Greg Peterson
06-09-2007, 9:52 PM
I'm just a humble newbie trying to reconfigure my existing house to work with my hobby.
The attached two car garage, which aside from the rare brake job or the time I replace the engine in my S-10, has not been used for what it was designed for.
So, I partitioned off about 1/4 off the space for a laundry room. The washer and dryer were originally inside the house right off the kitchen. This arrangement was noisy as all get out, even with a front loading washer (which is vastly quieter than the traditional top loaders). I had to install a drain and water hookup, but it was worth it. I got a new dryer a few months ago so that I could stack the washer and dryer. This configuration in conjunction with the new tankless water heater has really created a lot of space. The laundry room is roughly 100 square feet. Eliminating the dryer foot print and the water heater foot print has free up almost 17 square feet. This is a huge savings in space when your talking about a small space. This will allow me to install a couple of cabinets and utility sink. Based on the previous configuration, these additions would not have been possible.
When I framed in the walls, I constructed two parallel 2x4 walls, with about a 1/2" space between the two. They do not touch and both are insulated with R13 fiberglass. The laundry room side has 5/8" sheet rock and the shop side will have 1/4". The laundry room has a recessed space for storage of an ironing board and an outlet at the top of the space for an iron to plug into. Our iron has an automatic shutoff, but I also put a sixty minute timer on the outlet for redundancy/failsafe measures. Since the outlet is about 7' about the floor, the intention is for the iron to remain plugged in. I wanted the iron plugged in from above to reduce the incidents of the cord getting in the way. A throw back to my sweat shop days (Literally. One of my jobs in my youth was ironing laundered shirts for 12 hours a day. Good honest, hard work.)
anyway, thanks to suggestions from many here, the shop is taking shape and I think will prove very functional. Did I mention I have four circuits (GFCI protected of course) that provide me with 34 outlets? And that is even counting the lighting or 240V service. It'll be a small shop, but should prove to be a nice, productive space.
The attached two car garage, which aside from the rare brake job or the time I replace the engine in my S-10, has not been used for what it was designed for.
So, I partitioned off about 1/4 off the space for a laundry room. The washer and dryer were originally inside the house right off the kitchen. This arrangement was noisy as all get out, even with a front loading washer (which is vastly quieter than the traditional top loaders). I had to install a drain and water hookup, but it was worth it. I got a new dryer a few months ago so that I could stack the washer and dryer. This configuration in conjunction with the new tankless water heater has really created a lot of space. The laundry room is roughly 100 square feet. Eliminating the dryer foot print and the water heater foot print has free up almost 17 square feet. This is a huge savings in space when your talking about a small space. This will allow me to install a couple of cabinets and utility sink. Based on the previous configuration, these additions would not have been possible.
When I framed in the walls, I constructed two parallel 2x4 walls, with about a 1/2" space between the two. They do not touch and both are insulated with R13 fiberglass. The laundry room side has 5/8" sheet rock and the shop side will have 1/4". The laundry room has a recessed space for storage of an ironing board and an outlet at the top of the space for an iron to plug into. Our iron has an automatic shutoff, but I also put a sixty minute timer on the outlet for redundancy/failsafe measures. Since the outlet is about 7' about the floor, the intention is for the iron to remain plugged in. I wanted the iron plugged in from above to reduce the incidents of the cord getting in the way. A throw back to my sweat shop days (Literally. One of my jobs in my youth was ironing laundered shirts for 12 hours a day. Good honest, hard work.)
anyway, thanks to suggestions from many here, the shop is taking shape and I think will prove very functional. Did I mention I have four circuits (GFCI protected of course) that provide me with 34 outlets? And that is even counting the lighting or 240V service. It'll be a small shop, but should prove to be a nice, productive space.