The new Farrington Garage/Shop build
 

Alright, this has been a long time coming! Let me try to give a quick run down of the history that leads up to this thread. Basically, my wife and I decided to get back into the car hobby in 2002 after a 15 year absence (since high school). So, while I was in Northern California doing a National Guard communication school we decided to buy our current 66 Chevelle. Well, one thing led to another and we wanted a spot to store it and some parts cars so we bought a rental house with a two car detached garage on a one acre lot less than a mile from the subdivision where we lived. In 2003ish we built (myself, Deb and the kiddos) a new 28x44' two story shop on the back of the lot and have been working out of there ever since. The only real problem with that arrangement came when we bought a house and property 30 minutes away and moved into that in 2006. A lot has happened with the rental property over the years, but all that is important is that we finally sold it on contract back in April and that is allowing us to build our shop here at our house. Whew! lots of history in a reasonably short paragraph.

OK, so this will be the build thread of building the shop. Deb and I have some building experience and will be doing most of the work ourselves with the exception of the foundation and maybe a few other things that will just save time and headaches in the long run. Obviously family and friends will be helping too as we move forward.

We're doing a build thread on lateral-g.net, pro-touring.com and chevelles.com since we have good friends on all of them. Although I frequent lateral-g and have a ton of friends on here, this will really be our first "build" thread...

We would love to hear your questions and comments on what you would do to make it a better shop, but remember, we are regular people with regular jobs (a couple each) and at the end of the day, we want this thing to be under roof and usable inside of our budget. Just like everything else we do, we will make improvements as we go.

Here are the basics:
40x76'
stick framed 2x6" walls 12' ceilings in the main work area
40x26 area that will be sectioned off for machine and wood shop, storage and a paint area
40x26 upstairs that will be used for storage and possible future living area
two lifts, one two post and one four post
one 16x9' overhead door and one 36" service door
electric and wood heat (A/C is part of my dream plan)

The hand drawn plans
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps28f07784.jpg

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps4d392e72.jpg

Just breaking ground
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps366f85b0.jpg

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...psaf379fb1.jpg

Sam walking the dug footer
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps9297b1c4.jpg

Very nice Tom, great size as well! Good luck with the new project. One thing that I would consider is either another overhead door or increasing the height of the door, you never know when you want drive in a monster truck to work on??

Thanks Rick! I know the print shows a 16x8' but we are upping that to 9'. Any vehicle taller than that we'll have to just take the wheels off of... :idea: Right now with our 8' doors at the current shop we can back the trailer in with a car on it so that was our goal again with a little more room for something taller.

New shop
 

Very cool to see you posting it here Tom. First I had tire envy and then motor envy after driving the 66, now shop envy :king:

Looking forward to seeing it in a few weeks :thumbsup:

Congrat's,Tom to you and the rest of amazing Farrington Clan.I hope the weather is holding out for you guy's.I wish you guy's were closer I would love to come put my hammer swinging skill's to use.:thumbsup:Kevin and I may come to Indy GoodGuy's if so see you then.:gitrdun:

thats awesome, all that property must be nice to play on. Good luck to you.

Wow, beautiful property and land. Gonna be a great space. :thumbsup:

Rock on Tommy! Great to see a new shop being constructed!

Congrats, that's a big shop. I convinced Darcy we need a 30x40 to work out of. The next day she told me she thinks we'll out grow a 30x40 to fast and we should do at least a 60x40. This stuff is a lot more fun and easier to make happen when the wife is on board.

Sounds like myself and a group of buddies are going to make a guys trip down to Indy for Good Guys. Hopefully we'll have some time to catch up. Thanks for grabbing that cowl panel btw.

Congratulation's That's going to be sweet.

Yeah yeah, I dig your shop too! And, I think Jill is willing to pull the trigger on a shop expansion for you too.

[QUOTE=JMitch19;502737]Congrats, that's a big shop. I convinced Darcy we need a 30x40 to work out of. The next day she told me she thinks we'll out grow a 30x40 to fast and we should do at least a 60x40. This stuff is a lot more fun and easier to make happen when the wife is on board.

We're lucky to have our wives involved for sure. Our shop plan grew and shrank more times than I can count over the last five years but we finally decided on 40x70' a few months ago but after moving it around a bit to minimize the effects of the property slope Deb suggested going up to 76'. Has anyone ever said "I wish I built a smaller shop"?

I'll post more later, but we're planning to have folks over for a BBQ on Friday evening of GG's Indy. You and your buddies are of course welcome along with all the other Lat-G, P-T and Team Chevelle guys that are around that weekend.

Here's what was going on when Deb, Sam and I were thrashing on the cars at the Ohio Musclecar Challenge.

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps6dbcf9e8.jpg

Lots of pea gravel fill while I was out of town last week.

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps7921fa4d.jpg

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps5ba8a409.jpg

And this brings us up to date. I should be meeting with the flat work guy today and if all goes well, we will be pouring tomorrow. Having been in the building industry for a while, I won't be surprised if that gets bumped to the right a little.

