Between 485 & 705 SQ/FT Comfortable one-car workshop build

Starting this thread as a build log for myself. Questions and comments along the way are welcome! I received the building permit today so I consider that the first (tiny step) milestone.

Bought a house year and a half ago with the specific plan to put up a garage/shop. I calculated the project into what I decided I could afford for a house to make sure the goal was attainable in a reasonable time frame. Will be hiring out excavation/fill/foundation and prefab trusses, other than that i'll be putting it up myself with the occasional help of some great friends. Been pestering everybody I come across for advice and experience. Doesn't mean I'm not going to learn the hard way still.

Purpose of the building will be as a personal automotive shop and general workshop. I enjoy cars from the mid 90's and earlier, they require slightly refined maintenance schedules and the occasional major work (I hate road salt!). In a past life I was a machinist and I really do need to be able to tinker with mechanical bits here and there.

Here's the plan so far: 20x30 overall with 12'-5" ceiling to suit a 9-10k lb hoist. Front face of garage will be 20' wide, facing the side of the house. 10x10 overhead door and 80x36 man door on the front face. The overhead will be offset to the right to align with what will be the auto working bay and lift location. This should keep the left side of the garage mostly available for bench, cabinets, equipment. Another 80x36 man door will be located at the far end of the right side, so accessible in front of the lift. I'm seeing this door as an emergency exit location and access to a future carport that will stretch the length of the garage on that side. The building will not have any windows at all. Heat will be some combination of electric and wood.

Slab may be slab on grade or frost wall with footing. I thought digging down for a footing would be a big ordeal but where I'm looking to fill a couple feet above existing grade anyway it might not be too bad. Foundation guy is supposed to get back to me this week with estimates both ways. Getting the roughly 12'-5" ceiling by building a 12' stud wall on top of a 6" stem wall. I'm terribly paranoid of weld or torch spatter running under a sill plate and burning up inside the wall so a stem wall will give me that peace of mind as well as keep and water or spills away from sill plate.

I have some rough drawings done up, really just enough to get the building permit and estimate materials off of. The build will be a huge learning experience for me. I'm used to automotive, mechanical and machinery. Been a helping hand on a few shed builds but this will be the first significant building project for me. Posting mostly from mobile so pics along the way should be available.

Well, physical work has been at a standstill so far. Spring road weight restrictions have my excavation guy telling me to hurry up and wait. Found a concrete guy that sounds interested in the job (the 4 I contacted prior didn't sound interested). This guy provided me a quote broken down with the specs I asked for and comes recommended by a coworker.

Both concrete and excavation guys are visiting site Monday to determine what each needs from the other. During my last chat with the concrete guy, I mentioned that there will be a 10k lb 2 post lift installed and asked him if there was anything he thought should be done to accommodate. Slab thickness is already 6" and concrete will be 32mPa (4600psi?). Due to slab on grade construction and the threat of frost heaves, the entire slab will be insulated with 2" rigid. His suggestion was to cut out a 2 foot square of the insulation below where the lift posts will be mounted so that they will bear directly through the concrete to compacted base rather that possibly compressing the insulation. Thoughts on that advice? FYI, lift manufacturer specs 4" thick @3000psi so i'm going above and beyond the specs in both ways. Also I can't guarantee that i'll have the shop heated for the first winter or two.

Sounds like excavation work is starting 4th week of May. Should be a quick job for him judging by the machinery available, concrete formed and poured right after. Tallying up the bills so far, looks like i'm not much more than I estimated for sitework and slab. That's a huge relief.

Overhead door ordered this week, 10'x10' r16 plain flush panels with hi lift tracks to take advantage of the 12+ ceiling. Liftmaster 8500 jackshaft operator on it's way too.

Any thoughts on cutting out the insulation from below where the lift posts will stand as I explained above? I'm leaning towards no but I really need to get some feedback on how a 6" slab over rigid will take the load.

Should get pics of existing site and plan attached if I can resize them.

Been a little progress since my last post....

Here's the plan I was explaining previously:




Trees in the way. I do love the wooded lot that my house is on but these particular trees had to be removed to build the garage. They are also within falling distance of the house and a couple turned out to be rotted inside. I made the call to not mess around with falling the trees myself, just too much risk. Called in a pro and he made quick work of the 11 trees.




