3 years after buying our turn of the (last) century farmhouse in SE Iowa, I have finally started building a shop. Crawling around in the snow on gravel under a broken down car at 0ºF was the last straw, and my wife finally understands that if we can remove the tool storage boxes from the kitchen, maybe she will get a new kitchen. Here starts the fun!
We want our home to look as though it was lovingly cared for, barely updated, and passed down through the family for 100 years. It is none of these things except old; neglected, remuddled, abused and insulted. But, hopefully, when we are done, no one will know all the work that went into it. We want it to look original. I want the garage to look the same. The home is circa 1910, I have decided the shop should look circa 1930.
Because our budget is extremely small, I decided to reuse an existing 20x28 cement foundation close to the back of the house. Our neighbor, who owned our house in the 1970s, used the building as a hog shed and thinks it was originally a chicken coop. By the time I got the property it was a cement pad with a tree growing out of it, but it was relatively square, relatively level, and fairly stable. Considering the cost of new concrete would basically have been my entire budget, I decided it was good enough. Maybe someday I'll jack the building up and put in an insulated radiant floor pad under there, but for now it will do.
In the fall of 2013 my brother and I began framing up walls, in the hope that we could get the shell up by winter. We worked too slowly and winter came too quickly, so the framed walls sat in pile in the snow all winter. Spring 2014 I started building roof trusses, which took all summer by the time I took re-certification classes for my teaching license, took care of projects for other family and friends, etc. Just before school started again I threw a garage raising party and, for the first time on any project on this house, we got a lot done in a short amount of time.
We want our home to look as though it was lovingly cared for, barely updated, and passed down through the family for 100 years. It is none of these things except old; neglected, remuddled, abused and insulted. But, hopefully, when we are done, no one will know all the work that went into it. We want it to look original. I want the garage to look the same. The home is circa 1910, I have decided the shop should look circa 1930.
Because our budget is extremely small, I decided to reuse an existing 20x28 cement foundation close to the back of the house. Our neighbor, who owned our house in the 1970s, used the building as a hog shed and thinks it was originally a chicken coop. By the time I got the property it was a cement pad with a tree growing out of it, but it was relatively square, relatively level, and fairly stable. Considering the cost of new concrete would basically have been my entire budget, I decided it was good enough. Maybe someday I'll jack the building up and put in an insulated radiant floor pad under there, but for now it will do.
In the fall of 2013 my brother and I began framing up walls, in the hope that we could get the shell up by winter. We worked too slowly and winter came too quickly, so the framed walls sat in pile in the snow all winter. Spring 2014 I started building roof trusses, which took all summer by the time I took re-certification classes for my teaching license, took care of projects for other family and friends, etc. Just before school started again I threw a garage raising party and, for the first time on any project on this house, we got a lot done in a short amount of time.
Though several of his cousins are! Mike told me last winter that he recently celebrated his 35th wedding anniversary and the 38th anniversary of not shaving! 