Building a Real Workshop

Despite the title of this blog, this hacker currently has no dedicated workshop space. With recent approval from the Executive Finance Committee (aka Supermodel Wife), construction on a real workshop has begun. The original owner of my house was an amateur race car driver, and when the house was built he had the builders make the two-car garage twice as deep as a normal garage. He used the back half of the garage to work on his race cars. I got building plans approved by the city to install a partition wall halfway back into this space and to turn the back half of the garage into an air-conditioned workshop.

Here's the before picture:

 

Hacker Dad, Hacker Nephew, and Hacker Father-In-Law came over to help frame in the wall. We used Ramset fasteners to nail a pressure treated sole plate to the concrete floor, we nailed a double top plate to the existing rafters, and toenailed in the studs with a pneumatic nail gun fed by that giant compressor in the picture above. Here's Hacker Dad teaching the concept of "measure twice, cut once" to Hacker Nephew:

Hacker Father-In-Law inspects the work-in-progress:

Things moved along nicely.

It's a little disconcerting to see how much the ceiling sags in the middle of this four car garage. But we pressed on and finished the framing. Once the framing was complete we pulled out all of the drywall in the new workshop area so that I can install new electrical and insulation. Hacker Nephew really enjoyed this part.

It wasn't long before we had the place full of drywall dust. Yes, that's a plumbing vent line in the corner; the original owner planned on putting a shower back there and there's plumbing already run out to my new workshop. Woot!

By the time everyone left, a significant amount of dama... er, progress had been made:

Since then, I've taken time to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with family, put up the Christmas tree, and start some Christmas shopping. I installed electrical boxes and Hacker Brother came over last night and we pulled some cable. I'm running four 20-A circuits around the perimeter of the workshop and installed quad-gang boxes about every 6 feet. There will always be an electrical outlet within arm's reach in this workshop. Overkill? Absolutely!

I then started insulating the walls:

The workshop will be powered from a 100A subpanel. I'm ripping out the existing wiring in the back half of the garage and replacing it. Currently the garage is treated like one big room, with light switches near each door that operate lights in the entire garage. I'm separating that out into two rooms, and replacing the 15A/14 gauge wire with 20A/12 gauge. Today is going to be mostly a family day. I hope to get some work done in the workshop, but Supermodel Wife is the priority today.