember, I scrounge for everything. The only thing I paid to have done was to upgrade the service from 100 amps to 200 amps. That was $800 and was my biggest expense.

By the way, there's some pretty good threads on building shops if you go to the archives. I learned alot, and the folks on the forum are very helpful.

Welcome to the Creek.

John

[Brent Dowell]

Dang, Forgot about personlizing this. I'll do it right after this.

I'm looking to move to the Reno area. The place I'm looking it is an older house, with plenty of property.

There's an existing slab that has been poured, but I might need to enlarge it a bit....

Thanks for all the replies!

[Ben Grunow]

I built a new 2 car detached garage with an extra 16' in the back for shop so the whole garage is 24 x 40. Additional cost was very low (cant say how much because did it myself and I am trying to forget all the money I have spent on my house lately) which is the point of my reply. Can you extend a structure that is existing or one that is in the works already? There are advantages to having the shop attached to the house (as well as disadvantages-mainly noise) like available heat, water and sewer.

Just a thought-don't know if you are bulding a new house or what.

[Brent Dowell]

Hey,

Thanks for all the nice welcomes. I've been lurking here for a little while. I learned about the site from a pen turning forum I frequent.

From the posts, I'm going to estimate on the high side and go for about 25$-30$ per square foot. I'm going to try and do as much of the work as I can get away with (To save money, and just because I like to do it. It's a good change of pace from my day job).

The cool thing, is that the place that I'm hoping we are going to get, is bigger than our current place, and that means I'm going to need to build a bunch of furniture. I'm looking forward to ordering several hundred board feet of quatersawn oak and then building some of the basics... Morris chair, end tables, coffee tables, etc...

Should be fun, and Trust me, I'll provide a bunch-o-pics once I get started....

Thanks Guys!

[Andy Hoyt]

Brent - I spent many years designing and building custom homes for paying customers.

Rule Number One - Do not ever think in terms of cost per square foot. Would you buy a car by the number of doors? Or groceries by the bag? The SF Myth is one perpetuated by the Realtor World for the purpose of leveling the playing field (housing inventory) so that the consumer can quickly make perceived value judgements.

Take a 2,000 SF design built twice on adjoining lots by two different builders with two separate lists of specifications. Boil it down to this - one is built, spec'd, and furnished entirely by products sold at Walmart and the other by Tiffanys. Same house - same square footage - but two entirely different costs per square foot. Is it worth it? Only the buyer can decide.

To me, the more sensible approach (for you - right now, with a purchase decision looming on the horizon that may or may not be possible given the unknowns of a hypothetical shop) would be to quickly design your dream shop with shell completion specs to suit your needs along with equipment purchases and upgrades as contemplated. Draw it or it have it drawn and get those specs on paper as well. Shop that document around to a number of builders and get real world estimates that you can work into a mortgage application.

The exercise may well cost you many hundreds of dollars, but I'd think of it as money in the bank. And if that particular house escapes you, the design and data learned will still be applicable (for the most part) to the next house you stumble across.

I have some familiarity with Reno and know that the construction climate is frantic, so be prepared for surprises and to be patient.

Andy.

[Brent Dowell]

Andy,

Wow, that's a great perspective.

That's a totatally different way to think about this that I was thinking, and I appreciate the info on the local market.

I'm not sure I'm going to have enought time to be able to grab all the info I need before I secure the loan, so my thinking was to have a general range that would at least get the shell built.

Is there someway of coming up with a general estimate that I could use for planning purposes?

Thanks!

Brent

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Brent.............if you have the time.....Contact a couple of contractors; tell them what you want built....give them the specifics. I contacted 4 contractors and 3 of them had quotes to me in about 10 days.

[Al Killian]

Not sure if you like the looks of pole barns or not, but the are a cheaper way to build and faster.

[Bob Powers]

I had my shop built as an addition to my house in 2000, in the same architectural style, Cape Cod. It is 24X28, 10 ft. high at the roof line, and 13 ft. at the peak. It has a poured concrete slab, radiant floor heat, lots of insulation, and sheetrock walls and ceiling. All aspects were handled by the contractor, and I didn't do a lick of it myself. Total cost was $65,000 which turns out to be about $97 per square foot.

[Frank Pellow]

Brent, first of all let me welcome you to Saw Mill Creek. I built a stand-alnoe shop (mostly by myself) a couple of years ago and, when doing so, I never really thought about the cost per square foot. Rather, I estimated my expenses by major components. The components that I used were as follows:


Piers, beams, joists, and insulated sub-floor____16%

Exterior Walls (insulated)___________________15%

Doors, Windows and Skylights_______________12%

Electrical________________________________12%

Dust Collection System_____________________12%

Roof (insulated)___________________________10%

Heating__________________________________10%

Interior Floors, Walls, and Ceiling_______________7%

Interior Shelves, drawers, pegboard, etc_________2%

Permits, Inspections, Deliveries________________2%

Unused or Wasted___________________________1%The percentages to the right show how much of the final costs went to each component.

No tools costs were included (unless you count a dust collection system as a tool).

My final cost (including taxes) was $26,965 (Canadian). With the exchange rate at the time I built the place this worked out to about $20,200 US.

The footprint of the shop is 482 square feet and the usable interior space is 431 square feet. This works out to $42(US) per square foot of footprint and $47(US) per square foot of usable space.

For more details see post #328 in the thread: http://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=7769&page=22

[tod evans]

brent, welcome to smc! i`m bettin` that in reno you`ll be around 65 bucks a foot for a detached "garage" with mechanicals installed......02 tod

[Per Swenson]

Welcome Brent,

I can only speak for the North East Metro area,
where overnight well last month or so things have gotten bleak.

Last year, 5lbs of drywall screws, bout $7.00. Today, $20.00.
4x8x12-5/8 sheetrock, LY- $10.50. Today $20.00.

2 x4 precuts, doubled. Plywood up 1/3 from last hurricane season.

Help with exactly 1/2 a brain, $160.00 a day.

Another observation. Houses around here suddenly unsold.

Not to get all chicken little on ya, but what you do is draw up a plan

go down to your full service lumber yard and hand it to the counter man.

They will price it for you in a hour ,including delivery.

Good luck.

Per