• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

New garage shop

G

GaryR

Nordic Pine
Joined
Jan 22, 2024
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Location
Bloomington, Indiana, USA
Name
Gary
As some of you know I'm moving house soon. I've started thinking about fitting out the two car garage in the new house to use for my shop. One wrinkle is that I haven't seen the house and garage in person, yet. That won't happen for another three weeks. But from photos and floor plans and a Zoom walk-through I have place to start.

First, a floor plan. The garage is attached and approximately 22 ft x 26 ft with 8 ft ceilings. Immediately behind is a garden shed (not "THE" shed") that is 9 x 12, separated by a space of what looks to be 4 ft. The sketch is missing a man door on the back door of the garage. In red is the proposed location for an added sink. There are no windows save a small one in the man door.


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Here is the shed behind the garage. I plan to use this for wood storage, garden supplies, and I hope the cyclone dust collector.

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Here is a working sketch of what I have in mind for tool and dust collection placement. The grid overlay is for working out the locations of overhead strip lighting.

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On the to-do list is to confer with the plumbing/electrical /HVAC guys about the exact placement of the sink (which they tell me can connect to the kitchen plumbing, figure out a location for a mini split heat/AC unit, determine whether having the dust collector in the shed will be do-able and satisfy local building regulations, have a plan for additional electrical circuits and lighting.

View of space with previous owner's stuff in it.


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You're moving house to a house you haven't yet seen! Really? What's the story there?
 
Mike G said:
You're moving house to a house you haven't yet seen! Really? What's the story there?
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Yes, you can buy anything on Amazon! (just kidding).

We are are 2000 miles away. But, we have lived in that town before and know the neighbourhoods. We hired an excellent real estate agent who knows us well and video-walked us through the several properties we were interested in. This one had everything we wanted in the neighbourhood we wanted. We had independent inspections and appraisals of the property. (The inspector told us the house had been immaculately maintained, the best condition of any house he had seen in years). It is nearly perfect for our needs. We discussed one or both of us flying out to see it in person before committing but in the end decided there wasn't much to be gained and we might end up losing to another bidder if we waited to arrange travel so we decided to take the leap.
 
Wow, that's a massive leap of faith! I hope it works out well for you, Gary.
 
Ah, yes. One big plus is that I can store wood in that shed behind the house rather than in the garage shop. Here is the interior of that shed, again with the current owner's stuff in it.
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Can’t see much wrong with the equipment layout, the dust/chip extraction makes me wonder if you can do what I’m planning, build a small insulated shed butting up to the outside of your garage just for the extraction equipment with a well sealed Heppa air filter in the wall adjoining the two buildings this means all the dust will be contained and you won’t lose all your heat or cool air when it’s turned on, also your gardening shed will be dust free.
As I said I plan to do this, should work?
Ian
Edit, excellent that you can go from workshop to kitchen!
 
Not sure about that last sentence Ian. The advantage of 20m walk across the garden from workshop to house is that most of the dust and wood chips fall off before I reach the house.:)

Buying a house unseen is certainly brave.
 
AndyP said:
Not sure about that last sentence Ian. The advantage of 20m walk across the garden from workshop to house is that most of the dust and wood chips fall off before I reach the house.:)

Buying a house unseen is certainly brave.
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Oh but it is the small wood chips that get stuck to my socks that drives the missus nuts.
 
AndyP said:
Not sure about that last sentence Ian. The advantage of 20m walk across the garden from workshop to house is that most of the dust and wood chips fall off before I reach the house.:)

Buying a house unseen is certainly brave.
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Well, I guess brave is one word for it!

In my defense, it isn't completely unseen. We have many, many photos and two video tours, lots of questions answered, plus independent assessments of the home's condition and value. Those aren't the same as seeing it in person, I agree. What I feel I'm missing is a proper sense of scale since photos always distort that, and not being able to walk the property and evaluate sight lines and such. In other words I'm confident is a solid, well made and well maintained house with features I will like. Whether I'll fall in love with it remains to be seen.
 
It wouldn't be the contruction of the house, or it's condition, that I would worry about. It's the situation. Judging the area for all sorts of things, but especially noise, cleanliness, safety (crime etc), friendliness, and so on, would be my concern. Is there a dog food factory a mile upwind, or a sewerage works? Do street lights shine straight in the bedroom windows? That sort of thing. A house is just a building, and they're generally easy enough to fix or change if there are issues, but you can't change where it is located (well, not so easily).
 
Oh yes, I agree, and we checked all of those things as best we can from afar. For example, we walked the surrounding streets virtually using Google Earth and street view to check the condition of neighbouring properties. We joined the local neighbourhood association to see what issues are being talked about. We subscribed to the local newspaper. We checked with our real estate agent for plusses and minuses of every neighbourhood we considered. (One other property we looked at in another area was attractive until he pointed out that it was a quarter of a mile from a car racing track....) The neighborhood we chose is shaped like a peninsula surrounded on three sides by parks and nature preserves with hiking trails for the dogs, which was a big deal for me. There are no major streets to cause traffic noise. Real estate prices in the neighborhood have been stable for years. We mapped drive times to shops, health care for us and the pets, and events at the University. No more than 15 minutes for anywhere we would go regularly.

