Is a 20x25' woodshop really big enough?

[Brian Elfert]

Is a 20x25' really going to be big enough for a woodshop?

I am looking for a lot to build a new house. One lot I like, the city will allow me to build a 50x40' garage. The garage has to have space to park passenger vehicles. Half of the garage will be used to park a 43' motorhome. I figure 20x25' for parking passenger vehicles.

I would be left with 20x25' for a woodshop. Am I going to regret building so small? I do have the option of a 640 square foot accessory building, but not sure there will be enough space on my acre for another building. I could also make the woodshop 20x50, but that leaves my cars outdoors and I don't really want to do that here in Minnesota.

I am also looking at a rural lot with 5 acres, but it is another 12 miles further out. On the rural lot I would build a 60x44 building so I would have a 24x30 shop or bigger and size wouldn't be so much an issue.

Brian Elfert

[Jim Becker]

Brian, plenty of folks work in shops that are that size or smaller. Mine isn't much larger at about 21' x 30' minus the space taken by a stairwell to the upper level of the building. "How you use the space" is actually more important. And I hear you about leaving the cars outdoors...it's not bad here in SE PA as we do, but even I would want them garaged where you live!! If you can do a small "shed" bump-out off the shop portion of the building in the city location for the DC and compressor, that would really help out, too. Same goes for a covered "porch" for lumber storage, etc...or that could be in the "other" potential outbuilding where you could use a pre-fab shed for quick up and low cost storage.

Edit...but I am reminded by other responses that there is no question that driving an extra 12 miles for 4 more acres would be a no-brainer for me unless there was a really, really good reason to stay in town. In fact, that's exactly what we did when we bought this 4 acre property in 1999. ;-) It was a substantially longer drive for Dr. SWMBO to her workplace at that point, but the lifestyle was more suitable. (She now has an office much closer with a new employment/research situation so in the end we came out even better)

[Neil Bosdet]

I live on 4 acres now so my suggestion is based on acreage living. 12 miles is not very far for an additional 4 acres and space to do what you want. Which piece of land is a nicer place to live?

[Barry Anderson]

My shop is 22x14 and I've a table saw w/53" table, planer, jointer, 71"x24" workbench, drill press, band saw, 2HP Dust Collector, 24"x60" utility bench and an air compressor. I've enough room to work ... but I've a lot of storage built on the walls and into the benches. I don't build 8' high wall units, but I have built some fairly large cabinets, beds, etc. Mobile bases help a lot.

I would say that you will have plenty of room if you plan wisely.

Barry in WV

[Rob Bodenschatz]

Brian, you're going to get a lot of responses that say "Go as big as you can. Then go bigger." There's some merit to that but I think everyone's needs are different. The first question is: What type of projects do you do? Also, is that 20'x25' dedicated to woodworking? What type of equipment do you have/want? My shop is 24'x36' but not all of it is woodworking. The "woodworking" part of my shop is along the lines of what you're talking about:

60219

(Sorry about the quality. Had to get the file size down)

Would I like it to be bigger? Sure. Does it work for me? Yup.
Actually, in full disclosure, I haven't started using my shop yet because the power is not yet hooked up. I have played with workflow in the space, though.

[Ted Miller]

Brian, I just moved from a 3 car garage to a small 2 car garage of almost 22x22. I was very tough to fit all my machines in and since I needed assembly space I had to lose a few bases for some of my machines and then I had to go mobil for other items that used to be stationary. My last garage/shop for 3 cars was 34x24, it was perfect. No cars ever park in my garage since our weather is perfect year round, 6" of rain so far in the last 10 months.

For me 35x25' with a 10' ceiling would be big enough for me for wood storage, machines, finish area and my DC and ducting. Right now I don't even have room to fit my cyclone in my new shop, ceiling is low and no space for ducting...

[Ed Blough]

Is a 20x25' really going to be big enough for a woodshop?

I am looking for a lot to build a new house. One lot I like, the city will allow me to build a 50x40' garage. The garage has to have space to park passenger vehicles. Half of the garage will be used to park a 43' motorhome. I figure 20x25' for parking passenger vehicles.

I would be left with 20x25' for a woodshop. Am I going to regret building so small? I do have the option of a 640 square foot accessory building, but not sure there will be enough space on my acre for another building. I could also make the woodshop 20x50, but that leaves my cars outdoors and I don't really want to do that here in Minnesota.

