willonabike
Member
So I've been looking around these forums for a few years and finally decided to join the fun.
A bit about me - 33yo, married with the first child on the way. I am a bike mechanic (push bikes for you Americans) and we recently bought our first house.
Obviously a shed was high on my priority list when house hunting, and after some compromise I've ended up with a 20m2 galvanized steel frame job.
It was pretty basic, and filled with the previous owners junk but once the inside of the house was painted and tidied up it was time to fit it out.
I was previously working out of an old crumbling brick garage in our rental that was full of cracks, dust, leaks, spiders etc and all I've wanted was a 'clean' workshop.
The first job was to hook up power. The last owner had an air conditioner unit and lights in there but I guess he ran an extension cord so I had some digging. I got about 1/4 of the way before I gave up on the hand tools and organized a trench digger and we were done in half an hour.
We got the conduit in, filled it in a bit and then laid a PVC line. There is no garden tap anywhere in the back yard so at some point I'll hook that up.
One of the main things I wanted was a comfortable, clean environment and wanted it to be easy to attach whatever I wanted to the walls. I planned on replacing the evaporative aircon unit that was in the wall with a reverse cycle system that I salvaged and I figured some kind of insulation wouldn't hurt.
I didn't really have the frame work or patience to use batts so I went with some Ametalin silver wrap figuring it will help in summer plus give some moisture protection in winter. I tried to tape it in place leaving decent gap between it and the wall for a thermal barrier. I'm sure at this point people are seeing all sorts of things I could have done better but for the sake of about $140 for the roll and the tape plus a bit of time, it was worth a shot.
At this point I had run my power around, going for two power points on each wall or 6 double power points in total. I also ran a series for the lights - two twin-flouros and a switch going to an external power point that I have my air compressor plugged into. Having a father in law who is an electrician came in handy here.
In the first photo you can see a little shelter to the left of the shed. I built it one afternoon it a should make something better but at this stage it does the job of housing the compressor. I roughly lined it with some wool insulation to try and suppress the noise but it's a work in progress.
I ran the air hose into the side of the shed to a T-junction and an outlet for hooking up air tools or whatever down the track. The other line ran along the shed frame and up along the truss to a point in the middle of the ceiling where I can connect my air gun to and have it hanging down above my workstand. This makes it handy for drying bikes after I wash them, cleaning parts etc.
Once that work was done, I got hold of a dozen sheets of 19mm MDF from gumtree at $10 a sheet, cut them to size and screwed them to the shed frame.
I sat the panels on top of my excess silver wrap and taped it up. This was to provide some moisture protection from water coming in on the slab and also to protect the MDF when I prepped the concrete for the epoxy coat I had planned.
I wanted to have the ceiling lined too but only had two beams on each side to attach to. I also went with 3mm MDF here which I should have known was going to bend a lot and look **** but gap filler is a wonderful thing and I can live with the result.
With the walls and ceiling painted with some old undercoat that came with the house, I cleaned and acid etched the concrete and painted it using a Rustoleum epoxy kit from bunnings. I stuffed up here as the instructions recommended it would cover 18m2 and as I had about 20m2 I started out very conservative. Anyway as I got to the front of the shed I realized I had plenty but had effectively painted myself 'out' of the corner, was running out of daylight. I pretty much slapped down whatever was left resulting in a light patch in the back end of the shed. Not ideal but also not the end of the world as this is where the workbench goes and where I would stand working on bikes - I might even put mats down too.
The final steps for this post were to fit the air conditioner (and test it - works a treat, heat and cool!) and slide in my work bench and shelf. I hadn't measured anything for fit at this stage but with a little trimming and persuasion (and a spot on the wall to touch up if I get bored) they both fitted along the back wall.
Oh and I used some offcuts of the 3mm MDF as skirting to tidy up the walls and hide some excess silver wrap. I though about painting this too but got over it.
Anyway that's about where I am at in terms of photos. I've made some more progress but have been overseas for the best part of 3 months with work. Can't wait to get home again this week a get back in the shed! (And see the wife, family and all those good things!)
