Above 1200 Sq/FT Thielbilly’s Shop Reno and Home Projects

a_thiel24 · Apr 17, 2020

My name is Alex Thiel (pronounced till) and I am a 26-year-old process engineer in rural NW Ohio. I started a thread a few years ago (titled Starting Out Young) where I was working out of my dad’s basement, but Photobucket decided to mess it up royally. I said that I would start another thread when I moved out and got my own shop. Well that time happened in 2017 and I am just now getting around to starting the new thread. Life certainly has a way of getting in the way.

So back to 2017. In May of 2017 I graduated from Ohio Northern University with my mechanical engineering degree. My then fiancé also graduated that same weekend from Kent State with her doctorate of Audiology. We graduated on Friday and Sunday respectively and went to work at our new jobs on Monday. Our wedding was set for October of 2017, so we had been looking at houses in our hometown for months without any luck. Finally, around the middle of July we found a house just outside of town that fit the bill and we closed on it in August of 2017. The house had been for sale less than a year before after being foreclosed on and I really wanted to purchase it back then. But being a broke college student… So, we bought it from the guy who “flipped” it who was a high school history teacher of ours. The guy had no business flipping houses, but I digress. So, I won’t go into major details, but I did a ton of work with the help of my dad from August up until the week of our wedding. We rushed to get things moved in and then we got ourselves hitched and started living in our new home.

To start out, the green square is the 2-car attached garage. It is about 24x20 and houses our daily drivers along with some garden tools and bikes. I didn’t have anything to do to this other than rip out a crappy bench that was in the front of the garage.

The real shop is the red and blue squares. The red square is the original shop and is about 35x15 and I use it as my woodshop. My neighbor who lives next door grew up in my house, so I know a little bit of the history. I am fairly close to train tracks that run both N-S and E-W and he said this building was originally part of a train depot near by and was moved to the property before he was born (he is in his late 60’s). The blue square is about 45x32 minus the 20x15 portion that is the woodshop. He didn’t have an exact date on when it was added on to the original shop but from the construction, I would guess sometime in the 80’s.

Looking SE out my back door.

Looking North.

Looking NW.

Looking West.

Looking SW.

More updates to follow as I have plenty of time to spare thanks to COVID-19.

a_thiel24 · Apr 18, 2020

Here are 2 pictures of the woodshop before I started tearing into it. I eventually pulled out all the wallboard and “insulation”. They had used Styrofoam pieces held up in a grid pattern with some wood trim.

You step in the main door and turn immediately to the right to access the woodshop.

Looking back towards the entry.

There originally was a brick floor and they poured about 2” of concrete over top, apparently in sections as money allowed. The story is that they had a very heavy bench that was never moved when the concrete was poured.

As you can also see in that picture, I had to replace most of the sill plate along that wall and I added a few blocks as well to reattach the outside sheeting. The fuel oil tank was in that area and there was no gutter. All the water just sat in that area. All said, I replaced about 16’ of sill plate. As sketchy as that was, trying to lift the wall with a set of farm jacks, I didn’t get any in process pictures.

I also replaced one badly rotten corner post.

Kevkx125 · Apr 19, 2020

Looks and sounds like a great project. Keep up the progress reports please.

a_thiel24 · Apr 19, 2020

Kevkx125, thanks for commenting and following along! Like I mentioned, I have plenty of time now to post so hope to post once a day to get up to speed with my current progress and projects.

Since this is the shop and house reno thread, I may go on some tangents of other stuff going on around the property.

In the back yard there was a concrete pad that was in terrible place that supposedly had a chicken coop on it back in the day. It’s at the end of the brick sidewalk. That was where we wanted to put our garden in, so the pad had to go.

With the help of my truck driving/skid loader owning friend, we also got 4 loads of stone hauled in for both the shop and the house.

Once the rain washed off all of the dirt, it looked even better.

a_thiel24 · Apr 20, 2020

My main intention was to get the wood shop redone so I could bring all my tools from my dad’s basement to my shop. I didn’t have the money to put new metal on the outside of the building, but the board and batten style siding on the woodshop looked like swiss cheese and the huge single pane windows weren’t going to cut it.

I decided to ditch the windows for something smaller, higher (prying eyes), and more energy efficient. I started by removing all the battens of the original siding and taking out the old windows. I then began to reframe for my new windows.