This was a huge mess to clean up and I was on a tight timeline to do it before my excavation guy showed up. Cut them into 12ft lengths and piled them out back in case I come up with a good use for them.




Excavation day More fill than excavating. I decided to go with thickened edge slab on grade so my excavation guy just had to fill and compact the area. Him and his machine did an awesome job. Probably spent more time waiting for loads of fill to arrive than actually running but got it all done in a day.




Here is the slab formed up. You can see the structure the crew built into the forms to pour a 5.5" tall stem wall at the same time as the slab.




First of two concrete trucks. I think they were 6m^3 each, so total poured ended up just shy of 12m^3.




The crew during the pour. There's two rows of rebar around the edges, welded wire mesh across center, and 2" EPS insulation under the slab to keep frost from pushing up.




It was a long day but they finished it. I purchased and had the crew drop in anchor bolts at my specified locations to hopefully fall between the wall studs. Exactly according to plan, I only had myself to blame for the 3 that had to be cut and new anchors installed




The first day of framing went sort of great. One of the hottest days of the summer, and by coincidence the power went out. That wouldn't stop me, I dragged out the generator to run the the miter saw and we got two walls framed up.




Skipping ahead a pile of details here, progress was made slowly but surely throughout the summer. Seemed only the hottest days of the year when we would work on it. Stinkin hot. I can't thank my friends enough for puttting in many hard working days getting to this point and beyond.




I strapped the trusses with 2x4's at 16" centers and installed a metal roof over them. Coming from working in machine shops, I love metal clad buildings and this one will be almost entirely metal on the outside except for the soffits.




Getting into the cooler days of the fall, I got both man doors and the overhead door installed. These were all done by my father and myself. The man doors are commercial steel doors and my father put a lot of extra reinforcing in them and their steel frames when he built them. The overhead door is 10'x10' r16, I had ordered it with high lift tracks but ended up having to cut that section off to clear the ceiling. In the end they ended up as standard tracks with 16" radius IIRC.




I installed the LiftMaster 8500 by myself. Very straight-forward. This thing impresses everybody that has seen it! I probably paid about 2x of what a chain or belt drive opener would cost but it was well worth it to me.




Found this cabinet on Kijiji (Canadian equivalent of Craigslist). Guy said it came from a local junior high school ages ago. Extremely solid little unit, at $30 I felt like it was a bargain.




This is basically as the garage sits now. I buried 2" EPS insulation from the perimeter out 4 feet to help keep frost from pushing up and backfilled up to the bottom of the doors as well as did my best to provide a slope to keep water running away from the building. Power at the moment is an extension cord run from the house across the driveway, but I did bury a 2" conduit and 1" conduit for power and network cables.




That's basically where it stands now, I pulled the car in for the winter and have been doing small tasks as needed with only two 60w light bulbs Winter really gets me down, I'm just happy that I got the building closed in and was able to get most of my tools gathered in one spot.

From here on I'll try to post updates as they are happening, both with the build and with what I'm doing in the garage.

Looks good. Great score on the cabinet and a lot of friends to help the next time they need a laborer or whatever else for all the help they gave you.

Your build looks pretty awesome dla, keen to see it come together.

Welcome to the forum.

Cheers GB.

krcoomer said:

Looks good. Great score on the cabinet and a lot of friends to help the next time they need a laborer or whatever else for all the help they gave you.

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For sure, I owe some favors now!

Grumblebum said:

Your build looks pretty awesome dla, keen to see it come together.

Welcome to the forum.

Cheers GB.

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Thanks GB


One of my slowly dragging on projects here, a used compressor my father bought for me a few years ago.




I estimate it is from the late 70's. Very capable machine, good output specs and runs on 240v. But when I tried it out, it seemed to take forever to pump up and the compressor got very hot. Something was obviously wrong




Yes I think a broken connecting rod would cause some issues. I ordered a new connecting rod from Sears Parts Canada and eventually got the compressor unit reassembled. <EDIT> The compressor is a Campbell Hausfeld unit. I wasn't able to find much info on this specific one, but many models used the same parts such as connecting rods and pistons. The most common problem with them is the screws holding the reed valves coming loose and ingesting into the cylinder. Fortunately they seemed to be held in tightly on mine.




