Building a Small Hobby Shop

[Ryan-071]

Hey guys! I've been doing a lot of reading through the forums lately, trying to find out as much about what everyone else is doing/has done to help me in designing and building my own shop. I am coming at this from more of an armoring perspective, so there won't be much large stock, at least not 20' long bars to be swinging around. I'll be dealing with mostly sheet steel.

 

Anyways, I've kind of got a general plan setup, 2 actually, and I was wondering if I could get some advice.

 

In my area, anything under 200 square feet doesn't need a permit in residential areas, so I'm thinking something like a 12'x15' or 10'x18' would be pretty nice. I'm pretty friendly with most of my neighbors, and I don't plan to be hammering at 2 AM. However I would like to keep noise and smoke in mind when building. I'll be using a coal forge that I'll be building inside the new shop. I'll be building in my own backyard.

 

My first plan is the quick and cheap. I would really like to get at least some form of a roof up so that I can at least hammer in the shade, and my equipment won't get rained on. So I was thinking about building a quick frame and putting up some currogated metal roofing. Then putting up some simple walls when funds allowed. I would also like to have a gravel floor, so that when it rains, it doesn't turn into a mud trap. I could pour a concrete floor, but I think there is some restriction on that with the city. So I'd have to look into that first.

 

This option would get me going sooner, but there wouldn't be walls to block some of the noise for a while. 

 

My second plan would be to build it like a small house. Insulate everything, put a nice shingled roof on it. Still stick with the gravel floor. It would "look" nicer to the wife and the neighbors, but it would take me much longer to get built.

 

I like the idea of insulating everything, because here in Kansas it can go from 120 degrees in the summer, down to -20 in the winter. Worse with wind chill. If I go the simpler route, with the currogated metal roof, I'll be in the shade, but how much of the heat will I actually be blocking? I know Pugman built a REALLY fantastic looking shop using currogated metal. I just don't know enough about building materials myself to make informed decisions at this point. Do I need everything to be insulated in the summer? Or is it better to have more of an "open" shop? 

 

Thanks for any input you guys can give me! I really want to make some good building decisions with this.

 

~Ryan

[ThomasPowers]

I went pole barn when I built my latest shop addition, one thing you haven't addressed is height.  My shop has 10' walls, it lets the heat get higher up, more room to store stuff vertically.  I used pro-panel rather than corrugated for the walls and roof---mainly because it was free but it looks better to my mind.

 

Mind you if you are hot working armour you will probably want a propane forge or two; or go with real charcoal for heating over using coal.

[Ryan-071]

Thanks Thomas! I did forget to mention height. I was planning on at LEAST 10' because I can easily reach an 8' ceiling even without a hammer. I haven't heard of pro-panel. I might need to look into that (even if it isn't free for me). Also, I said coal forge, but I'm really using whatever I can get my hands on. If I can get some real charcoal from the local blacksmithing group I will. Unfortunately none of them really have any interest in armor. I've been looking around on the armour archive as well, and they have some great info for actually working the metal for armor, just not much info at all about constructing the shop. I figured it would be better to ask about that here :)

[Charles R. Stevens]

You need to insulate the roof, even in summer the sun heats up the roof, the roof radiates down on you. So not only do you have 120 degree out side air you have a 160 degree roof radiating down on you. Poise the forge.
A free ate ding carport kit is affordable and quick, you can add to it as well.
But your wife, neibors and realtor may apretiate something nicer. Build on a 4x grid as building materials come in 4x sheets. I'd probably build a pole framed building, that is to say, plant 4x4 PT posts intend of 2x framing. . You can span a bit more than 7' between posts with a 4x6, but I'd go with 4' on center. With a 4x4 top plate. Build a conventional roof, something that compliments the house.
In the sommer you will want all the ventilation you can get, in the winter not so much, after you get the roof up I'd consent rate on west and north walls, insulation is optimal but I'd palm on it and to close all w walls. Hear in OK, I'd try for opening the whole north side and half the south side in the sommer. And it's alwase best to face the long sides north and south, less sun on the walls in the summer, more in the winter, and the north wind has less wall to run down and rob heat.
I'm not a carpentter but I've built and remodeled a few houses and barns. So if you have a question I'll try to help, and pony you in the right direction so you can deside if I'm full of BS.