As you can see, I put on house wrap to help with the swiss cheese situation until I could afford to put new metal on the building. Spoiler alert: still no metal as of April 2020.

I also boarded over a window on the SE side which can’t be seen from the house.

BORING HOP YARD · Apr 21, 2020

Looking great, nice start to improving that shop.
Thanks for sharing.

Bears Fan · Apr 21, 2020

Great start! The shop looks better already with new windows and the house wrap on on it, that will look awesome with some new metal siding :beer:

a_thiel24 · Apr 21, 2020

Boring Hop Yard, thank you for stopping in.

Bears Fan, thanks for checking in. I have been a lurker on your thread for years. In my head, it'll be great with some metal siding. Just waiting for the funds to be allocated for that project. May be waiting a while...

It was about January of 2018 at this point and my company was having some major issues and I got stuck working a 7pm-4am shift, 7 days a week for about 8 weeks. Progress was slow but I had a little bit of time to plan out my electrical situation due to my super messed up sleep schedule.

I don’t seem to have any pictures of just electrical. Insulation went up shortly after.

Electrical is super cheap to add when the walls are open, so I went pretty big. I got a huge Square D box from my brother’s employer for $50 and it was full of breakers to get me started. Previously there was a small box with about 5 breakers and no main disconnect. Luckily, the wire that was supplying the box was already big enough for a 100-amp service. All I had to do was put my box where I wanted it, reroute the main wiring, and swap in a 100-amp disconnect (box was previously 200 amp).

I ran 2 separate 120 circuits down each long wall. I also ran a total of 5 home run 240 circuits for future bigger machinery. Also added provisions for lights, outside lights, and a circuit in the ceiling for a future air cleaner.

Those 2 paragraphs represent hours and hours of planning. I also drew out my walls and ceiling to scale with studs and everything. If at anytime in the future I need to upgrade or change anything I know exactly where every wire is run. If anyone would like more explanation on this, please feel free to ask.

When I started on the project my dad told me I had all the time in the world and that he didn’t care when all my equipment got moved out. At this point in the project was when he told me that he was getting engaged and was moving in with his future wife who lives about an hour away.

I wanted to get the woodshop done so that everything could just be moved once, and I could get right to using it. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen in time and everything had to be stored in the other side of the shop. And for a then 24-year-old, man did I have a bunch of ****. I also gained a ton of **** from my dad that I wanted to have on hand. He lived in an old farmhouse with a pole barn and always kept a ton of junk and I would be losing access to that when he moved.

turbowoodworker · Apr 22, 2020

Nice work on a good space. Looking forward to all the future progress.

a_thiel24 · Apr 22, 2020

Turbowoodworker, thanks for stopping in. I've got quite a bit of material yet to get to current. Unfortunately, I'm not the best with taking pictures.

I don’t have any pictures of just the OSB going up, but here is a picture that shows quite a bit of work.

From the picture you can see that I took out the sliding door and added a regular garage door (no opener). I also took off the week of the 4th of July and hung up the OSB. Then with the help of my dad, brothers, and a good friend we got the ceiling metal and lights up. I went with 4-foot LED’s and love them.

In fact, I borrowed a light meter from an electrician at work to measure the foot-candles.

bikerneil · Apr 22, 2020

Nice garage and post on your progress.

Great job on the lighting. I love having plenty of good quality, white light.

frankush · Apr 22, 2020

Looking good. You'd never know it was the same space.

sean Buick 76 · Apr 23, 2020

Great job!

a_thiel24 · Apr 24, 2020

bikerneil, lighting was definitely a high priority for me. I used the threads here for all of my info.

frankush, thanks for stopping in and the mighty fine compliment!

sean Buick 76, thanks for stopping in. I've been a lurker on your thread for quite a while.

Once the wallboard and ceiling were up, it was game on. First thing I did was trim out the windows and man door. Apparently, I also put in the new man door and failed to take pictures of the progress.

I added some 1x8 and some cove trim to the bottom as well at some point.

I then hung up a lumber rack so I could start to clean some of the chaos on the other side of my shop.

These lumber racks are from Grizzly (around $25 for a set of 2). I have 5 total in the shop and absolutely love them.

Also, around this time I got some dirt for the garden.

captain14 · Apr 24, 2020

With the new wallboard and ceiling up it makes the wood shop a better place to work (and hang out)?

We all knows it’s hard to take photos when you are on a roll during a project l, but just think you can go back to review what it used to look like or where that electric wire is run in the wall.