This evening I disassembled the electric motor. I didn't get very far into it before hitting the limits of my comfort zone, but far enough to see that it is fairly clean inside and the bearings have a small amount of axial play in them. Wrote down the number from the side of the bearing and bolted it all back together before forgetting what goes where. If the bearings ever become an issue, I can have parts on hand to make a quick repair.

I've been messing around a little in the garage this weekend. First task was to gather all the automotive fluids from all their hiding places and put them together where I can keep track of what I have vs what I need.




Next task was to fix a swivel caster on my Westward toolbox. The stud that's peened over the swivel bearings had become loose. I clamped the assembly together and used my little flux core welder to weld the peened end of the stud to the mounting plate. I know it's a hack repair but the thing was beyond doing anything proper with. The other swivel caster had long ago lost all of it's ball bearings. They aren't high on my list of priorities because this box won't be rolled around too often.

After that, I decided to convert my flux core welder to MIG in preparation for welding floor patches in my car. Out with the .030" flux core wire, in with the .025" solid wire.




The polarity needs to be changed from electrode negative to electrode positive. The machine has this bus connector that accomplishes the task. Here it is in the electrode negative arrangement.




After switching it 90 degrees counter-clockwise, I reinstalled the cover.




Hooked up gas, fitted nozzle to the gun, changed contact tip, and proceeded to deposit bird$#!+ on a piece of scrap metal. It just wouldn't penetrate at all. The wire would just melt into balls on top of my test piece no matter what power and wirefeed settings I used. In the process of troubleshooting, I decided to check to make sure the bus connector nuts were tightened all the way. Just a slight pressure on one of them, and....




broken stud. That's a good way to ruin an otherwise productive sunday.

Had to cool off a bit after that one, decide where to take it from here. I've got other things I can tackle in the garage today without needing the welder so I'll get back out there for a bit, then disassemble it some evening this week to determine a repair.

dla

The garage build is awesome. Love the tall walls and it will be a beautiful place all around. The building looks VERY well built and should turn into your perfect garage and shop!!

I will be watching for more posts.

Best Regards
Herb

Shaping up like a great little shop. Being in NB as you are, do you you have plans to insulate and get some heat going?

HSpencer said:

dla

The garage build is awesome. Love the tall walls and it will be a beautiful place all around. The building looks VERY well built and should turn into your perfect garage and shop!!

I will be watching for more posts.

Best Regards
Herb

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Thanks Herb! The tall walls (12'-4") are to accomodate a lift someday. Everything about this build, I took a step or two above "minimum". At times it was difficult getting quotes and materials to my spec because everybody around here goes for the absolute cheapest of everything.

Denwood said:

Shaping up like a great little shop. Being in NB as you are, do you you have plans to insulate and get some heat going?

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Dennis, insulating and heating are a high priority for this build! The overhead door was spec'd with extra R-value, the commercial/industrial man doors are insulated with rockwool and have all their nooks and crannies jammed full, the 2x6 framing allows R-20 of fiberglass batt, the trusses were spec'd with a 14" raised heel to accomodate extra blown in insulation, etc.

The plan for heating method has evolved since the build started and will likely evolve further. I was originally looking at electric (baseboard or construction heaters) to keep a baseline temperature, maybe 5C or 8C and a wood stove to provide comfortable working temperature. A friend offered a forced air oil furnace and that solved a lot of issues with the previous idea. I don't have to balance my power consumption between tools and heating, a single thermostat can provide my baseline heating and kick up while I'm using the shop, I don't have to arrange the garage around the length of baseboard heaters, no need to source and store firewood, and I can run it on a small generator during power outages.

Insulating and heating will be progressed once the exterior is finished (hopefully spring/early summer). The eaves are still open and there's some sealing to do around the doors to keep critters out. After that I'll feel comfortable with putting in insulation and drywall.

****** with the welder stud breaking. Do you have to change your roller to the 0.6 one with the wire thickness change from 0.8 ?

GB

GB: Yes I did have to switch the drive roller around to accomodate 0.6mm wire.

