A Shop is Born

[Charlie Barnes]

Charlie,
looking good ,seems like you did alot of prep.You will be rewarded for that.Curious why no visqueen vapor barrier under the slab.Good Luck on the rest of your build,keep the photo's coming.
Greg

Greg,

In this area, vapor barriers are not commonly used for turn down wall footer/slab applications. I'm told that it's not needed. I hope that's right.

Charlie

[Micheal Roth]

Here's the last one for this week. It's my good buddy Mike putting the final touches on the sewer hook up to the house.

Ole' Mike made it to the big time. The World Wide Web! Look'in good!

[Jim Mattheiss]

Charlie:

That "porch" looks like a good place for a pair of rocking chairs and a table for the pitcher of iced tea.

Don't be too hasty on the hanging fern decision . . . .

I'm jealous on your new addition and it's design looks flexible enough for a MIL suite (ok - maybe it is too close to the house in that case ) or something else.

Keep posting - I'll be monitoring things as they progress to steal ideas.

Cheers

Jim

[Mike Vermeil]

What a piece of junk. Who's been giving you advice on this thing anyway?

Can't wait to see it in a couple weeks. Pre-pull festivities on the new porch? I'll bring the fern.

[Dick Thomas]

Nobody else has mentioned it, Charlie, so I decided I would:

YOU HAVE TRIGGERED A NATIONWIDE EPIDEMIC OF 'EXTREME SHOP ENVY';

We may never recover, until we build/upgrade our own! Therefore our long-suffering wives HATE you.

But of course we're looking forward to it; Looks great!

DickT

[Charlie Barnes]

Good Evening Friends,

It's been another productive week on the shop front. There have been a couple of bumps in the road, but nothing that can't be overcome. This week the electric meter and breaker box were installed along with the HVAC equipment and ductwork. Also, the brick work, windows and doors were mostly completed. Note the use of the word "mostly". It's kind of a domino thing.

The contractor doing the brick work, who is doing a very good job by the way, accidentally broke one of the windows. This means that a replacement window will need to be ordered. Until it comes in, the brick work can't be completed. The siding can't be installed until the brick work is done. So the target of having the shell wrapped up by this Friday probably isn't going to happen.

The minor victory for the week was getting our local utility company to allow me to install the meter lower to the ground than their normal standard. As you can see in the first picture, it's pretty high up on the side of the shop which was going to make it difficult to camouflage. Fortunately, the local inspector has been really great to work with and he is going to let me lower it so that the top is even with the brick work. This will make it much less visually intrusive.

In the mean time, I'm already revising my layout for about the third time based on the great ideas I keep finding from you guys. The latest revision is in the area of plywood and hardwood storage. I'm now planning to store most of my hardwood vertically just inside the front door on the right side. The plywood will also be stored vertically, but the location is still "floating" from day-to-day. Honestly, if I get any more good ideas from the other threads, I may never move in! Maybe I just need to lay off reading the Creek for a couple of months!

Anyway, I hope you like this week's installment. All of the photos are pretty self explanitory, but just in case. The first photo shows the current meter location. The second is of the breaker box (note blue inspection tag). The third is the the furnace in the rear storage area. The fourth shows some of the HVAC duct work in the shop area.

[Charlie Barnes]

Again, these are pretty self explanatory. The first is the brick work in progress. My wife said that this took a crew of 3 guys about 3 hours late Thursday afternoon. The second shows the doors and windows installed (except for the broken one) and mostly completed brickwork around the window area. The third is the scene on the "front porch", which is still proudly - fern free.

[Tom Hamilton]

Charlie, great planning and execution. You will have many happy years of woodworking in the shop you built.

Since you seem to have thought of all the major items I can only add one small suggestion: hanging pots with ferns on the front porch would look really nice....and pay handsome long term dividends. Just a thought.

Enjoy the journey,

Tom, in Douglasville, experiencing rain for the first time in over 40 days.

[David Helm]

I'm with you. Keep the ferns in the ground where they belong! Shop looks great. Too bad you don't have a wood stove to burn those off cuts. I'm really jealous of real HVAC and plumbing.

[Art Mulder]

Looks good, real good actually, but larger photos would be nicer on these middle-aged eyes!

[Charlie Barnes]

Well guys, not much to report this week. Tom Petty had it right when he said that "The Waiting is the Hardest Part" - as in waiting on my replacement window. The good news is that it should be in next week and they should be able to get things wrapped up. Maybe this is just in time since it seems we have suddenly gone from very hot and dry to cool and damp. Note damp doesn't mean wet - we still need real rain in a bad way. Anyway the crew got most of the siding and soffit up. The electrician got the meter relocated to the lower position even with the bricks. The GC and I decided that he would go ahead and do the finished grading so I could get the grass reseeded which my boys and I cranked out yesterday. With any luck, the window will show up this next week and they'll get the rest of the siding, brick and gutters knocked out.

The first photo is the siding work in process. The second one shows the relocated electric meter. It was much higher if you recall. The final photo shows the seed and straw effort from yesterday. I guess there's progress, just not as much as I wanted.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Charles.....it is progress and you are going to have a shop others will drool over!....or Turn Green!

[Jim O'Dell]

Very nice! Question about the broken window. Could the glass not be replaced without the casement? Or was there damage there too? Either way, it will be done soon, and you'll get to start seeing in real time, just how much you will need to change your planned tool placement!! Jim.

[Charlie Barnes]

Very nice! Question about the broken window. Could the glass not be replaced without the casement? Or was there damage there too? Either way, it will be done soon, and you'll get to start seeing in real time, just how much you will need to change your planned tool placement!! Jim.

I should have mentioned it sooner. Actually it's the casement that's cracked. I was told that it wouldn't impact the window functionally, but it is visibly noticeable. And of course, it would be on the first window which is the one that people would see first.

Regarding the tool placement, I've been thinking about a making mobile tool cart for my lesser used bench top tools such as my mortiser, oscillating belt/spindle sander etc. The tools would be mounted to a plywood base that would drop into a mating opening in the top of the cart. When not in use, the tools would be store in the lower part of the cart. Even with my expanded space, I'm going to keep things flexible and mobile so that the inevitable layout redesigns are less painful!

[Don Jarvie]

That shop looks awesome and the porch is a nice touch.

Have you thought about a wood floor? Those concrete floors can get really cold in the winter and you can also run some outlets to the middle of the shop and not have to upset the slab.