Fun House on the Range

[minnesotamudder]

Hello Everyone, my name is Josh, I have been watching all of these amazing garage builds and i decided I should add to the collection.
To start my parents moved into their new house 2 weeks ago and it came with all of this amazing space.

This is the main garage space. It has a 9'x9' garage door leading to the pavement behind the house, a 16'x12' door going to the alley, and the total building is 33'x24'12'. This will be used for fab work on Off road vehicles, buggies, building rolecages, welding, building hot rods, and general maintenance.

This is a 12'x20' garage that will be used by my mom for her car, our bikes and other misc storage.

This is a 10'x18' Shed that will be cold storage for car parts.

This Barn is 12'x23'. The upstairs will be used for a RC shop and the downstairs has two sections. One section is 12'x17' and will be our machine shop. The other portion is 12'x6' and will be used for storage.

 

[minnesotamudder]

The insides of most of the areas are now packed full after unloading from the move. So I will post some pictures that were taken before most of the stuff was brought in to show the general size and talk about the plans for each building. Sorry some of the pictures are blurry, my potato does weird things some times and makes pictures blurry.

This is the big garage. The main uses will be all of the general fab work that will be done on the jeeps in the pictures, working on my rat rod 1950 chevy truck, building a off-road buggy, welding tube bending and general car repair and work. The plan is to put in a lift in the second bay (the non drive through bay). We haven't decide if it will be a two post or if it will be a dual lift scissor lift. We would like the 2 post if the posts wouldn't take up so much space, where as the scissor lift would be in ground and when not in use take no space. What are other peoples thoughts on this issue? Would we still be able to do the same types of work on both types of lifts? I would assume we could still drop transmissions and transfer-cases with the scissor lift because of the gap between the two sides?

We will be building or buying shelving to be on the wall with a welding/chassis table under it of fab work.

This is the machine shop. We will be putting our mill and lathe in here to make parts for the offroad stuff and RC crawlers.

This is the storage area next to the machine shop. The plan is to put grocery store style shelving in here to store car parts and other items that need to be in a more controlled temp area.

 

[minnesotamudder]

The last of the sections are the RC shop, the cold storage area, and moms garage.

This is the cold storage area for parts. The plan is to eventually add shelving for stuff, but mostly its just going to get stacked until the rest of the areas are done.

This is Moms garage. It will be used for her car and the bikes with other storage built in. It might also get used for the air compressor if we decide we want to trench airlines to the other shops.

Finally we have the RC shop area. The plan for this is to put benches all the way around on one side on the far side of the chimney. We will be putting peg board, making a lot of under bench shelving, and making space for my tig welding cat for RC tube chassis and a cart that will hold a grinder, mini chop saw, and scroll saw.

Other plans include a paint booth with a exhaust fan that when I am not painting can be used to pull the hot air out of the room.

We will have to have power ran to the big shop so we can then run it to each individual area, wire the big shop and RC shop, insulate the big shop and RC shop, and set up three phase power for the mill and lathe in the machine shop.

 

[minnesotamudder]

The first step this week was to finish out the RC shop as it was the only space without a lot of stuff in it.

This is my first time doing any wiring, I think I did a decent job. I had a few mistakes, but with my dads guidance it turned out well

We then cut a hole out for the window so we can get more light and air flow in the room.

The view

And looking in from outside.

 

[minnesotamudder]

Framed the window opening.

To much stuff in the big garage to work inside so we had to work outside. Luckily it was nice out.

Window is in

The wall height is a little low for a full size door so some modifications were made to the header to sit against the top plate.

Setting up the cut

Door is in, with silly faces from Dad of course

Door from the outside.

 

[minnesotamudder]

And finally this is where we ended today.

You can see where we will cut out for the fan that will be used for the paint booth.

We ran out of insulation with that little bit of work left.
Doing insulation is not the funnest thing to do, but at least it will stay cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

That is all for today, tomorrow we are going to get another roll of insulation, and get the sheeting for the room.

Hope you enjoy the build and all the project we will be working on after the garages are done. I will try to show more techy stuff of what we are doing, but if there is anything else you want to see or need more information, let me know and I will see what I can do.

 

[minnesotamudder]

Today we finished up the insulation and got the sheeting for the walls.


The spacing for the studs were inconsistent all around and we had to do a lot cutting to fit.





Luckily we had just picked up this stapler for insulation to make the process easier.

 

[minnesotamudder]

I also got pictures of the other garages that are full.



This is the cold storage shed. It's filled mostly with jeep and Chevy parts, with some snow removal stuff.





The machine shop has the mill and lathe, plus all of our RC stuff.







And as you can see the big garage is full. Everything just needs to be put in the shelving that is on the floor after it is put up.

