auburnseeker

By the time January rolled around I did have heat in the garage via a used Monitor heater and the foam up on all the walls and some of the ceiling. I was also able to get the garage door covers built. They are solid foam with only the hardware passing all the way through. Wood on the inside is just slats fr other srcrews that hold the outside wood in place. That is just Luan 1/4 inch plywood, stained with Cetol by Sikkens. All the wood on the outside was glued to the luan before it was through fastened with 3 and 1/2 inch screws. Used a soft seal that I made (like on nice house doors) for the back side foam of the panels to seal against and the panels sit on top of a piece of 1 inch foam so no wood contacts the cement and you get a real good seal. The panels actually come off and can be removed and carried, though awkwardly by one person (me ) to get the tractor in and out. The hard part was figuring out where to seam the foam and luan as I wanted minimal scrap, no visible seams and the openings were 9 foot by 10 foot each. With hardware and foam, I believe I have about $1200 or so into them It probably took about 20 to 30 hours to build them from start to turning the last latch in place with them up. They were off several times last winter to plow and are actually quite quick to come off and go on, just a bit awkward too handle. The idea is they will only need to come off and be out on a couple of times a year once the shop is finished enough to store the tractor and other equipment in. The wider trim pieces are 1 by 4 and 1 by 6 pine. The 2 foot overhang on the garage helps prevent them from getting much exposure and the Northwest facing direction keeps the sun exposure minimal so they should hopefully last for several years and pay fro them selves several times over the years. They do make the garage noticeable cozier, even after putting all new garage door seals on. Last winter I heated the garage to 50 degree minimum and it used about 200 gallons of oil. With the ceiling getting finished and everything totally sealed up, I'm hoping to get it down to 2/3 or 1/2 of that. You can slo see my truck pulled the wrong straw and had to spend the winter in the snow bank, Making it a nice obstacle to plow around.

As you can see winter was closing in and a final nail in the coffin came from the planning board which tabled my plans as I lacked a survey that included the location of the existing buildings, though they were clearly;y placed on a neat scale copy of the survey, but not on the original. My setbacks are in the 100 to 300 foot or more range from buildings and all but the power line right of way, when codes call for 15 to 20 feet so this was really more an exercise in the board flexing their muscles to show you who's boss rather than real concerns of infringing on any of the requirements for new buildings. I also blame the architect on this as he never provided me with drainage plans which were one of the things I requested when I asked for the initial plans. (These ended up being 2 gravel trenches under the Eves 2 feet wide by 3 feet deep. Yup without that on the plans they wouldn't approve the project. Now with the next meeting coming in December the project was put off until spring. So for the first winter the old garage was pretty stuffed as I hate to park anything outside. The shelves in the bak came out and the excavator went in for the winter as I had bought rolling shelving to replace them. It's tough to finish off a garage when it's this packed and snowing outside.

I should probably explain how I came up with what would fit the bill for a shop at this time. After searching for hours on line, trying to determine size and materials even making up a mock rough scale model and trying a scale car in it, I determined a clear span garage of 60 wide by 72 feet long would be ideal, as far as not only positioning where I wanted it, but actual usable space inside, accounting for a vehicle as large as my 2006 Ford Superduty extended cab 8 foot bed pickup being able to park in it out of the way. I figured a garage with one large garage door would be cheaper to build and easier to heat than one with several doors. I also knew that I didn't want any doors on the eve sides so the layout had to be such that all openings were on the gable ends. From experience I knew I didn't want a metal roof that size because of issues of snow build up from sliding so a shingle roof would be in order. Checked into pole barns, but with what I already have up here, The house and existing cedar sided garage, I couldn't get away with a tin barn and still keep everything looking right up here. Aesthetics are very important. Especially with the size of the building I wanted to build. Of course all this on a Budget also makes it tough. All the advantages of the pole barn were quickly offset by the draw backs. (It would have been nice to just have a pole barn slapped up in a couple of weeks). I also decided a long time ago I would eventually want in floor heat so a slab wasn't going to work and I would have to go with a frost wall so it could be properly insulated and support the massive weight on the walls. At one point talking with a friend he suggested I use 2 by 8 studding for better insulation. I ran the numbers and it made sense as it added only a couple of grand to all the framing lumber. It proved benficial later as well, since the truss size would have required extra bracing until I told them it was going on an 8 inch instead of 6 inch wall. It will also make finishing the building off easier later as it gets rid of the step from the 8 inch concrete to what would have been 6 inch studding. It was tough to find sizes of garages on line and what they would actually hold. One site did let you build a garage and put a full size Dodge truck in it, but even that was only marginally helpful. So off to the architect to draw up official plans. For this I had to pay $2000 because of the size. He made good money on that one as I only got a few pages of plans with no mechanicals or inside finishing. It's specced with a gravel floor even so I could complete it as little as possible for budgeting purposes and to get my CO. Also figure in another $400 for the engineer's Stamp. Now with official plans in hand I went down to get my final planning sign off. This is where the wrench got thrown in the works. Now with plans in hand the planning officer says that's a big building and he thinks it should go in front of the board, though he can't point to any one requirement that it needs to be reviewed by the board. Of course I also just missed the deadline for the next meeting application so. Would have to wait an extra month. This was September, that would put me into beginning of November for the approval if I had everything I needed. I pressed on having the excavator come in and get he site leveled off, still a major undertaking and hauling out all the stumps and logs. This ended up running me $11,500 and that was a real bargain for the amount of truck loads that came in and went out over the next few weeks. Here is what it looked like at that point. In the last photo you can see what it was like before we started even cutting the access road in.

