My "Barn" garage

[drc42]

OK, been lurking for quite some time here from time to time. I am more than overdue for posting about my "Barn".

This has been something I have been pondering for several years. I even had my wife convinced it was something we would build "eventually". She considered it to be something we do when I am closer to retirement age... I of course had been thinking something much sooner.

The original plan was to build the barn next to the house we were in at the time but we really couldn't find a good way to make it fit. We had 2.5 acres but the only way to make the barn fit would be to put it way in the back and there were some wetlands issues.... could have probably worked around that but I had this nagging thought of "do I really want to invest this much into this property?" I knew once we built something like this we were not going to want to ever move and I had always wanted to build the "dream home".

So long story short... I managed to talk my wife into the plan of building not just the barn but also new house. Part of what made it easier to convince her is we found 24 acres of land in a perfect location.

We purchased the land in February of 2016 but due to wetlands issues (which is why the land was in our price range) we didn't really get started until June of that year. So, it was just about a year ago when construction finally got started.

July of last year we finally had the footers for the foundation in place.

In early August the foundation was in and it was ready for the concrete floor. This was the first time I really got a feel for the size.

The concrete was poured about a week after that.

As with all things like this there were delays in the process.... took a couple more weeks before Morton delivered the materials for the building.

I would stop by the build site most days on my way home from work, mostly to see what progress had been made on the house (which was in progress by this time). One day I arrived to find the driveway and the road blocked by the Morton Buildings delivery truck:

Hopefully my future neighbors didn't get too annoyed with me since I hear the truck was stuck there for about 6 hours.... thankfully it isn't too far of a detour for those that had to go around on another road. He managed to get in to the driveway without any issue but when pulling out he wedged the trailer between the telephone pole and the ditch.

But the materials had been delivered!

Roof trusses (with the beginnings of the house in the background):

And lots of steel for the roof and siding.

Now we just needed to wait for the crew to come to put the building up!

 

[drc42]

Finally in the middle of September the construction crew finally arrived!!!!

By the end of the 2nd day the building had some shape.

Seemed really odd to have windows before the walls were complete.

Meanwhile work continued on the house and they started drilling the well... that had its own set of challenges that I won't go on to here. Oddly for as much of an issue as we had with TOO much water on the surface they had trouble finding water when drilling the well!

The outside was complete except for the doors in about a week.

It felt HUGE inside.... oddly seems cramped now with all my **** in it!

 

[drc42]

Insulation!

I live in New Hampshire where it can get pretty cold in the winter and with the size of this place (36' x 60') insulation is a critical factor. I don't want to waste all my propane just heating this place. So I opted for Morton's "Energy Performer" insulation package. The nice thing with this is the insulation comes in large rolls so that it is a continuous sheet of fiberglass insulation between each set of posts (which are 6' on center in my building). Then the entire wall is covered with plastic vapor barrier plastic.

Here is after the walls were insulated.

After the ceiling was installed they installed rolls of insulation on top, once again at a full 6' wide so a single blanket filled the area between each roof truss, and then there is more blown in insulation on top of that (I forget the R rating of all of this).

Having gone through one winter with it now I have to say I am very impressed. If I am not going to be out there working just shut the thermostat off and it rarely gets below 40 deg. Then I just kick on the thermostat when I plan on working out there. On a cold but sunny day it will warm itself up a few degrees even when it is in the 20s outside. I plan on adding some solar heat eventually but just the few windows on the south side help a bit.

On the interior most of it is 8' of OSB with white steel above it however on the north side wall I had the windows installed higher up.... I wanted to make sure I had lots of usable wall space below the windows but still wanted good cross ventilation. So on this side the OSB goes up to a little over 9'.

I love having the OSB walls rather than drywall. My old garage had just drywall and it is so nice to be able to drive a screw to hang things on the wall anywhere without needing to find a stud.

The ceiling is the "acoustic steel" which is perforated to help reduce echoing. I figured it would drive me crazy running power tools hearing it echo... besides I knew I wanted to shoot some YouTube videos and wanted reasonable acoustics for that.

Here you can see the large rolls of insulation sitting out front waiting to be installed in the ceiling.

 

[FTWingRiders]

Following along, will be neat to see it come together.. but I don't see any pictures in the second and third posts. Maybe me?

 

[HOTFR8]

In posts two and three I am being asked to logon to a GOOGLE account for images so I can not see any images.

 

[drc42]

Oops, I think I know how to fix that... took a "short cut" in grabbing the links on the second couple posts....

