Frank's Workshop Construction Project

[Rob Bourgeois]

Frank quick question...

You only seems to have roughly 5 feet from the wall to the blade on the table saw. I dont know if that suitable for you or not but just something I noticed. It doesnt look like the doors would line up with he saw to give you the extra room of outside to push the stock on to the saw.

Looks good and cant wait to see the finished pictures.

[Fred Voorhees]

Frank, good luck on your new shop and I have a quick question for you not relating to your shop but to your garden. I notice you stated you have a square foot garden. Are you a fan of Mel Bartholemew (sp?)? He used to have a weekly television show on the PBS stations and that was his method of gardening and when I had my garden, Oh years ago now, that is the method I used. My garden was 900 square feet and very bountiful.

[Jim Becker]

...you have a square foot garden. Are you a fan of Mel Bartholemew (sp?)? He used to have a weekly television show on the PBS stations and that was his method of gardening and when I had my garden, Oh years ago now, that is the method I used. My garden was 900 square feet and very bountiful.

LOML has been using the "square foot gardening" method for years, especially at this property. Our two raised beds are about 12' long and "produce a whole lot of produce" and herbs each year. We compost and that makes for a very rich soil in each bed that is added to each year. Sawdust from the shop not only contributes to the compost, but is also used to keep weeds off the walkways along the beds...which are free-standing, rather than fully contained in lumber. Only the down-hill side has a wooden wall since the garden is on a slope.

[Frank Pellow]

Frank quick question...

You only seems to have roughly 5 feet from the wall to the blade on the table saw. I dont know if that suitable for you or not but just something I noticed. It doesnt look like the doors would line up with he saw to give you the extra room of outside to push the stock on to the saw.

Looks good and cant wait to see the finished pictures.

Rob, thanks for pointing out these two problems. The table saw location is only approximate awaiting both the completion of the building and my purchase of a new saw. I hope to replace my ancient Sears Craftsman with a new cabinet saw (leading candidate is a General 350) in about a year.

I could position the saw back a couple of feet and I think that I will do so on the diagram. I do have 16.5 feet of floor space in that direction with nothing permanent behind the saw so this would work.

I thought that the saw blade was lined up with the door and I certainly intend it to be. Maybe I will move the door about a foot to the left.

[Frank Pellow]

Frank, good luck on your new shop and I have a quick question for you not relating to your shop but to your garden. I notice you stated you have a square foot garden. Are you a fan of Mel Bartholemew (sp?)? He used to have a weekly television show on the PBS stations and that was his method of gardening and when I had my garden, Oh years ago now, that is the method I used. My garden was 900 square feet and very bountiful.

Fred, yes I have been using Mel Bartholomew's (the correct spelling) methods for many years. Our garden is also very bountful. Our garden was about 1000 feet before I decided to take over some of the space for the workshop. It is not certain, but I think that the vegetable garden space will be reduced to about 800 square feet. This year, while the shop construction is underway, the vegaetable garden will only be about 400 square feet.

[Frank Pellow]

I made the following changes to the diagram
-the elevations of the ceiling are now shown
-the location of the dust ports are now shown
-some tools have been moved a bit

Rather than take up additional space on the forum, I simply replaced the diagram that I had earlier posted at 03-24-2004 11:10 pm.

[Frank Pellow]

I think that I will report progress each week at the end of the week (and, in my opinion weeks end on Sunday). So, here is my first report.

This week:

• The task of staining the rough-sawn pine for the board and batten siding reached a little over the 400 board feet mark (not all done this week). This is a little more than 1/3 of the boards that will be needed. I am pre-staining these boards with one coat on the back and sides and two coats on the front. Picture (1) shows the pile of completed boards. It is too cold here, to stain outside yet so I am staining about 20 board feet a day in my way too overcrowded basement workshop.

• I built double doors out of rough-sawn pine and plywood. Picture (2) shows the front of one door. Picture (3) shows the back of the same door and you can see the overlap that is being built in the eliminate wind between the doors. Note also that the doors are being insulated. The insulation and the rest of the inside of the doors were covered with thin plywood after this picture was taken.

• Lots of small changes were made to the shop layout and to the materials list. The internal size of the shop crept up to 431 square feet.

• About 20 feet of 10 foot high fence and trellis was removed from the end of the existing deck and I started to remove deck boards. About 40% of the existing deck needs to be removed to make room for the workshop. I am happy to say that the 23 year old 2x6 cedar decking and the 2x8 cedar joists and beams are in good shape. I plan to rebuild the deck elsewhere next year and I will definitely be able to reuse the wood. But, this time I will screw it down; not nail it.

