G-Man's Big House....40x64 Shop Build
Well, it's been a couple of years in getting here, but I finally have a working barn/shop! It's kind of a long story, so feel free to jump ahead to the pictures...lol. The basics are that it's 40x64', with two 18x12' overhead doors on the front, and one 12x10' overhead door on each end. There is a 12' overhang on the back, and there are service doors near the front two corners, and in the back. My hope was to limit shuffling equipment by having enough doors to hopefully always get to what I need without much hassle.
I partitioned off 24x40' as a shop and the other 40x40' will be the barn/storage area. I should say that I may mess up some of the timeline as it all starts to run together after a couple of years! Don't be too hard on me...I've never built a barn/garage/house before, so I'm learning as I go and making lots of mistakes
So, here's how the basic timeline went:
We bought our current house in July of 2011, and knew we wanted to put up an outbuilding, but spent a lot of time/money doing a remodel, and getting more urgent things done. We were also waiting to buy the two properties to the east of us. The farther one was completely dilapidated, and had been vacant for several years. Vandals had stolen all of the copper, and obviously used it as a crash pad a few times...they even broke through the living room floor to get light down into the crawl space when they were stealing copper wire.
The closer house was still occupied, but the owner had stopped paying the mortgage, and taxes, even though she had a renter in it...nice huh?
The farther property came up for auction first, so we got that one ($20K for 5 acres with the shell of a house on it). One of my neighbors does construction on the side (also drives a big rig), so he did the demo of that house, and then I spent weeks clearing garbage from the property. The owner apparently didn't pay for trash pickup, and simply piled up garbage in the woods, and in holes dug on the property. I filled up a 20yd dumpster, then a 30yd dumpster with all of the garbage!
Eventually, we learned that the bank was ready to foreclose on the closer house, so we called them and told them we wanted to buy it "as is, cash offer". The renter was obviously upset about paying rent, and then getting kicked out, so she kept us in the loop during the whole process. The renter left right after running out of propane, and let us know she was leaving. A month after that, the bank finalized foreclosure, and called us. We did some research and knew that they were owed about $50K based upon an earlier sheriff's auction listing for it. They told use they were planning on fixing it up a little, and putting it on the market for $75K, hoping to get $65K. We made an offer a bit over $50K, and they accepted....a few weeks later we closed. We paid up because we had to have it since we already owned the other property.
This is where it got a bit tricky. This house was still livable (although it was pretty nasty), had city water, and a septic system that was only 9yrs old. I wanted to keep both of those for the barn, for a number of reasons.
One problem we ran into was that a local ordnance prevents you from having an outbuilding on a lot without a primary structure. In other words, if I knocked the house down, I couldn't put the barn up. The other problem was that you can't combine properties with more than one primary structure. So, I had to knock the house down, legally combine the two properties, then get the building permit for the barn. Needless to say, this wasn't a fast process.
Now back to the septic, and water. I had to get the county to give me a waiver to keep the septic, because normally, they require an open hole inspection after demolition showing that you removed the tank. They came out, inspected the field, and determined it was in excellent shape, so they granted the waiver. I also had to get a different township to work with me, because they provide the city water. Normally, for demolition, they charge you $850 to sever the line, and if you want to hook up again, they charge you a boatload of money for a new tap (thousands) I got them to agree to sever, then reconnect for "only" $850 for each event. That's expensive, but a fraction of paying for a new water tap. My argument was that the tap was already in place, and they wouldn't have to run new lines, etc. I also managed to get the bank to pay an overdue bill from when they owned the property, so that greased the skids a little bit.
At this point, I had a demo permit in hand, and the same neighbor did the demolition on the second house. It was a manufactured home/trailer type, with a huge crawl space underneath spanned by some really nice 24' long 8" steel beams (beams came in handy later). The crawl space turned out to be a bit of a problem in the long run. Because of how the lot was graded, and the deep crawl space, it meant we couldn't put poles in easily and couldn't do a trench footing (can't backfill, then dig a trench, as it will collapse). Two different builders looked at it, and said the same thing...it was going to have to be a formed foundation. I actually like that a lot better than putting poles in the ground, but it certainly increases the cost when you start adding all the extra concrete!
In order to keep the city water and septic without a lot of hassle, we put the one corner of the barn right where the corner of the house had been so the hookups are in the right place, and we set the elevation based upon the septic tank.
We (me, same neighbor that did the demo, and another who's done a bunch of work with him) dug through some really nasty fill that was put down before the old house had been built, got to virgin sand, added more clean sand, compacted, and then the neighbor that did the demo brought in his basement concrete forms, and we went to work. He does a lot of basements, so we turned his 4x8' forms sideways, and poured a 12" thick 48" tall foundation. We got the backfill done, then set to work on preparations for the concrete slab on one side of the building.