Repair of the welder has been a trying experience. I disassembled the machine and removed the assembly that holds the conductor studs. They are threaded #10-32. I wasn't able to find brass threaded rod or screws in that size, so i had to make my own with a 3/16" rod and a threading die. Already more work than I had wanted to put into this thing, but that was just the beginning.




After making the new stud and soldering the nut onto it, I reinstalled it all in the machine. Being very careful now to tighten everything gently, another one of the studs twisted off. I absolutely was not going through all of that again. The repair this time was to connect the wiring inside the machine completely bypassing this polarity change arrangement. I bought some brass screws and connected everything and found that the welder still wouldn't run properly. Far too many evenings have been spent messing around with this machine. This pin that operates the gas valve in the gun shot out at one point, took me two days to find it on the other side of the shop.




I had the gun apart to check the electrical connection, it had been loose too but fixing it didn't solve the problem. It always ran well with flux core dcen, but that's the only combination that it seems to work with. It's a rebranded version of the same machine in this thread Converted welder to gas--can't get it to weld now! and he was having the identical problem as I am. His solution: buy a Hobart 140.

I'm too stubborn to throw in the towel on this but it really isn't giving me much hope. I'd love to pick up a good name machine that runs on 240v and can justify it for my future plans but I don't have the shop wired yet, and the project sitting in the shop at the moment requires welding.

Here's a portion of my project at the moment. Can anyone guess what I think of road salt?




Lots of prep and patches to fabricate before I need to start welding. Damage is limited to the floor pans thankfully. I uncovered a major design flaw when tearing this down. Ford put small holes (roughly 5/32" or 4mm) in each dip and bump of the floor on this car, then glued sound damping material over it. Even with meticulous undercoating it's whole life, the salt and water were able to creep in and do significant damage without notice until I went poking around.

This car is actually in really good shape for being 22 years old in this area. If it weren't for the factory drain/vent holes and sound damping, the car wouldn't have a rust through anywhere.

I've been through similar repairs with cars sitting in a muddy driveway, or pulling into a shop an evening at a time. Although my garage is far from complete, being able to tackle this job in this manner is already a dream.

Wayyy long overdue update. Some of this progress is from a month ago.

Haven't done anything more on the car. Sickens me to see the holes and the frustrations with the welder sent it to the back corner of the shop where I try to avoid eye contact

Ever since I got the roof done, I've been racking my brain to figure out how to build the soffit corners and make it work with the steel siding without too much for awkward bits crammed into the corner. Most housing in this area is done with simple boxed returns and I'm fine with that. The sticking point for me was that the method I was told to use by a few people with construction experience didn't wrap around the gable face any, and it seemed to me that I'd have several different trim pieces all trying to mate at one 4-way corner. My solution is as below, cutting and assembling was mostly done on the ground so I only had a few screws to drive while on the ladder.




Next hurdle was to mark the installation height of the F-trim on the wall that will eventually hold the soffit panels. I calculated that I wanted the bottom edge of it 1/4" below the bottom edge of my fascia boards. That accounts for the thickness of the soffit panels and will keep them at about a 1/4" slope over the 12" overhang away from the wall. Again, trying to minimize time and tasks done on a ladder, I decided to build a tool!




Marking the height to the bottom edge of the F-trim is a one-handed affair with this arrangement.

Most of the last month has been spent on a very special project. I've taken the odd time here and there to replace a spring shackle and tie rod end on the truck, various mower maintenance and tuning/repair, and general spring property cleanup. But the focus has been on building a doghouse. There's a story to it.

My mother has been searching for a house on and off for a year now, has looked at several and always found something she wasn't pleased with. She's rather content in her apartment except she really wants a backyard where she can bbq and play with her dog. Finally, about a month ago, the perfect house for her and her dog appeared. Offer, inspection, lots of paperwork, she's getting the keys later this week to move in over the weekend.

My sister and I decided that she needs a doghouse. Her and her boyfriend visited on a nice saturday to start, here they are assembling the floor.




We designed it around using leftover materials from the garage build. Having the same 4-12 roof pitch meant a lot of plywood was already cut to the proper angle. My sister calculated how big it should be for the size of Lacey but we kept rounding the numbers up and maximizing use of available material. Lacey (left) now has room to invite friends, such as my sister's dog Maggie (right).




Here, the doghouse (from here on known as Lacey's cabin) is sitting on a pair of work horses that my sister and I built 2 years ago. She can't visit without being put to work! These things have been used for absolutely everything around the house, yard and garage build. They are incredibly sturdy and cost little to build. At the time I only had a hand saw.




I was forbidden from choosing any colors as I've proven my incompetence in the past, my sister came up with the color scheme. I wasn't too sure but it seems to be coming together for Lacey's cabin. I'd seen cedar shingles being installed in the past but this was my first attempt. Finishing touches this week will be to install the ridge cap and glass windows with frames painted the same as the trim. The surprise delivery should be Friday.

Nice dog house and shop.

Long time no update!

Surprise delivery of Lacey's cabin went off without any trouble, my mother is proud to have it in her backyard and Lacey enjoys her own space when I'm not invading. I need to get a final overall picture, I even impressed myself with the window frames.




After that, I spent some time working on the old wagon. One step forward, two back. Found a deal on a little hatchback to use as a runabout so I can put the wagon on the backburner until I have a few other projects completed, like the garage to work on it in

Concentrated my effort with help from my father over the last month or so to get siding finished and most of the fascia and soffit installed. Seeing it look like this is a HUGE morale boost. The only other thing I'm pushing to have done before winter is the electrical panel installed and connected with a few circuits to get me started.




Like I always say, I'll try and post more regularly here. I'm on the site daily and follow several folks' threads. Feel bad for not contributing very much.

Nice space!

That looks nice. Kinda what I wanna build! Great work.

Thank you Bill and Unruh!

My mother and sister visited this weekend, while they were here we put up this "Allspace" organizer unit that my sister's boyfriend gave to me. I've never been able to use pegboard to it's potential but I'm really trying here!

Today I picked up a pair of desk cabinets from a surplus sale. I was told they came out of a power generating station that shut down 5 years ago, used in the maintenance shop. There was no top (the pic below has a couple 2x12 lumber just to get a feel for size) and it turns out I got two lefts! Doesn't worry me too much, I can cut and weld one bracket and live with the drawer lock being on the wrong side...




I haven't been able to figure out who the manufacturer is. There is one small sticker that says "Martone" with a semi-local address, probably the original seller. Google came up blank. They seem to be built sturdy enough, all metal.

Long term plan with them is to assemble them as a desk (72" wide) and install that in a mezzanine office in the back left corner of the shop. I've laid out the footprint on the floor to see how it would affect the working area, pretty sure it will have minimal impact and provide a good space to store snowblower, generator and compressor underneath. My main use will be as an electronics and soldering bench however I'm sure a shop computer will end up in there. Less than a month ago I replaced the kitchen countertop in my mother's house and saved a 72" long chunk of the old one for just such a project. What a coincidence

For now though, I'd like to be able to use the drawers but have it not take up a lot of floor space while I still have building materials strewn about and unfinished interior. Started reaching for a measuring tape, some scrap plywood, a circular saw and a drill, random hardware from the junk bin, and TADA!

Nice building u got there, I picked up the same air compressor at an auction for 20$ as an impulse buy but found out later the tank was rusted through.

Nice building you've got going there.

Whereabouts in NB are you?

markushofer27 said:

Nice building u got there, I picked up the same air compressor at an auction for 20$ as an impulse buy but found out later the tank was rusted through.

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My tank looks good from the outside but I'll pull one of the plugs and inspect inside before running it. Haven't got power to the garage yet so no huge rush.

timbitca said:

Nice building you've got going there.

Whereabouts in NB are you?

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Just outside of Fredericton. I grew up around Moncton, family all still around there.

Spent this evening doing odd little tasks in the shop...

Merry Christmas! I hope you all had a great one with your families and friends!

We are in full winter mode here. The long term forecast here ranges from -11C daytime high to -24C overnight low I'll be mostly staying warm inside the house for a few weeks.

Merry and happy new year from Sudbury, Ontario. Its been -33c for a low here the last week. My new superduty has barely been cranking over.

Love the garage, im going to build almost the exact setup except ill need to go 20x29.5 to keep me from having to hire an engineer for a floating slab, ontario limits us to 592 sqft before an engineer drawinging is required. My poor drag car has been in a cramped 18x20 attached garage with no room to work

Is it just ontario or lumber prices insanity?

I really like this comfortable one-car workshop. I will likely be going with an 18X30 size metal garage so I am interested in seeing how you set your place up with the lift and tool boxes. Nice build and workshop. I love the metal siding.

Very cool project, nice work!!! Best of luck in 2018!!

Great thread
This is my kind of build. Keep the progress updates coming.

Oh - and happy new year.

Mac Hmslf said:

Merry and happy new year from Sudbury, Ontario. Its been -33c for a low here the last week. My new superduty has barely been cranking over.

Love the garage, im going to build almost the exact setup except ill need to go 20x29.5 to keep me from having to hire an engineer for a floating slab, ontario limits us to 592 sqft before an engineer drawinging is required. My poor drag car has been in a cramped 18x20 attached garage with no room to work

Is it just ontario or lumber prices insanity?

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I've heard from a buddy that lumber has gone up here as well. To me it's like gas prices, when I need it I need it so I just close my eyes and swipe the card

Wasn't my shop supposed to be 29.5ft long? Tape measure must have stretched a bit in the summer heat

We're still in the chilly snap here. It's not just hard on diesels, my 1.6 Fiesta has been cranking slow lately and I found the battery at 11.8v over the long weekend. Trying to limp it along:

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54chevyls1 said:

I really like this comfortable one-car workshop. I will likely be going with an 18X30 size metal garage so I am interested in seeing how you set your place up with the lift and tool boxes. Nice build and workshop. I love the metal siding.

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Lift is still a few years out yet Maybe I'll dust off the CAD machine and do some layout concepts for inspiration to get me through this chilly spell.

sean Buick 76 said:

Very cool project, nice work!!! Best of luck in 2018!!

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Thanks Sean!

Shootinok said:

Great thread
This is my kind of build. Keep the progress updates coming.

Oh - and happy new year.

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Happy new year to you and all of GarageJournal I'm excited to see what 2018 brings!

Watching the weather forecast over the last few days, the folks far smarter than I are certain that we're getting a good dump of snow tomorrow starting about noon. Up to 18" in my area they say.

Had a buddy over for not much more than an hour tonight and we shuffled things around to get both "classics" tucked away. Still plenty of room for the snowblower and whatever repairs it will need as well as access to all of my tools.

Ooohhhhh. I think my rubber ruler will be out this summer. I had one inspector told me since im in the middle of nowhere the 20x30 will slide without the engineer... yippie..

Thanks for posting that shot with the truck. Now i have an idea when the mustang (91) is not being worked on in winter i can stash it to side and still work on something

I built a 10x10 shed in october and with building my own trusses i was still at 1800 with price matching and getting discounts

Where did you get the 10x10 door and what was price? I was quoted 1500 installed.

Mac Hmslf said:

Ooohhhhh. I think my rubber ruler will be out this summer. I had one inspector told me since im in the middle of nowhere the 20x30 will slide without the engineer... yippie..

Thanks for posting that shot with the truck. Now i have an idea when the mustang (91) is not being worked on in winter i can stash it to side and still work on something

I built a 10x10 shed in october and with building my own trusses i was still at 1800 with price matching and getting discounts

Where did you get the 10x10 door and what was price? I was quoted 1500 installed.

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In that pic, the wagon is about 2ft from the side wall and the truck is about the same from the opposite side wall. I can walk around comfortably. If the wagon was jammed right to the wall and I didn't have building materials leaning on the right side, there would actually be reasonable space to work on the truck.

I purchased my door and liftmaster 8500 as a combo and installed myself. It is a Richard Wilcox flush panel R16. Package cost was 1850+tax, I think the liftmaster was 400-450 of that. My father did the negotiations so I'm not sure how much list may have been. 1500 installed sounds decent for an equivalent door. The liftmaster is great and maintains full ceiling height. Only downside is they've been having controller failures, I'm on my 2nd. If I wasn't building this around a future lift I would stick a conventional chain or belt drive up there.