Good luck on your next steps.

mayerryan · Apr 24, 2020

Looking great so far! Cant wait to see the progression on the shop and house!

T-handle · Apr 24, 2020

Great work Alex! Keep on posting :thumbup:

cortina64 · Apr 24, 2020

Great transformation so far, looking forward to seeing the progress!
Warren

a_thiel24 · Apr 28, 2020

captain14, it is definitely a much nicer place to get some work done! I'm trying to be better about photo taking on my current projects.

mayerryan, thanks for stopping in. The shop has progresses nicely. More updates to come.

T-handle, thanks for stopping in.

cortina64, more updates to come.

On the other side of the shop there was a stairway to get access to the attic. It was basically crumbling, and the rise/run caused it to impede out farther than the wall it was up against, making it harder to park my truck.

This needed to be rebuilt so I could store more items in the attic during my cleanup process. I started with some 2x material from my dad. They were stored in the rafters of his barn after it was built in 2000 so they were grungy. With some cleaning and a trip to the planer, they cleaned up good.

The only way I could figure out how to get to the attic without impeding the parking space was to flip a set of stringers.

I ended up taking the boards off the back as the treads were skinny and I kept kicking them. Prior to this, the stairs came out about 2’ further to the right in the picture.

Added a round over so that they fit tight on the stingers.

Brian R · Apr 28, 2020

My favorite type of thread where someone finds an old building with history and character and renovates on the fly instead of tearing it down.

Well done and thanks for posting.

a_thiel24 · May 3, 2020

Brian R, those types of threads are my favorites as well. Just wish I had taken more pictures along the way.

Before my dad moved, he bought a bunch of the snap type wood flooring that he planned on installing in his house. He never got the chance and sold it to me for a song when he moved. I decided that I wanted to put it in my woodshop with the main benefit being that it would be much easier to clean than the cracked flooring. I checked every single day during the spring and summer to make sure that I did not have any water getting in or sweating from the concrete. Thankfully I did not. I started with a roll of padded underlayment from Menards. I don’t remember what it was called but it was rated to go directly on concrete as long as you taped the seams.

And approximately 500 square feet later.

I did have to grind the concrete in a few spots prior to this as a few places were heaved. I just used a diamond wheel I got from Amazon on a 4.5” grinder. Also filled the spot where the old bench previously was with new concrete.

I can’t express how much I love this as flooring in my shop. It was my best decision to date.

Kevkx125 · May 3, 2020

Awesome idea for flooring in the wood shop, looks sharp.

PhantomEB · May 3, 2020

Never seen this thread before and loved reading it. Maybe one day I be in the same boat, but won’t be until I have all the tools I want here. No issues loading my stuff into a sea can rental to sit outside a shop while I do the upgrades inside.

cortina64 · May 3, 2020

Your flooring looks great, should be easy to keep clean.
Go idea on flipping the stairs.
Warren

a_thiel24 · May 4, 2020

Kevkx125, thanks. It was too good of a deal not to give it a try.

PhantomEB, it's definitely worth the wait to find the right place. Especially when you have all the tools to get started on renovation already.

cortina64, it makes it so much easier to clean. Like I said, best decision I made about the shop.

Next project was a door for the woodshop to try and contain dust. Previously there was no door, just an entryway. I used a glass door that I picked up from the curb.

I also fashioned a handle/lock myself. Free door, free handle. Win win.

zjohnson1 · May 4, 2020

Awesome work! Threads like this make me wish I could have found a property with an old garage, unfortunately they don't seem to exist in my area... Keep the updates coming

Kevkx125 · May 4, 2020

Nice reuse on the door A_thiel24, wood shop is looking good.

Bears Fan · May 4, 2020

That floor is awesome and you get some cool factor points for that door knob on the door :thumbup:

its all about the details :pimpflash

a_thiel24 · May 5, 2020

zjohnson1, older buildings are both fun and hard to work on. Working with what I had was the only option I had, so I just went with it.

Kevkx125, thanks for continuing to stop in and check out my progress. Free is king.

Bears Fan, I'm glad you found your way to my thread. I have been following yours for quite some time. And we aren't that far apart in the grand scheme.

Next up was the workbench build. I had a bunch of lumber from a family barn that fell in 2012 that I had been saving and it seemed like the right time to make use of it.

I used some metal cabinets that I got for free and a 26” US General toolbox to go underneath.

