the bionic doghouse

[mustangmccance]

I have been in the process of building a place to house my "toys" for 8 years now. I built a 24 x 30 foot shop in nebraska then moved to utah, after five years I built a 40 x 42 foot steel building. did all the work myself on these 2 (with a lot of help from my friends of course) then right after I finished that building I had to move again. I hope that this is the last time I ever move but anyway I have been working on my new shop this time since I injured myself slightly on the last one my wife convinced me to have the shop assembled by a pro. It went up so fast that I am very glad I had them do it. now I have just been working on finishing the inside.



here is a picture of my shop. I call it the bionic dawghause. it is 60 by 40 inside I have a 44x40 main shop then I have a 16x20 foot separate woodworking shop that I can close off and keep the sawdust off my cars. I will have a small bathroom area and a 10x 16 ft area just for my dogs. I have a 10 x 10 foot wood deck off the back of the shop, inside there is a small fridge and microwave. I have a pretty good collection of hand tools, 2 air compressors one 60 and one 80 gallon with a selection of 3/8, 1/2 inch and 3/4 inch sockets drills and since my dad retired and moved out to iowa he has added all of his tools to the shop so I am feeling pretty good about things now.

it is still in the construction phase but it is coming along. the outside is done but the inside is still being worked on. as you can see the term dawghause has two meanings. it is a house for my dogs and a place I can go when I am in trouble with the wife. it is bionic because I keep building it better than it was before.



this was my tentative floor plan.



after it arrived.

 

[thomask]

Nice shop, I mean doghouse.

You really made great use of pegboard.

 

[mustangmccance]

yes I like pegboard. I like to be able to hang stuff out of the way and keep it organized. and the white stuff saves time in painting and finishing. I am starting to build some cupboards and storage to clean up that one corner where all my steel shelves were. they were bought at a garage sale for cheap when I first built the shop and had no storage so everything just got piled up on them. finally that corner is going to be organized.


this is what I am starting with, actually it looks a whole lot worse than that now, but it will look better soon with any luck. I am no cabinet maker so my joinery is going to be quick and easy. just going to make them out of plywood so hopefully my plan will work.

 

[mustangmccance]

I am beginning to realize that a very important plus for my garage I have not included in the description.

when we moved into this house it had a small two car attached garage. this is now my wife and my sons garage. they park there cars in that garage. the property was 3 acres so lots of land and on it were these 2 sheds. I stored all my stuff in them and in my 22 foot haulmark trailer until I built the doghouse. now these sheds store my camping gear, the lawnmowers and garden tools, my 2 four wheelers, and the leanto out back stores the lawnwagon and snow blade. I also do some of my real dirty work out in the white shed, when they ran my electric I had them run a line into the white shed at the same time since it went right by it. so now I have lights out there two. when I stripped down my 9 inch differential I did it in the white shed so I did not have to worry about getting that **** all over my shop. so these two sheds although in all the previous pictures of the shop I tried real hard not to show them I am now beginning to give them the credit they deserve thanks to reading all the posts on this site.

 

[82_454_shorty]

I like the name!

 

[mustangmccance]

here are the updated pics of the ugly corner.

 

[mustangmccance]

here is a new pic of the ugly corner after putting up the pegboard behind my tool boxes.


now on to the area behind my engine building workbench and my "lounge area"

 

[ratz]

I like the way the lines on the toolboxes, line up with the workbench/cabinets. It looks clean.

 

[mustangmccance]

I started re doing the break area part now. my dad is kind of disabled and he gets tired pretty quickly nowadays so this is an important part of my shop. besides the shop is where I hang out most of the time now anyway. so It was looking pretty shabby and it was time to get to work on it since I leaned back on my stool the other day and tore the vapor barrier a bit. so I patched that and decided to get to work on this corner. here are some before and after pics.

I never really cared what the shop looked like before I found this site now I am starting to paint things, and worry about whether this will look good or not. omg I am turning into a garagaholic.

 

[mustangmccance]

now I have to get me some of those nice chairs I saw in my craftsman tool catalog the other day. but that new camp chair of mine is awfully comfortable. oh well sacrifices must be made in pursuit of garage improvement.

 

[mustangmccance]

I moved my dad into a new apartment a little closer to my house. he was living in the next town over but we found a place for him closer. This place is a little smaller so he didn't need my big desktop computer that I had let him use, so being the addicted garageaholic and computer geek I am I decided to hook it up out here. so I found that with my laptop I could just barely detect my wireless network from the house. (I am about 100 yards from the house and inside a steel building) so I bought a wireless range expander and hooked it up and now I have great wireless reception anywhere in my shop. in fact it is better reception in here than it is in my house lol. anyway now I am really needing those new chairs. I hinted to the wife that they would make a great christmas present, even left the catalog open to the right page for a couple days. I guess I'll just have to wait and see if Santa is good to me this year.