We lived in this town for 10 years some years ago and although it has grown our friends there tell us it still has the same college town vibe that we enjoyed so much. I'm sure there will be some surprises but I hope none that will make us regret our decision.
 
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Gary, how does your soon to be new shop compare in size with the shop you have now?
Your new shop layout looks good.
 
I guess the big difference UK to US is if you hired an agent they are working for you? Here buying a house from an estate agent miles away would be very risky as they're working for the seller!

Layout looks good, whats the table behind the door into the kitchen? Can't read the label. And what will the long bench on the back wall be used for?
 
Here most commonly there is both a seller's agent and buyer's agent so nominally the buyer''s agent works for me. But it is complicated by the fact that the seller pays the commission for both buyer's and seller's agents. It's a system that most agree is ridiculous and too expensive but also highly resistant to change.

The table is my drawing table. The bench along the back wall is an existing set of cabinets the previous owners re-purposed after a kitchen remodel. I may have to remove some of them if I need to locate the dust collector there.
 
Mini split has been installed.

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And plumbing for a garage sink roughed in. Through the wall into a kitchen cabinet, around the inside corner, and connected to the kitchen sink plumbing. I'm very glad I didn't have to work inside those cabinets and it looks like they did a tidy job.

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That third photo looks like your plumber had a major accident, and spilt a fair amount of blood! I can't un-see it now..... :)
 
We’ve just had a mini split installed a Mitsubishi like yours but it’s on a stand that lifts it 16” off the ground, when I pointed out that it looked b horrible it was explained to me that it was to prevent snow damage to the fan in a heavy fall. Is it just that you are less likely to have such a depth of snow?
 
I didn't discuss it with the installers but southern Indiana is not likely to get a snowfall of that depth. The average snowfall there is about 17 inches for the year. Raising it does make sense in snow country. Mice are another risk. Raising the unit up might dissuade them better than having it lower. I've read that it is a good idea to pack stainless steel wool into openings that mice could enter.
 
GaryR said:
I didn't discuss it with the installers but southern Indiana is not likely to get a snowfall of that depth. The average snowfall there is about 17 inches for the year. Raising it does make sense in snow country. Mice are another risk. Raising the unit up might dissuade them better than having it lower. I've read that it is a good idea to pack stainless steel wool into openings that mice could enter.
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Yes I’ve heard about steel wool deterring them, but haven’t ever come across the ss type. Indiana is among the States I haven’t visited yet, up to about 20 atm.
 
Moving day one. This pulled up to house at 8:00 am. I believe the box is 53 ft long.

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They stopped work at 2:30 pm. By that time they had loaded all of the shop except for the jointer, thickness planer, and the two band saws.

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And the entire shed was also loaded.

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The "loader" guy was an artiste at packing the shop and shed to fill every available space as efficiently as possible. All of that stuff fit into just the first 11 feet of the van.

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The loader said that after the household is loaded tomorrow we will probably take up about half the van volume.
 
You might have said elsewhere, Gary, but I've missed it...........What is happening to your tea-house?
 
JamesHow said:
Going with him I think?
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Sure is.
From page 10
www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk

A Japanese style garden shed

I couldn't stay away. I mounted some flashing along the floor beams. To be followed by a weather barrier wrap before the serious rains come. The flashing took a little bending and folding and soldering since it has to have dams and diverters on the ends and fit into grooves in the posts. The...
www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk
 
Yes, all the finish planed posts and beams carefully wrapped, as are the windows and doors. I'm taking it all, including the stones and plywood subfloor and wall panels and metal roof panels and flashing. All of it except the screws and nails.
 
That really is incredible, squeezing all that in especially when you think how heavy some of your stuff is.
Now back to my old post, how did they get the heavy bits up 50” to the truck bed?
 
Everything went up a couple of long ramps, rated for 2000 pounds each. One of the ramps was a little sketchy, though since you could see it flex just walking on it. But everything went up on furniture dollies (if that is a familiar term to you) with 4-7 guys pushing and pulling. The 1200 pound jointer was the scariest because a mistake could have ended very badly for someone. I did get one picture when it was almost in the van:

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And about to be strapped to the wall of the van:

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Dollies, yes, moving heavy things in what might be thought of as slightly dangerous manner? No not in today’s uk.
That jointer of yours is a lovely bit of kit, is the cutter block coupled straight onto the motor shaft?
 
It is a 12 inch Crescent jointer, made in 1948/49 in Leetonia, Ohio. Yes, with direct drive. Machine scraped table surfaces. It works beautifully but it is loud and chip collection is horrible. Makes a huge mess.
 
In case anyone is curious, here is our route to our new home with daily driving times. The cities are obscured but the stops are Baker City, Oregon; Ogden, Utah,Cheyenne, Wyoming; Lincoln, Nebraska, Columbia, Missouri, and Bloomington, Indiana. Traveling with two dogs and a cat in our Honda CR-V. Weather forecast to beautiful all the way. Screenshot 2025-06-04 at 6.16.45 AM.jpg
 
Quite a journey! Not sure if you've posted pics in other build threads but you really have some lovely old machinery there!
 
It's amazing what a handful of people can achieve with man-power alone. I've seen a double decker bus pushed out of deep sand in Namibia by a dozen passengers......so I'm not surprised to see a lump of cast iron get pushed up a ramp.
 
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