I am also looking at a rural lot with 5 acres, but it is another 12 miles further out. On the rural lot I would build a 60x44 building so I would have a 24x30 shop or bigger and size wouldn't be so much an issue.

Brian Elfert

Brian
Think about what you asking. If you build normal size furniture and use stock that is 10 foot long or less then yes you have enough room. But if you build large projects and normally use stock longer than 12 feet long you will probably be bumping into things.

But the same, with different numbers, can be said about any size. You need to figure out what limitations you can live with and build something that fits what you have decided.

To rip lumber you need a space twice as long as you normally get your lumber. A 12' long board needs at least 25 feet to be ripped.
Likewise if you have a massive saw with a slidding table some of them require 20 or more feet one way and 10 or more the other.

I have a my cut off saw placed so exceedingly long lumber can go out a window on one side and out the door on the other with 20 feet between.
I can crosscut anything 10 or less without opening the doors or windows.

I can move my table saw outside so I can rip any length wood should I need. However I have room inside to rip 10 feet my area is 20x20.

Would I like more room? Sure, but I'm totally certain I could run out of space in a 100 x 100 shop.:p

[Brian Elfert]

I live on 4 acres now so my suggestion is based on acreage living. 12 miles is not very far for an additional 4 acres and space to do what you want. Which piece of land is a nicer place to live?

Another issue with the rural parcel is lack of services. No high speed Internet except expensive (and slow!) wireless or sattelite. No cable TV either. No natural gas so I would have to use propane at twice the cost.

I did find another rural site that has all of the above services, but the location is far away from all of my friends and they help me a lot on projects.

Brian Elfert

[Gary Benson]

You will find a way to use the space you have, and could always use more. I would vote for the first option and avoid the additional drive time. Good luck.

[Ted Miller]

Brian, Do you have AT&T, they have DSL and its fast like cable and not very expensive...

[Brian Elfert]

One other note on my shop space. The sidewalls would be somewhere between 14 and 16' tall to accomodate the 14' door needed for my motorhome.

I could build a platform to place the dust collector and compressor on and still have room to walk underneath. Heck, I just thought about it and I could probably build a lumber storage platform on one ond of the workshop with 16' overhead and have room left underneath.

Brian

[Jim Becker]

Brian, Do you have AT&T, they have DSL and its fast like cable and not very expensive...
Ted, DSL is limited to being within 18,000 wire feet of the central office--and preferably closer. Many rural areas do not offer this. It sounds like the rural property that Brian identified is in an area not even served by cable...

[Brian Elfert]

Brian, Do you have AT&T, they have DSL and its fast like cable and not very expensive...

The rural property has Frontier as the phone company. They do offer DSL, but it is highly unlikely to have DSL available at my location. The local cable company does not offer service at all to the property even though I'm within two miles of a 4 lane state highway and right on the fringe of a metro area with 2.5 to 3 million people.

The lack of natural gas isn't the end of the world as I want to do geothermal anyhow.

Brian Elfert

[Brian Elfert]

Ted, DSL is limited to being within 18,000 wire feet of the central office--and preferably closer. Many rural areas do not offer this. It sounds like the rural property that Brian identified is in an area not even served by cable...

Qwest isn't limited to 18,000 feet from the central office as they have installed DSL remotes all over even in some rural areas. The remotes do have the 18,000 foot limit also, but they have enough remotes in most areas to not be an issue. I did get DSL once at 19,000 feet from a CO or remote, but the tech knew about some heavier gauge wire that ran back to the CO. Unfortunately, this rural lot is one part of the county not served by Qwest.

This is getting off the topic, but helps explain why I want to be on a city lot with more services.

Brian Elfert

[Paul Johnstone]

I live on 4 acres now so my suggestion is based on acreage living. 12 miles is not very far for an additional 4 acres and space to do what you want. Which piece of land is a nicer place to live?

It all depends.. One house I had was 9 miles further out than another we were considering.. Thought it was no big deal, but it added about 20-30 minutes each way to my commute, going through all those darn traffic lights, one lane each way, etc.

I think a 20 X 25 shop is plenty. Mine is odd shaped.. If you averaged it out, it would be roughly 14 X 25 or so, and part of that space isn't very usable, other than rolling machines not currently in use.

You've got enough space in 20 X25 that you could permanently station a tablesaw and outfeed table/workbench. Permanently station a drill press, bandsaw, and a lathe if you got one. Put a mitre saw station with "bench" along one wall. Heck, you probably even have enough room not to put the jointer on wheels. Everything else is mobile (except Dust collector).

