Psychoholic
Well-known member
I finally have enough pictures of the project to start a build thread!
A few months ago I get a call from a friend that bought some land to put 2 shops on that the lot that backs up to theirs was up for sale for a good price. I wasn't really in the market for it but the deal was sound and after 8 years of renting shops I was about ready to stop paying rent to someone else without earning any equity. Did some creative financing to make the money work, got all of the loans and bought the beautiful 3.31 acres of property in Statham GA which we are calling 'Thisland' because of this clip from Firefly.
After that I did a ton of research on what type of building I wanted, what the math worked out to, and opted to do a 50' x 100' x 18' with a 15' x 50' mezzanine cold formed steel building instead of doing red iron. Red iron seems to be the preferred method for really wide spans but a 50' deep building was good with cold form. Plus this seems to be the way the market is heading (and in full honesty - the wait time for a red iron building was 3x what it is for cold form. I'm terribly impatient as a person and I didn't want to be paying for the land for eternity while renting a shop). We are primarily a small part time fabrication shop and we do powder coating (wheels and art mostly) so all of the math worked out and we have a pretty compelling shop floor layout that lets us do the business stuff and have plenty of room to play with our cars and bikes.
Ordered the building from Metal Building Outlet and had a great experience working with them through the design process and I'm happy to pass my contact along if anybody wants it.
Next up was working with a general contractor and they have been tremendous too. They just both happen to have property that is within one or 2 lots of me and they're also putting up buildings of similar size so we have been able to combine a few things to drive our price down (like having the grading guy hit multiple lots at a time to save money moving the machines around).
If you've never seen a good grading guy work it is really something special to behold. Our driveway is 560' from the street to where the front door of the building will be. He got most of this done in 3 days. I put a GoPro on my truck and drove down it about a week ago.
(my neighbors/GCs both collect old military trucks and actually use them for work)
So now we have a graded pad. (F150 for scale). The hill to the right of the picture we did need to push out another 10' to meet with my concrete layout plan so I could have my side pad I wanted.
So here is where we are today. I have gravel down the entire driveway. I have a stop work order in place that should be lifted today (one of the silt fences ripped and we had some pretty heavy rain for about a a week. That has been fixed (plus grass+straw has been put out) and the inspector should be out today to lift the SWO.
Once the SWO is lifted the concrete dude is ready to come put in the forms. My plumber is ready to rough in as soon as the forms are in. Then 2 different inspections and we're ready to pour concrete! We are doing 4" of 4k psi concrete. Inside the building is done first and and that will be smooth and all the outside concrete (air compressor pads, driveways, side pad) are all brushed. Building is scheduled to be delivered on the 21st of this month but we have to wait for a minimum hardness of 2500 psi before we can begin so that is 28 days from pour from what I hear.
So there ya go - my big shop build in progress.
A few months ago I get a call from a friend that bought some land to put 2 shops on that the lot that backs up to theirs was up for sale for a good price. I wasn't really in the market for it but the deal was sound and after 8 years of renting shops I was about ready to stop paying rent to someone else without earning any equity. Did some creative financing to make the money work, got all of the loans and bought the beautiful 3.31 acres of property in Statham GA which we are calling 'Thisland' because of this clip from Firefly.
After that I did a ton of research on what type of building I wanted, what the math worked out to, and opted to do a 50' x 100' x 18' with a 15' x 50' mezzanine cold formed steel building instead of doing red iron. Red iron seems to be the preferred method for really wide spans but a 50' deep building was good with cold form. Plus this seems to be the way the market is heading (and in full honesty - the wait time for a red iron building was 3x what it is for cold form. I'm terribly impatient as a person and I didn't want to be paying for the land for eternity while renting a shop). We are primarily a small part time fabrication shop and we do powder coating (wheels and art mostly) so all of the math worked out and we have a pretty compelling shop floor layout that lets us do the business stuff and have plenty of room to play with our cars and bikes.
Ordered the building from Metal Building Outlet and had a great experience working with them through the design process and I'm happy to pass my contact along if anybody wants it.
Next up was working with a general contractor and they have been tremendous too. They just both happen to have property that is within one or 2 lots of me and they're also putting up buildings of similar size so we have been able to combine a few things to drive our price down (like having the grading guy hit multiple lots at a time to save money moving the machines around).
If you've never seen a good grading guy work it is really something special to behold. Our driveway is 560' from the street to where the front door of the building will be. He got most of this done in 3 days. I put a GoPro on my truck and drove down it about a week ago.
(my neighbors/GCs both collect old military trucks and actually use them for work)
So now we have a graded pad. (F150 for scale). The hill to the right of the picture we did need to push out another 10' to meet with my concrete layout plan so I could have my side pad I wanted.
So here is where we are today. I have gravel down the entire driveway. I have a stop work order in place that should be lifted today (one of the silt fences ripped and we had some pretty heavy rain for about a a week. That has been fixed (plus grass+straw has been put out) and the inspector should be out today to lift the SWO.
Once the SWO is lifted the concrete dude is ready to come put in the forms. My plumber is ready to rough in as soon as the forms are in. Then 2 different inspections and we're ready to pour concrete! We are doing 4" of 4k psi concrete. Inside the building is done first and and that will be smooth and all the outside concrete (air compressor pads, driveways, side pad) are all brushed. Building is scheduled to be delivered on the 21st of this month but we have to wait for a minimum hardness of 2500 psi before we can begin so that is 28 days from pour from what I hear.
So there ya go - my big shop build in progress.