 

[drc42]

Should be fixed now. Hopefully if you reload the page you will see the pics. Can somebody confirm if they see pics in my second 2 posts? Want to be sure it is working before I continue.

 

[captain14]

Yes the pictures are showing up. It's huge when empty BTW.

 

[drc42]

Progress on the barn slowed down at this point. The Morton crew was done with their part of the project, they use another sub-contractor for the overhead doors which took a week or two. Then the electrical sub-contractor took a while to get things wired up. They managed to get the lights hooked up fairly quickly but then was a couple months before they came back to finish up everything including wiring up the door opener. Part of the reason it took a while is they were also doing the electrical in the house and they were waiting for it to be ready.

So in the meantime I watched progress on the house. I designed the basic layout of the house so it was really exciting to see it become reality.

Back of the house. This faces south so is the "sunny side". All the windows helps with heating on sunny days in the winter.

Front of the house

 

[drc42]

Over the next couple of months things got crazy with building the house and getting our old house listed for sale. Then we got an offer on the old house but they wanted to close very quickly.... This meant a mad rush to get everything cleaned out of the old house (and more importantly the old garage). I had been there for 18 years so a lot of stuff to deal with.

The original plan was to paint the floor before I moved anything in but with delays in getting power and delays in getting water meant I could not pressure wash the floor. Then with the rush to move out of the old place things got moved to the barn with no time for organization.

And then the sale of our old house fell through

So then I had more time but of course the new place was already a mess. I needed some cabinets. I found that "NewAge Performance" had a really good sale on a big set of cabinets. This really helped manage a lot of the smaller stuff.

Of course it didn't take long to get them packed full of random stuff. But it did help.

 

[drc42]

Over the winter I tried to get things organized best I could. I also installed some heat!

The contractor doing the gas piping for the house did the gas hookup but I did the rest of the install.

Also the bathroom got installed. I think my wife is more excited that I have a bathroom in the barn than I am.... no more coming in to the house with greasy hands making a mess!

It was great to be able to park my Sprinter van inside (which I am slowly converting into a simple RV / dirt bike hauler). This was the reason I needed the high ceiling. Ceiling is 13' on the sides and goes up to about 14.5' in the center. Door is 12'.

Also this leaves me plenty of headroom for when I eventually add a lift. Won't be able to lift the van all the way up but more than enough for my other projects.

 

[drc42]

Moving day!!!

In the middle of January we moved into the new house!

The barn was as done as it was going to get for a while. Was a little frustrating having it being cluttered and tripping over things but I was still happy to be in our new home.

My plan is to live here until they move me in to some sort of assisted living or into the ground (hopefully many many many years from now). So I can live with it being cluttered for a while.

 

[Blackhawks63]

Very impressive

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[AZ Pete]

beautiful place!


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[HOTFR8]

Yes, Fixed. Great looking place and set up.

 

[MacTexas]

Nice looking place.

 

[FTWingRiders]

Looks great! Love the color! Not adding a bath is one of my biggest regrets.

 

[lakeroadster]

Very nice... thanks for sharing.

 

[drc42]

So, once we moved in to the house not a lot got done in the barn. During the move it became mostly a dumping ground and was far too cluttered to really get any real work done.

Then, in May of this year I got laid off... sucked but at least I had some time to deal with stuff. The original plan was to build an enclosed office in the back of the barn so I figured it was time to finally get around to that.

I wish I had gotten a few more pictures of this part. Here is how it looks now, usable but I really do need to finish up the trim work to make it look a little nicer.

The walls are insulated so that I can run a window AC in the summer and have some heat in the winter without cooling/heating the whole barn. I will still keep the rest of the barn heated but I can keep the office nice and comfortable.

I built the ceiling strong enough to be some useful storage space, now I just need to find a good way to get heavy stuff up there. For now it is limited to what I can do with a ladder.

 

[drc42]

Still needing more storage space I decided to make use of the high ceilings. I figured near the side walls I could create a big 4ft wide "shelf" that is almost like a second floor. This will allow me to hopefully make progress on all the clutter.

Also, I figured it was time for me to get serious about becoming "internet famous!" I decided to film the process and put it up on youtube.


For some strange reason it isn't working when I try to embed a video here (possibly turned off for this section of the forum? I know it worked when I posted on in another section).

Anyway, will have to do this the old fashioned way with simple links:

part 1:

part 2:

So that pretty much brings everybody up to where it stands now. Once I actually make use of all my new storage space I will see about shooting a video tour of the garage.

 

[shortykorte]

Congrats on the nice home and big shop. Good idea to make use of your temporary vacation.