In my shop, I have the router table, jointer, planer, drum sander, and belt/disc sander on wheels. The bandsaw and drill press are on wheels, but seldom moved. It would be nice to have everything with a permanent spot, but I don't think I'd want 24 miles added to my commute every day, especially in the traffic we have now.

[Jeffrey Makiel]

My shop is 17' x 26' and shared with a home heating system and a gas meter. It's tight but functional. I do all sorts of projects. Sometimes not even woodworking related.

My shop is a basement shop. Your shop will be at grade. That means you can open the door for extra space when ripping long stock. However, it might be a bit chilly in those cold MN winters. It also means that you may be able to remotely store those lesser used items or materials since you won't have stairs to contend with.

Speaking of winter, the bigger the shop the more it will cost to heat. Also, the longer it will take to warm up when in use. But I would probably opt for the larger shop anyway. ;) It's much better to grow into a space than to grow out of a space.

-Jeff :)

[Paul Johnstone]

To rip lumber you need a space twice as long as you normally get your lumber. A 12' long board needs at least 25 feet to be ripped.


That's a good point.. However most common furniture seldom needs pieces longer than 6 or 7 feet long. So even if you buy lumber 12'- 16' long, you can rough crosscut it to size before ripping, jointing, planing, etc.

Wow, you are going to have 16' foot ceilings.. man, I am majorly jealous.. You'll have plenty of room.

[Mike Henderson]

My shop is 10' by 11' and I manage to get work done. It's too small, but it's all the space I have. It's all a matter of deciding what you really need and being efficent in use of the space.

But no matter how big my shop was, I'd probably still think it was too small.

Mike

[Ted Miller]

Ted, DSL is limited to being within 18,000 wire feet of the central office--and preferably closer. Many rural areas do not offer this. It sounds like the rural property that Brian identified is in an area not even served by cable...

I live in a county of 3.5 million, I take alot for granted, at work we have T-5...

[Mario Lucchesi]

We recently moved out to the sticks and now my shop is too big. (yes it is) the main shop area is 48X32 and I cannot aford to close it all in, so I had to enlarge my office to 12X24 and move most of my tools into it for the winter. I live in MI. It will take a another year to insulate and finish the main shop and then I will need to heat it all year. I know it will be great when it is finished but I have to do it slowly as I don't want to pile up debt.

Just something to think about.

On a side note moving out of town has been the best thing that we could have done for our family, it is great having our own area and watching deer and turkey is better than 200 middleschoolers when school let out!!

[Robert Trotter]

I'll put my 2 yen in here.

Brian, while I like working wood, I also like to live. Unless you are REALLY REALLY into woodworking and plan on doing a lot of BIG stuff then I would choose the house and location you want to live in. It sounds like you actually like the city place and it is close to friends which sound like they are a part of your lifestyle. Enjoy your life and have a workshop rather than have a workshop and change your lifestyle.

People have been setting up work shops in what ever space they have for a long time. They find ways to work. Your 20'x25' space would probably be plenty. Are you setting up a business?

14' ceilings and judicious location of windows, doors etc will go a long way I think. Maybe a mezonet for compressors and lumber storage high up as you are thinking now or even put a raised floor in and use under the floor for storage etc.

Mike has done some pretty nice work in his smaller shop (which is bigger than mine).

Robert

[Jim Becker]

Yes, RTs can be used to extend DSL to outlying areas...but not all the carriers deploy them...especially the smaller operators.

All this points out that it's really HARD to choose what's best given that both locations have endearing qualities!! I don't envy you on that...

[Nancy Laird]

Brian, Our shop, which started life as a 3-car garage, is about 25x35. We have an 8x8 bump-out on one end where the DC and compressor live, with some storage shelves; another 6x6 bump-out for the gas furnace; an attached 12x16 finishing room; and we are getting ready this summer to add another attached 12x16 room for the lathes and turning stuff. There are times when our shop is too small! We have a Unisaw with outfeed table, planer, jointer, drum sander, edge sander, drill press, two lathes, two bandsaws, scroll saw on a stand, router table, sharpening station, mortising chisel station, radial arm saw, and lots of bench and storage space. When we bought this house with the 3-car garage, we thought that it would be all we would ever need for our work. Instead, we've done three add-ons, getting ready for another, and another building just for the lasers and attendant equipment! Grows like Topsy!!!!

