Vermont Detached 29x36

[jsamhall]

Hey everyone,

First time poster, long time reader. Really awesome community here!

Before diving into the workshop, I'll introduce myself! I'm John hailing from northern VT where I live with my beautiful wife and our freeloader cat. Professionally, I work in IT at an automotive company and as you may have guessed I love cars! Especially Subarus but really I'm into everything! Outside of work I enjoy spending time with family, hiking, camping, traveling, playing music, and tinkering on cars. The primary subject of said tinkering is my 2006 WRX Wagon which I've put a whole lot of work into over the years including a metal wide body and forged bottom end + STI gearbox to support 450 awhp. Subies aren't known for having tidy engine compartments, but I'm proud of what I've done with mine!

Anyhow, onto the workshop! As-per title, this thread is covering the build process of our 29 deep x 36 wide workshop. Odd dimensions you might think but I'm sure many of you have been in the same boat I'm in where zoning and terrain imposed some constraints! Long story short, our home is situated on a rather narrow, hilly, wooded plot with a 50' side setback and a zoning board that doesn't grant variances "just because" (e.g. without "extreme unavoidable hardship"). Either way, its going to be a lot of space and I couldn't be more excited!

Here was the day I received the plans from the contractor. One change that isn't on here is the staircase has been relocated to the exterior of the building in order to save precious square footage inside. We decided to go with attic trusses and an 8/12 pitch so the attic is going to be big at 16' wide an 8' ceiling spanning the 29' depth of the building.

Before I knew it an excavator was driving up our driveway and then we had this big hole in the back yard! This was on December 5th! We got some really heavy wet snow in November that acted like a big blanket and kept the frost out of the ground. Before getting too far, our underground propane tank had to be yanked out and set aside for a little while. You can see where they backfilled the hole where the tank was, as well as the tank itself in the background before the treeline in this photo.

Aside from the workshop, this project also included a french drain to help redirect water away from the house and provide drainage for our well that overflowed making a marshy area in our back yard. You can see a little bit of the well head in this photo.

Fast forward a bit, footings poured and forms up! This was just before the holiday. There wasn't much snow at the time, especially considering this is northern VT!

We returned from our holiday travels to snow, and cement walls! Check out that retaining wall, its 10" thick! Also, yeah that's a floor drain pipe you see

It wasn't long afterwards that the crew had backfilled and started framing the building. In preparation for the slab there is 2" foam insulation and 8" of compacted crushed stone in there.

Just a few days ago, the crew came by on Saturday to set the trusses. It was a really cool feeling to see the building like this, and walk inside!

This last photo brings us up to date, where half of the roof is shingled.

You may have noticed another building in these photos which is a detached 2 car garage, about 20x20. The previous homeowners (original builders actually) planned on connecting the garage to the house but never did, so we are hoping to do that some day! We briefly considered knocking it down and building one big garage, but decided that it would be more ideal to have a completely separate building for automotive projects, not to mention the added cost that would be roughly doubling the building size. Having an attached garage and a detached shop may sound insane to some people but I have a feeling I'll find some like minded folks here on this forum

That is all for now! I think the build process will go pretty quickly from here. The contract does not include any interior finishing or insulation so that will be all me and my wife if I can convince her to help, lol I'm planning on R19 fiberglass for the 2x6 walls and 2" XPS on the exposed concrete. I plan to finish with sheetrock as I prefer the aesthetic to OSB for example. We have a 75k BTU Modine heater ready to go in, so I'll be keen on getting that insulation in there ASAP before turning the heat on. The ceiling height is 9' 6" so no full size lift, but I've got my eyes on a BendPak GP-7LCS which is a clear floor 2-post lift standing only 8' 10" tall!

I'll keep this thread updated as we go. I'm excited to be a member of this awesome community!

 

[Arclitgold]

Subbed! Can’t wait to see where this goes


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[gutted72]

Welcome and congrats on the new garage. Looks like you may be trying to get that insulation in pretty quick, that cold is moving in fast .

 

[Buckgnarly]

Zoning in VT?....you must be Chittenden County!

Welcome, and you must be crazy building this time of year!