Since I decided to hire in a pro for the excavating with bigger equipment, I was able to concentrate on insulating the existing garage so I could get heat in it for the winter. The insulation 6 inch roux in the walls and ten inches in the ceiling with the 1 inch foil faced foam combo ran me about $7000. That was getting a bit of a deal, because I bought so much direct from a wholesaler. I tried dealing with one of the guys selling reclaimed foam insulation but he proved to be quite flakey and in reality not a lot cheaper, since I was really getting what I wanted. The foam was delivered on another truck and is not shown in these photos. I also ordered enough 2 inch foam to make garage door covers that could be easily removed and enough to build a custom hatch for the stairway in the middle of the garage to access the attic. This its what it looked like before I started tearing into the project. We spent a few days gutting the garage of what was in there to do it right, including pulling out the existing Furnace and ductwork so I could start with a relatively blank slate. The existing garage is 28 by 50 foot with a 10 foot ceiling.

I figured I should break this up a bit for easier reading. Ok enough of the back story now down the garage projects. Next I really needed to finish the garage here so it has heat. It was for the most part an uninsulated shell with an old forced air furnace and some ductwork. We started doing this while cleaning out and moving not only my shop, but also the other house I had which was packed full of stuff as well, all so that we could complete the sales. We also decided to empty out a large storage unit I had full of parts. Much of the contents of the shop and storage unit were wholesaled crazy cheap just to lessen the amount of stuff I needed to cram into the existing garage. I decided I really wanted to make the garage energy efficient so I opted to go with 6 inches of Roxull insulation in the walls and 10 inches of Roxull in the ceiling. I also planned to go over the whole inside with 1 inch of foil faced Hi r Foam. Meantime I went down to apply for my building permit to start the new shop. This was the first week of September after I had an official offer on the shop. I told the planning office what I wanted to build and brought down sketches as well as the survey and a ly out of where it would be on the property. I had staked everything out ahead of time on the most level spot of land (we have just over 7 acres but much of it is a hill and a lot of rock) I also didn't want it to be a prominent feature of the property as my wife says the size reminds her of Walmart so it really only would fit in one spot. I began cutting trees and clearing the spot once the planning office told me they didn't see a problem and could approve it in office when I came in with the actual plans, which weren't going to be any different size or building type than my sketches had shown. I realized a few weeks into the clearing process that there was no way I would have concrete in the ground if I did all the excavation by myself. Especially considering all the other projects we were trying to complete that I mentioned above. I decided to hire in some pros, but not until my father and I dropped all the trees, I bucked them up and stacked them, then the wife and I chipped all the brush. I even started pulling stumps but it was a lot of work for my small machine. I was also running out of day light.