As others have said, it really depends on what kind of ww'ing you want to do and how many tools you have. I totally agree with Robert above, plan your home around your life, rather than vice versa. You might find that the 20x25 space will eventually be just right...or too big...or too small. We worked for years in a 2-car attached garage with lots of other "stuff" in it, and the only reason we have so much space now is that we run a business and have too many machines!!! (Did I really say that?)

Whatever you decide, it will be right for you now, and in the future if you want to change it, you can.

Nancy

[Art Mulder]

Is a 20x25' really going to be big enough for a woodshop?

Yes.

...art

:p

ps: Well, what do you expect? My shop is 11x20. I'd be tickled at doubling the size.

Not to mention that you don't tell us how big your current shop is, nor what you do with it. ;)

[Paul Kinneberg]

Brian, I agree with the others you really need to determine what it is you want to make, and how often, to determine the size. Like a lot of things bigger may be better but you have to stop somewhere. I went from a 11 x 20 ft space in Andover to a 26 x 36, with a 11 x 16 foot room upstairs, in Zimmerman yes its bigger but I bought more tools and added more cabinets and now I wonder if it was big enough? Anyway I moved 36 miles further from my office downtown and have not regretted it. I did do my research on transit and telcom. I take the bus from Elk River in the future the train. I also would not have bought where I did if I could not have had DSL (I have a DSLAM on my property). I do believe for me I could have given up the bigger shop but me, and my 3 teenage kids, could not live without DSL. Good luck.

[john hanes]

One other note on my shop space. The sidewalls would be somewhere between 14 and 16' tall to accomodate the 14' door needed for my motorhome.

I could build a platform to place the dust collector and compressor on and still have room to walk underneath. Heck, I just thought about it and I could probably build a lumber storage platform on one ond of the workshop with 16' overhead and have room left underneath.

Brian

Brian,

I don't think that you want to put your dust collector up on a platform. Then you will be using a lot of power just to lift the dust up that extra height.

[Michael Gibbons]

Brian, I moved to the country which makes my drive 37 miles from my driveway to the driveway at work. I thought it would be miserable but I adjusted quickly. I only wish town had a few more convienenceslike a HD or Lowes and some "better than" fast food restaurants. I would suggest making a model out of MDF and hardboard of your proposed sized building to a 1/12th scale so you could see how it will work. It should only take a couple days to make it and all the tools and you can really get an idea if things will work out like you plan. I made one and I already see things that need changing. Out here in the country you either have dial-up or sattalite(?). And no natural gas yet.

[John Bailey]

Brian,

I built a 20x20 shop. I'm currently building a 15' sailboat, 5' beam, I have plenty of room and I love my shop. If I were to build again, I'd build the same shop.

John

[Brian Elfert]

My shop currently is in the basement of my house. It is L shaped maybe 400 square feet total. It is such a pain to get stuff into/out of the basement that I never finished setting up my shop.

I want to start making stuff like cabinets for an RV I am renovating and cabinets for the living room of my house. I ended up buying a used Craftsman table saw to do the rough cuts for my RV as I couldn't get the plywood to the basement Unisaw.

I also use my shop to build HUGE rockets that actually fly. Last one was 12" diameter and 18 feet long!

Most folks have to make do with a shop space they already have, but I have the opportunity to build something from scratch and I don't want to regret it in a few years.

The high ceilings are to accomodate the motorhome. I had asked the builder about a different building design with lower ceiling height for the workshop and passenger vehicle garage area, but it was less expensive to go with one ceiling height in a big building. Heating/cooling will hopefully be geothermal so the utility costs should be low.

Brian Elfert

[Jesse Thornton]

My current shop is 11' x 17', and streamlined as it now is, I find it limiting. I can certainly manage, but one of the biggest drawbacks has been not being able to hire a helper on a few jobs because it would simply be too cramped in there. I could get by quite comfortably in a 20' x 25' space, but according to the SketchUp model I'm working on of my future shop (;)) my ideal is ~24' x 30'.
All of this, as the variety of responses attests to, is highly conditional and subjective. Personally, I would take the five acre lot out of town over the one acre lot in a heartbeat, but there are a lot of reasons for that that come before shop space. For me, being as far from cable television as possible is an advantage.:p High speed internet is great, but if you're using it primarily for email and the like and and not concerned with streaming sound and video, it might not make that much of a difference.
If woodworking is a pasttime and not a central aspect of your lifestyle, then I definately agree with Mr. Trotter's sentiments: "Enjoy your life and have a workshop rather than have a workshop and change your lifestyle." If all of your other considerations point to the town lot, you'll get by just fine with 20 x 25. Just buy plenty of decent swivel castors.

