Hemihead2
ALLIANCE MEMBER
I’ve been on GJ for a couple of years now and it’s about time I share changes I’ve made to my shop as a result of the inspiration I’ve gotten from seeing all the great places on this forum. My thread title comes from having made the Phase 1 upgrades when I first bought the house and shop and moved here back in 2003; doing those initial upgrades to the shop that was already here. After discovering the GJ, though, I got inspired to make the Phase 2 upgrades.
The property I bought is 6 acres with a detached 25’ x 50’ garage/shop. It already had a 12’ x 25’ finished work room built up inside the main structure. It’s 12’ to rafters inside the shop and the separate room had a floor installed on top, creating a small 12’x25’ loft for storage. The rest of the insides hadn’t been finished, plus there wasn’t much in the way of plugs or lighting there, either. In fact, as I started working on the phase 1 upgrade, I found that what was there was poorly done and downright dangerous.
Here’s an exterior shot to start –
First up was to get after the wiring. I’m not much of an electrician, so I hired one to work with me on a time and materials basis to get wired up the way I wanted. The people I bought the place from assured me they already had 220V out in the shop but it turned out their idea of 220 was to put a plug above the shop sub-panel and hard wire it to both sides of the legs without a breaker. It was bad enough that the panel was just off the floor.
I discovered that the wiring from main panel at the house to the shop sub-panel was 12 ga. Romex and was just draped under the house to a point closest to the shop and then run through PVC underground to the shop. I’m guessing that the location of the shop panel was established when they ran out of Romex. Here’s some before and after pics, note the 220 plug just above panel box –
After running proper ga. wire through correct schedule PVC under the house, to a proper J-Box and sweep over to the shop, we installed a new sub-panel sized for my needs. I upgraded the house to a new 200AMP panel and installed a 100AMP sub-panel in the shop.
Before -
After –
Once the new panel was in place, the shop wiring was next. Plans called for 220V plugs for my welders in both rooms, a 220V hook-up for a compressor and plenty of 110s around the room. The wall for the work room facing the inside of the big room was paneled in crummy miss-matched plywood, and had a set of plugs already there. I wanted to replace those plugs as well as the wall paneling so started to pull the wall paneling down. We found out that set of plugs were wired with 16 gauge lamp cord. No wonder the breaker kept blowing when I was trying to use a shop vac to clean up in there before starting the upgrade. Here are pics of that wall and then some of the rest of the wiring –
Then came insulation, sheetrock, and paint –
I’ve always wanted an epoxy floor, so after I did a few days of prep, some friends helped me out one weekend and we put down a U-Coatit system, light gray no flakes. I should have repaired the cracks in the floor, but I got in too much of a hurry.
Before -
After –
After the floor had totally cured, I moved up my toys, a ’32 roadster and a ’68 Charger, from storage in the S.F. Bay Area along with my tools –
Fast forward several years and the shop looked like this –
Then I discovered GJ and my wheels started turning – thinking about all the things I realized I should have done during Phase 1, and figured, why not do them now.
To be continued…………
The property I bought is 6 acres with a detached 25’ x 50’ garage/shop. It already had a 12’ x 25’ finished work room built up inside the main structure. It’s 12’ to rafters inside the shop and the separate room had a floor installed on top, creating a small 12’x25’ loft for storage. The rest of the insides hadn’t been finished, plus there wasn’t much in the way of plugs or lighting there, either. In fact, as I started working on the phase 1 upgrade, I found that what was there was poorly done and downright dangerous.
Here’s an exterior shot to start –
First up was to get after the wiring. I’m not much of an electrician, so I hired one to work with me on a time and materials basis to get wired up the way I wanted. The people I bought the place from assured me they already had 220V out in the shop but it turned out their idea of 220 was to put a plug above the shop sub-panel and hard wire it to both sides of the legs without a breaker. It was bad enough that the panel was just off the floor.
I discovered that the wiring from main panel at the house to the shop sub-panel was 12 ga. Romex and was just draped under the house to a point closest to the shop and then run through PVC underground to the shop. I’m guessing that the location of the shop panel was established when they ran out of Romex. Here’s some before and after pics, note the 220 plug just above panel box –
After running proper ga. wire through correct schedule PVC under the house, to a proper J-Box and sweep over to the shop, we installed a new sub-panel sized for my needs. I upgraded the house to a new 200AMP panel and installed a 100AMP sub-panel in the shop.
Before -
After –
Once the new panel was in place, the shop wiring was next. Plans called for 220V plugs for my welders in both rooms, a 220V hook-up for a compressor and plenty of 110s around the room. The wall for the work room facing the inside of the big room was paneled in crummy miss-matched plywood, and had a set of plugs already there. I wanted to replace those plugs as well as the wall paneling so started to pull the wall paneling down. We found out that set of plugs were wired with 16 gauge lamp cord. No wonder the breaker kept blowing when I was trying to use a shop vac to clean up in there before starting the upgrade. Here are pics of that wall and then some of the rest of the wiring –
Then came insulation, sheetrock, and paint –
I’ve always wanted an epoxy floor, so after I did a few days of prep, some friends helped me out one weekend and we put down a U-Coatit system, light gray no flakes. I should have repaired the cracks in the floor, but I got in too much of a hurry.
Before -
After –
After the floor had totally cured, I moved up my toys, a ’32 roadster and a ’68 Charger, from storage in the S.F. Bay Area along with my tools –
Fast forward several years and the shop looked like this –
Then I discovered GJ and my wheels started turning – thinking about all the things I realized I should have done during Phase 1, and figured, why not do them now.
To be continued…………
