Dean's Desert Dream Garage

[Slowbuilder]

Hey Dean, where did you source the pipe for your fence? We need to add some fencing (AFTER the shop is through final), and I'd sure like to save some money on materials.

It looks really good, BTW. Nice job!!

 

[AZ Dean]

Thanks for the link and wow, that looks really nice and just about the perfect size at 1600sq-ft 3bd, 2ba. Congrats. Now, they say starting at $120k, I'm sure it ends up being about twice that with the slab foundation, a few upgrades etc? Even then it's a great deal though!

Well, we got it on special, so it was $107K, then we added a few small upgrades, like 2x6 walls and upgraded insulation, and nicer roof shingles. Makes for a quiet and energy efficient home, actually. Total cost for the home, shop, land (1.25 acre) and all improvements came out to about $263K. Not bad at all. That includes septic, electrical and 2500 gal in ground water storage system.

Hey Dean, where did you source the pipe for your fence? We need to add some fencing (AFTER the shop is through final), and I'd sure like to save some money on materials.

It looks really good, BTW. Nice job!!

Thanks so much! We really like how it came out. I bought everything at Bonanza Pipe and Steel down near Guadalupe and Ironwood. Prices were hard to beat.

 

[stioc]

Well, we got it on special, so it was $107K, then we added a few small upgrades, like 2x6 walls and upgraded insulation, and nicer roof shingles. Makes for a quiet and energy efficient home, actually. Total cost for the home, shop, land (1.25 acre) and all improvements came out to about $263K. Not bad at all. That includes septic, electrical and 2500 gal in ground water storage system.

That's an awesome all-in price, thanks for sharing it

 

[zippyslug31]

Zippy - Clayton homes bills itself as the largest homebuilder in America. If true, I understand that they could be very busy. Busy is OK, but you have to keep your customer informed and if you are not meeting deadlines, you better damn well have contingencies. I often felt like they were oblivious to the impact their mistakes were having on me and my schedule. I could go on and on, but it was a very frustrating experience. Congrats on your property - I hope you'll share some photos and info on it. I'd love to see it!

Hey Dean, yep looked at Clayton before we built, too. Ended up going the site-built route, but kept it on the more affordable end by going with HiLine homes. Seems built well enough and we were able to sneak some customizations in. Busy you say? Man, during our build my region was BOOMING so there were a lot of hurdles for them at the time, and they still got our place built reasonably quick. That said, HiLine also was **** with their communication.
My barn (different contractor entirely) went up in only a month! I've seen other, smaller barns take much longer so I was super happy with my barn contractor... once they finally got started.

I've debated on starting a build thread of my own, but can't bring myself to the commitment based on some of the super impressive threads on this site! ha.
I won't dirty your build thread with posting my own links, but go on youtube and google my screen name... you can find a number of my videos pretty easily over there.
Cheers.

 

[Azmule71]

LOVE the early Z1000s. That's a beauty. Nice upgrades, too. So many people skip suspension upgrades and it's probably the best money you can spend.

Makes A huge difference, especially when you arn't built like a 5'6 160lb horse jockey! I think we have a mutual friend, Steve Guenther....

 

[AZ Dean]

Well! Decided to spend a bit less time on internet forums and BAM, next thing you know, a year has gone by!

I definitely have a lot to share, but I must confess that whole 'happy wife, happy life' thing has got in the way of making as much progress on the garage as I had hoped.

Anyhow, updates coming, if any of y'all are still interested.

 

[MrScott99]

Always interested in updates! Bring 'em on.

 

[Jon In Tucson]

Always interested in updates! Bring 'em on.

I'm right there with MrScott99... Show the progress!

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[ZRX61]

Friend of mine just moved into your neighborhood from California (don't panic, he's from NY originally). Just down the road in Gold Cyn.
Has one of those 11 letter multi-syllable Polish names & ends up buying a house next to a guy with the same name except the last letter.


He has an XR650 so you may see him on the trails... & a '66 Charger & '74 Kaw Z1 so you may be betting your doors blown off on the street

 

[sean Buick 76]

I just found your thread today and read the whole thing. Good job, it looks great! I know things didn't go as planned however the end result is something you should be proud of! Have fun!

 

[AZ Dean]

Always interested in updates! Bring 'em on.

I'm right there with MrScott99... Show the progress

Friend of mine just moved into your neighborhood from California (don't panic, he's from NY originally). Just down the road in Gold Cyn.
Has one of those 11 letter multi-syllable Polish names & ends up buying a house next to a guy with the same name except the last letter.
He has an XR650 so you may see him on the trails... & a '66 Charger & '74 Kaw Z1 so you may be betting your doors blown off on the street

I just found your thread today and read the whole thing. Good job, it looks great! I know things didn't go as planned however the end result is something you should be proud of! Have fun!

