Between 485 & 705 SQ/FT Bigger and Better!!

[Krfjkm]

I thought it was time to share my new shop build as it has been a long and winding road to get to this point.

I’ll start with the link to my previous shop build in Texas:

Texas Casita

First Post!! I have been watching the forum for a while and have learned a great deal from you guys! Thanks!! We just recently moved to San Antonio and part of the requirements for our new house was a Shop/Pool House/Guest Suite/Playroom. We decided to call it the Casita (tiny house). It is...

www.garagejournal.com

This was going to be my forever shop and I built it to meet those needs. I went as big as the city would allow and thought it was perfect. I GC’d the build and had heat and AC with great insulation. I built an apartment above it and did all the finish work myself. I thought I was in "heaven"!

That’s when things changed—my wife came out of the blue with a divorce. It absolutely crushed me and was a complete surprise. We had never discussed divorce and it was a tough road to travel. I won’t go into much detail but it was something I never expected.

So, now I found myself living in NC in a 2 BR condo and starting over. Packing up my forever shop was something I never planned to do and it was a tough process. Sticking all of my tools in a storage unit is never fun and I sure miss having them. Needless to say, at this point I was feeling kind of sorry for myself.

I got through the divorce and decided it was time to stand tall once again. I ended up meeting an amazing lady. I am 6’5” tall and was at a store getting a package wrapped and she was there—she’s 6’3” tall so I had to ask her—“how tall are you?” That broke the ice and today we are married. I have never been happier and today feel my ex did me a favor.

I had upgraded my personal life so now it was time to get my upgraded shop.

We found an amazing piece of land in a small town that is close to restaurants, wine stores and shopping. We bought it and started the process of building a house.

I’ll work to give you guys a quick overview of the house build and then share my shop in the upcoming posts.

 

[Jacko264]

Nice I hope all goes well with what you do
Graham

 

[Jayman17]

Good to hear you rebounded from your divorce and found someone special to share your life with. Looking forward to watching your build.

 

[Krfjkm]

We found the lot for our house and found a great builder who would let me do some of the work myself. We spent hours looking at plans and went back to the very first plan we saw:


It is a perfect layout for us and one level living for us with and office and 2 BR's and a bath upstairs. We fell in love with the location and are neighbors are great people-- biggest plus is no HOA!

Here is pictures of the lot, grading and footers:







From there we moved on to framing:


It was moving fast and we were so excited!

 

[runit]

following!

 

[Krfjkm]

We got everything dried in right around the December timeframe and then proceeded to start with siding. We wanted the Farm house look so we went with Hardie Board and Batten. It's a great product!

If you look at the earlier pictures of our lot in the Spring we had a bunch of trees at the back of the lot. They were large trees and had vines growing throughout. Once the leaves fell we were able to see just how much damage those vines had done to the trees-- not a single one was healthy.

I found a good tree guy to come in and remove the trees and the vines. You can see in the picture below just how big those vines were-- it was a real mess. Tree removal wasn't a planned expense so that one hurt a bit but we are glad we got it done now versus worrying about the damaged trees falling or hitting my future shop.