crappy farm building into mercedes garage project

crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - Printable Version

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crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - JB3 - 07-10-2014

want to turn this glorious structure into my play room shop area.

apart from actually being fairly water tight, its about as primitive as you can get, but I think I can make it awesome given a decade or two plus unlimited cash.

open canvas now, looking for ideas on making it a kick ass small shop. Biggest initial issue is I need expand the roof height over one bay to fit shop equipment.

The building has some cool history. Doing local research ive discovered it was probably a loading dock for hay wagons or whatnot to load materials and supplies. The immediate owner roofed it over, it was originally just a stone cut out in the hill with a lean too roof and evolved into this.

half of it is dry stone rock wall. on the inside gonna be perfect for welding and grinding projects, also mostly underground on the back side.

back side, good ramp for a dirt bike. Too bad you end up in a deadly rock garden Big Grin

inside-

also the cool part is that its pretty private. Hard to get to the front of this building, so people peeking in and stealing stuff is remote. Arrow shows the way out-

All ideas and tips welcome!

Thing is skinned in OSB thats been ruined by water, so I have to reside it completely and properly. Wiring appears to be a buried extension cord cut and wired into a pair of light bulbs.

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - 97e300 - 07-10-2014

You going to put a lift in there?

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - JB3 - 07-10-2014

(07-10-2014, 03:57 PM)97e300 You going to put a lift in there?

thats the tentative plan. first a concrete floor, then I remove one half of the roof over one bay and rebuild it 4 feet higher to clear an early 90s 10k freedom lift I got off an old auto shop.

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - w123love - 07-10-2014

garagejournal . com !!!

The guys in Europe have pretty sweet shops in rural areas.

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - Druk - 07-11-2014

You might be surprised at how little -if any- you have to raise the roof. I have a two poster in the right side of this...

and all that was required was removal and strengthening of the interior roof supports. It needed 12" minimum hard concrete + re-bar in the floor for the hoist footings

And I recently added this which makes life easy Idea

.

.

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - JB3 - 07-11-2014

(07-10-2014, 05:57 PM)w123love garagejournal . com !!!

The guys in Europe have pretty sweet shops in rural areas.

yeah they do!
started a thread over there already. Big Grin

(07-11-2014, 05:34 AM)Druk You might be surprised at how little -if any- you have to raise the roof. I have a two poster in the right side of this...

and all that was required was removal and strengthening of the interior roof supports. It needed 12" minimum hard concrete + re-bar in the floor for the hoist footings

wow, thats a hell of a lift you managed to cram in that bay! great setup, you would never imagine that was in there

im thinking of doing an opposite direction higher roof structure to clear my full size chevy van for servicing. i need to push up the edges to fully lift that cube shape. if i removed the cross beam on the inside, i could install the lift, but the van would hit the ceiling pretty quick

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - MFSuper90 - 07-11-2014

If you are going to pour concrete, save your money and spend it on floor heat!
Makes everything so much nicer to work on when its the same temperature Smile

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - JB3 - 07-11-2014

(07-11-2014, 06:58 AM)MFSuper90 If you are going to pour concrete, save your money and spend it on floor heat!
Makes everything so much nicer to work on when its the same temperature

definitely sounds cool, but I don't think I can justify the expense of it. Ive never had floor heat anywhere, and never really had an issue with working on a cold floor. It would be a nice extra feature, but im viewing it like having cable set up in the garage, nice but not really needed and maybe distracting

Secondly, the pad is going to be partly underground, so temps will be somewhat moderated that way. I figure with nothing in the floor but rebar, I have maximum machine placement options, especially with a small space.

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - Simpler=Better - 07-11-2014

You need to run PEX tubing in the floor for the heat, and keep the heat away form the lift areas.
You can put a heat exchanger on your generator's exhaust to heat the water in the floor.

Oh, you don't have a generator? Keep your eyes peeled for a MEP-002 or MEP-003 generator. Both run 120/240/208 3ph, air cooled diesel, and can anecdotally put out 10kW/20kW respectively (rated for 5kW and 10kW). Fuel consumption is .5-1gph for the little guy and .75-1.5 for the big guy (ish)

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - sassparilla_kid - 07-11-2014

Needs an old ass International Harvester refrigerator (or some other old fridge) in there with a sticker of some sort on the front telling you to wear goggles while grinding or "if you're gonna be a turd go lay in the yard" kind of thing, you get the idea lol

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - Greazzer - 07-11-2014

Get the right HVAC system in place first. My garage in the summer is a screen door to hell and during the one month we have cold weather in S.C., it's too miserable to enter.

