Below 265 SQ/FT Nobody’s tool storage, maintenance & recreation lair.

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Hi everyone!

Before diving into the rest of the forum, I’d like to introduce myself and show the first, completed, part of my little lair. It is only missing some trim on the ceiling, that I wasn’t able to install yet because other projects needed completion first.

My name is Olli, will be 39 this year, and I’m first and foremost a DIY’er with a primary focus on house & garden. But have a interest in (and do quite a bit of) other stuff as well.

As per the title, this is where I keep most of my tools, do maintenance on tools that require it, do office work & relax. I do have two more rooms, one for project work and one for storage. These are currently still undergoing remodel - so not to be shown yet.

I outfitted/build this room basically from scratch. Meaning that after tearing everything out that was in this room before, it was down to 4 rough brick walls & some pipes (heating) that needed to stay. 3 walls and the ceiling mounted piping were cladded by placing metal studs/framework and drywall. The fourth wall was cladded with mineral materials only, since it is an outside wall that had some humidity issues and I didn’t want to risk anything - although the underlying issues were rectified in the whole process of building this room. The materials used are calcium silicate boards, corresponding mineral based adhesive/plaster and mineral based silicate paint.

It has it‘s own electrical distribution panel that is fed from the main line.







Kind regards,
Olli

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Now for the built.

As it was.







The tear down.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

My electrician prepared the second feed, so I could do everything else myself when time came.





Oh yeah, the good stuff.





Terminated and waiting. Lot of slack, as I wanted as much flexibility as possible at this stage. I had not decided where I would put the new distribution panel yet, except for a pretty rough estimate.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

That hideous old steel frame, single glass window was next to go. Originally I had planned to replace that myself. But as life got in the way, I hired a local company to do it.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

A small, incredibly tedious, job was to remove the old, rotten, conduit off a telecommunication line that could not be removed/ disconnected. The reason for manually cutting this off was that there is a lot of “bad stuff” in this conduit and I absolutely didn’t want to create fine particles/dust while cutting. So using a small angle grinder i.e. was out of question. And, the cable that was used back then is lead mantled. You don’t want lead dust either …

 

[slim_grim]

Killer looking space Olli!

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Thank you very much, @slim_grim !

—

Next came the first try to rectify a larger problem. The pre-owners of this house had a pool in the garden. A pool needs water, so they run a water line through the basement into the garden. They used a massive steel tube to guard that line. Now the line itself needed to be pitched back to basement to allow for it to be drained come winter. The issue with the steel tube used as conduit/guard was that the diameter was too small, to allow for the line to be pitched in the direction of the basement, and the steel tube pitched in direction of the garden - so that no water from the garden would ever travel to the basement through that guarding tube. …

I had capped off both ends of that steel tube with water tight expanding foam. Now I would find out that it was not water tight.





In the corner of this picture you can see the remainder of the 1/2” water line that went through the steel tube.



And pulling the tubing from the garden.







I realized quickly that the part in the garden was not steel. I pulled it, and realized it had separated from the steel tubing - so that would remain for now.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

On another occasion I had found another water/humidity related issue on that very same wall.



This is a classic with basements build from bricks. Back in the day they would use tar paper to isolate the first layer of bricks from the rest. On corners, that would overlap. A little over 50 years later thats the prime culprit for water ingress.

Gladly I know a specialist for isolating/sealing of basements and this was to be rectified by high pressure injecting of an expanding resin. He also had an idea for the steel tube that had remained inside the wall and was still a headache. He asked me to prepare a little and he would do the rest.

So I quickly cut and then chiseled away a bit of brick all around that pipe.





Then a bit more removed, brick as well as steel tube.



And time for injection.









Water tight, non-shrinking, mortar for the steel tube issue.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Since I thought that was all said and done now, I prepared the wall with a mineral based primer and put new conduit around that telecommunication line.







This is the point during the build that I had to pause because I had to put other projects in the fast lane. But you won’t notice as I will continue the posts.

 

[hobie18]

Wow. And I did so much today.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

So because of the time that passed, which in retrospect was a God’s send, I realized that the steel tubing issue was still not rectified. While the sealing that was done worked in that very area, water managed to still get by and would now cause humidity in other areas. I was aware of the fact that sealing of the tubing would be more of an experiment than anything else. There was a chance it would work, it didn’t. You will see in the next post(s), why we gave it a try in first place.

 

[WildBill]

Place looks great, what a nice workshop. I wish mine was half as organized and neat looking.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Solution: The steel tubing has to come out. Where it penetrates the wall, the wall has to be dug out. It has to be filled and the wall needs to be isolated.