Thanks for the warm welcome back. Its been an eventful year, but not as much progress on the garage as I had hoped.

It was one of those "One step forward, two steps back" kinda years where I'd get started on a garage project and then I'd tweak my back, or get pulled away for house or yard project.

One of the many things I am looking forward to is working with my grandkids in the garage. My oldest just turned 11, and he likes to work on things with Grandpa.

So we threw together a quick workbench. Decided to wing it, rather than drawing out the design ahead of time, and while it has done its job well, I made a few mistakes that I'll have to go back and fix later.

Christian loved doing this with me and I am hoping it can become a regular thing going forward.

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I had initially just used two full sheets of 3/4" MDF , but decided that was too big and cut it back to 4'x6'. I later put it on casters so I can easily roll it around, but then realized I made it too tall. Argh! Well, I plan to unscrew the base and shorten the legs at some point.

 

[AZ Dean]

Up to this point, I had no electricity in the garage. The panel was there and connected to power from the street, but nothing had been run inside the garage.

I had initially intended to run my own circuits as I am an experienced electronics tech, but I don't really know much about residential wiring best practices. I asked around on local Facebook groups and found a local journeyman who was doing side work. He turned out to be a good find, performing acceptable work for a reasonable price.

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I decided to run MCT at this time, as I plan to fir out the walls and the wiring will be hidden later. I had Cody install a few surface mount outlets and wire up some lights.

Let there be light! After a lot of thought and research, I decided to make a budget-oriented choice for my lighting and went with the Costco shop lamps. I read through many of the lighting threads here on GJ and made a best guesstimate as far as numbers and spacing. This pic was the first group of lights installed. I have since installed more and now I have 16 fixtures in my 40x35 garage. So far, I am quite happy with my choices.

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At 4000 lumens and 4000K, they have great light color and output for the money. I have been watching for them to go on sale and have picked up most of them for ~$20 ea.

I also had him run some wiring for security lights, as it is DARK out here in the desert at night. I chose to use motion detector lights rather than dusk to dawn lights to maintain minimum light pollution.


Found some 36 watt LED security lights on Amazon and have been very happy with them.

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There's some hints here at future plans/projects to come.

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[AZ Dean]

Now that we have electricity, we need toys! I mean...tools!

I'd been keeping an eye on compressors and wanted a 60 gal model, but a true industrial quality unit was out of my budget. I had read lots of good things about the DeWalt models and was fortunate to pick this one up on sale at Tractor Supply. The plan/hope is to pipe the garage with hard lines for compressed air, as well as some outlets outside for yard and driveway access.

This compressor has been trouble-free for the last year and is much quieter than my crappy HF 21 gal unit, thankfully. I installed a remote drain valve and I try to purge it whenever I think of it, usually a few times a week at least. There is always condensate present, even in our dry weather.

Once I get the wall built out behind it, I'll get rid of the pallet and bolt it to the floor on some anti-vibration mounts.

And of course, we can't have a garage without a garage fridge, so I found a 'gently used' one locally.

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And a nice evaporate cooler for the very warm AZ summer months. This 5300 cfm model from Home Depot makes the environment very pleasant if you keep it close. Supposedly rated for 1600 sqft, it just makes the garage kinda swampy when you aren't right by it.

I installed a four gang outlet up high so I could hang some retracting power cords. I have a second one waiting for me to get to it. I got this one from Northern Tool as it was hard to find any retractable cords with decent reviews. This one had good reviews, but it less than a year later, it isn't working right, with the locking function difficult to actuate. Argh!

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Ok, so we now have lights, power and a place for beer. Time for some action!

 

[AZ Dean]

But hang on a second, my sweet wife has been wanting chickens, we're behind on the murphy bed project and NOW is the time to get it done. Cue the multi-month delay to garage progress...but still plenty of fun and hard work!


So we had been wanting a murphy bed for our spare bedroom and after seeing the price of commercially available units, we thought: Why can't we just build one? Looking back...I can see why they command the price.


We started with a kit from Rockler and chose 3/4" baltic birch ply from a local woodworking store. Unfortunately, this coincided with a very wet spring and this caused me no end of issues with warping. That and me being a complete noob at this sort of thing.

To make a long story short, we got it done. The result is what we wanted and it was a good learning experience.

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We chose a 'Carbon Gray' stain and decided to dilute it significantly and wipe it quickly to give a distressed finish. I then followed up with finish sanding and a few coats of polyurethane. Afterward, I wasn't quite happy with the poly finish and decided to add a few coats of paraffin wax which gave a nice luster.

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Later, we bought an unfinished chest from Ikea and applied the same 'distressed' finish to it, with nice results. At least, it looks good to us.

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[OutlawDrifter]

Wow quite the update! I've followed your few instagram posts.

Nice beer-i mean-garage fridge!

Glad you've got a grandkid excited about being in the shop, still trying to get my 13y/o interested in doing stuff out here!