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - JB3 - 07-12-2014

(07-11-2014, 08:22 PM)Greazzer Get the right HVAC system in place first. My garage in the summer is a screen door to hell and during the one month we have cold weather in S.C., it's too miserable to enter.

definitely, im going to insulate the heck out of it for this reason. should make a decent difference. im still deciding on heat source, thinking of going with electric only since ive got to run 100amps out there anyway and for the summer a window ac unit might suffice with it properly insulated. the partial underground nature means its not terrible yet in the summer, but there is no way its not going to be freezing in the winter

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - Greazzer - 07-12-2014

Just an idea. Back when I was "young", pre-parachute injury, and had a ton of energy, I had a 1954 Packard convertible which I was restoring. Career and other issues forced me to sell. HOWEVER, during the 2 years that I played with that car, I heated a weekend built garage which was 16x24 with an oil drum on it's side and this cheap kit which made it a wood burning stove. Had legs, flue, et cet. I think the kit was like $10 but that was the early 90's. Not sure they still sell the kit. The walls had no insulation, they were chip board, et cet, That oil drum homemade heater would force you out of there it go so hot and it would heat up that uninsulated space in 15 minutes. I lived in Delaware at the time and we used to have some nasty winters.

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - JB3 - 07-12-2014

interesting idea. there is an old wood stove that was in the house that was functional, guy had it hooked up to heat an attached loft space.

i might drag that sucker down and set it up as a source of heat.

my only concern is fire. im just a little leery of being done for the night and still having a stove red hot and needing to cool down for a while.

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - Simpler=Better - 07-12-2014

Wood stoves are fine so long as:

-The exhaust goes away with a nice slope so it vents properly
-Nothing around it can get set on fire

Our shop has a woodstove, nothing within 5ft or so, keep it clean, and you're fine.

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - JB3 - 07-13-2014

(07-12-2014, 09:37 PM)Simpler=Better Wood stoves are fine so long as:

-The exhaust goes away with a nice slope so it vents properly
-Nothing around it can get set on fire

Our shop has a woodstove, nothing within 5ft or so, keep it clean, and you're fine.

So far leaning towards electric, if I can hang an electric heater from the ceiling I can turn off and on, much better than valuable floor space taken up by a stove in the middle of the building, plus the fire risk and corresponding insurance hike of having a wood stove in an outbuilding im looking at. Its a pretty big difference

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - DeliveryValve - 07-13-2014

Looks like a very nice piece of property you've acquired. At some point, you should post up a diagram of the floor plan with measurements. i.e measurements of the vehicle parking area and planned work area. Then we all could go crazy on how you should arrange your shop. Smile

(07-10-2014, 03:12 PM)JB3 ...
apart from actually being fairly water tight, its about as primitive as you can get..

I like to know what happens when you get a torrential down pour on that hill side. Where does all the water go? Hopefully not through the doors!

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - JB3 - 07-13-2014

(07-13-2014, 10:57 AM)DeliveryValve Looks like a very nice piece of property you've acquired. At some point, you should post up a diagram of the floor plan with measurements. i.e measurements of the vehicle parking area and planned work area. Then we all could go crazy on how you should arrange your shop.

(07-10-2014, 03:12 PM)JB3 ...
apart from actually being fairly water tight, its about as primitive as you can get..

I like to know what happens when you get a torrential down pour on that hill side. Where does all the water go? Hopefully not through the doors!

will do, thats a great idea. ill whip up a diagram at some point

we had a recent super heavy rain with remainders from the southern hurricaine thst passed through, its weird, not much water flows around the building. its cut in, but its also still kinda on a grade and the soil is very rocky around it. having said that moisture does indeed find its way through the back wall though, its a dry fit wall.

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - Hario' - 02-19-2015

Have you thought about lowering the floor level into the ground to get clearance rather than raising the roof? It might be an 'easier' option..

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - JB3 - 02-19-2015

(02-19-2015, 11:17 AM)Hario Have you thought about lowering the floor level into the ground to get clearance rather than raising the roof? It might be an 'easier' option..

Id have to do some kind of inner curb to support the field stone if I did that. the stone walls could fall in since they are dry fit just sitting there.

Looking into concrete as we speak, finally ready to start working on this. (or I should say all my automotive crap needs to go down into this building, so concrete needs to be installed, so I can do some renovation in my house Big Grin

)

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - JB3 - 04-29-2015

took a great deal of time, but I have some progress

first gravel dumped-

[Image: 20150411_101855_zpslglbnn9f.jpg]

compacted with a strip for a lift-

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found an old schoo stone mason to mortar all the stone walls

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finsihed-

[Image: 20150418_112449_zpsf6d6uio1.jpg]

RE: crappy farm building into mercedes garage project - JB3 - 04-29-2015

then some concrete poured and even have an apron now for the front of the building-

[Image: 20150420_123437_zpsbzhixctj.jpg]

[Image: 20150420_123508_zpstgctwnok.jpg]

[Image: 20150421_111312_zpsraufjbtf.jpg]

[Image: 20150421_092802_zpsu4lnt9h4.jpg]

and finished-

[Image: 20150421_174547_zpsco19y2g5.jpg]

been curing for a couple days, waiting 25 days before rolling a car down there and trying to get it into the building

time for stage 2, making this water tight