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps99804a6e.jpg

Wow!!!!!! Tom,Look's Outstanding.It's going to be a 1st.Class Building.:thumbsup:

Thanks Scott, hope you get to see it in person!

Shop
 

I can't wait to see more pictures as the building goes up.

Just as promised, the flat work guy came out and checked the grade of the pea gravel and spread the visqueen. They will be back at 6 am and start pouring at 7:30. Pretty exciting!

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps8dbd9bd6.jpg

Congrats Tom on the new Farrington family car cave! Can't wait to see it finished!!:hapdance: :hapdance: :hapdance:

That's a great feeling seeing them placing the concrete. That's going to be awesome.

oh nice....is it too late for a arsenal vault and a secret underground tunnel to the house? just sayin.

No surprise, I fell behind on updating pictures.

Just as promised the pouring started early on the morning of 9-04.
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps50a1e446.jpg

Here's the less than cautious clown that drove too close to the foundation and broke out some of the blocks. A few years ago I may have lost my cool, but in the end it would have solved nothing. The flat work guy came up with a solution for the repair and we agreed it was the best option.
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps91f27261.jpg

Concrete poured and relief cuts done by the end of the day. Also had the engineered floor joists delivered for the floor and also the rafters for the same area.
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps14d439a3.jpg

Here are a couple of pictures that give a better perspective of the grade we had to deal with.
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...psa1f5a9c7.jpg
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps0a07918a.jpg

Our trip to LS Fest was cut short mid day on Friday due to my part time job. Once that obligation was met we took advantage of the situation to pick up lumber and start to lay walls out.
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...psa76b87cf.jpg

Hopefully more updates tonight!

I'm clueless on this stuff, but why did you go with blocks instead of poured?

Look's great Tom.Congrat's.:gitrdun:

Great question. We definitely would have preferred to have poured foundation walls but only found a couple of places in our area that would do it. Oddly enough for this horrible economy they were too busy to get back with us. One of them I sat down with and reviewed our prints and expected to hear from within a few days for the estimate and eventually after calling for a couple of weeks with no response we gave up. So, the block guy was a friend of a co-worker and it worked out fine using him..

It looks great. I wish I put a storage area upstairs in mine.

My framing skills are a little rusty, we had off and on showers until about 2 and my whole family dropped by (I'll never complain about that) so we didn't get as much done as we had hoped, but any progress is good progress!

Sam taking a break to sweep off the water while Deb talks to my dad. Oh yeah, first wall up!!!
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...psb4c36c2c.jpg

Dark enough to call it a night.
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps675da5ed.jpg

Great progress:thumbsup:

X2 Nice.

I can't wait to see more walls going up.

Looks awesome Tom! One of these days I want a garage about 4 times that big. :thumbsup:

I always think we should be making more progress than we do, but a couple of jobs, two cars to maintain and a buddies to work on and there are still only 24 hours in a day just limits us...

Deb and Sam getting it done. Don't bother with your safety comments on our work crew, I can't control everything! We're doing well with safety glasses, but Deb in flip flops is beyond my control.
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...psbf626aa0.jpg

Progress at the end of the day yesterday.
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps78bc0091.jpg
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...psf04f53d7.jpg

Clueless dogs found this to be the coolest piece of concrete because it had been shaded all day. They don't seem to mind the sawdust landing on them.
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps9666dd80.jpg

Tom,Look's good. You have an Amazing Family.:hail: :thumbsup:

Thanks Scott, I am pretty thrilled with the family also. I couldn't do what I do without them.

I like what you are doing. I'm going to start building a new shop next spring and have it finished by the end of summer.

This has been a huge inspiration for me:

http://www.bcsportbikes.com/forum/sh...s-I-don-t-even.....
:D

Looks awesome! I just in Mooresville going to JONES auto salvage!

Somehow I keep thinking that I am doing pretty good with updates, but apparently I fell behind again. Work has been demanding but we're still making pretty decent progress. All our car projects need attention, but the buyer of our former shop indicated that he will soon have the remainder of the money and want it sooner than later so it's thrash time to get this place under roof.


We left Goodguys Indy early on Sunday so we could get home and get some work done. The last of the wall construction was building the two 4' walls on each side of the garage door and install the header. We used our John Deere to lift the header to 8' (max lift of the bucket) while Sam and I lifted each end the remaining foot. All was well until we shoved the last side in. Even though I had never done it before, I used construction adhesive in the pockets and that made things very slippery. Well... As we were shoving the second side in, the first side slid out and bounced out of the tractor bucket and smashed the hood of the poor John Deere. Also glanced off Sam's head, but he's fine. After we all settled down we were able to install it with a few more safety measures in place.

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps86671a78.jpg

Tom,comming along nicely.Sorry I missed your Bar-B-Q last week(We really wanted come hang out).Work and famliy thing's have me staying close to home for awhile.:thumbsup:

Looking good Tom. It's pretty exciting when they start to actually look like a structure. :thumbsup:

Floor is complete upstairs and trusses have been delivered for the open area.

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps4ff99a76.jpg

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...psc2b95257.jpg

Nice work Tom! So where's the guest room at??? :headscratch: