New Shop

[Captain]

Congratulations !!
It may seem like a long way off.
But before you know it, tools will be missing, only for you to find them with the lawn mower !!
A 2 lb Black Smith Hammer vs Mower deck....
they were pounding holes in the lawn to play golf....

ALSO, for all of you......
unplug all your shop equipment. Funny how they manufactured all with the power switch right at EYE LEVEL of your Grand Kids !!!

[67 Malibu]

We will be starting on my "auxiliary" garage in a week or two. Across the street at our rental property. It has taken a full two years to get the very bad concrete job that was done by the first contractor removed & replaced. It is going to be a small double but should give me room for some things. I will probably put a two-post lift in. I already have a 40'x40' with a drive-on lift. Looks like yours will be tall enough to park a car under a drive-on. Mine is not. We built it in 1989. Before the hobbyist type lifts became common & affordable. Looks like you are doing a very nice job. And congratulations on the other new addition too.

[Jesse James 80]

Congratulations !!
It may seem like a long way off.
But before you know it, tools will be missing, only for you to find them with the lawn mower !!
A 2 lb Black Smith Hammer vs Mower deck....
they were pounding holes in the lawn to play golf....

ALSO, for all of you......
unplug all your shop equipment. Funny how they manufactured all with the power switch right at EYE LEVEL of your Grand Kids !!!

I know this well... this brought back memories of my dad yelling at me for not putting his tools back after using them. We were moving a car out of the back of the garage a few years ago and I randomly looked down and saw a super rusty 9/16... I probably dropped or left it there almost 25 years ago. And yes... he found a few with the mower

[Jesse James 80]

We will be starting on my "auxiliary" garage in a week or two. Across the street at our rental property. It has taken a full two years to get the very bad concrete job that was done by the first contractor removed & replaced. It is going to be a small double but should give me room for some things. I will probably put a two-post lift in. I already have a 40'x40' with a drive-on lift. Looks like yours will be tall enough to park a car under a drive-on. Mine is not. We built it in 1989. Before the hobbyist type lifts became common & affordable. Looks like you are doing a very nice job. And congratulations on the other new addition too.

Woah, for a second there I thought you were this guy:

https://www.vintage-mustang.com/thre...etent.1008490/

He had the same problem. It's a 56 page thread but I'll give you the breakdown. HORRIBLE contractor built unbelievably crappy footings, city would not pass them. He went through almost a 2 year lawsuit and WON. Old contractor paid new contractor to remove and re-pour footings. Check out first few pages for crappy footings, check out last few pages for his awesome 2 story shop, it's not quite done, but he's getting there. He's going on 3 years now because of the footings.

Yes, I'm looking at the US made 4 post Wildfire lifts as seen on vice grip garage (you can search for it on youtube). I originally poured footings for a 2 post, but after seeing the Wildfire lift is easily movable, only needs 120 power, and my biggest hangup, has a really awesome jack system (or jacking tray) to do suspension/brake work. I think because I chose to go with a slightly thicker floor (5.5") the ceiling is just under 13', like 12'10" ish. I can easily store a car on top/bottom. I wasn't excited about possibly banging doors on the 2 post and having to get down under the vehicle to place the arms, especially since 4 of my vehicles are really low. It will also make storing an extra vehicle "above". We have a "hail season" here from like March to June where every storm is a hail threat and it will be nice to make sure I can get everything in the shop.

[Jesse James 80]

Got a little more done this weekend and it's finally starting to look like something. I still have to finish the back. I might side the left side, but then I need to move back inside and start building the stair case.

I still have to finish the framing around the big doors and the right side has red clay all over everything... I'm going to have to stabilize that before messing with siding (long term plan is 3-4' split face block retaining wall - hopefully next year).

[67 Malibu]

Woah, for a second there I thought you were this guy:

https://www.vintage-mustang.com/thre...etent.1008490/

He had the same problem. It's a 56 page thread but I'll give you the breakdown. HORRIBLE contractor built unbelievably crappy footings, city would not pass them. He went through almost a 2 year lawsuit and WON. Old contractor paid new contractor to remove and re-pour footings. Check out first few pages for crappy footings, check out last few pages for his awesome 2 story shop, it's not quite done, but he's getting there. He's going on 3 years now because of the footings.

Yes, I'm looking at the US made 4 post Wildfire lifts as seen on vice grip garage (you can search for it on youtube). I originally poured footings for a 2 post, but after seeing the Wildfire lift is easily movable, only needs 120 power, and my biggest hangup, has a really awesome jack system (or jacking tray) to do suspension/brake work. I think because I chose to go with a slightly thicker floor (5.5") the ceiling is just under 13', like 12'10" ish. I can easily store a car on top/bottom. I wasn't excited about possibly banging doors on the 2 post and having to get down under the vehicle to place the arms, especially since 4 of my vehicles are really low. It will also make storing an extra vehicle "above". We have a "hail season" here from like March to June where every storm is a hail threat and it will be nice to make sure I can get everything in the shop.