[Greg Deakins]

I have built seven shops in the last seven years. The first was a two car garage with a bath, connected to the house. The second, just half of a one car garage, but in Florida. (downtown st. pete) I would have to drag everything into the alley to work. The third, a small industrial unit with a roll away, about 300sq. The fourth was part of a barn in the country,outside of Detroit and was good sized, but very cold. The fifth, a one car garage in Downtown Detroit. Horrible, and every day was a question of if my tools were still there. The sixth, inside an industrial building on the southwest side of Detroit, beyond bad area.... and no heat. But then I wisened up and moved to rural Minnesota. For less than the price of most of the others, I have a larger shop than ever. Plus a large finishing room, plus plenty of inside, unheated space. All in all, it is about three times my largest shop beforehand, and measures 45x24. the main part has forced air, and the finishing room a seperate propane wall unit, to keep things at a perfect temp. A roll away, and plenty of windows, plus expansion space if needed. It is a few feet from my home, and a seperate garage makes it strictly shop space. I place the economics, and security in high regard, I lose no sleep over it. Of course, in the country, and being in a grey zone, not quest or frontier want to give us DSL, and the wirless is being disrupted by the power lines. We are forced to go with wild blue, but they aren't installing here for a while due to how busy they are. For a hundred bucks a month, we can at least do better than dial up. THats a couple hours a month in shop time to make up for it, boo hoo. All I have to do however, is consider the benefits, and the cost of internet is miniscule. The other differences between the country and the city life I am mainly accustomed to are taking some getting used to, but it all makes sense in the end. Land is good...

[Mike Holbrook]

We built out house on a little less than 12 acres about 10 years ago. The property value has more than quadrupled since we have been here. If I had it to do again, I would buy even more land and sell part of it off to individuals wanting to build on larger lots. Property values do tend to go up and since it is such a large part of most peoples net worth it is something to think about.

I am in the process of making a room in the basement I finished about a year ago into my shop. The room is 20x14', so I am storing wood in a 17x14' room off the shop room. I have a two story patio with a roof over the top story. I am enclosing the basemant patio with a large barn door in one wall, so I can deal better with sheet goods and longer lumber before it actually gets to the shop. So you might think about using multiple rooms in or off a finished or unfinished basement. If you do a good portion of the basement finsihing work yourself you add a great deal of value to your house without spending much.

[Al Killian]

If you are going with 16' ceilings, then you can have a 10' ceiling for the shop and use the upper 5'+ to store your lumber and other items. This could add alot of space to a 20'x25' shop. I like the idea of a country home with shop. Just think less pepole to complain about noisy tools.;)

[Dan Drager]

I would say "Yes", that is plenty of space for a really nice shop. That is how big my shop is, 24' x 20' and I have a TS, RAS, Jointer, Drum sander, Planer, etc....all but the TS on wheels. What that does not leave room for, is a good, clean finishing area, which I ended up putting in my basement much to the displeasure of the wife.


To comment about the rural thread. Yes, you give up a few things living out in the middle of no where, But I can sit on my deck at night and hear nothing but birds and maybe a distant cow. No traffic noises, no barking dogs, no teenagers blasting hip hop. A fair trade off in this man's opnion.

[Mike Henderson]

Ted, DSL is limited to being within 18,000 wire feet of the central office--and preferably closer. Many rural areas do not offer this. It sounds like the rural property that Brian identified is in an area not even served by cable...
I know that this is not a thread about DSL, but I thought I'd add something about it. Jim's right about the 18K feet limit for DSL, and at 18K the speed of your DSL line won't be very high. What the phone companies are doing now is to install something called a Digital Loop Carrier (DLC). A DLC can be thought of as a sort of mini-central office (mini-CO). The connection between the real CO and the DLC is via fiber, with some copper wires to power the DLC. The DLC then contains the line cards (and DSL modems) to actually drive the copper that goes to your home. So let's say that it's 20K feet to the main CO from your house, but there's a DLC that's 2K feet from your house. For DSL purposes, that's a 2K line which will give you really excellent performance.