 

[jsamhall]

Subbed! Can’t wait to see where this goes

Thanks! I am excited

Welcome and congrats on the new garage. Looks like you may be trying to get that insulation in pretty quick, that cold is moving in fast .

Thank you and oh yeah, right away!

Zoning in VT?....you must be Chittenden County!

Welcome, and you must be crazy building this time of year!

Not in Chittenden just a bit north in Franklin, but our district "R1 - Recreational" in our town is strict on variances. Our contractor, a local guy of ~30 years with plenty of experience with the local board, gave his firm opinion that a variance would not be granted because there were other locations on our property where the building could be erected which made the variance we originally were seeking extremely unlikely, citing this particular section from the zoning regulations:

That because of such physical circumstances or conditions, there is no possibility that the property can be developed in strict conformity with these Regulations and that the authorization of a variance is therefore necessary to enable the reasonable use of the property;

Plus another section stating that only the variance "will represent the minimum variance that will afford relief and will represent the least deviation possible from the zoning regulation" didn't bode well with the fact that we originally wanted to be about 10 feet from the property line.

Either way, everything worked out and 29x36 is still plenty large and we're happy with where the building is situated on our property. All's well that ends well as they say

 

[jsamhall]

Its been super cold here with windchill down around -30F but today was a balmy 20 degrees and some headway was made on siding!

I also poked my head up into the attic, tons of space up here

 

[NoPressure]

Very nice. Jealous of the attic space. What size are the garage doors?

 

[jsamhall]

Very nice. Jealous of the attic space. What size are the garage doors?

Thanks! They're 9x7.

 

[jsamhall]

Siding is coming along quickly!

 

[jsamhall]

Vinyl siding is all done now, as well as the door to the attic. The staircase to the attic will go up in the springtime. I decided that to me, the floor space saved by putting the staircase outside was worth the sacrifice of convenience having it inside. Not to mention it should be a little more efficient to heat the shop area.

I've been playing around with some floor plan ideas and layouts. The electric panel goes in on Thursday so its time to start planning the fine details.

Does anyone have any personal recommendations regarding electrical layout? I'll only be able to do about half the shop for now as I have to wait until the slab is poured in the springtime to build stud walls in front of the cement, but any first hand experience recommendations would be super appreciated!

 

[jsamhall]

Overhead doors are on!

I had a bit of a "doh!" moment when I realized the motor for the overhead door is going to interfere with where I had intended on putting a lift. I think I'll end up removing the motor and replacing one of the really old motors in our other garage with it, leaving the "lift side" door to be manually operated or perhaps install one of those wall mounted openers and be mindful not to open it while a vehicle is on the lift... or something like that. There just isn't quite enough depth even with 29' to position the lift deep enough to allow for a vehicle to be on it with the overhead door opened. Oh well, I'll live

 

[Deezler]

Nice building!

Wait, you are saying that with just 7' tall garage doors, you cant clear a lift in a 36' deep building? Balogna! haha.

Seriously though.. I don't get it. Put the lift 15-18' from the door and you won't have any issue, I don't think. Or are you trying to lift school buses in there?

As for electrical... lots of opinions on here. Most garage builders here go way overboard with outlets, which isn't a bad thing. What size panel/service are you putting in? Don't skimp on the front end.

Edit to add: You can also get high-lift tracks (doubled up tracks by front door) to raise the door higher. jackshaft (side) opener also a good idea for overhead clearance.

 

[jsamhall]

Nice building!

Wait, you are saying that with just 7' tall garage doors, you cant clear a lift in a 36' deep building? Balogna! haha.

Seriously though.. I don't get it. Put the lift 15-18' from the door and you won't have any issue, I don't think. Or are you trying to lift school buses in there?

As for electrical... lots of opinions on here. Most garage builders here go way overboard with outlets, which isn't a bad thing. What size panel/service are you putting in? Don't skimp on the front end.

Edit to add: You can also get high-lift tracks (doubled up tracks by front door) to raise the door higher. jackshaft (side) opener also a good idea for overhead clearance.

Thank you!

It's actually 29' deep (outside dimensions) or about 27' 4" inside. If it was 36' deep you're right there would be no concern! But alas...