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
A bit about me - 33yo, married with the first child on the way. I am a bike mechanic (push bikes for you Americans) and we recently bought our first house.
Obviously a shed was high on my priority list when house hunting, and after some compromise I've ended up with a 20m2 galvanized steel frame job.
It was pretty basic, and filled with the previous owners junk but once the inside of the house was painted and tidied up it was time to fit it out.
I was previously working out of an old crumbling brick garage in our rental that was full of cracks, dust, leaks, spiders etc and all I've wanted was a 'clean' workshop.
The first job was to hook up power. The last owner had an air conditioner unit and lights in there but I guess he ran an extension cord so I had some digging. I got about 1/4 of the way before I gave up on the hand tools and organized a trench digger and we were done in half an hour.
We got the conduit in, filled it in a bit and then laid a PVC line. There is no garden tap anywhere in the back yard so at some point I'll hook that up.
One of the main things I wanted was a comfortable, clean environment and wanted it to be easy to attach whatever I wanted to the walls. I planned on replacing the evaporative aircon unit that was in the wall with a reverse cycle system that I salvaged and I figured some kind of insulation wouldn't hurt.
I didn't really have the frame work or patience to use batts so I went with some Ametalin silver wrap figuring it will help in summer plus give some moisture protection in winter. I tried to tape it in place leaving decent gap between it and the wall for a thermal barrier. I'm sure at this point people are seeing all sorts of things I could have done better but for the sake of about $140 for the roll and the tape plus a bit of time, it was worth a shot.
At this point I had run my power around, going for two power points on each wall or 6 double power points in total. I also ran a series for the lights - two twin-flouros and a switch going to an external power point that I have my air compressor plugged into. Having a father in law who is an electrician came in handy here.
In the first photo you can see a little shelter to the left of the shed. I built it one afternoon it a should make something better but at this stage it does the job of housing the compressor. I roughly lined it with some wool insulation to try and suppress the noise but it's a work in progress.
I ran the air hose into the side of the shed to a T-junction and an outlet for hooking up air tools or whatever down the track. The other line ran along the shed frame and up along the truss to a point in the middle of the ceiling where I can connect my air gun to and have it hanging down above my workstand. This makes it handy for drying bikes after I wash them, cleaning parts etc.
Once that work was done, I got hold of a dozen sheets of 19mm MDF from gumtree at $10 a sheet, cut them to size and screwed them to the shed frame.
I sat the panels on top of my excess silver wrap and taped it up. This was to provide some moisture protection from water coming in on the slab and also to protect the MDF when I prepped the concrete for the epoxy coat I had planned.
I wanted to have the ceiling lined too but only had two beams on each side to attach to. I also went with 3mm MDF here which I should have known was going to bend a lot and look **** but gap filler is a wonderful thing and I can live with the result.
With the walls and ceiling painted with some old undercoat that came with the house, I cleaned and acid etched the concrete and painted it using a Rustoleum epoxy kit from bunnings. I stuffed up here as the instructions recommended it would cover 18m2 and as I had about 20m2 I started out very conservative. Anyway as I got to the front of the shed I realized I had plenty but had effectively painted myself 'out' of the corner, was running out of daylight. I pretty much slapped down whatever was left resulting in a light patch in the back end of the shed. Not ideal but also not the end of the world as this is where the workbench goes and where I would stand working on bikes - I might even put mats down too.
The final steps for this post were to fit the air conditioner (and test it - works a treat, heat and cool!) and slide in my work bench and shelf. I hadn't measured anything for fit at this stage but with a little trimming and persuasion (and a spot on the wall to touch up if I get bored) they both fitted along the back wall.
Oh and I used some offcuts of the 3mm MDF as skirting to tidy up the walls and hide some excess silver wrap. I though about painting this too but got over it.
Anyway that's about where I am at in terms of photos. I've made some more progress but have been overseas for the best part of 3 months with work. Can't wait to get home again this week a get back in the shed! (And see the wife, family and all those good things!)
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