The plan was to have a concrete slab for the whole building, but we were racing the weather, so I decided to only pour the part of the slab that I plan to heat (radiant). That part I'm calling the shop, and is the 24x40' side. We put down plumbing for a complete bathroom, with toilet, sink, and an extra large shower. I wanted the shower for when I'm really dirty, and don't want to track it into the house, but also so we can give our large dogs baths easily. For that reason, we also put a nice center drain in the floor...big dogs, water, you get the picture! We put down 2" R10 foam board insulation, got the Pex tubes in place, did a pressure test on the system, and ordered some 4,000psi concrete with fiber mesh, and added heavy gauge wire sheets as we poured the concrete. We did a bit more backfill, and then handed it off to my builder who did the walls, trusses, roof, and exterior metal. I decided to go with 4x6 posts (6x6 on the corners) set in Sturdi Wall brackets from Perma-column. they're not cheap, but I know they saved the builder time, and that was one of my concerns.
When the builder was done my neighbor and I did the 40x40 slab. After that I ran most of the electric service while things were open. I got lucky because my neighbor had a truckload of 4' wide 32' long rolls of insulation he got from a demo job, and he gave me a huge pile of them....they fit between the trusses perfectly. I hung those over the shop area before building the partition wall. I supported them with twine and hung a vapor barrier. At that point I built the partition wall and then hung the liner panel ceiling over the shop. Next I moved on to insulating the walls of the shop, adding purlins and 1.5" foam board between the purlins. Then the wall steel went up and I started framing out the bathroom/utility closet which also has a deck built on top out of 2x10s to be a storage platform.
That's pretty much where I am right now. I still need to install the mini-split/heat pump (in the one area I have hung the wall metal) and start building the radiant heat system. After that I'll work on plumbing the rest of the bathroom....have I mentioned I hate plumbing...that's why it's last! I also plan to build my own workbench(es) and the primary one will be attached to the long wall of the bathroom/utility closet.
As a side note we also bought the 5 acre vacant lot that was farther to the east than the first one we bought, so now we have 20 acres with about 1000' of road frontage.
I'm getting ready to pour a concrete slab under the 12' lean to on the back of the barn. I plan to build a welding/grinding table out there so I can do dirty work outside when weather permits.
I'll put a link to the Photobucket gallery, and some of the major milestone pictures in the next post. I have no idea what I'm going to do with all the free time I have when I get done with this project!
Well, it's been a couple of years in getting here, but I finally have a working barn/shop! It's kind of a long story, so feel free to jump ahead to the pictures...lol. The basics are that it's 40x64', with two 18x12' overhead doors on the front, and one 12x10' overhead door on each end. There is a 12' overhang on the back, and there are service doors near the front two corners, and in the back. My hope was to limit shuffling equipment by having enough doors to hopefully always get to what I need without much hassle.
I partitioned off 24x40' as a shop and the other 40x40' will be the barn/storage area. I should say that I may mess up some of the timeline as it all starts to run together after a couple of years! Don't be too hard on me...I've never built a barn/garage/house before, so I'm learning as I go and making lots of mistakes
So, here's how the basic timeline went:
We bought our current house in July of 2011, and knew we wanted to put up an outbuilding, but spent a lot of time/money doing a remodel, and getting more urgent things done. We were also waiting to buy the two properties to the east of us. The farther one was completely dilapidated, and had been vacant for several years. Vandals had stolen all of the copper, and obviously used it as a crash pad a few times...they even broke through the living room floor to get light down into the crawl space when they were stealing copper wire.
The closer house was still occupied, but the owner had stopped paying the mortgage, and taxes, even though she had a renter in it...nice huh?
The farther property came up for auction first, so we got that one ($20K for 5 acres with the shell of a house on it). One of my neighbors does construction on the side (also drives a big rig), so he did the demo of that house, and then I spent weeks clearing garbage from the property. The owner apparently didn't pay for trash pickup, and simply piled up garbage in the woods, and in holes dug on the property. I filled up a 20yd dumpster, then a 30yd dumpster with all of the garbage!
Eventually, we learned that the bank was ready to foreclose on the closer house, so we called them and told them we wanted to buy it "as is, cash offer". The renter was obviously upset about paying rent, and then getting kicked out, so she kept us in the loop during the whole process. The renter left right after running out of propane, and let us know she was leaving. A month after that, the bank finalized foreclosure, and called us. We did some research and knew that they were owed about $50K based upon an earlier sheriff's auction listing for it. They told use they were planning on fixing it up a little, and putting it on the market for $75K, hoping to get $65K. We made an offer a bit over $50K, and they accepted....a few weeks later we closed. We paid up because we had to have it since we already owned the other property.