Me? On a Mustang site? Not a chance!

Our situation was that I hired a contractor to do everything. And I have never before done that. When I was younger, I always did my own concrete work. This guy did the footings OK but codes inspected the trenches before & after the pour & then signed off on them. It was the poured 2' stub wall & flat work that was really bad. We settled out-of-court. We didn't want to waste the time on court & money on lawyers. We got a well known bigger company to take the stub wall & floor out. Turned out the first guy did not pour the stub wall as part of the footings. That worked to our advantage. We got lucky with a very good local concrete crew that had just decided to start up again after six months off because of this virus bs. We ended up pouring the floor first & then putting two course of blocks on top. The opposite of how we did my 40x40 building 30+ years ago. We were so happy to get this crew that we went ahead & put a full-length parking drive beside the building & out into a big double driveway. All excellent work. Now we are back to waiting mode for our carpenter to wrap up a couple of current projects. Then we will do the building like we did the addition on our house twenty-some years ago. He is the experience & talent & I am the gopher/extra muscle, etc.

[Jesse James 80]

Glad it worked out for you! We almost had an "oops" at the start of mine. My guy did 16" wide x12" footings. Luckily, the inspector caught the depth issue and we had to re-dig the footings to 16x24, so they're pretty large. This was for "frost depth" but in the 21 years I've lived here, I never seen the ground freeze more than an inch or so for a day or two. I told him if he got his equipment back out and dug them correctly I would pay for the concrete difference (because they should have been that big in the first place), which wasn't too bad, I think it was $350-400.

What really got me was electric. I was "shocked" how expensive it was to wire the shop (and I got multiple quotes, I went with the middle guy a friend recommended). Including having duke relocate my power line early on in the project, adding up everything electrical (to include lights) and I will have spent around 9K on electric.

Foundation/floor, electric, and the doors (because they're so large x3) are by far the biggest individual expenses.

[67 Malibu]

I was thinking about the six windows in the building & wondering if you had any security issues in the neighborhood? I put one window in mine & it does not even open. We have had the bad area of town expand our way since I bought the land in 1988. We had several home invasion robberies 6-8 years ago up & down the main drag a few blocks away so I added glass break sensors around the window in the garage. Those are tied into our home security system. When I built the garage in 1990 codes required a GFI outlet at the beginning of each circuit so I started the overhead door circuit beside the walk-in door. When we leave the building we just reach over & kill the GFI which in turn kills the power to the overhead doors. That way no one driving by accidentally trips the door opener with a radar detector or something else.

[Jesse James 80]

Thank God, no. We bought in a nice neighborhood 12 years ago, and thanks to Greenville's population explosion, a lot of high end homes have surrounded us in the past 5 years. We ended up living in the "it" area apparently. Knocking on desk very hard, but I haven't put my tools away in 7/8 months. My kids power wheels are in there, our bikes, all of my materials are out in the open. I've even left the keys in my Z71 a few times over night (I really need to stop doing that). I've even left them sitting on the back of the tonneau cover over night.

The only tools I make sure to put away are my nail guns. I have a cordless Paslode framing gun, trim nailer, and stapler (for siding). It would take a lot of $ to replace them. Most of my tools are all 10-15 + years old now. All of my car tools are still in the house garage and will stay until the doors are up.

The cars all have good insurance, even the firebird project is insured. I do plan on adding some kind of Ring style security system. If I lived in a neighborhood where I would think twice about adding windows to a garage, I probably would have moved by now.

[67 Malibu]

Sounds good. But, since you mentioned power tools, we spent last winter & spring doing a complete kitchen remodel. That included a new fridge with all of the bells & whistles. The guy that bought our old fridge mentioned that he was buying it to replace the one in his old garage. "Old" as in didn't exist anymore. When I asked what happened he said that he had left his battery powered tools charging overnight & awoke about 2:30 in the morning to the place in flames. Fortunately it was an unattached garage & they kept the fire from getting to the house. But the fire inspector traced the origin of the fire to the chargers overheating. So now he has a new garage & a new respect for what he leaves plugged in but unattended overnight. I could just as easily leave something of mine charging & walk out of the door at night & forget it. So now anything of mine that gets recharged gets plugged into that circuit that gets the GFI outlet turned off when I leave for the night.

[Jesse James 80]

No joke! I try to remember to unplug everything. I don't leave chargers plugged in anymore.

A couple years ago when I was redoing the siding on my house I left the battery for my cordless stapler plugged in overnight and the next morning the bottom of the battery casing had melted a little bit.