 

[mustangmccance]

well I guess I was a good boy this year I got the chair I wanted.
http://s972.photobucket.com/albums/ae205/mustangmccance/?action=view&current=chair.jpg

 

[mustangmccance]

I also got a set of nice bose speakers off ebay and hooked them up to my computer so now I have pretty decent sound and I can watch movies or listen to music or audiobooks and with the amplifier and subwoofer setup that I bought when I got the system it is loud enough I can hear it pretty well.

also when I plumbed my airlines I ran a line to my bench so I have the little coiled air hose that I can use to blow off the bench or run air tools. very handy.http://i972.photobucket.com/albums/ae205/mustangmccance/computer.jpg

 

[zkslawn]

any pictures of the fords?? especially the mustangs

 

[mustangmccance]

yes I do. if you check my profile I have several loaded but here are some of my 65


I also have a 67 that is currently in the body shop, it has been completely stripped to bare metal and I will pick it up in june, and start rebuilding it.

my dad has his 95 supercharged mustang and his 89 convertible mustang in my shop too.

 

[Cool75280Z]

Nice. Any pics of how the dog kennel and run turned out? I am thinking about putting one into my design.

 

[mustangmccance]

yes. you have to understand a few things though. first we bought this house because of the land it sits on. we have just under 3 acres of land with nice trees. we moved in the winter so we had a guy build a 30 x 30 dog kennel with 6 foot high chain link fence. so we could have a place for them when we got here. but since there was no dog house or place where they could get warm they had to sleep in our attached garage. so that was one of the main selling points of my shop to the wife. get the dogs out of "her" garage. so anyway here are some of the pictures.

http://community.webshots.com/photo/2949037230101642786tlsDKa?vhost=community



I have now added a doggy door to this door so the dogs can go in and out when they want.



this is the "dog run. it is 30 feet wide and runs the length of our property about a hundred yards or so. when the plumper trenched the line for my water supply I had him trench a line for my fence so the fence is buried about a foot deep. the chainlink area is still back there and it sits in concrete so my dogs stay where they are supposed to be. the kennel is just a 10 x 16 foot room with a feeder and a raised sleeping pallet I made with a 4x8 sheet of plywood and 2x4 it gets them up off the concrete and I let my kids paint pictures on the walls. they had a good time. I don't have any pictures of it though.

 

[TurboMustang370]

Looks GREAT!
Are the Ford logos painted on or stickers? I've been searching for a big blue oval and a big harley davidson iron cross, big like 3'x5'

 

[mustangmccance]

those are decals. I just googled ford decals and found them. they did not stay too well so I superglued them on and now they are staying just fine.

 

[TurboMustang370]

those are decals. I just googled ford decals and found them. they did not stay too well so I superglued them on and now they are staying just fine.

thanks for the info. they look awesome.

 

[zkslawn]

love the mustangs.. look great.. thats my next project

 

[TurboMustang370]

OFF TOPIC:

Have you had good luck with that car bubble? A friend of mine got the one for his motorcycle and he said that within a week he was getting condensation on the inside of the plastic from the temperature changes.

 

[mustangmccance]

love the mustangs.. look great.. thats my next project

if you are starting a mustang project I highly recommend you stop by all ford mustangs website.

http://www.allfordmustangs.com/

the forum on there is excellent for answering questions and giving you ideas. I have been a member on there for years and always find people who have faced the problem I have faced and come up with clever solutions.

 

[mustangmccance]

OFF TOPIC:

Have you had good luck with that car bubble? A friend of mine got the one for his motorcycle and he said that within a week he was getting condensation on the inside of the plastic from the temperature changes.

yes I have had good luck with mine. this one is different than the bubble that i used to have. this one has fiberglass poles so it keeps it up even when I unzip it so it doesn't just lay on the ground when the car is out of it. and I live in a pretty humid environment and I have not seen any condensation inside it. my shop rains occasionally when I get condensation on the skylights but the bubble stays dry. it has 2 fans and seems to work well. I have only had this one about 6 months.

 

[zkslawn]

if you are starting a mustang project I highly recommend you stop by all ford mustangs website.

http://www.allfordmustangs.com/

the forum on there is excellent for answering questions and giving you ideas. I have been a member on there for years and always find people who have faced the problem I have faced and come up with clever solutions.

wow thanks.. ive been thinking about the forums.. i have a book but my dog just at it.. but thanks ill deff check that one out .. i love forums

 

[mustangmccance]

finished a project this weekend. I had just finished the wiring and the last of the pegboard along the west wall and this is what it looked like.

so I decided that I did not like looking at that old spare 302 engine or those dirty jacks etc. I don't want to get rid of the engine and I certainly didn't want to clean the jacks so something else had to be done. I decided on a closet.

that looks much better I think. now I just have to add the handles and clean up the rest of the mess on my workbench.