There are very few primary CO's being built any more. The new switches are much smaller and require a lot less power than the old ones - and have a much greater line capacity - many more lines than homes that could be located within an 18K foot radius circle. So what they're doing now is to "extend" the reach of the CO with these DLC's. Conceptually, you could have one CO in a state and provision all the service by reaching out with DLC's.

But none of this will help you if you live in an "old" rural area where the service has not been upgraded to a DLC. AT&T (old SBC) is putting almost all their service on DLCs because they want to reduce the copper run so that they can provision very high speed service for TV.

But enough off topic rambling.

Mike

[Robert Trotter]

Brian, you have had lots of advice and food for thought. Think it through and talk it through with your family....

One of the contributors to the discussion suggested building a scale model. I think this is a good idea. I presume you have some initial plan for the garage/workshop.

Might I suggest using the Sketchup software. If you haven't used it before it is pretty easy to learn and use. You can do you outline of your shop and make the walls. And then just use 3D blocks at the correct size for any equipement you have or work stations you will use and even some envisioned projects like you rockets and half asssembled cabinets. make each of them groups and you can move them around and change placement etc. very easy. And you can look at it at like a plan but also you can look at it as though you are in the shop and get a better feel for how it will work. I am doing this for more balcony layout.


Remember that you mobile home can be parked a bit closer to walls etc, allowing room for whatever work you need to do on it. This will give you space around the motorhome for storage as well.

With storage up high or under a raised floor or around the wall near the mororhome, you will have the "workshop" area for working andnot storage. THis will make a differnce, too.

You can also put up a moving panel wall if you are worried about heating a large space (it appears that you are not worried though) and it might keep the dust off the motorhome, too.

Lots of ideas from others. Decide on you location of the property first(talk it over with the family and check on what is important to you concerning frinends, school, travel, internet and TV etc), then you will have the size for your garage. Then get some sketches and I am sure the people here will give you lots of advice on setting up in that area.:)

One thing that was pointed out by someone else was "NOISE". Are you a noisy worker? You don't want to move into a new place and have arguments with the neighbours. How will you limit noise? Have you checked out the neighbours for both properties, are they the type of people that are likley to be open to a bit of noisy tinkering.

You don't what someone trying to burn your shed down because you are driving them nuts.

Just my rambling thoughts.

[Rick Williams]

Brian:

Worked out of a 22'x24' garage for about 10 years. Have 3 1/2 acres so built me a 30x36' 990 sq ft shop a couple of years ago. Was going to do a 30'x40' but within city limits and city covenants require 3 garage doors and permits with inspections for anything over 1000 sq ft. Would like to have more space now which seems to always be the case. Build it as big as you can is my advice. You'll always use the space. Going to add on to mine in the next year or two.

[John Ricci]

My shop is 20'x30'x10' and although not quite finished it has me wondering about space:confused:. Fortunately I have 100 acres of "expansive potential":rolleyes: so the shopspace can grow when the $$$ decide to drop out of the sky into my lap...until then the "one man band" has to be happy with playing a smaller room. My hat is off to the guys and gals working in tiny spaces that I couldn't even fit my rag-tag collection of machines into for storage let alone use!

[Jesse Thornton]

If you do want to use SketchUp to design your shop, you can download an excellent collection of stationary tool models for free here:
http://www.yda-online.com/shopmodels.htm

[Joe Jensen]

Is a 20x25' really going to be big enough for a woodshop?

I am looking for a lot to build a new house. One lot I like, the city will allow me to build a 50x40' garage. The garage has to have space to park passenger vehicles. Half of the garage will be used to park a 43' motorhome. I figure 20x25' for parking passenger vehicles.

I would be left with 20x25' for a woodshop. Am I going to regret building so small? I do have the option of a 640 square foot accessory building, but not sure there will be enough space on my acre for another building. I could also make the woodshop 20x50, but that leaves my cars outdoors and I don't really want to do that here in Minnesota.

I am also looking at a rural lot with 5 acres, but it is another 12 miles further out. On the rural lot I would build a 60x44 building so I would have a 24x30 shop or bigger and size wouldn't be so much an issue.

Brian Elfert

IMHO 20 by 25 is too small. I have a full 3 car garage which measures 20 by 30 and it's too small. I do have a large wood rack in the garage, but not nearly enough room for proper benches and a good finishing area. If I were building I'd want at least 30 by 40, but I've been doing this for a long time. My dream shop would be a space of 40 by 60 or larger with separate areas for finishing and wood storage. Hey, one can dream...joe