Building A Shop: Preparing a Practical Workspace

By Jim MacLachlan

Preparing a practical workspace requires a lot of planning; the need to balance what is needed against budgetary, space, & other constraints. I've had a shop most of my life, but none have been very satisfactory until a decade ago when we moved to our new farm & I finally had the opportunity to build a shop from scratch. While it's a real step up from all my previous work spaces, I still had a limited budget & other factors that limited my dreams. I'll describe the process from planning through construction; what worked, what didn't, & some things to watch out for. Maybe you won't make the same mistakes I did & you'll find some ideas to incorporate into your own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim MacLachlan
• Release date: Jun 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005876401

Jim MacLachlan

I grew up on the family farm with horses, sheep, cattle, fowl, dogs, cats, & a lot of other critters in north central Maryland. While the farm paid for itself, the family remodeling business was the steady income. I worked at that for about 15 years until an injury forced me to change my computer hobby into my career. It was tough at the time, but a great career move from an economic standpoint.Now I'm the entire IT department for a small manufacturing company in Louisville, KY. My wife of 35+ years & I have a small hobby farm with horses, goats, dogs, & a cat. Taking care of the farm, woodworking, & various fiber arts take up my free time.

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Building A Shop:

Preparing a Practical Workspace

By Jim MacLachlan

Copyright 2021 by Jim MacLachlan

Published by Jim MacLachlan at Smashwords

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Warnings & Disclaimers:

This book has hyperlinks to outside sites & articles to amplify or expand on various points. I tried to only use stable, safe sites, but click on them at your own risk. Things change rapidly on the Internet & are beyond my control.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Warnings & Disclaimers:

Introduction:

My First Shops:

Planning:

Permits, Codes, & Inspections

The Overall Size

Doors & Windows

The Structure:

Attic Storage

The Overhang

Laying out the inside of the shop

The Work Bench

Electric

Heating

Location:

Finalizing the Plan:

My Extras

What I Wanted, but couldn't have

The Contractor:

Construction Begins:

Construction Ends:

A Decade Later:

Afterword:

Introduction:

The shop is our biggest tool. A good one is a pleasure to work in, but every shortcoming can hamper our efforts. There's considerable cost, effort, & space involved in making one that works well. I've worked in many over the years & spent a lot of time planning my last. It came out pretty well, but I still made some errors that I'll detail so you can avoid them.

Your needs & budget will vary from mine, of course. Even if you don't have the need for a large, dedicated building, you'll still find much to consider here. My early shops were in basements & outbuildings. I know plenty of people that happily use them & either might work for you. They did for me for me for long time, but I eventually wanted more as my skills, tools, & needs grew. There are quite a few things to consider before pouring a lot of time & effort into a dedicated working area, though.

Ever since I was a little kid, I've had the need for a space to fiddle in. At first I just took junk apart & built models, but I was still quite young when I started repairing some & building from scratch, so I found some existing area or building that I could use. None were particularly good, some were just horrible, but it was my place where I could keep my projects & tools out of the reach of others.

When we moved to a new farm in 2007, I had the opportunity to build a shop from scratch. It's a real step up from all my previous work spaces. I'll describe them briefly since the issues I faced with them help explain some of my considerations when planning this one. Now that I've used my new shop for over a decade, I can tell you what worked & what I should have done differently.

I grew up on a working farm where we mostly made do with what we had on hand & that hasn't changed much for me. My current farm faces the same issues as the first. The elements & animals keep me busy with maintenance & repair plus it's still at least an hour round trip into town for materials. While I'm better off financially, I still can't afford to call a carpenter, electrician, or plumber for every problem. I was a remodeler for over 20 years, so I have most of the skills & tools. I've always recycled everything & I'm a bit of a hoarder, so I usually have the materials on hand. The results aren't always pretty, but I value practicality over looks.

Woodworking is my primary hobby along with some metalwork & fiber arts. I make a lot of toys, small pieces of furniture, & other useful items such as Inkle looms. I love turning on my wood lathes, especially bowls made of green wood. The bigger woodworking projects I work on are typically pretty rough, things like horse jumps, gates, & other items for the farm that don't require any finish. If you regularly build large pieces of furniture, work on cars, or have a couple of regular helpers, my setup won't work for you, but the planning stages are similar. We'll still have a lot of tools & considerations in common.

Any money my efforts save or make justifies my shop & collection of tools, but it goes beyond that. My shop is a major component of my health. I like (need?) to fiddle & I want to see the results of my work, but I've been a computer guy for almost three decades. The work is engaging & far more economically rewarding than construction, but the computer or server room rarely looks any different no matter how hard I work. I can actually see & touch the results of my many shop & farm projects, so they help my attitude tremendously. They also provide the physical activity that's lacking in my day job.

The shop is also my retreat. It's not a man cave, just an area where I'm usually left alone to do my own thing. I've been married for four decades during which time we raised three kids of our own plus a handful of strays. My shop has been my quiet, private space. That's always been in short supply in our houses which were small, chaotic, & crowded with kids & pets.

Above is a picture of my shop with the house directly behind me. The main area is 25 feet across the garage door side with the overhang adding another 10 feet. Lengthwise it is 30'. The garage door is 10 feet wide by 7 feet tall. The windows, one in each wall, are 30 inches wide by 36 inches tall. In 2007, I had it built for about $20,000. That's just the structure, not the tools. I could use one that had twice the space with more amenities, but I'm not rich. I had to build what I could with a strict budget of both money & time.

My First Shops:

Most of the shops I've used over the years have been pretty awful in one respect or another. They were opportunistic squats where I could fix what I had to & make what I could, but the shops often limited both.

My first personal shops were in the basement since the area costs nothing except for some space that would probably collect junk. They weren't too bad for small projects, but had a lot of annoying limits. Water & other facilities were conveniently close by, but noise, odor, & dust complaints from the family were common. They had a constant temperature, although that was often stifling since air flow was limited to a tiny window that I could only open occasionally. Tools were on hand for home repairs, but that meant others in the house could misuse & mislay the tools. (I'm still ticked about my mother using one of my first good wood chisels for prying something open. She chipped the edge badly.)

I was married when I worked out of my last basement shop. Keeping my curious, adventurous boys out was difficult since the freezer, washer, & dryer were also in the basement, so we needed quick, constant access. It was tough to move materials around & large projects had to be built elsewhere. They can be a fire hazard & I've been told their presence can raise the rates on or even void some home insurance policies now.

Basement shops work well for some people, though. A friend of mine makes & repairs banjos & fiddles. He rarely uses lumber longer than a few feet long & doesn't make a lot of sawdust with his small, exacting projects. When he put an addition on his home, he had a big, clear basement area built just for his shop & he can close it off from his grandkids. It's perfect for him, although he had to change home insurance companies. I've known model builders & several turners (using a wood lathe) who are also happy in their basement shops.

I build bigger projects often enough that the way the space was cut up by utilities, bracing, & the low ceiling was a constant problem. In my last basement shop, ripping an 8 foot board on the tablesaw meant stopping halfway through to turn the saw about 30 degrees so I could get the board past the main plumbing stack to finish the cut. To rip anything longer, I had to haul the saw up the steep outside basement steps into the yard. That could only be done when there was good weather for long enough to build the