Attached 24' x 70' Shop

[Wesley J]

Hi All,

I thought I'd better finally get around to starting a thread on my shop build so here goes.

We started off by looking for an unmolested house in a particular part of town and came upon this place:

We bought the place from the original owners and the house had very few changes over the years.

It ticked all of our boxes:
- Close to schools. Kids can walk to all schools
- Close to University. We're 2 stops on the train
- Close to transit. We're 2 blocks from the C-Train
- Close to shopping. we can walk to multiple restaurants and grocery. Or I can ride my Road Toad 2 blocks to pick up beer...
- Close to work. I'm a 10 minute drive
- Large yard. 1/3rd acre inner city. Perfect for a decent sized shop and still a nice big yard
- In our price range. The realtor listed the lot as 19 meters (62') but it was actually 29 m (95') which I think impacted the selling price.

A prefect starting point!

Wes

 

[Wesley J]

I should clarify, I started the garage build/house renovation in 2014 so its mostly done now. I did a large part of the work myself and lived within cash flow so that effected the timeline severely.

I rented my other house and kept the 24x24 shop to myself so I could continue to have a place to work on projects.

Back to the story:

Prior to moving in, I rewired the entire house as it was full of aluminum wiring. This isn't completely necessary but in order to reduce my insurance to a manageable level, and feel comfortable that my family was safe, I did it before we moved in.

My research found that houses with Al wiring are ~50 times more likely to have an electrical fire than modern copper wiring.

Much to my chagrin, I lost a year of construction time due to the flooding we had in Calgary in 2013. Post flood, contractors were in very high demand working on insurance claims so I couldn't even get anyone to come by and give me quotes.

I'm capable of doing most things myself and this journey taught me that just because I can, it doesn't mean I should. I spent a lot of time on drawings and Engineering before I relented and paid professionals to do it for me. I wish I would've learned this lesson before starting.

So, after a lot of revisions, demo began. And yes, I did a large portion of it myself....

 

[batMan339]

Tagged for interest. Looks interesting!
I was down in Calgary for relief during the floods. Fun times.

How true about that saying. Just because I can do... does not mean I should.
As someone who just turned 30.... this rings more true every year. Haha.

 

[Wesley J]

I have to say that dealing with trades and making good decisions on who to use was a major and constant struggle. During construction, economic times were pretty good in Calgary. We're an Oil and Gas town and we have wild economic swings (we're in a multi year downturn right now with high unemployment). This made availability and quality of contractors quite poor.

I found this out all to well with my cement contractor. I had clear Engineering drawings and I went over them in great detail with the contractor. I'm an Engineer by trade and I've also had a significant amount of experience as a concrete laborer so I understand concrete work. Well, lets just say that when I got home from work on the first day of pouring (footings), I had to stop work and contact my Engineer and the City to attempt to get them to sign off on the messed up footing. I was fortunate that they all agreed to sign off it as long as I made some future changes.

Anyway, here's a few pics from that fiasco:

I got approval from the city to tie my garage floor drain into the sewer, which was fantastic. The caveat was that the P-trap had to be inside the house as the garage is considered a cold space.

I also thickened the concrete in 2 spots where I would install my little 2 post lift. 2'x2' x1' thick.

Floor Drain:

Girlies love it!

Cheers,

Wes

 

[Wesley J]

Demo. I really hate demo.

I spend a ton of time stripping the original stucco off the side of the house. Man, it was a lot of hard work up high in a wobbly lift.

On to the framing stage. I was impressed with the framers, they were timely and professional. My wife baked cookies for them and we bought them pizza on a few occasions. They showed up when they said they would and communicated well.

About the only drawback was how much waste they left behind. I literally filled an 8x20 gooseneck trailer with 6' sides. Just amazing.

Dancing framer, LOL

You can see my other addition here on the right where I pushed out the kitchen. I did all of the work on that side except the concrete foundation (I pushed the basement out 8')

8' wide slider going in to access the back yard:

You can see clearly here the floor from the addition above and the vaulted ceiling at the back of the shop with the skylights.

A beautiful sunrise view from the kitchen addition:

Getting there...

Roofers working away. Due to the low slope (1.5:12) I had to go with a flat roof membrane style roof. I went with a high quality product and the price reflected it...

Closed in so I could start the electrical and insulation etc.

Garage door day! R-19 Door

I'll take a break here.

Wes

 

[Pluribus]

Nice job of incorporating the big addition aesthetically into the existing building! Looks much better than what you had before with the detached garage.

 

[AZ Pete]

looking good



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[Wesley J]

Nice job of incorporating the big addition aesthetically into the existing building! Looks much better than what you had before with the detached garage.

Thanks. I took a number of iterations and some accurate elevations to get it right. Once I drafted it all on paper, I used Chief Architect with the visualizations. Then I passed it off to my draftsperson.