I didn't know double tracks were a thing but that makes so much sense they are, thanks for the input! Now I've educated myself about all sorts of different track types, sweet!

The electrician is coming by tomorrow to meet with me to hammer out the final details before getting started. We've discussed some of the more demanding stuff already, such as my intention to install a 240v compressor immediately and 220v TIG machine some day. For standard outlets I'm going to start by seeing what fits within the current budget and go from there. Maybe like every 6 or 8 feet or something would be fine by me.

I've been playing around with floor planning and dimensions and such in an image editor, using 10 pixels per inch as scale. Here's my not-so-exciting progress lol

 

[benmills]

Any updates?

 

[jsamhall]

Any updates?

Long time no updates, but I'm here to deliver with new progress pics!

I left off my posts sometime in February when the building was framed and sided. At this point progress was pretty limited by lack of a concrete slab making interior finishing a big no-go. So, we waited patiently until spring finally decided to come to northern VT and the ground hardened up enough for our dirt road to be unposted so the escavation crew could return to finish prepping the driveway.

The electricians came in and did most of the wiring back in February, so I had lights to work under and power for corded tools.

Once the snow had finally melted, I decided to paint the foundation walls with some foundation coating to help mitigate water penetration. I started by pressure washing the walls and scrubbing them down of any loose debris, plus breaking off a ton of concrete ties. This was after the first coat. I ended up digging down a little bit and applying a second coat later on.

Around this time all of the hay and tarps got pulled out of the building so it could dry out faster in anticipation of eventually pouring the slab. With a nice base of gravel to walk on I got started on insulating the wall cavities. After a lot of debate and some valuable input from members here, I decided to go with Roxul R23 mineral wool insulation. While I would not describe installing insulation as "fun" by any means, I thought this stuff was a lot nicer to work with compared to fiberglass.

For the cement walls, I went with tongue and groove 2" XPS secured to the wall with Loctite foam board adhesive then taped all the seams with XPS. For the "cap" pieces (on top of the cement wall, perpendicular to the vertical wall), I left a little gap between the foamboard and base plates of the stud walls and filled that with some spray foam to ensure a good all around seal. Below all the gravel is a continuous layer of 2" foam board, so I dug down to that to rest my pieces upon. This ensures the slab has a 100% thermal break between it and the foundation walls, which as I understand it is a desirable thing. I used a bunch of scrap 2x6 lumber from our deck that I had tore up to help adhere the foam board to the cement walls.

For the parts of the slab that would not be poured against foam board, we did a 45 degree bevel cut on some 1" XPS that again went down to the under-slab board, with the "top" of the bevel cut about 1/2" below the finish grade of the slab. I didn't take any photos of it but this image explains it pretty well:

Finally, after what felt like FOREVER, the excavation crew came in and prepped the ground in front of the garage for the cement truck. They dug down, laid down some type of road subsurface fabric material that my contractor explained to me allows water to drain down but not come up (I guess this is a normal thing for roads/driveways) then topped that with a bunch of good sized rock, like softball size and larger. This provided a compact enough surface for the cement truck to drive on, so they were scheduled!

At long last, on June 7th the cement team came and poured the slab. Its about 5.5"-6" thick @ 4000 PSI with a drain in the center with relief cuts making four equal sections. Since I am planning on epoxy coating the floor, they did not seal the cement. Here it is on the day it was poured!

With the slab poured, I was as eager as one could possibly be to start hanging some sheetrock. I decided to go with sheetrock instead of OSB for a number of reasons, but it mostly came down to aesthetics although the added fire rating also appealed to me. We finished the ceiling the other day after many grueling hours. We're doing all 5/8" and went with 4x12 sheets for the ceiling to minimize seams. I can't thank my wife enough for helping me hoist those heavy suckers up onto the lift!! I'm really happy with how it came out, but I think I'll be subbing out taping and mudding to earn me some time for other projects around the house.

Last but not least, today my air compressor showed up. Its an 80 gallon tank with a two-stage 5 HP motor that fills to 175 PSI and puts out 15.8 CFM @ 90 PSI, so it should be sufficient for painting full cars, sand blasting, grinding and stuff like that.