I've been meaning for some time to get a continuous thread going dedicated to my shop build and likewise the finishing off of the garage shell already on the property. My goal here is to kind of give anyone contemplating a similar project a step by step build with time frame and costs of each step as well as what was involved to get to that stage. For some time after buying an old run down diesel repair garage to work on my cars in and run my business out of up town, I realized that I would really like to find a property that would contain both my residence and my shop. Having moved to a small town lot , roughly a 1/4 acre that my wife bought right after we met I realized we would need more space to accomplish this task. Our growing family also required something a little bigger than our 1200 (that's stretching it) square foot house. So after a lot of discussion and actually a couple of years of searching for a larger property with a garage that would suffice, we decided that if we could find something that we could build one on that would work. It also meant the house had to be decent as well, as I wouldn't have time to build a shop and repair an old run down house. This meant the budget would have to be increased and even pushed to the limit, including reaching a little past a comfort zone in what we were looking for price wise. Though I told my wife trust me, she still had me show her on paper what our budget cap could really be. Like most of my cars though, it always meant so much more for so little extra that it just made sense. I did require it to have some kind of even slightly oversized garage already needed to exist on the property as I needed a place to put the cars from my shop and existing house which had an oversized garage so we could sell those. Fortunately after much searching, while having a casual conversation with a friend and mentioning my woes, he told me his Brother was thinking of selling his house and he believed the price range was right at the upper limit. We looked at it in the dead of winter and had too wade through the snow to even get to it as it has a 600 foot driveway and there was no way to see it from the road. (it was heated but he wasn't using it to live in anymore as he had, like me, moved to be with his wife. Coming from the little house we were in which needed some work, but the wife and I couldn't agree on the direction to go, she loved it and I saw the potential for where a shop could go as well as the existing garage would suffice nicely to be able to store my cars so we could sell the house in town. Then eventually the shop. I needed to come up with a pretty good down payment but the owner was willing to hold paper as his brother had many dealings with me and gave him his nod of approval, so I decided to cull my collection to make it happen. A decision I had discussed with my wife well in advance if the right place came along. It took 6 Months but a few cars down and we had our down payment, then another 3 to 4 for the seller's Lawyer to get their end in order. Our's was exceptional and on top of everything the whole time. Now we finally had what I deemed to be a place well worth the effort to make it just what we wanted. (our dream home). With room of course for the dream shop. The house in town was originally only to be a 5 year plan house then upgrade and again upgrade later in another 5. We stayed at it for 10 but then skipped the in between step and ended up in 10 years with same result, so it worked out. It took a couple of years to finally sell off the shop, after really dropping the price and like wise almost as long to sell our small house in town. Though I didn't lose any money on the shop, because of many improvements on the house in town we came out ahead on that. Which even after having both listed with realtors, sold it our selves. I also decided it would be necessary to sell the house I bought before I met my wife after realizing we were never going to use it again. (it's more like a vacation cottage in a small tourist town). This really worked out like a savings account for me, requiring me to put money away every month which I would have just wasted on cars otherwise. This with the left over funds from the sale of the shop after paying off the mortgages would give me 100G to build the new shop.

Is it possibly not automotive? I know there was discussion some time back about other companies that used the Cadillac type crest back in the 20's or 30s. Sure does look like a button though. Maybe some executive had them for his coat?

But I only have room for a few here at the house in the new shop.;) Where are you going to put the ones you need to store for us without a dedicated building to house the entire collection? I think the woody would be appropriate for me given my location in a resort town. Would have been nice to have seen more foresight given into their housing. Looks like originally he never figured the town would sell the community center. (seems like a dirty deal to me all the way around). How many towns sell a community center, unless it's to build a new one because the old one is outdated and doesn't meet current federal regulations for safety and access. Almost seems planned, especially with no stipulations being made about the housing the collection was to be held in. Like someone knew that angle from the beginning. Sell building, overcharge for rent or remove the tax that paid the maintenance rent, now no way for it to be solvent so it must be disbursed. Perfect plan. That would never happen ion government though, would it? Kind of like the APA around here. The Nature conservancy buys the land for all to use, then a few years later, sell it to the state who in hand with the APA. reclassify it as forever wild and eliminate all but foot traffic into it. These tracts are huge and would take weeks to hike. They used to be managed forest. Oh and when the state buys it from the Nature conservancy the, conservancy sells it as a profit. Now the towns that though they were getting high use land, with snowmobiling and ATV access, get shoved out in the name of conservancy and preservation. All this happens while the state is heavily in debt. Where do they get the money to buy the land if they are broke? Remember the land is usually heavily timbered by the owner before they sell it to the conservancy so it's the furthest thing from pristine wilderness, and wouldn't have been as heavily logged if they knew it was going to be maintained as a working forest so it would reforest for new cutting in a shorter time span.