 

[LXCam]

What a project! I take it you plan on living there for a looooooong time

When I first read the size of the addition and the lot size I was baffled they allowed you to go that large. There are many areas where I'm at that you're only allowed to cover a certain percentage of the lot. It also not permissible to land lock the backyard. Is the door in the back of the shop your only means of egress for anything large?

Anyhow you've put a great deal of thought into this and I'm certain it's going to be absolutely spectacular when it's finish up. Good luck and please keep the pics coming.

 

[Wesley J]

What a project! I take it you plan on living there for a looooooong time

When I first read the size of the addition and the lot size I was baffled they allowed you to go that large. There are many areas where I'm at that you're only allowed to cover a certain percentage of the lot. It also not permissible to land lock the backyard. Is the door in the back of the shop your only means of egress for anything large?

Anyhow you've put a great deal of thought into this and I'm certain it's going to be absolutely spectacular when it's finish up. Good luck and please keep the pics coming.

Yes, we have young girls and they can walk to school from now until they're all done university. And shopping/groceries/restaurants are all walking distance and I'm a 10 minute drive to work downtown (which is where all of our industry is centered)

Yes, we're only allowed 45% lot coverage and I'm at about 37% if I recall correctly. The yard is 1/3rd of an acre so there's still lots of yard space, especially considering my location.

Interestingly, in Calgary we have a detached garage size limit of 750 sq feet (or thereabouts). But, if its attached then there are no limits.

The back yard is bordered by a pathway which allows me access to the back yard, as well I have a 4' sidewalk beside the garage that goes to the backyard as well. This is standard issue for yards in most neighborhoods in Calgary.

I had planned for the garage to stick further into the driveway as we have a minimum setback from the street of ~8 m (25')' if I recall correctly. It turns out there's a 2 m (6') easement out front so they made me push it back 8 m from there. So, my response was to move the entire shop back 6' so as not to loose the length. The inspector said "your garage is big enough" and didnt want to approve. Well, thats like not approving a plan because your bathroom or closet is too big. Screw them. Needless to say I got my way.

 

[bj383ss]

This is an awesome build. Can't wait to see more pics. You might take the award for deepest garage on here.

Bret

 

[Wesley J]

This is an awesome build. Can't wait to see more pics. You might take the award for deepest garage on here.

Bret

Thanks and yes, I really would've preferred wider but it was the best I could do with the lot size and my back yard/deck/patio design.

 

[Wesley J]

With it closed in I got to work doing the electrical and insulating. Because this wasn't nearly a big enough project, I was working away on an interior renovation on my own as well... So, that forced me into using the garage in its unfinished state...

Countertop for the living room reno...

Installed anchors for the MaxJax in the main workshop area as the Chevette needed some maintenance.

Beers and shop nights still had to happen...

And some chillaxing. I don't seem to have many back yard pics.

Drywall delivery and installation was done well. I'd used these guys in the past and they did a great job.

Creepy panoramic photo of wiring in ceiling. I worked a lot on the lighting design.

The 100 mile deep look is getting worse...

I'll take a break here as my image links are VERY long and I'm limited to 20,000 characters per post.

Wes

 

[Greg5OH]

that thing is huge in length lol.
the only thing I woudl change is to put the lifts on an angle leaves room to go around and can put more lifts in too.
got a sketched floorplan for dedicated fab area etc?

 

[Wesley J]

Progress continued on the exterior of the house. I'm getting really sick of 1" thick stucco. I cut it into ~2' x 2' sections so I could pull it off the house while up a ladder and handle it. Yes, I stripped the entire house myself. That's how I tend to operate.

I really don't like the look of standard soffit materials and I was in the unique situation of having a non-vented attic space. So, after much searching, I found a source for clear cedar tongue and groove and bought enough to do the house.

Back to the garage and drywall progress. The mudders got all finished up and I convinced the drywall contractor to paint it as well. Well, after the painter finished the primer, she quit and left town. The drywall guy didn't charge me for any of her labor or product but left me with no other option than to complete it myself.

Painted the cement wall with some elastomeric paint

The siding guys got to work installing Hardie siding while I was busy with soffit, framing in and installing a new front door etc.

Yeesh, I look back at this and wonder WTF I was thinking...

Paint is on the walls! Let the installation of the sun begin!

60" TV just wont cut it for garage parties...

More siding progress:

Getting setup for the Tragically Hip's final show. We had about 50 of us in there watching the final performance of "Canada's Band"

Another good spot for a break

Wes

 

[buildingup]

Really sweet how you tied it all together so it doesn't stand out like a soar thumb. What do all the neighbors think?

 

[NTCRS]

Impressive work, and garage!

 

[Donzi camino]

nice job, well done!

