Workshop Design #1

When I first start woodworking, my wife and I lived in a two story house with a very small detached garage.  The garage was actually not very suitable for a workshop, at least not without a lot more work than I was willing to put into it.  Besides that, I didn’t want that much money sitting in the garage in that particular neighborhood.  Therefore my workshop was in the unfinished basement of the house.  It would have made Matt proud.

This worked out well until we decided to move.  In 2004 we built a new house out in the country.  The new house had an attached garage which was large enough for a small workshop and both cars.  I decided, though, that I would like a dedicated building for a workshop that was the same size as the garage.

So when the concrete was being poured for the basement of the house and garage, I also had the footings and frost wall poured for the workshop.  At that point we finished the house and garage, but due to financial reasons the workshop was left as is… just a short cement wall sticking out of the sand.  My kids have had a great time playing in what I call “the most expensive sandbox around”.

I am now planning on building the rest of the shop next summer.  So I though I would start the design process, and have everything planned out before construction begins.

The outside dimensions of the frost wall are 24ft by 32ft, giving me just under 768square feet of floor space.  As the design progresses I will update the the blog with new images of the design.  so far, all I have drawn are the footings, frost wall, and the cement floor (in the image the green represents a little grass around the outside).

As you can see there is a break in the wall for a large garage door and an entry door.  The next step will be to start throwing some lumber at it and constructing some walls.