That meant: Removing part of the deck I had built only a year or two prior. Going through the natural stone tiles and concrete foundation of the old patio that I had built the deck on - and brick removal in the basement, once more with feeling. Gladly my specialist was in for the ride. I removed part of the deck and did the inside work, he cut the stone and concrete & did the digging in a first step.







Sure enough, once I penetrated the seal and steel tube, water startet flowing.











First part of the steel tubing already out, trying to loosen the rest of it with a smaller pipe.



First part of the culprit.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Now the second part needed to come out.



My trusty Festool PDC. Drills easily through steel. Tubing like this, no matter if it’s small diameter pre-drilling or using a step drill bit to enlarge the hole.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Re-building the part we took out & isolating that part of the wall on the outside.







Back filling.



Rebar.





Concrete.



Inside job.



Slab re-build.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Deck re-built.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Now confident that the water ingress/humidity problem was solved. I could continue. Next was that old water line. Since it ended exactly where I needed to come out with a CAT (network) and antenna cable and was also in a convenient height. I decided to line it with conduit on the inside and keep it in place.

Just to illustrate that it really used to be a water line.



Cut, lined with conduit, antenna cable in using lubricant.







(Yes, I do need compression stockings after having suffered from “open leg” on both legs.)



Ready to apply the calcium silicate boards.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Calcium silicate boards are a great building material. Lightweight, mineral based (no mold, moisture permeable) incredible insulation capabilities. But you absolutely have to keep the whole build mineral based. So mineral based adhesive/plaster and later on a mineral based/ silicate paint.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Time to run cables and start on the metal framework for the other walls.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Building the housings for heating pipes, water line and cables.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

More metal framework and drywall.















Ready for my HVAC guy to come and do some plumbing.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Plumbing by my HVAC guy.

Freezing the existing pipes to tie-in and do the plumbing.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Adding sacrificial boards where the new radiator will be hung. Additionally this wall has a double layer of drywall.







First layer.



Second layer.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

More drywall. And concrete grinding - for later, when I need an adhesive to stick not just to the old paint.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

More.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Small detail, and an adhesive test run.









The adhesive test run showed what I expected, it won’t bond to the paint layer on that styrofoam insulated part of the ceiling.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Whenever I had some time to kill, I plastered.







And then it was time to finish that calcium silicate board wall.

Injecting the mineral based adhesive/plaster where necessary.







And then plastering & finishing with the same product.







In this picture you can see why I needed to remove that paint layer of the concrete.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Some more adhesive testing revealed there was no adhesive available that would penetrate/bond through the layer of paint on that styrofoam insulated ceiling. But without the paint, it would create the perfect bond. So the layer of paint ultimately had to go.







Expansion foam concrete layered boards going onto that part of the ceiling.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Details.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Neat Made in Germany junction box by Hensel Electric. And the best hole marker ever. “Shoots” a load of green chalk from a pressurized container.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Electrical stuff.







Wooden substructure for ceiling.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Hanging wallpaper & installing outlets/sockets.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Hanging, installing & connecting the distribution panel. Obviously the distribution panel was labeled correctly after the install - but that is a detail I don’t want to share - so I used a picture where it hasn‘t been labeled.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Delivery of the interlocking garage/workshop floor tiles.





Hanging the ceiling.















Radiator was installed the day after. Ready to move in.

 

[tworley]

Lots of work--looks great!

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Adding a 40mm plywood to to my Snap-On box as worktop.







From there it still took a bit to get to what you see in the first post, but the build was finished a couple of days before Christmas ‘23. The pictures in post #1 were taken after Christmas ’24 and reflect the condition of “as is”.

The whole build, with life intervening here and there, having to fast lane other projects in between, Material delivery delays, waiting on appointments with tradespeople that I utilized here and there as described, took a good year and a half.

Hope this was interesting and you enjoyed reading & looking at the pictures. Thank you for the chance to add my little lair here - I will now start participating in the other sections as well. If there is any interest, I will add for the actual workshop and storage room to this thread.

Happy New Year & kind regards,
Olli

 

[slik560]

An incredible transformation. Sehr gut!!!

 

[rharman]

Very nice, very nice!

 

[Geoff289]

Welcome aboard. You'll like it here.

You've got a very nice space there in return for all your hard work.

 

[Nobody-named-Olli]

Thank you very much for the positive comment and warm welcome, everyone!

Kind regards,
Olli