 

[cyclopsblown34]

Excellent work on the shop and I like the heck out of cabinets and closets for storage. Any pics of the dogs? Sorry, I'm a critter person as well as being a garagenut.

 

[mustangmccance]

of course. my dogs are very spoiled. they don't come in the house (the wife won't allow that) so I wanted to have a nice comfortable place for them. and that also gives me a good excuse to go out to the shop even when it is cold out and I would just rather go to bed. I still have to go out every night and spend some time with the critters.

the first picture is my son bryce and our first dog Midknight. my wife named him (she called him a knight in shining coat) of course that was before we found he is terrified by thunder. she thinks we should rename him mcchicken. lol.

this picture is of My youngest daughter sarah and our big dog Josh. he was named after the newfoundland that won the eukaneuba dog show a few years ago.

and this is my daughter Lauren and her dog Molly. we got her from one of Laurens friends who couldn't take care of her anymore because she had too many medical problems. ( her friend, not Molly).

they are a lot of fun and make the shop an even more important part of our home than it would have been. thanks for asking.

 

[mustangmccance]

I don't know how you guys think about this site, and I apologize if people think this is a waste of time, but I kind of think of this thread as my own personal blog about what I am doing in my shop. I am not going to put in stuff like well I had a fight with the wife so I am moping today or **** like that but just projects and stuff. that being said I finished the closet last night. I could not find any door handles that I liked so I bought these from orschelins.

but they did not look right since I had used the black gate hardware I bought when I lived in utah. it had been sitting in a bucket for 3 years so I decided to make use of them. but anyway since they did not match I decided to powdercoat them. put them in the bead blaster for a few minutes, powder coated them with my eastwood kit and in half an hour they are on the closet and I think they look great. I love powdercoating. if I had painted them they would have had to sit out for at least all night to dry, and the best thing is that cold weather does not affect powdercoating at all. awesome.

 

[intimadatorsquizz]

very nice it looks good

 

[bluebolt]

So what did you do with that big pile of scrap insulation, throw it out? I used my leftovers from my 30x40 shop to insulate the space above my house garage, made an immediate difference in the garage temperture.

 

[mustangmccance]

Kind of a long story there but basically I was away at a car show in nevada when the weather finally cleared up enough that the guys could start building. yes I was annoyed that I was not there, but my daughter took lots of pictures for me so I could see the progress. when I got back they had cleaned it all up. even all the garbage. they really did a good fast job. my only complaint about the builder is that I wish he would have told me that I was making a mistake by not putting a drain in. I had the plans all drawn up and had it all figured out in my head so it certainly isn't his fault but it would be nice to have someone slap you around occasionally and say hey you idiot you forgot something. but anyway I am enjoying the shop a lot now.

 

[mustangmccance]

when I built my new closet It ended up not leaving me with enough room for the little vise I had mounted there. so I had planned to just move it and drill some new holes. But, after seeing all of the guys who used hitch receivers I decided I would do that, and maybe later I could use it for other tools. anyway I also thought it would be a good exercise to get some welding practice. I not a great welder but I am pleased with how it turned out. very solid. after I welded it and ground down the welds I powdercoated it and this is the result.

 

[Nuts]

Shop is looking better all the time.

I'm going to steal the hitch vise too.

Nuts

 

[mustangmccance]

a couple months ago we had a really bad ice storm. my dads tv bought the farm during the power outages we had. He decided to buy a new one he got a nice 42 inch vizeo flat screen. I am no electronics guru but my dad is pretty good with electronics and he said that he thought it was just the power supply that went bad and if I could get it fixed I could have it. I took it to the local tv repair guy, a couple capacitors and a 100 dollars later I have a nice 32 inch flat lcd tv. I wasn't sure where to mount it because I wanted it over by what I call the lounge area. but this is what I came up with.

 

[Banana #2505]

Only one thing to think about with the TV, How cold does it get in your garage? If it does not have heat in the winter (or gets below freezing) the crystals will freeze and mess up the picture. Friend of mine learned the hard way.

 

[mustangmccance]

I keep the garage heated to above freezing for the dogs. it is not warm but I kept pop in the fridge all winter without it freezing so I think It will be ok, and the LCD for my computer was fine. but only one way to find out.

 

[Banana #2505]

If it heated then you shouldn’t have a problem. A friend of mine left his TV in storage over the winter. When he moved into his house the TV was no longer viewable because the crystals have frozen and thawed so many times.

 

[onewaydave]

Hey Mustang, got your message and sent a reply. Answered my own question by reading your thread. What is the gizmo on the console of the mustang?

One of my dream cars is a cobra kit with a LS-1 engine in it. I've always been a chevy guy until I met Cummins.

Your doing a nice job with the shop.

 

[mustangmccance]

thanks it is coming along and I sure spend a lot more time out there than I do in the house. once I get the bathroom done this summer life will be good. the septic tank should be delivered sometime this week, the toilet and shower and lumber will be here tomorrow.