Dia, we're seeing -35C at night right now..I feel your pain!

I was going to ask previous, but what's the plan for the extra height? There's a ton of usable space up there for storage...

Denwood said:

Dia, we're seeing -35C at night right now..I feel your pain!

I was going to ask previous, but what's the plan for the extra height? There's a ton of usable space up there for storage...

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Hey Dennis! Great to hear from you again!

In the main drive-in bay, eventually something like a Atlas PV-10P.

I love the way you've installed enclosed cabinets around the upper portion of your garage but it just won't work for me. I've got to limit the amount of storage space I build into this because it'll all end up too cluttered to actually access. Many on here have Flat Surface Disease (FSD), I'm on a whole other level of that and seeing the space as it is so far has taken a whole lot of discipline and restraint on my end. So for the foreseeable future I believe I'll keep the open overhead area and try limiting any general cabinet depth to 12" to keep everything visible and accessible as per jrhass60's thread here: https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=317417

I spent an hour this evening taking video clips and narrating in hopes of embedding it here as a shop and projects update. Turns out I say "uh" a lot and I can't stand hearing my own voice recorded and played back

Really haven't done anything to the garage itself this year. Serviced the front end in the truck which required pulling the differential from the axle housing, new seals everywhere and eased my mind regarding the condition of it all. Have the wagon on jack stands right now fabricating floor patches. Nothing too horrible especially considering the age of it and where I live but I can think of a few hundred other things I'd rather be putting time into.

Milestone update Today, August the whateverth, 2018, the comfortable one-car workshop has power! I actually had the cable run from house to garage since early last winter. Getting it into the house panel was a daunting task that I waayyy overthought but in the end came up with a good solution that satisfies code and didn't have to destroy walls to do it. I'll omit pics of the house panel as it's nearly 30 years old and has had hands in it before me, nothing to keep me awake at night but it's on the list to be swapped out.

Here is the panel in the garage, just before throwing the main breaker to check for voltage or fireballs. All went smoothly.




While picking up receptacles and boxes this morning, I wandered by the electrical tools rack at home depot and something fell in my basket...




That tool works good. Give it a squeeze and pull the outer covering off of 12/2 or 14/2.

120V-20A receptacle on a 20A breaker over the red bench. I triple checked everything with a multimeter but still shoved the outlet tester in just for peace of mind.




Liftmaster is now powered up all the time Oh the relief of not having to plug an extension cord into a bedroom outlet, out through a window and across the driveway every time I want to go in the garage!




The tin receptacle covers were my plan all along, just like in the machine shops I've worked in. I actually had my basket loaded up with plastic covers because I didn't see these at HD but they were around the corner in amongst the more industrial type hardware. All of the electrical will be run in conduit surface mounted on the walls when the time comes.

Also got delivery of strapping and drywall today to start putting up a ceiling.

dla said:

Milestone update Today, August the whateverth, 2018, the comfortable one-car workshop has power! I actually had the cable run from house to garage since early last winter. Getting it into the house panel was a daunting task that I waayyy overthought but in the end came up with a good solution that satisfies code and didn't have to destroy walls to do it. I'll omit pics of the house panel as it's nearly 30 years old and has had hands in it before me, nothing to keep me awake at night but it's on the list to be swapped out.



Here is the panel in the garage, just before throwing the main breaker to check for voltage or fireballs. All went smoothly.

While picking up receptacles and boxes this morning, I wandered by the electrical tools rack at home depot and something fell in my basket...

That tool works good. Give it a squeeze and pull the outer covering off of 12/2 or 14/2.



120V-20A receptacle on a 20A breaker over the red bench. I triple checked everything with a multimeter but still shoved the outlet tester in just for peace of mind.

Liftmaster is now powered up all the time Oh the relief of not having to plug an extension cord into a bedroom outlet, out through a window and across the driveway every time I want to go in the garage!

The tin receptacle covers were my plan all along, just like in the machine shops I've worked in. I actually had my basket loaded up with plastic covers because I didn't see these at HD but they were around the corner in amongst the more industrial type hardware. All of the electrical will be run in conduit surface mounted on the walls when the time comes.



Also got delivery of strapping and drywall today to start putting up a ceiling.

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