He probably thought he was doing good for the community like a lot of people that leave communities personal property, whether it be real estate or something like this. He probably never imagined they would sell the building that the cars were housed in, who in their right mind would normally do that. So basically the community he must have liked and wanted to benefit from his vision, stabbed him in the back, legally. Too bad as others had mentioned, he didn't have the cars future in mind as hi only priority, or he would have possibly worked something out with the Gilmore, which would have had the cars in mind before the community. Yes as others mentioned, they will get into the hands of collectors, but some collectors lock them away, to be seen by only a few fortunate. Some of these look pretty valuable and aren't likely to end up at your local cruise in any time soon. Some may even end up out of the country never to be repatrioted. Atleast in the museum they were able to be seen by the Public.

You aren't kidding. 70 one day in February and the arctic Tundra since. It's been mud season for 2 months now except when it's frozen, though the snow cover kept the ground from really refreezing. 3 Back to back North Easters didn't help either. Atleast the other garage is heated. The winds did a number on my tarp garage door last night, I resecured it several times yesterday and again at 1AM. Fortunately the worst of them have subsided. 65 MPH gusts and sustained of 40, doesn't do well with plastic over windows and doors. Time to get the glass in and some better sort of Temp Garage door until I can build something nice. Watching the kids now so I can't be out there working.

I actually haven't gotten a lot done on the new shop since winter set in (and still persisting here in the East) Though I did get my order of windows in, stacked in the garage for now. Though I have been finishing off the old garage on the property which is 28 by 50. I'm going to start a step by step thread shortly, with costs of all aspects as I completed them including materials and sizes, so someone in the future looking to build something similar could get a good handle on what it will take to build something similar and how much space it actually gives you once done. Something like I was looking for before I started and couldn't find.

That would make sense. The few I clicked on were expired for sale ads, some from Craigslist, so I didn't spend a lot of time there except looking at garage photos which I didn't need much more information about, just drooling over stuff. I might have ended up there looking at garage door ideas as well. Usually I just use google images for that.

Can't beat the price and it actually looks pretty solid.

I searched a ton of sites daily and left tabs up when I was searching for my C1 when I finally ironed it out that I wanted a 58-60 found it on oldride.com. It had just been posted by a dealer no less who had it on consignment. It was a black numbers matching fuelie. It was a little out of my projected budget, but I pulled all the strings I could including putting the shipping on my credit card so I could pay for it next month. It worked out and I still am surprised I was able to buy what I thought was unobtainable. Diligence and patience will yield the right car and don't settle for something less than what you want. I have noticed a ton of C1's on Ebay as well as you could search CLAZ.org which picks up all the local traders from around the country. There is a site that eludes me at the Moment that also picks up all the hits on craigslist, that aren't covered by CLAZ.org. Ironically looking at that photo look at the difference in styling in 10 years time. The yellow car is a 48 Plymouth Convertible, and though the vette is a 60 it's 1958 Styling.

I think Pinterest works a little bit like this site, but it's only a photo site using photos from the web. You create an account, then post pictures of your favorite things. Many are just photos people reposted from the internet. Kind of like here. As mentioned, as far as I know it's only a photo site. I looked up cars on there and I have looked up, barns, garages, etc. There is very little information about the item and nothing appears to be for sale, or any way to contact someone even if you see a for sale sign in the picture, unless there is contact info in the photo.

I did manage to get a bit further on mine in the last few days. One thing I decided to go for was rolling shelving units. boy it really makes organizing the garage nice and a lot easier to work on my walls, by just rolling them loaded to another spot. Even my large shelves are on wheels now. You can just see them with the bins on them in the earlier photo I posted. I've gotten rid of almost all my fixed shelving for the garage. I also put the rapid air system in and it feels like a small miracle when I actually get to install one on the finished wall. Even putting outlet covers on seem like small victories, because you finally realize that spot is finished.

I think Pinterest is just a site full of photos, like google images. I found a lot of stuff I was interested in knowing more about on Pinterest when I was looking for a Hudson truck, but there was no further information other than just the photos. Not even any links, if I remember correctly.