I had been scouring Craigslist and Marketplace for months for a section of bowling alley to use as a bench top. I finally found a smoking deal on a piece for $120 at a bowling alley that was being renovated about 1.5 hours away. They were in 16’ sections and they were planning to cut it at 12’ for me to offer it at that price. When I got there, they had cut it without support on the short end and caused it to splinter so they threw in the other 4’ piece for free. Luckily I had them cut it at 12’ knowing that I would need to square it up and only need 11’6”.

Then I sanded it down to clean up the old bowling lane oil. Also put some cherry edge banding on it.

And finally, all loaded up and ready to get to work.

Bears Fan · May 5, 2020

Awesome bench top. Love the cherry edge :beer:

a_thiel24 · May 6, 2020

Bears Fan, thanks for the compliment. I love working with cherry because it cuts/sands so nicely and darkens with age.

Finally, all of my equipment was moved in and I had a proper bench.

Looking in.

Looking back towards the entry.

1st shop project in the new shop.

PhantomEB · May 6, 2020

Time for overhead cupboards over the bench and another HF box under there!

a_thiel24 · May 7, 2020

PhantomEB, I made the bench super deep because I knew I would have the storage containers and Kennedy toolboxes at the back. I honestly can't reach much higher than the stuff already on the back wall. Also, if i got another toolbox, where would I sit and drink Busch Light :headscrat

Made a trip to Illinois to visit my grandma. She had a single step into her house from the garage and it was getting difficult for her. There was also no railing and she had fallen twice.

When I got back, I started working on some Christmas gifts. The plan was to make epoxy river coaster sets using my new Kutzall shaping disc for my angle grinder. It indeed cuts all.

Went to the ER on the suggestion of my ER nurse brother in law. No stiches and $800 later…everybody got some very expensive coaster sets for Christmas.

Kevkx125 · May 7, 2020

Nice job on the garage steps and railing. Good for you helping your grandma, man I loved my grandma's I sure do miss them. Hope your finger healed up well.

Jayman17 · May 7, 2020

Woodshop is looking good. Careful with that carving disc! :shocking:

I hate getting cuts on the fingertips, every time you grab something and put pressure on it, it's a constant reminder. Got any photos of the coasters?

Jay

a_thiel24 · May 8, 2020

Kevkx125, with her living in Illinois I only get to see her about 1-2 times a year so it was definitely nice to do something for her that would help her everyday. She still mentions how nice it is every time I talk to her.

Jayman17, the finger did heal but still hurts if I poke something with it. I assume some nerve damage but it is not noticeable on a daily basis.

Here is a picture of some of the coasters. I think I made about 8 sets total. The boards I used were long enough to make 6 per set and I gifted them in sets of 5 so I could keep one from each step.

This was my first attempt with carving and epoxy so I learned quite a bit along the way.

I follow this guy on Instagram and this is where I stole the idea from.

a_thiel24 · May 8, 2020

After Christmas I started working on the other section of the shop. Unfortunately, I never took any before pictures of this side. It had the same ceiling insulation, luan as wallboard, and a small amount of surface mount electrical. The one good thing that was already done was that the walls were already insulated and I definitely was not expecting that.

So, everything had to come down.

Now here comes the story that nobody will believe. Part of the ceiling insulation was fiberglass batts, but they were ratty, so they came down as well. At one point I pulled a batt down and heard something heavy hit the ground. I looked down from atop the ladder and see a gun on the floor. My initial thought was that it was a BB gun, but I couldn’t see an orange tip. I jumped down from the ladder to find a Sig Sauer P250 9mm with no magazine. I pulled back the slide to make sure it wasn’t loaded, and a spent casing fell out. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do so I just set it down and went back to work. About 2 batts later I heard another loud thud on the concrete and there sat the fully loaded magazine. Later, I talked to the local Sheriff (wife’s grandpa used to be a deputy so was comfortable with him). They had the owner on file and tried to contact him but failed and ultimately said I could keep it. This was over a couple month period.

Kevkx125 · May 8, 2020

a_thiel24 Nice find on that part of the shop already insulated !! Your right that is a unbelievable story. Enjoy the pistol if you are a gun person!!!

PhantomEB · May 8, 2020

Score!

Bears Fan · May 8, 2020

I would dump it in the river :lol_hitti

Above 1200 Sq/FT Thielbilly’s Shop Reno and Home Projects

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