[Charles R. Stevens]

Let me know if you decide to go with my suggestion, as there are more details to doing a long lasting quality job. Save you time and money in the long run.
Like rapping rubberized asphalt and poly ice xxxx around the posts (below ground) and considering a sod roof (I know sounds weird, but it can be done for about the same money materials wise, and the sun is what destroys conventional roofing).

[Ryan-071]

Thanks for your input Charles!

 

I was planning on building on the south side of our backyard, with the door facing towards the north, which would allow for the easiest access from the house. Our house faces East. Also, we have a very new 6' privacy fence going all the way around our backyard.

 

I'll definitely be looking at the insulated options now for sure. If I build the roof on the 4 corner poles now, will I be able to add walls to it later? 

 

I also have an old woodburning stove hood and chimney at my disposal. I'll have to measure it and see how large the pipe is. I'm hoping for at least 10" but preferably 12". How difficult is it to run a chimney through an insulated roof? What type of precautions will I need to take to make sure I don't burn the roof down?

 

Again guys, thank you for all of your help. This is some truly fantastic information for me.

[Ryan-071]

A sod roof sounds interesting. I was thinking that at some point I might be able to install some solar panels on the south side of the roof. Might help offset the electric bill a bit for running lights and equipment in the shop.

[Charles R. Stevens]

If you set the 4x4's on 4' centers around the parameter you can attach siding easily, t11 pattern plywood is fast and easy, but more expensive than old fashion T&G siding.
I'd put a walk threw dire on the west side, snow, ice and wind on the north isn't a great thing on the plaines.
With the 4x4 posts on 4' centers you can have really big openings for summer.
As to the wood burning stove and your forge, you use an insulated stove jack threw the celling, and a double walled pipe threw the roof, with a large threw flashing. I prefer to go threw the ridge line personally. One at each end of the shop.

[Charles R. Stevens]

Metal building suppliers sell 4'x 100' roles of insulation, makes fast work of the walls, and if you sod the roof, sufficient for the ceiling too.
A sod roof will require a 100# per square foot roof, a truss plant can hook you up with trusses for a 24" spacing and deck with 3/4 OSB. Standard in your area should be 32" with 1/2" OSB.
A few LED bulbs for lighting are a lot more economical than the solar panels.
Intact a Steve Bear style solar water preheated would see a bigger drop in you're bills and have a faster payback.

[Ryan-071]

I'm going to be looking around locally and see how much lumber I can scrounge up for cheap/free. That will help determine when I can start building.

[VaughnT]

I'm with Charles.  The shop that Pughman built was just about perfect, and he documented it well.  I think he said that the building only cost $2000, but I don't recall if that was because he scrounged parts or bought everything new.

 

Building on 4' centers for the wall posts is rather easy.  Whatever you do, make sure that you keep the wall of your shop at least 6' from the fence so that area doesn't become a nightmare to maintain.  I've seen way too many houses with almost no room between the fence and a wall, and it's always overgrown because they can't get the mower in there.  Aside from snakes and rats, the big danger is mold and mildew because it's such a dark, moist environment.  

[Charles R. Stevens]

If you plan right, you can place a PT member around the parimiter, with a rabbit on the top edge, placed at the right hight, place "Z"flashing and set the 3/4" T11 right on it, if you lay everything out right, the sodding fits between the bird blocking, and the sill with out cutting, as well as the sill retains your gravel (or I like brick pavers) floor higher than the outside (nice to have dry feet). If you still want to use corigated tin, just instal it horizontally on the walls, and trim. It looks better, and uses less material, paint it and it looks good.
And you can span 4' or more with perlings on the roof. "Z" perlings are recommended for tin to wood on roofs to prevent the expansion and contraction from slotting the screw holes and letting in rain, or worse, snow melt.

[Neil Blythin]

May I suggest one slight alteration to Charles suggestion of building with 4x4's?

The lumber industry tries to maximize the dimensional lumber they get from each tree. They're not interested in producing the best quality lumber, but rather the most pieces out of any given tree. The result is that most 2x and 4x SPF these days is garbage (with very questionable grain).

For posts, you are far, far better off if you invest the little bit extra in 6x6. Because they are harvesting smaller, farmed trees, 6x6's are usually heartwood. Basically they square off a tree and you get concentric rings right down the centre. A 6x6 is far less likely to twist and warp over time.

They're also nicer for mounting things to in your finished shop (shelves, equipment, whatever).

Build with 6x6 posts, 4' O.C., clad I'm whatever 4x8 sheet material you like and you'll have a rock solid building that's simple to construct.

Anyways, that's just my 2 cents worth.

Cheers,
Neil

[Charles R. Stevens]

The barn building industry uses 2x, lumber, laminated together to address Neil's concern and keep prices down. By using below ground rated 2x4's you can build a 4' post with the ends stagerred, allowing regular 2x to be spliced in to make a 12' post. With this rought, simply apply rubberized asphalt between the two PT halves and coat the lower 3 1/2' with the same, wrap in 6mil poly (or use ice dam block/ flexible flashing, which is Polly with a coating of rubberized asphalt) you may see as much as a 50% reduction of material cost. And it is much easyer to scrounge 2x4. Then again scrounging old wooden fence works too. You can splice the posts that rotted off at the ground, to make 12' posts rapping the bottoms so they don't rot, and using the fence as wind block (I have a feed shed built exactly that way)

[DSW]

I wish I could get online right now with my other computer because it's got all the picts of the shed I've been working on as well as the house and shed from Jersey.

 

A few generic thoughts since I'm in a bit of a hurry this morning.

 

Floors... It's MUCH easier  to pour and finish a concrete floor before you put up walls. This way you can work mostly from the outside to screed and finish vs wading thru the crete. You get a much better finish that way if you are not familiar with doing concrete vs doing it after the walls are up. I can walk you thru all of this if need be as I did concrete for a living for almost 15 years. There are some easy tricks that can make this SO much easier on you if you go this route.

 

I'd be careful with PT today. The "newer" ACQ treated lumber that's been sold for the last few years is very corrosive to metals. It will eat thru fasteners and flashings fairly quickly unless you use specially designated fasteners ( expensive), Stainless steel ( more expensive) or copper. Alum is totally out.

 

 

The suggestion to work with 4' dimensions is a good one, but I'm not sure I agree with the 4'OC part. If you do 6x6 posts and set them on 4' centers, you will end up piecing in the exterior siding if you want to go with something that fully wraps the exterior. In this case 4' outside to outside would make more sense. If you do posts with panel infill similar to post and beam construction, going 4' inside to inside makes more sense. That way the posts still show and you use full sheets vs having to cut each one at the post down.

 

 

If I was going to go with a pole barn type building, I'd probably do a post and beam style. It goes well with blacksmithing and you can showcase some of your work that way in the construction. Around me there are any number of guys with small mills that will sell you rough sawn posts for timber framing, usually fairly cheap. Down side is many times they are green lumber, but several guys I know have aged posts for sale. I'd be real tempted to go this route vs PT posts.

 

 

Insulation. You generally get the most insulation value from sprayed foam vs fiberglass. I'm working on a remodel of a Sandy house in New Jersey right now. I can get an R15 in the walls with fiberglass, or I can get almost an R 30 in the same stud cavity with spray foam. They do sell "home owner kits" to DIY. The cost of foam is significantly higher than R15 fiberglass, but when you figure what it would cost to have an equal R rating to foam, it's not as bad as it looks. Foam also seals out wind and moisture.

 

 

I'd have to agree the idea to be able to open up the shop makes a lot of sense. Big wide doors you can open in good weather can make a huge difference in comfort. While not the greatest, double steel exterior doors can give you a decent opening size for ventilation and still provide you with a decent seal in the winter. You might check and see if there is an architectural salvage yard or Habitat store in your area. Older front doors from homes in the 70's and 80's would make a good inexpensive choice when people remodel. You can also often pick up decent used windows from these guys as well. I've got a bunch of nice salvaged windows to close off the one wall of my shop space as well as a salvaged industrial roll up door.

[Neil Blythin]

Just to be fair, I should say that I am biased towards larger scale lumber. This is a shop I've been helping to build recently. Most of the timbers are 9x9 White Oak...

 

[VaughnT]

Neil, you need to post more detailed photos on that shop!  I particularly like the stone corners....

[Avadon]

I'm going to throw out my 2 cents for whatever it's worth. I have a background in carpentry, cabinet making, woodworking, etc. which came before the blacksmithing and I've also done some framing of buildings. I'm also interested primarily in doing blades and armor and migrating from the welding/smithing I've done and still am doing to the former mentioned.

 

First thing I would ask is are you renting or do you own? If you own I would do it right and do it once. That being a traiditional tier 1 workshop. In this economy you can get 20x30 shops framed up pretty cheaply, even cheaper if you do it yourself. The most expensive part will be concrete and aside from the concrete you can build as you go/have the money. It's not that much work to put up a 20x30 (or smaller) and throw up T-111 siding. Contractors can practically sneeze these buildings out with their eyes shut and you can too with a little research and even a small bit of help.

