Building a new shop

[Jordan Baker]

For the foundation wall I wanted to use Insulated Concrete Forms or ICF. With wanting to do as much on my own as possible here seemed the best way to go. This also provided me with a fully insulated foundation wall with over 5” of insulation. This was important as I’ll will be doing infloor heating eventually and I didn’t want heat loss through the foundation wall. The other advantage of the ICF is that I was able to build the entire foundation on my own and get all the rebar in two days worth of work. Some help was done with wood bracing ….then everything ground to a halt with a concrete shortage. 3 weeks went by before I was able to get two trucks worth to get the walls poured. Once the walls were poured and sat for a few days I was able to the big hole all back filled. Finally after two months I was mostly out of the mud.

[Jordan Baker]

And by the time this was done, my load of lumber had arrived. Who knew that pile would build a building. After about a month of working away on it I had my walls all up. Most of the walls I put up on my own including 16’ long sections that were 12’ high. I do not recommend doing this but at the same time I enjoyed the challenge. Some help was sought for getting the LVL’s in place and a final squaring up.

I also was under constant supervision from the site supervisors

[Jordan Baker]

Finally the big day came with the arrival of the trusses and the instal day for them. A boom truck was hired and I managed to get a crew of guys in from work to help with getting them all installed. 26 trusses to go up. We started at 0800 and by 1530 the last truss was up and by 1900 the last of the strapping and bracing had gone on. For the next month I worked away on getting all the plywood sheeting down on the second floor, more bracing and all the wall sheeting and tyvek on the exterior walls.

[Jordan Baker]

I did hire a company to do all the metal installation. My wife was adamant no one would be going up on the roof to install anything. The weather was also getting colder now and it was nice to watch from inside the metal going on. This past week the metal work was finished and the doors got installed. Just in time for winter weather to finally arrive. I still need to move a lot back inside for a storage tent I set up in the yard.

The shop is far from done as but I now have a sealed up shop.

Finally some reorganization and some vehicle stuff can happen again.

[Bob Carriere]

Fantastic job Jordan......

...and a big thanks to Vicky for supporting you.

[Jordan Baker]

Bob, the size is 50’x36’ deep. 12’ high walls for first floor. The second floor is 24’4”x50’ with 8’ high ceiling and 6’ at the knee walls. I used what is called a gambrel attic truss. Pretty cool engineered piece that gives me an uninterrupted full span on the first floor

[Allan L]

Where's the Like button when you need one?

[Kirk Armitage]

Congrats on the new building . In floor heating eventually, that will be a game changer . It's hard to believe now ,but from my experience , you will fill that shop and then some...lol.
I look forward to your Otter restoration , after your construction is done.
Regards K Armitage