jeremy_cherokee
Well-known member
I've been contemplating when I would start a garage build for about a year now. I think it's time, even though I'm not ready to do everything I want to, if I don't start now, who knows when I will.
Background
I just turned 29. I live in a tiny little town North of Ames, Iowa that has about 1200 people in it. I married my high school sweetheart back in 2008 and we've been together since 2002 (man that's a long time haha). We have twin almost-3-year-olds (a boy and a girl). This is a little tangental, however, if you're a gynecologist and you have a young couple sitting in front of you that had to take fertility drugs to get pregnant, don't say "there's at LEAST two babies in there" when doing the initial ultrasound. I'm pretty sure that knocked off at least 10 years from my total lifespan. Obligatory pics of my little helpers:
Annnnnyway ... We moved to the little town from Ankeny (a suburb of Des Moines) almost 2 years ago. I had completely remodeled our house in Ankeny from top to bottom but we didn't like the traffic and wanted to put our kids in a smaller school. Then we found this house. I walked into the shop (will explain in a bit) and the wife walked into the kitchen (the guy hand built a beautiful kitchen and many other things) and we were sold. It wasn't really where we wanted to live (location wise) but we couldn't beat the price with everything it provided.
The Shop
When we lived in Ankeny I thought I was spoiled. There I had a nice 24'x30' shop - which, seeing that they consider a garage to be "oversized" at 20'x22' in Ankeny - was pretty freaking nice. Then we started to look around and what I had in Ankeny was a good start, but not nearly where I'm at today.
My current shop is broken up into two sections. The total dimensions of the shop are 24 x 48'. However, the inside is broken up into 2. In the front section there is a 24' x 18' parking garage. This is where I park our daily drivers, my motorcycle, and, for the moment, our wood storage for our wood burning fireplace. The back section is separated by a 16'x7' garage door and a 32" passenger door and consumes the rest of the space (about 24'x30'). This area is what I refer to as "the shop." It's still a work in progress as the original builders did a questionable job on the electrical - not so much actual wiring, but location of the wiring.
My Hobbies/Why I NEEDED a shop
As the name of this thread implies, I am, for all intents and purposes, a nerd. Many of you might assume that means I play video games and snort my nose frequently while wearing big thick glasses. No, not so much. I am not a gamer, I am a nerd. I have a 25U server rack in my basement. I host a personal blog site (ok, it's basically just a digital scrapbook of my life), a plex server because I have a bunch of blu-rays and have them backed up so I can stream them, and I do a lot of testing to learn new things as my occupation is a systems administrator (that's a simplified explanation of what I do, but probably the best two-word name I can give my title). Although my server is not in my shop, my nerd-ness expands to all aspects of my life, including the shop. Here's a picture of my tech room, which is effectively my shop on the inside:
In addition to being a nerd, I am a big gear head. My dad (His Build Thread Here) was a mechanic for many years before he switched over to his current occupation involving nuclear medicine equipment. I grew up a GM kid but I have since expanded my automotive interests to include anything that is fun to drive because, well, that's what life's about. Life isn't about being blindly loyal to a single brand but, instead, is about having as much fun as you can in this limited time we get here on earth. What is probably my favorite vehicle (although, really, saying you have a favorite vehicle if you are a lover of cars is like explaining what your favorite color is. Yes you might like blue but red looks great too ... so does black, and gray, and ...) is the Jeep Cherokee XJ. I've owned 4, although my current one and my first one have been, by far, the best ones I have owned. The first one was a 1990 2-door with a 5-speed and a sun roof. We rebuilt the engine on that and then I decided to sell it because I needed money and was probably suffering from brain damage from doing all that engine work because who sells a completely rust free XJ 2-door with a stick.
My current Jeep, affectionately named "FrankenJeep" has been a massive, ongoing project. I bought it not running, 2WD, and with about 170k on the clock but absolutely no rust on it. Last year I converted it to a 4WD, put in a brand new crate motor, completely painted the under body with farm implement paint, and upgraded pretty much everything about it. My signature has a website, if you're really interested, feel free to take a look.
Plans for this Nerd's Shop
This is a loaded question, as I'm sure all of you realize when writing your build thread. Here's a few of the basics I really want to accomplish:
- Re-do the wiring
- Build a Steevo Bench
- Replace the old cabinets with said Steevo Bench
- Re-do the sheetrock
- Replace the lighting
- Re-paint the flooring
- "Pretty up" the parking garage with racedeck, sheetrock, and new garage door openers
- Build a shed (possibly attached behind the shop) to store the larger extra materials and the yard equipment
- Move the TV to ... oh screw it, I'll draw this up on Sketchup so it makes more sense
- Build a mobile cart for the miter box and table saw (which I just sold and need to replace with a smaller one)
Final Thoughts
I apologize (kind of) for the long-winded thread. I will try and keep the remaining posts not quite as long but still informative. I, by no stretch of the imagination, considerd myself an expert on anything that isn't a server. However, I do try and do some neat projects and like to document them so other people are encouraged to also make a fool...I mean try neat projects.