As you may notice, the compressor was loaded into our old garage... which means I'l be facing the fun task of moving it to the new one. Weighing in at 400 lbs this will be a serious job. I'm hopeful to borrow a fancy pallet jack from work that has some basic suspension and big tires (we use it to roll pallets across our not-so-great parking lot between warehouse units).

I didnt have it loaded into the new garage because the next project on my to-do list is epoxying the floor. After seriously considering a snap-together flooring solution I decided that epoxy was the path I wanted to go, although in the future I may end up adding some flooring around the workbench and/or around the future lift. After a lot of research on this forum and YouTube I'm going to use the Rustoleum Epoxy Shield Professional version along with their premium clear coat. I've already swept and power washed the floor once since finishing the ceiling sheetrock and once it dries I'm going to do that again before acid etching with muratic acid. I'm going to pick up four of the epoxy kits and three of the clear coat kits. The floor is just over 900 square feet so I'm hoping this will be sufficient for two coats of epoxy and a complete covering of the clear coat.

Alright thats everything up to today! I'll try to keep this thread updated more moving forward!

 

[Riley]

Certainly looks like a nice space though the only picture showing for me is in post#9.

 

[trashmanssd]

looks awesome so far.

 

[tab2]

Wow I describe St Johnsbhry as northern VT, you are up there! Do you ever go over to Lake Carmi and is it clean? We go to Caspian over in Greensboro which is nice and clean.

 

[Swiftlegend]

I am a car guy and there is no way if I was designing a building or just "buying" a Morton would I have low ceilings. Mine are the same height as yours, but a pole building where I am leaving the trusses open and have a thread trying to figure out heating it and insulation ideas.

Anyways , think about it this way, you lift the car the max, you will still have to hunch your back or sit in a chair. Still better than nothing I guess.

 

[jsamhall]

Certainly looks like a nice space though the only picture showing for me is in post#9.

Thanks! Huh that's weird. I'll check out why that may be and try to correct the links. I used Imgur and Instagram for most the photos.

looks awesome so far.

Thanks! I'm hyped.

Wow I describe St Johnsbhry as northern VT, you are up there! Do you ever go over to Lake Carmi and is it clean? We go to Caspian over in Greensboro which is nice and clean.

Yeah! We're about 30 minutes from the Canadian border. I've never been to Lake Carmi personally. I'm generally on the western side of the state (I work in Burlington) or up in the north east corner of the state (the "north east kingdom" or NEK) visiting my wife's side of the family.

I am a car guy and there is no way if I was designing a building or just "buying" a Morton would I have low ceilings. Mine are the same height as yours, but a pole building where I am leaving the trusses open and have a thread trying to figure out heating it and insulation ideas.

Anyways , think about it this way, you lift the car the max, you will still have to hunch your back or sit in a chair. Still better than nothing I guess.

Thanks for your opinion. We wanted a full attic and didn't want the building to be gigantic on our property, hence the ceiling height on the first floor. I can fit a BendPak GP-7LC which claims 68" of lifting height which I think will be perfectly suitable for what I do and a huge QOL over the jack stands used for the past decade "Better than nothing is just a tad pessimistic" but hey you do you bud!

 

[benmills]

Is the floor done yet? Looking forward to seeing more progress.

 

[jsamhall]

Is the floor done yet? Looking forward to seeing more progress.

It is done! Thanks for encouraging me to update this thread!

Sorry for the lack of updates, the end of the summer flew right by and now there is snow on the forecast here in northern Vermont. Fortunately I've made a lot of headway in the workshop and I think I'm on a good pace to have it ready to "move in" in the couple months depending on how long finishing takes.

For whatever reason it looks like images stopped working so I'll have to go and update those at some point. They're all on Imgur so kinda strange they stopped working but I'll figure that out later.

I left off where I was preparing to epoxy the floor and man, what a process that was. I chose to go with Rustoleum's EpoxyShield Professional version after hours of research on GJ and other forums. I spent probably 4x as long prepping as I did actually applying the epoxy & clear coat. I first did a general sweeping/mopping of the floor to get it "generally" clean before really diving in. I chose full strength muratic acid for etching and bought a special pump sprayer for the occasion. I first followed the dilution instructions on the jug but didn't get any etching effect whatsoever so ended up using basically full-strength acid. I wore a PPE suit, respirator with fresh filters, eye protection, gloves, and hell even shaved to make the mask seal better. I'm glad I did because that stuff was crazy intense, sizzling as it hit the cement.