 

[Wesley J]

Really sweet how you tied it all together so it doesn't stand out like a soar thumb. What do all the neighbors think?

Neighbors are all good. The house right beside the garage has no windows looking my way and I'm northwest of them so I don't block out the sun or anything. I'm bringing up the housing value in the neighborhood so there has never been an issue

Impressive work, and garage!

Thanks

nice job, well done!

Thanks

 

[mlyonsdc]

Very nice they did a great job tying it into the existing house. I am in the middle of doing the same thing, 1200' attached garage addition. It is a lot of work tying into the existing house. We just poured the concrete floor this week and hope to be drywalling next week.

 

[Wesley J]

With the siding done, it was time to continue with the cedar. In an effort to break up the front a bit I decided to do this area in clear cedar.

I was trying to come up with a pattern in the cedar (I was using 2 widths of boards) and a buddy suggested Morse code. So, I embedded a message as best I could without the ability to add spaces...

So, one of the things that had been driving me crazy was my big rounded curb. In order to change it out to a smooth transition, I had to apply to the city and then pay them a ridiculous amount of money to come and rip it out and pour a new curb. The city works at the speed of smell so I waited months for them to come and do it so I could pour the driveway.

As fate would have it, the day before they were coming to remove the curb, I was backing the Chevette in and the oil filter snagged the curb and emptied about half of the oil on the ground...

Being the responsible citizen that I am, I cleaned it up as best I could and followed up with the fire/haz mat department. I work in the oil and gas industry and if my guys spill a few litres of oil on the ground it must be cleaned up immediately and the HSE department my be notified etc.

Well, 3 minutes later the fire department showed up to help me clean up. Honestly I was surprised they showed up but I was even more surprised that they didn't care in the least. I continue to cleanup further after they left as our storm drain is a couple of houses downhill from us and goes directly into the bow river.

But I digress. At least my little girls got a tour of the firetruck!

Curb removal. Man, these guys have no f#cks to give. They broke my neighbors curb during removal and didn't even pay attention...

On to the lighting. I wont bother with describing my plan as it'll become clear. I'm using Sylvania fixtures and Substitube LED's throughout. I believe there are 108 bulbs in the shop... Crikey...

And some exterior lighting. These lights aren't very bright, 9W LED, they just appear that way due to camera exposure.

Curb finally getting poured

Surprisingly, they paved the gap a couple of days later.

And they concrete guys came by to do the driveway shortly after. Man, what a sh!t show that was. One of the guys flipped the valve on the water and emptied the water tank into the drum with the last couple of yards still in the drum. After a long battle, another truck was on the road.

I had to fight a bit to cut it properly, as always they want to do the least amount of work. I designed the cut location based on concrete cutting standards which take into account thickness, strength etc. I added one cut along the line that would be the edge of the retaining wall footing. 3 years later and no cracks.

The idiots didn't spray the surface with retarder so they had to come back and blast. What a mess... Oh, and the idiots didn't get a permit to blast, nor did they get permits to put gravel on the road so they got shut down for a couple of days... brutal.

Break time

 

[Wesley J]

Meanwhile, I got to work on my little storage mezzanine. 2x2" 0.125" WT steel tubing. Based on really basic Engineering design (ie load calculations and a FS of 2) it'll support 10,000 lbs.

Time for a new lawn and put the girls to work

Much better

Another good spot for a break

Wes

 

[Deezler]

Beautiful transformation! Really like the new roof lines. The cedar on the front entry was key, to break things up. What do you mean "what was I thinking?" , in regards to the hardie lap siding? I think it looks great.

Why do you keep calling your Corvette a Chevette? Google chevette and you'll see what image you keep putting in my brain, haha.

 

[leboeuf]

This is inspirational. Seriously nice job!
I have some bizarre roof lines to deal with on my future expansion and you have expanded my vision.

 

[Wesley J]

Beautiful transformation! Really like the new roof lines. The cedar on the front entry was key, to break things up. What do you mean "what was I thinking?" , in regards to the hardie lap siding? I think it looks great.

Why do you keep calling your Corvette a Chevette? Google chevette and you'll see what image you keep putting in my brain, haha.

What was I thinking was in reference to the amount of work I did myself. And thanks, I really like the cedar.

I give all my vehicles names for some reason. I drove a Chevette back in University and now I drive a Cherolet Corvette. Its also a way to hide my mid life crisis in conversation...

 

[Wesley J]

This is inspirational. Seriously nice job!
I have some bizarre roof lines to deal with on my future expansion and you have expanded my vision.

Thanks, I appreciate the compliment!

 

[zmotorsports]

What a beautiful transformation. Looks like it was meant to be there all along and really turned out great. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Wesley J]

A shot of the lighting up front. I toyed with the idea of putting lights in the other soffits but it was going to be very difficult due to the sprayfoam (I didn't think ahead) and the only reason for them is to show off the house. These lights provide usable light in the areas required, even though I would've liked lights in the other soffits on a separate circuit.