 

But if you want something NOW I really like the idea of a pre-fab carport. You can usually find these on craigslist. You can sheet off/close it up and probably even tie in some insulation into it. It would at least give you a temporary place.

 

Another idea is built yourself a small shop. A great book "Build Your Own Shed" by HDA Inc. I think I got it at Lowes or Home Depot. Sure you can find it on Amazon or ebay for cheap and have it shipped to you. Great hands on little book that will walk even a total newb through framing a small building. I have the book and it's great.

 

Yet another excellent idea.. build this really cool small gambrel shed yourself from Barn Plans http://www.barnplans.com/minibarn.php  The guy who owns this company is named Dano. He's super cool, easy to talk to on the phone, doesn't mind answering lots of questions and he's based here in Oregon (where I am) but out by the coast. They've had hundreds of these barns built (in many of his different sizes) and you can build a concrete floor or put it on skids, or probably even do sand or gravel floor. Just ask Dano, he's a licensed architect and pretty good with engineering too. Then later when you build a much larger shop you can use it to house your gardening tools-lawn mower/armouring/Blacksmithing storage.

 

Yet even another option is to buy a pre-made shed. Tons of people sell these, not just lowes/home depot, but you can find lots of companies that deliver them or even come out and build them. At my parents house they built me one for working on my hobbies (back then R/C Sailplanes) and the crew came out and framed the thing completely in under 3 hours. The previous day we had poursed a slab for it and had angle iron to attach to the skids. So when they put those skids down the workers drilled the concrete and put in anchors then put in lags through the angle iron into the P.T skids. That thing never budged a bit. It's still there 25 years later!! These small sheds go for about 2k-5k. They have these things so competitive that you probably couldn't build it yourself for that cheap, especially considering your time/labor. You may even be able to find one on cragslist used that someone just wants hauled away. Getting it up onto a flat bed trailer though and back down can be an ordeal in itself, but if you buy the thing for a few hundred could be worth it.

 

Some guys love pole barns and that's cool. I myself can't stand them because the timber is quite heavy for one guy to raise. They aren't terribly easy to raise in my opinion and insulating them can be tricky since you don't have 16" bays to easily throw fiberglass into. In Jefferson County, Oregon they are considered a Tier II building since they are cheaper to build. A Tier I building being traditional stick frame. That said, pole bldngs are cheaper on your property taxes, but they also don't appreciate your house value as much as a stick bldng. I'm not big on having PT wood in concrete either like in pole bldngs, if something has to be replaced it's a big chore. But there are tons of pro's and con's and that's an entire thread within itself.

 

Everyone is right about your thermal issues (if you don't use any insulation). Without insulation the time you will feel comfortable in your shop will probably be only 2-3 months of the year at most. I know because I am prepping my uninsulated 24x30 shop for C.C. Spray Foam and whatever the temperature is outside in the summer you'll have that temp and 5-10degrees hotter. So if it's 100dgs out, it could be 110 in your shop. I experienced just such an event in my shop this last summer. It functions like a greenhouse/convection oven. Roof shingles heat up the OSB, OSB and T-111 transmit all that heat energy right into the interior and dramatically increase the temperature inside the building. By noon you'll have an oven. Welding in that shop meant drenching my clothes in water, wringing them out, and putting them back on. Only way to avoid heat exhaustion.

 

When you're buidling anywhere near/close to a fence make sure you research your set back's. Fences are usually built an inch or two set in from your property line. Most counties dictate that any structure must be placed so many feet in from the property line. Here in my part of central oregon any building (of I believe any size) must be set back 15' from the property line. I liev in some rural country so there is plenty of room. Some tight suburbs may be as little as 10'. You'll definitely want to call the counties bldng department and find this out even if you put the bldng on skids. You'll still level and tamp the earth and perhaps place iton tamped gravel for proper drainage. Even small shops can't be moved very easily (think F-150 truck, bobcat or forklift).

 

Hope at least some of this helps?

[Neil Blythin]

Neil, you need to post more detailed photos on that shop!  I particularly like the stone corners....

Sorry Vaughn, I didn't see your post until Avadon just brought this thread back into the 'view new content' list... I did post some more info on the timber frame build in another thread: '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

 

Cheers,

Neil