 

[minnesotamudder]

Today we started on the sheeting. It was slow going because the studs are not 16" on center. Plus everything had to be cut down because each section is less than 4' tall.

 

[LinuxMercedes]

Looks very neat. Are the current power lines to the buildings enough to run your tools, or are you planning to upgrade those at some point?

 

[minnesotamudder]

Looks very neat. Are the current power lines to the buildings enough to run your tools, or are you planning to upgrade those at some point?

The machine shop currently has a 60 amp breaker in the house from our 200 amp service, but it uses a fuse panel and the wire that is ran to it can only handle 60 amps.

The power that runs to the machine shop also powers the small garage. The cold storage building also has power ran to it but it is only on a 15 amp breaker.

The plan is, because we have 200 amp at the house, to run wires that are 100 amp capable to the big garage and the machine shop. Then set up sub feed panels at each which should be enough for our needs.

If that isn't possible(We still have to talk to our electrician friend) then we would have to have the power company run 200 amp service to the big garage, but that will cost more money than just running wires to the shops.

The plan for the machines is to install a phase converter, as the power company quoted $5k to install 3 phase power.

We just have to determine the correct size of phase converter for out mill and lathe, But we are still not sure how to do that correctly. We can get numbers that seam right, but we are not sure.

Tomorrow we plan to continue to put the sheeting up, and then start to design the benches for the RC area to make the most efficient use of the odd shaped space we have.

 

[Thumper68]

Welcome to the forum from Duluth.

Great job so far and I like the fact that you can have different spaces for your different projects.

Got any pics of your RC crawlers, if you check the link in my thread you can see a few of mine, its been few years since I played with them but if I ever get any time I would like to do a few more builds.

 

[minnesotamudder]

Welcome to the forum from Duluth.

Great job so far and I like the fact that you can have different spaces for your different projects.

Got any pics of your RC crawlers, if you check the link in my thread you can see a few of mine, its been few years since I played with them but if I ever get any time I would like to do a few more builds.

These are the only pictures I can find right now, I will try and get more pictures tomorrow.

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[minnesotamudder]

Well, it's been hot and raining the last few days, but it finally was nice enough to get some sheeting up. We are about half way done and hopefully will have more updates in the next few days depending on weather.

 

[minnesotamudder]

Well, it's been raining and then we had fun stuff to do this weekend.

We put shelving up in the storage area and moved a lot of things in from the big garage.


Then this weekend was fun time. On Saturday we went to crawl for the cure in Gilbert mn to get ideas for our buggies, and to hang out with friends.




Then we went to Duluth to watch ships leave, and when we got back we started to change the fuse box to a breaker box.

 

[minnesotamudder]

Today we moved more stuff around in the big shop to get my jeep in. I have to do brakes, oil change, and change the oil pressure sending unit.

We realized I got the wrong brake kit. There are 2 types of front calipers on a Wj, well I ordered the wrong one[emoji13] so we sent those back. Then it was getting hot so we went to town and got the right parts.







Stay tuned for the next update[emoji106]

 

[oldironfarmer]

Looks like you guys are doing great!

If you decide to make your own phase converter, you just need a three phase motor as big as the larger of the two motors you want to run. You manually start this motor and let it idle. As long as it is running you can start either or both of the other motors, you just couldn't start them both at the same time. You manually start the idler with a rope around the pulley. It is incredibly simple and I have used it for years: run single phase 220 to two legs of the idler, and run from those two legs and the third leg to your other starters. Of course your other motors have to be wired for 220v.

I'm currently running a 3 hp mill with a 5 hp idler.

 

[Terrick down Under]

The idler sounds like a cool little idea, can you put up a pic so we can all see?

 

[willmitch]

Hey everyone. I'm minnesotamudders dad.
I figured I would sign up for this forum, 'cause it's a great information site, and while I'm at it, hopefully add to this thread. I'll try to add pictures and updates as they come. It might be hard for mudd to update as he's moved out of state, but I'll see if I can make him do some work when he comes home for Christmas

 

[willmitch]

Well, I took a few pictures of the progress. It's been slow, having 5 areas in which to shuffle things around in, and jumping around as to give myself enough room to work.
Inside the RC area. Not done but much closer.





Inside the machine shop. machine in position, but not hooked up yet.







Now just have to get a phase converter to power the machines and be sure I have the right power requirements to power it. I'll have to consult the techs at the manufacturers once I decide for sure which one to go with.

The big garage will get a 200 amp panel installed, hopefully this coming week. If nothing else I will power the phase converter from that.

 

[willmitch]

As of today, I think I am going to power the mill and lathe each with their own VFD. Should be cheaper and I won't have to run power wires from a remote room where the phase converter would be.