This is where it got a bit tricky. This house was still livable (although it was pretty nasty), had city water, and a septic system that was only 9yrs old. I wanted to keep both of those for the barn, for a number of reasons.
One problem we ran into was that a local ordnance prevents you from having an outbuilding on a lot without a primary structure. In other words, if I knocked the house down, I couldn't put the barn up. The other problem was that you can't combine properties with more than one primary structure. So, I had to knock the house down, legally combine the two properties, then get the building permit for the barn. Needless to say, this wasn't a fast process.
Now back to the septic, and water. I had to get the county to give me a waiver to keep the septic, because normally, they require an open hole inspection after demolition showing that you removed the tank. They came out, inspected the field, and determined it was in excellent shape, so they granted the waiver. I also had to get a different township to work with me, because they provide the city water. Normally, for demolition, they charge you $850 to sever the line, and if you want to hook up again, they charge you a boatload of money for a new tap (thousands) I got them to agree to sever, then reconnect for "only" $850 for each event. That's expensive, but a fraction of paying for a new water tap. My argument was that the tap was already in place, and they wouldn't have to run new lines, etc. I also managed to get the bank to pay an overdue bill from when they owned the property, so that greased the skids a little bit.
At this point, I had a demo permit in hand, and the same neighbor did the demolition on the second house. It was a manufactured home/trailer type, with a huge crawl space underneath spanned by some really nice 24' long 8" steel beams (beams came in handy later). The crawl space turned out to be a bit of a problem in the long run. Because of how the lot was graded, and the deep crawl space, it meant we couldn't put poles in easily and couldn't do a trench footing (can't backfill, then dig a trench, as it will collapse). Two different builders looked at it, and said the same thing...it was going to have to be a formed foundation. I actually like that a lot better than putting poles in the ground, but it certainly increases the cost when you start adding all the extra concrete!
In order to keep the city water and septic without a lot of hassle, we put the one corner of the barn right where the corner of the house had been so the hookups are in the right place, and we set the elevation based upon the septic tank.
We (me, same neighbor that did the demo, and another who's done a bunch of work with him) dug through some really nasty fill that was put down before the old house had been built, got to virgin sand, added more clean sand, compacted, and then the neighbor that did the demo brought in his basement concrete forms, and we went to work. He does a lot of basements, so we turned his 4x8' forms sideways, and poured a 12" thick 48" tall foundation. We got the backfill done, then set to work on preparations for the concrete slab on one side of the building.
The plan was to have a concrete slab for the whole building, but we were racing the weather, so I decided to only pour the part of the slab that I plan to heat (radiant). That part I'm calling the shop, and is the 24x40' side. We put down plumbing for a complete bathroom, with toilet, sink, and an extra large shower. I wanted the shower for when I'm really dirty, and don't want to track it into the house, but also so we can give our large dogs baths easily. For that reason, we also put a nice center drain in the floor...big dogs, water, you get the picture! We put down 2" R10 foam board insulation, got the Pex tubes in place, did a pressure test on the system, and ordered some 4,000psi concrete with fiber mesh, and added heavy gauge wire sheets as we poured the concrete. We did a bit more backfill, and then handed it off to my builder who did the walls, trusses, roof, and exterior metal. I decided to go with 4x6 posts (6x6 on the corners) set in Sturdi Wall brackets from Perma-column. they're not cheap, but I know they saved the builder time, and that was one of my concerns.
When the builder was done my neighbor and I did the 40x40 slab. After that I ran most of the electric service while things were open. I got lucky because my neighbor had a truckload of 4' wide 32' long rolls of insulation he got from a demo job, and he gave me a huge pile of them....they fit between the trusses perfectly. I hung those over the shop area before building the partition wall. I supported them with twine and hung a vapor barrier. At that point I built the partition wall and then hung the liner panel ceiling over the shop. Next I moved on to insulating the walls of the shop, adding purlins and 1.5" foam board between the purlins. Then the wall steel went up and I started framing out the bathroom/utility closet which also has a deck built on top out of 2x10s to be a storage platform.
That's pretty much where I am right now. I still need to install the mini-split/heat pump (in the one area I have hung the wall metal) and start building the radiant heat system. After that I'll work on plumbing the rest of the bathroom....have I mentioned I hate plumbing...that's why it's last! I also plan to build my own workbench(es) and the primary one will be attached to the long wall of the bathroom/utility closet.
As a side note we also bought the 5 acre vacant lot that was farther to the east than the first one we bought, so now we have 20 acres with about 1000' of road frontage.
I'm getting ready to pour a concrete slab under the 12' lean to on the back of the barn. I plan to build a welding/grinding table out there so I can do dirty work outside when weather permits.
I'll put a link to the Photobucket gallery, and some of the major milestone pictures in the next post. I have no idea what I'm going to do with all the free time I have when I get done with this project!
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