[whtbaron]

Mine is not a typical back yard shop either. I shut down the hog barn in 2011 and was left with a building that was going to cost almost as much to demolish as it would be to renovate, and I didn't have a heated shop, so... The barn was built in 3 sections (finishing, farrowing, and dry sow ) so I tore the old dry sow barn down in 2012 and put up a big enough area to work on a tractor with 14 ft walls in 2013. The rest of the bench area only has a 7 ft. ceiling. By finishing the interior with new metal and running new armored wiring, I was able to get a better deal on insurance. Heating system is a small electric boiler with in floor tubes. I still have the feeder barn to work on and I'm hoping to get new concrete in there in the next year. View attachment DSCN2944.JPG
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Sure wish it still looked as clean as it does in these old pics...

 

[whtbaron]

I thought your shop was your home? :drinkup:

I like to think of it as my retirement home...

 

[whtbaron]

Can't be any worse than the "Where's Waldo" shop I moved out of that wasn't heated. 35 yrs tends to create it's own accumulation.... View attachment 028.jpg
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Although it did get a face lift eventually...

 

[whtbaron]

That’s what mine’s been for the last 14 years

I've seen lots of project shots from the inside, but what does the whole thing look like from the outside?

 

[whtbaron]

Where you at? If you are in a warmer climate the natural lighting might be nice (or it might be a pain if you have sunlight blasting in the back of your welding hood) but for me it's a trade-off between commuting with the great outdoors and having winter heat loss.

 

[whtbaron]

That used to be pretty high on the checklist when considering marriage.

1. Rethink when you’re sober
2. Check out the future “mother in law” to see how she’s aged
3. Get a second opinion …..


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Yeah, but I never thought to pay attention to the father in law. I think she got his boobs and hairy legs...

 

[whtbaron]

Looks like a shop classroom

It looks great, but if he's living in the middle of a desert, I have to agree with Freebird.... it's going to get really hot in there in the summer unless he's got a big AC.
One of the reasons I went with metal clad was to keep sparks from welding and grinding (I often think that grinding is actually a bigger issue) away from flammable woodwork. Between that and the new surface wiring clad in aluminum, my insurance company agreed and lowered my rates to that of a new building. Welding and grinding just isn't a "clean" hobby (even less so as a job) and I can't imagine cleaning all that woodwork. For a potential multi-purpose building, metal clad still isn't a bad idea because it's easy to unscrew and remove at some point down the road.

 

[whtbaron]

When I was painting, we had a belt drive to the exhaust fan and an extended hood to keep the motor out of the fumes. If you are going to use existing fans, at least make sure the motors are sealed to keep the sparks in the motor from igniting the fumes. It's the equivalent of running in the center of a carburetor when you have paint/thinners in the air. You've been at this long enough to know dust explosions are not a good thing.

 

[whtbaron]

I used to have three 5 gallon pails of thinners under the paint shelf and over 100 small containers of paint behind me at any given time. They told me each pail was the equivalent of 3 sticks of dynamite. There was a big black spot on the ceiling where a previous painter had dropped a cigarette on top of one of the pails. Lucky for him, he got a lid slammed on it and put it out before there was an actual explosion.

 

[whtbaron]

Yea, the bigger the gap between the blades and the housing, the less efficient the fan is... but they can get coated with paint to the point where the fan blades will start to drag and burn things out. I had to clean ours out occasionally. Our booth was an old cinder block one with all metal filters on the intakes. About once a year I took them to a car wash and washed out the dirty old snot, and sprayed new snot into them.