After thoroughly acid etching the slab, I did three or four rounds of pressure washing with a turbo nozzle, waiting for it to dry, then vacuuming. I repeated this process until the slab was dust free. I never thought it possible to get concrete so clean but lo-and-behold, it is possible with some serious effort.

When it came time to apply the epoxy, I set out all the materials outside the overhead doors on a drop cloth. My wife and I did the painting in our socks. We worked in about 5' rows trying to keep a wet edge and put the epoxy on in one heavy coat. I used just over 3 kits. My wife spread the decorative flakes with expert form as you can see here:

The floor came out great

I also replaced all the 2700k light bulbs installed by the electricians with 23w 5000k LED A21 bulbs and supplemented those with 42w 5000k 4' LED ballasts that I haven't completely finished installing as is obvious by the dangling wires.

We followed it up with the clear coat a few days later, used four boxes of that with mostly all of the 4th packet leftover which had to be tossed unlike the epoxy that can be kept in its respective Part A/B containers.

It wasn't long afterwards that my father's timing belt snapped in his Subaru. He towed it to our house and it became the first vehicle in the workshop which was slightly ironic as it came before any of my own. I was happy to help though, and it felt great to work in such a spacious, clean environment.

I had to take a break from workshop stuff as I promised my wife last year that I'd build a deck this year, and summer was quickly coming to an end. I finished it up a few weeks ago, really happy with how it came out. You can also see the french drain that was added during the workshop construction process. It does wonders for keeping the ground dry which was previously a big issue on the back side of the house.

After the deck was done I shifted focus back to the workshop and started framing up some walls to add more insulation to the foundation walls I covered with foam board before the slab was poured. These went up really fast. I anchored the PT base plate to the slab with 1/4" Simpson split-drive concrete anchors. The walls stand 3.5" taller than the insulated foundation walls, so I was able to tie the top of the walls into the exterior walls with blocking and wood screws which provided a path to run electrical down as well as enough space for an R15 batt sized piece of insulation to sit atop the "ledge" as well.

I filled the saw cuts with some self leveling sealant from DAP. I first installed 1/4" backing rod which I couldn't find locally but fortunately Papa Bezos had my back. The color isn't the exact same as the epoxy but ultimately its gonna get dirty and I really just wanted to fill those crevices as knowing myself, it is an absolute guarantee that I'd drop some important hardware in there and never find it again. Time well spent IMO!

Anyhow, back to the walls. Once I finished framing and squaring I added a bunch of outlets, strategically placing them where I plan to put stationary equipment and store a car on a battery tender. I also put one under the sink where I plan on putting a small 4 gallon electric water heater so I can wash my hands before coming inside. With the electrical done it was time to insulation and I again opted for Rockwool batts. With the 2" foam board and Rockwool R15 batts, the foundation walls are a total R25, nice!

I then decided to build a workbench integrating my Harbor Freight 44" tool chest with the casters removed. This was kind of a weird framing situation since I wanted to have a finished wall under the workbench that is connected to the framing that contains the plumbing for the sink. First I positioned the tool chest in front of the 2x4 wall, and realized that if I were to frame it in I'd end up with a 32" deep bench surface which was too deep for me, especially considering I'll be adding some cabinets above the workbench and need to be able to reach into them. So I decided to put the tool chest right up against the foam board and sit it on top of PT 2x4s, bringing the top of the tool chest flush with the top of the foam board on the foundation walls. Then I built the top frame of the workbench and screwed it directly to the framing for the exterior walls, and two front legs are attached to the lumber under the tool chest. I'm going to build a shelf under the right side of the bench once the wall is finished, but it's already extremely solid.

For a bench top I'm planning on using two pieces of 3/4 plywood glued together and screwed down to the frame, then having the sheet metal place down the road bend a piece of stainless to put down over that.

I'll try to do a better job keeping this post updated!