Back to the garage. I rented a lift to install my radiant heater and put some of my vintage bikes up on the mezzanine while I was at it.

Good timing on the heater... I hate winter

Finished up the parking area lighting

I have (according to my wife) too many bikes so I needed a tire storage solution

Built some stairs headed down into the shop. Batu is the wood species, used on boats and such. Super hard and very weather resistant, I oil it yearly.

Spraying living room builtins

Winter sucked that year...

Built a standing height desk to go above the equipment rack and beer fridge. This sees a ton of use.

Oh ya, my white board. I bought a piece of glass, made a frame and hung it on the wall. You can use a sharpie if you like, wipe it off with alcohol when your done.

Break time. Its firday, I need a beer

Wes

 

[Wesley J]

Although I love woodworking, I also love metal working. It was time to make myself a simple welding table to help with my welding withdrawal...

Split a 4x8 5/8" sheet with a buddy

My plasma was on the frits and my 7" grinder was at a buddy's place so I fought my way through this with a 4 1/2" grinder and cut off wheels...

My apprentice:

The only gloves I could find for her. I've since bought her proper welding gloves.

She's already better than Grandpa, lol

I'll try to find a finshed pic. I have clamp and tool storage integrate into it now.

Wes

 

[Wesley J]

I got to using the shop for projects on the rest of the house reno. He's the walnut countertop for our bathroom vanity:

Several coats of polyeurothane and finished with steel wool

Back to the shop. Bought the roller sheer brake combo. I've since upgraded but I did get a lot of work done with it.

An excellent Kijiji find:

A few friends and I go together to share the cost of those more expensive tools that you don't use very often. We picked up a Modublast cabinet. Great piece of kit.

I have a few of these mobile bases that I build cradles for bikes for maintenance. Depending on the number of miles I put on a bike per year, I like to do a decent amount of teardown especially for bearing maintenance.

I'll stop here for now, it appears I needed a break...

 

[Wesley J]

Time to start constructing some cabinets. My celing is about 10' 6" on the low side and about 14' on the high side. I built the cabinets so I could comfortably stand under them and not hit my head. You can see when I wired the place that I ran switched power under the cabinets so I could add undercounter lighting. I did this on the mezzanine as well.

I used 3/4" plywood and re-inforced the shelves. The cabinet sizes we optimized for material use and to fit the bins you see here. I also built a fe cabinets without a fixed shelf so I could adjust as required for other stuff not in bins.

Soooooooo much cutting

You can see me getting overzealous here and loading the cabinets with stuff.

I got thinking back, I installed all of these damn things by myself... Yeesh

I had purchased an airless sprayer for jobs just like this so I put it to work. Like everything else in the shop, it got hit with gloss white paint.

Not only do I have a bunch of motorcycles, I also seem to have a lot of gear so I built myself a gear closet. I kept it down from the ceiling so the top was at the same height as my shelving on the other side of the man door so I can store longer material such as wood trim which I usually have milled from 14' stock.

More Storage, again sized for those bins

On to the doors. Sooo many doors and soooooo much edge banding...

You can kindof see here that I left the doors about an inch below the cabinets so you can grab them there to open them. I didn't want hardware on the as I like the clean look of the stark white.

This picture likely makes me happier than it should....

Break!

 

[kwyjibo]

This picture likely makes me happier than it should....

IMHO you have every right to be happy with the way it's turning out. Excellent work. Keep it coming.

 

[Wesley J]

You ever wonder why you live where you live? LOL. Not too many negatives about where I live but this is #1:

 

[kap384]

About time you got your shop on here!

 

[ravz]

Beautiful job on the garage and the integration of the addition!


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[Wesley J]

Hey Guys,

Work has kept me pretty busy but I thought I'd post a few shots of me filling the space with tools.

I picked up a small lathe. I mostly work with Aluminum but this will handle smaller jobs with steel as well.

Dragging the project back to the shop from my rental garage 1 block away

Delta uni-fence installed on the table saw!

Some welding table additions

Just when I thought my shop couldn't get any better

I managed to improve it, LOL

Mill in place

Girlies love the shop too

I think in my next installment I'll focus on the tools and some of the projects I've done of late.

Cheers,

Wes

 

[zmotorsports]

The place is coming along nicely Wes. Great addition tool/equipment wise and it looks like a great place to work and apparently just to hang out with the kiddos, which is always an added bonus.

 

[BassProCamaro97]

This is amazing.

 

[el monte slim]

All of your hard work and efforts have really paid off. Kudos on everything you've accomplished. It's given me a bad case of workshop envy down here in the land of slightly less snow!