Garage/Shop South wall with windows and doors

You can save a lot of money if you do not mind using second hand material. This picture shows the garage/shop with windows and doors. Thanks to our friend John for the doors and our friend Roy for the windows!

West wall

A couple of nice spring days allowed us to put the metal siding on the west wall. We still have some trim to do. Then we will start on the doors and windows.

South roof finished

Towards the end of March, we finally managed to get the South half of the roof finished!

South half of the roof

We had a cold, snowy, and windy March, but in between snow storms, we managed to get the south half of the roof started and the chimney in place.

Placing the chimney

I know this is a hard picture to figure out, but the shiny, metal thing is the chimney. The east part of the building will be my husband's shop. Once we get the boiler working in the house, the wood burning stove will be moved to the shop. The chimney needed to be in place before we started to put the metal on the south side of the roof.

Roof - North Side

The next project was the roof. We used pulleys to hoise the metal sheet on the roof. My husband would walk it across the roof and slide it into place. I was on a scaffold on the inside, and I would help guide it into place. Once in place, the metal was screwed to the purlins.

South and East Walls

As I mentioned previously, on nice days with little or no wind, we would get out and do as much work as we could. Some days that meant we were only able to get one sheet of metal up. Other days, we were able to do a lot more than that. Little by little, we got it done.The opening at the top of he east wall is for a vent.

South wall with some siding

It was sometime in December when the snow started to fly and it was too cold for us to continue our project. This picture shows the north and east walls at that time. At this point, we started working on the inside of the house again. In December, we tiled the kitchen floor ( yeh!). In January, we tiled the master bedroom and painted it. It is nice to have some color other than white primer!

We also started preparations for installing a boiler which will run the in-floor heating. On nice days, we still worked outside on the garage.

South wall

This is what the south wall looked like before we started putting the metal siding on it. It shows all the "ladders" in place. There will be two man doors and four windows on this side of the building.

North Wall from the inside

This is how the north wall looked from what will be the inside of the garage.

North Wall

We were lucky, the fall weather held out long enough for us to get the sheet metal delivered and the north wall completed.

Cement Floor

It was getting to be late fall. We were not sure if we could get a floor poured before the weather got too cold, but thanks to Kerry and Cory Kincaid, we got one done just before it turned cold!

Purlins

After we finished the trusses, we braced the trusses and then the purlins were put in place. These are pieces of wood that go on top of the trusses. You may also have also noticed that we had the floor poured. We were able to get that done just before the cold weather set in.

Finishing the trusses

After we placed the last truss ( there were thirteen all together), I was so hapy, so I posed for this picture.

Spacers

Three spacers were placed in between each truss. One on the north wall, one on the south wall and one in the middle. This picture shows the one in the middle.

Lifting a truss

This is a picture of how the tractor bucket and the crane lifted the trusses into place.

Trusses

When we were nearing the completion of the ladders ( no picture), we ordered the trusses and had them delivered. Again, the crane was used to lift the trusses into place. This is a picture of one of the trusses on the ground. A long steel pole and two slings were used, along with the crane to lift the truss.

The ladders

Next, boards were placed between the posts, every two feet. We called these 'the ladders' because my husband often climbed them as a ladder. This picture shows the beginning of the ladders in the north west corner.

Top Cap

After all the posts were placed, we put on the top cap and the screed boards ( bottom boards).

Placing the posts

A friend of ours came out one weekend and helped my husband place many of the posts while I tried to keep his four year old occupied and away from the building site!
It was a challenge, but we all had a successful day!

6" x 6" Posts

We needed twenty-seven, 20 foot long 6" x 6" posts for our building. Since it is hard to get straight posts that are that long, we decided to build our own. This took some time to do, but we saved money in the long run doing it this way. In the picture, you see several of the completed posts. We screwed a sturdy wire on the end of each post. That way the crane could pick up the post and place it into one of the pre-drilled holes. The hole was then packed with gravel.

Crane

Since there was going to be a lot of heavy things to lift and put in place, my husband built this crane, which attached to the bucket of the John Deer tractor. Using the hydraulics, he could move things left and right. It also had a hoist to raise and lower things. Believe me, we used it a LOT!

Wood Delivered

In September, we had the wood delivered to start our project.

Building a Garage/Shop - Clearing the Site

I know I have not made entries to this blog for a long time, but we have been busy building a garage/shop. After much investigation, we finally decided to build a post and beam building. This picture shows the leveled site for the 32' x 48 ' building