Allen Bryant
Member
- Messages
- 35
- Location
- Bumpass, VA
This project has been several years in the making, and is finally coming together. At our old house we lived on a part of a farm, and I had access to a 18x24 barn for my wood working. This size actually worked out pretty good. I was able to get all my tools in there comfortably with some planning and still have room to work on some decent sized projects. After moving to our current location, I tried to fit the tools and setup into what was the third bay of the garage. The thinking here was that I could move one of the cars out if I needed room temporarily. In practice, this did not work as well for me as I would have liked. I had purchased tools over the years that needed room just to sit them and one thing that got neglected was where I would put projects in progress when it was time for the cars to come back in. The final issue presented itself last spring when my mom had to come stay with us for a few weeks. She's getting up in age and has gotten to the point where she will, but doesn't like to climb the stairs to the second floor. We have a guest bedroom/office on the first floor, but we only have a 1/2 bath down there. There is a real possibility that she may eventually move in with us and if that happens we really need a full bathroom on the first floor. Being off the garage it would come in handy as well for both us and the kids if we are too dirty to go through the house to the other bathrooms. After working with the architect that did the original design of the house the only way we could come up with to renovate the existing laundry room and bathroom, was to extend 6 feet into the garage, dropping my usable space down to 10x14. With that happening, I had to look at alternates, so we decided on a 20x32 ,640 square foot structure in the back yard. The land had been cleared for some time, so we were ready to start construction.
I knew that I wanted a wooden floor and we had to look at costs as well, so I ended up going with a modified pole barn. Instead of the poles running all the way up to the roof, we stopped those about 18 inches off the ground and put a platform on top of it. In April of 2014 I had a friend bring his tractor over with a post hole digger and we dug 12, 12 inch wide by 4 foot deep holes. This is way overkill for the area but the will not move for the most part unless we get hit with another earthquake and even then they may move with the ground preventing some damage.
The first set of pictures is from the foundation, to the final floor in place. In addition I extended the driveway down the property to beside the shop. I needed a better place to park our camper as well and this gave me the ability to put in an outlet for it, so I didn't have to run adapters and extension cords out when I needed to power up the camper.
I knew that I wanted a wooden floor and we had to look at costs as well, so I ended up going with a modified pole barn. Instead of the poles running all the way up to the roof, we stopped those about 18 inches off the ground and put a platform on top of it. In April of 2014 I had a friend bring his tractor over with a post hole digger and we dug 12, 12 inch wide by 4 foot deep holes. This is way overkill for the area but the will not move for the most part unless we get hit with another earthquake and even then they may move with the ground preventing some damage.
The first set of pictures is from the foundation, to the final floor in place. In addition I extended the driveway down the property to beside the shop. I needed a better place to park our camper as well and this gave me the ability to put in an outlet for it, so I didn't have to run adapters and extension cords out when I needed to power up the camper.