 

[AZ Dean]

Wow quite the update! I've followed your few instagram posts.

Nice beer-i mean-garage fridge!

Glad you've got a grandkid excited about being in the shop, still trying to get my 13y/o interested in doing stuff out here!

Thanks Outlaw! I wander by your Instagram from time to time to see how things are coming along. Overall, I have tried to be on social media less, but I still check in.

 

[AZ Dean]

Ok, so on to the CHICKENS. We now have fresh, organic eggs everyday, but I will probably not live to see a financial return on this investment, LOL.

We've had backyard chickens before, so we kinda knew what we wanted. Space for about a dozen chickens that would keep them comfortable, happy and safe from all of the predators out here. This is what we came up with: A small lightweight steel building and a fully enclosed pen. So far its worked out pretty well. You might think that a steel building would be hot in the AZ summer, but it is actually quite a bit cooler than an equivalent wood building, as the shiny enamel finish and light gauge steel rejects heat and doesn't have the mass to store it like wood.

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Our new peeps!

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Slowly venturing out from their new place:
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But then wifey says...I need water out here. And power! So being a good husband, I said, "Your wish is my command."

The Poultry Palace is a bit over 100ft from the nearest power and water. Time to find a trencher! Fortunately, my excellent neighbor had one and generously offered to let me borrow it for a day. I would love to tell you this was a quick and easy job since I had the right tool but in reality, it was a hard day's work, buried the trencher in the sandy wash and I almost lost my arm.

The biggest problem was with our horrible rocky soil. I literally had to stop every minute or so to pull away the large rocks that the trencher was digging up and were then getting caught in the chain-thingy.

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During one-such time, I decided to leave the engine running, but put the trencher in neutral. Well, it being an old, beat to **** unit, it POPPED BACK INTO GEAR just as I was reaching for the rock bound up in the chain. Yikes! Lesson learned! Always shut off the motor!


Crossing the small sandy wash between the garage and coop, the heavy machine just dug itself into the sand. I am sure it had nothing to do with me not properly operating it.

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After a good hour of digging, jacking it up, filling in the holes and trying to get it to move, I was finally successful in getting the machine back to work and hours later I finished trenching a line between the garage and coop. I had to follow up with quite a bit of shovel work.

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SO. MANY. ROCKS.

 

[AZ Dean]

Once the trenches were dug, it was time to figure out the water and power. This was my first time doing some of this stuff, so I read a lot, asked people questions, made some (un)educated guesses and just went for it.

DISCLAIMER: As far as YOU know, all services depicted herein were installed entirely in compliance with local codes and regulations.

Truth be told, I did try to comply to the best of my ability.

Another one of those long-story-short things, here is what I decided to do: Install a T where the water ran by the garage so I could supply water both to the garage and the coop. For power, I ran a line from the garage panel out the side and into the same trench as the pex water line, but separated as best I could manage.

You may ask yourself, "Why didn't he come off that outlet right there?" Good question! The line going out to the coop may one day feed sweet wifey's She Shed, so I wanted it on a separate circuit.

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More pictures to come once I figure out why my uploads are failing. :

 

[Jon In Tucson]

Great progress! I may have to search you homestead out on my next trip to the valley of the sun.
Jon In Tucson

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[AZ Dean]

Great progress! I may have to search you homestead out on my next trip to the valley of the sun.
Jon In Tucson

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Jon, Thanks! Don’t hesitate to let me know if you’d like to stop by. Always enjoy meeting new people.

 

[sean Buick 76]

Aweome!

 

[AZ Dean]

Awesome!

Thanks! I haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet!

 

[Kevkx125]

Shop and toy's are looking good. keep up the progress and thanks for sharing

 

[bikerneil]

Great thread and beautiful garage!

Keep posting!

 

[rixtrix1]

Once the trenches were dug, it was time to figure out the water and power. This was my first time doing some of this stuff, so I read a lot, asked people questions, made some (un)educated guesses and just went for it.

DISCLAIMER: As far as YOU know, all services depicted herein were installed entirely in compliance with local codes and regulations.

Truth be told, I did try to comply to the best of my ability.

Another one of those long-story-short things, here is what I decided to do: Install a T where the water ran by the garage so I could supply water both to the garage and the coop. For power, I ran a line from the garage panel out the side and into the same trench as the pex water line, but separated as best I could manage.

You may ask yourself, "Why didn't he come off that outlet right there?" Good question! The line going out to the coop may one day feed sweet wifey's She Shed, so I wanted it on a separate circuit.

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More pictures to come once I figure out why my uploads are failing. :

You should to wrap your copper lines at the clamps with some plastic tape for both corrosion and for vibration resistance. Just had a bunch of copper airline and waterline put in as part of a remodel at work, and this is what the plumber passed along, as well as for code in an industrial building. Really looking nice!