Background
I just turned 29. I live in a tiny little town North of Ames, Iowa that has about 1200 people in it. I married my high school sweetheart back in 2008 and we've been together since 2002 (man that's a long time haha). We have twin almost-3-year-olds (a boy and a girl). This is a little tangental, however, if you're a gynecologist and you have a young couple sitting in front of you that had to take fertility drugs to get pregnant, don't say "there's at LEAST two babies in there" when doing the initial ultrasound. I'm pretty sure that knocked off at least 10 years from my total lifespan. Obligatory pics of my little helpers:
Annnnnyway ... We moved to the little town from Ankeny (a suburb of Des Moines) almost 2 years ago. I had completely remodeled our house in Ankeny from top to bottom but we didn't like the traffic and wanted to put our kids in a smaller school. Then we found this house. I walked into the shop (will explain in a bit) and the wife walked into the kitchen (the guy hand built a beautiful kitchen and many other things) and we were sold. It wasn't really where we wanted to live (location wise) but we couldn't beat the price with everything it provided.
The Shop
When we lived in Ankeny I thought I was spoiled. There I had a nice 24'x30' shop - which, seeing that they consider a garage to be "oversized" at 20'x22' in Ankeny - was pretty freaking nice. Then we started to look around and what I had in Ankeny was a good start, but not nearly where I'm at today.
My current shop is broken up into two sections. The total dimensions of the shop are 24 x 48'. However, the inside is broken up into 2. In the front section there is a 24' x 18' parking garage. This is where I park our daily drivers, my motorcycle, and, for the moment, our wood storage for our wood burning fireplace. The back section is separated by a 16'x7' garage door and a 32" passenger door and consumes the rest of the space (about 24'x30'). This area is what I refer to as "the shop." It's still a work in progress as the original builders did a questionable job on the electrical - not so much actual wiring, but location of the wiring.
My Hobbies/Why I NEEDED a shop
As the name of this thread implies, I am, for all intents and purposes, a nerd. Many of you might assume that means I play video games and snort my nose frequently while wearing big thick glasses. No, not so much. I am not a gamer, I am a nerd. I have a 25U server rack in my basement. I host a personal blog site (ok, it's basically just a digital scrapbook of my life), a plex server because I have a bunch of blu-rays and have them backed up so I can stream them, and I do a lot of testing to learn new things as my occupation is a systems administrator (that's a simplified explanation of what I do, but probably the best two-word name I can give my title). Although my server is not in my shop, my nerd-ness expands to all aspects of my life, including the shop. Here's a picture of my tech room, which is effectively my shop on the inside:
In addition to being a nerd, I am a big gear head. My dad (His Build Thread Here) was a mechanic for many years before he switched over to his current occupation involving nuclear medicine equipment. I grew up a GM kid but I have since expanded my automotive interests to include anything that is fun to drive because, well, that's what life's about. Life isn't about being blindly loyal to a single brand but, instead, is about having as much fun as you can in this limited time we get here on earth. What is probably my favorite vehicle (although, really, saying you have a favorite vehicle if you are a lover of cars is like explaining what your favorite color is. Yes you might like blue but red looks great too ... so does black, and gray, and ...) is the Jeep Cherokee XJ. I've owned 4, although my current one and my first one have been, by far, the best ones I have owned. The first one was a 1990 2-door with a 5-speed and a sun roof. We rebuilt the engine on that and then I decided to sell it because I needed money and was probably suffering from brain damage from doing all that engine work because who sells a completely rust free XJ 2-door with a stick.
My current Jeep, affectionately named "FrankenJeep" has been a massive, ongoing project. I bought it not running, 2WD, and with about 170k on the clock but absolutely no rust on it. Last year I converted it to a 4WD, put in a brand new crate motor, completely painted the under body with farm implement paint, and upgraded pretty much everything about it. My signature has a website, if you're really interested, feel free to take a look.
Plans for this Nerd's Shop
This is a loaded question, as I'm sure all of you realize when writing your build thread. Here's a few of the basics I really want to accomplish:
- Re-do the wiring
- Build a Steevo Bench
- Replace the old cabinets with said Steevo Bench
- Re-do the sheetrock
- Replace the lighting
- Re-paint the flooring
- "Pretty up" the parking garage with racedeck, sheetrock, and new garage door openers
- Build a shed (possibly attached behind the shop) to store the larger extra materials and the yard equipment
- Move the TV to ... oh screw it, I'll draw this up on Sketchup so it makes more sense
- Build a mobile cart for the miter box and table saw (which I just sold and need to replace with a smaller one)
Final Thoughts
I apologize (kind of) for the long-winded thread. I will try and keep the remaining posts not quite as long but still informative. I, by no stretch of the imagination, considerd myself an expert on anything that isn't a server. However, I do try and do some neat projects and like to document them so other people are encouraged to also make a fool...I mean try neat projects.
years ago and it was junk right from the beginning. So I'm going to go down to Sears and play around with one before I jump the gun on those.
My servers are predominantly Linux - CentOS has been my favorite lately. It just seems to be a little better thought out, in my opinion. Plus I'm almost an Red Hat Certified Admin so having CentOS helps me maintain my skillset. 