• My estimated cost has increased to $25,400 (cdn) or $19,250 (us). Real expenses are now over $2,000 (cdn).

[Frank Pellow]

I recieved some good advise on the auxilary thread that I spun off for Dust Control (and I even plan to follow some of that advise).

So, I am going to take the same approach with my electrical wiring plans. The name of the thread will be "Frank's Workshop: Electrical Plans".

[Frank Pellow]

This week:

• I removed the portion of my deck that it was necessary to remove in order to make room for the workshop. I am attaching a picture of the site that was taken late Saturday afternoon. The boards mark the perimeter of the new shop building. Contrast this photo with the one that I posted on the 17th of March.

• Stained about another 100 board feet of siding.

• With the assistance of several Saw Mill Creek forum members and, in particular, Rob Russell, I solidified the electrical plans for the shop. There is a spin-off thread entitled "Franks Workshop: Electrical Plans" on this subject.

• Neither the estimated not actual costs were altered this week. But, I expect then when I finish calculating my electrical cost, there will be yet a further escalation in the overall estimate.

There will be no report next week becuase I will be away all week helping my daughter Kristel and her family move from Prince Albert Saskatchewan to Carlton Place Ontario (much much closer to where I live).

[Tim Morton]

Looks like things are progressing nicely, I have a question about the floor. Did you give any thought to pouring a slab rather than footings? Not sure about the cost of concrete in canada verses the labor to dig and pour footings. But I was just wondering if you thought about doing that and adding in floor radiant heating. Toast warm during those cold winters.

[Frank Pellow]

Tim, I did consider building upon a concrete slab but decided against it for two reasons:

(1) I have had a lot of experience with constructing buildings on beams layed upon concrete piers and I have had no experience with building on concrete slabs.

(2) I want the main shop door to be at deck level for easy access to and from the house (and to the washroom just inside the back door of the house).

I am going to insulate the floor and I trust that the building will be warm enough (actually I am not a big fan of "tosaty warm").

[Bob_Hammond]

I noticed that you didn't allow space for a permanent outfeed table for the tablesaw, but you have an assembly table. I made a cabinet that is a combination assembly tabel/outfeed table. It's pretty big (68x44) to give me plenty of room, and allows for lots of storage underneath.

Bob

[Frank Pellow]

I noticed that you didn't allow space for a permanent outfeed table for the tablesaw, but you have an assembly table. I made a cabinet that is a combination assembly tabel/outfeed table. It's pretty big (68x44) to give me plenty of room, and allows for lots of storage underneath.

Bob

Is it mobile? I may eventually build a mobile outfeed table but don't seems to need one right now. I do have a General International Roller stand (picture attached) which handles my current requirements quite well. But, then again, my (current) table saw is a very old Simpson/Sears Craftsman and I don't ask it to do much.

Note that I don't use a table saw for sheet goods because my Festool circular saw with guide rail is much better for that.

[Frank Pellow]

I am back home for three of days having just finished helping pack my daughter's family's stuff in Saskatchewan and hurrying to finish marking the spots where the piers are to go before leaving for the Ottawa area and preparing their new house for occupancy. I will be home again next Monday and the guys come to put in my piers on Tuesday.

I was out today installing batter boards and marking pier locations and elevations and I decided to experiment with a new bargain priced laser level that I picked up recently. The new level worked great and I was very impressed with it but, in the end, I found it easier to level the cross pieces on the battens with an old line level that I have had for about 30 years and which cost me a couple of dollars. Pictures showing the old and new level technologies are attached,

[Frank Pellow]

This week:

• xx

• I dug about 2/3 of the trench that will eventually be used to run electricity and natural gas to the workshop. This was hard work and the work was not made any easier by the fact that I encountered big chucks of concrete in the ground. It looks the builders of my house must have had concrete left over one day and simply dumped it on the site. A picture is attached showing a cross section of a piece that was about 1.5 metres long. I had to break the concrete up with a sledge hammer before I could extract it. Not fun! But, I slept well last night -a little over 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep. The remaining 1/3 of the trench can not be dug until the machinery needed for the piers has come and gone. I did mange to alter the path of the trench and reduce the length by about a third (14 metres instead of 20) which will save me money when running the gas and electric lines.

• As I feared when I accepted a lot of the electrical advice that I was given on the sub-thread entitled Franks Workshop: Electrical Plans, the estimate of my electrical costs has gone up (by 30%). But, I am sure that the shop will be better served by electricity and that the increase is warranted.

• The weather is now good enough that the task of pre-staining the pine board and batten siding has shifted from by basement to my garage. Slightly more than 700 board feet (60 percent of the boards) are now stained.