A guy a few towns up did that, and was trying to get me to build mine the same way, It wouldn't have worked and he fell under agriculture use so it didn't matter as you don't even need building permits. I wanted clear span as well. He took I'm not sure how many, I think atleast 6 for 120 foot long barn, put one on each side, left the center area open and spanned it with trusses. Can make for a huge garage is somewhat short order, but I wanted a little more residential looking building to go with the house or atleast other out buildings.

Must be nice. Last time we saw 70 was in February (which made no sense) . Each month seems to be colder not warmer. Rain and snow last night has art least transitioned to a nice soaking 40 degree rain. Hopefully soon the weather will break. Would like to get the Hudson out and maybe get some outside work done on the new shop.

I knew you were just reposting it, I just wanted to clarify for anyone maybe not up on what they were looking at in a pretty delapitated state.

You would have room for one or two more cars, but that's probably it. here is inside my new one already and stuff has to come out to put a floor in, hopefully this fall. Though the pile under the lumber tarp is board and batten siding that will go on the building this summer I hope if the weather ever breaks. It's all pre stained so I have a jump on that.

Crap breeds by itself at night when we aren't looking. I actually sell on eBay full time for a living so it's a real curse as well as somewhat of a blessing. I buy or shall I say used to buy big lots to get a little cream. I won't tell you how much crap I have culled and actually some good stuff, but it helped get rid of the crap when thrown on the pile and the new caretaker given a really good price on the lot. I have 2 storage units 10 by 10's full and just hauled a little more over to help clean out a bit. Someone is coming to buy those this week. It's half what I paid for the stuff, but I have found better items to market so time to go. The problem with us collectors is we tend to collect a little of everything including cars, soda machines, I even have records and crap like that I just went through and put a huge pile together to get rid of, though I should get rid of all but enough to fill my couple of jukeboxes (more crap) as I never listen to them with satellite radio or the internet. A bunch of signs, then a bunch of tools I will probably never use for specific old car applications because they were cheap or free. Then boxes of hardware, Carpentry tools, from when I was in business doing that including wood shop tools like a commercial planer and cabinet saw, though I use my job site saw more than anything else. I could literally turn this shop into a wood shop and probably have just enough room to set it up properly, but then what do you do with the cars? It's only time and money and both never seem to be there at the same time. Getting back to the garage, I only went wit heh chair rail idea, because the 4000 lineal feet of lumber I got a deal on, didn't' have enough good boards with even do a solid vertical board all the way around, by the time you took out all the damaged spots in the lumber and most of it was 16 foot boards. This is the best I could do. I still have a lot left over, though much of it will be cut up for trim and extension jambs. The few good long boards, will be used for wainscoted soffits on the new shop. I also ran air lines in all the walls so I could reach just about anything in the shop with a 10 to 15 foot whip. I hate tripping over air lines run across the floor.

Looking good. My new big shop is a long way from that. I did get my order of windows in, but they are just stacked inside, waiting to be installed. I've been working on my "small" shop it's 28 by 50 with a 10 foot ceiling. Progress has been slow, but steady, having to make special electrical box extenders and fix wiring that wasn't done quite right, mainly in the lighting. Mostly because I have too much crap in the way. Since the weather is still bordering on winter with wild temperature fluctuations, I can't move anything out to the big shop as I don't want it to sweat with the wet warm ups from 20 degree night time temps. The photos are a few days old, I'm actually around the corner now and about 5 feet down the side wall. I am over 1/2 way around with the wainescoting. It took forever just to out the finish on that stuff. 1 coat of stain and 3 coats of varnish on the bottom and 1 coat of whitewash, then 2 coats of poly on the top. I'm trying t finish this up before the weather really breaks and I can get outside to fix up the property after the big shop project really left a lot of dirt and rocks where it used to be trees, and the wife would prefer it look better than a mud field. I also need to get the grass going to prevent erosion.

Looks more like a 31 to me.

Just wondering. So our titanic of a hobby isn't quite sinking yet I guess. Except maybe the rough projects, but even the rarer ones seems to be still in demand according to the discussion on the Airflow thread. The 32 Shovel nosed coupe on the page link, almost seemed to look like a bargain after what I have seen lately, Of course810 to 812 cords excluded.