Much has happened since the last post. As with all home improvement projects, the battle plan does not survive encounter with the task itself and this years work turned into a conflict with two fronts; military buffs know how that usually goes. This was in addition to deciding I wanted to read 50 books in 2015. Thus blog writing ceased for the remainder of the year. At the time of the last post, we were figuring out where to store the contents of the gutted space. Our TV room and an adjunt storage space were able to accommodate some of the displaced stuff. There was still a great deal of construction material which needed storage. This brings us to a major change in the original plan.
The property as purchased came with a small shed which was used mostly to store leftovers from previous projects, yard stuff and other basically detritus. Walls were concrete brick but only 4 feet high and the roof was a simple low angle gable 7 feet at the peak.
While it remained watertight, the plywood door and plexiglass window made it at times a shelter for various neighborhood critters. As I was clearing junk out to make room, it became very clear that the storage shed needed major work; much more than my workshop needed additional space.
Thus the plan for bumping out the east wall by 6 feet was abandoned in favor of rehabbing the shed.
One thing that had been stored there that was both valuable and useful was about 200 linear feet of treated 2x6's. They were put to use as wall framing and trusses so the shed could have 8 feet high walls and a more PNW appropriate roof pitch. I preformed the wall portions and cut the angles for the trusses over a three day weekend. I thought I could tear the old roof down and get the structure to frame and roof stage over the following week. The battle plan went drastically awry when removing the old roof showed one wall about ready to fall over and another wall needing work as well.
The last time I had done any masonry work was 16 years ago. A wall that needed replacement and a proper foundation together with a slab and another wall that needed repairs as well were well beyond my minimal masonry level and free time. Fortunately Dale came to the rescue. He's the contractor who was going to do the shop extension. While he is a licensed general contractor, he mostly works on one man jobs and is sort of a neighborhood treasure as he does not advertise and relies solely on word of mouth for projects. He came the day after receiving my frantic call, looked at it and agreed to squeeze the job in that week. As it turns out, while he does masonry and concrete infrequently, he's pretty good at it.
So I was back in business. Dale helped me put in the roof beam and trusses and plywood sheathing and even helped me finish off that part of the task on the fourth of July. Like I said, he's a gem; the photo below is us working on 7/4. As we were putting up the roof, I got nostalgic. One of my favorite photos is of our sunroom at frame stage. It was taken with B&W film.
Twenty years later, the color and digital version
The rest was pretty straight forward but time consuming and at times physically demanding. It was a fun little project; kinda like making a tiny house- minus the plumbing and electricity. I was able to incorporate a couple of old colored glass windows that were previously in the shop area and would not work in the revised shop area.
The shed once completed was able to store much of the materials to be used in the shop remodel. Once those materials were installed and detritus removed, DW would have plenty of space for a potting area. As the project progressed it became clear that rehabbing the shed was a better use of time and money than adding on to the workshop.
The interior now
Now it's back to the shop area.
