A great topic, and I look forward to the responses also. Pictures would be great to accompany the posts. I will try myself!
My son James who was 13 at the time & I participated in building a new shop in 2001. I say "participated", because we done about 1/2 of the work ourselves, but hired some of the basic work done; concrete work, framing, roofing and the gable ends vinyl siding. What we did: inside finish, wiring, help with roofing and we put the vinyl siding on up to the roof line. Our shop is a 24X24 with a 5'X10' tool room on the back, it has a 12/12 metal roof with a 10X24 finished upstairs. It took up pretty much all summer to put it up.
What I really like about my shop: We have a 10 foot ceiling on the first floor. Plenty of room to roll the car on the rotisserie, and to swing an 8' 2X4 when we do woodworking. We put in two floor dust collector ducts hooked up to a central vacuum, because of our woodworking. We can hook our saws, etc. up to the ducts and minimize sawdust in the air. We can also sweep the floor into the ducts and vacuum the dirt... We "finished" the inside walls, 1st & 2nd floor with cheap 3/8" plywood, painted white. The plywood allows me to hang anything I want, anywhere I want - we don't have to search for a stud, depending upon what it is of course. With the walls painted white they reflect the ceiling lights (2 lights on each of 3 switches = 6 total) better and makes it much easier to see what you are doing. We have one 220 electrical circut with an air compressor with several 110 circuts. We also plumbed the shop with several air lines, although I fiind that I actually only use one... Our walls are 16" o.c.; I bought any extra 5 or 6 trusses and placed the roof trusses on 16" also, even though they were designed for 24"o.c. The result was a stronger floor joist upstairs as the trusses were directly over the wall stud. We have a 9'X16' door. We ran electrical, phone and cable lines out there. We can work on a project and watch the Georgia games if they are on, or watch a DVD or VCR if we want. Now we have cable phone and cable computer also.
What I would change if doing over: Before we "moved in" I painted the floor with a super duper concrete paint to seal the floor. It didn't last very long before it was peeling up - very little is left today. I placed the 5 h.p. air compressor in the small tool room on the back. It heats up the room very fast and of course the hotter it is the more water it pumps. I have had to install a fan in the ceiling to pull some outside air in if the compressor is going to be running much. The air compressor should have been in the main shop. I should have installed the door prior to hanging the lights. I have two lights that are partially hidden by the door when the door is open, which is 99% of the time I am working in the shop.
We have been very happy with our shop and have completed several projects and learned a lot of stuff working together down there. I wish it were bigger, though!
C - I will try to post a picture later
