There have been lots of “Poppa Projects” over the last few months but this has been the most time consuming by far. I picked up this Amish Built 12×24 garage back in Feburary or March and have been giving it a little attention every weekend since. I started off with electrical work because I’d need power to do most everything else — Dug a trench, burried conduit, pulled wire, installed the sub panel, and ran all my circuits. One thing I always hated working in home garages is the lack of power… most people are lucky if they’ve got 4 outlets in a 2 car garage and chances are they’re all on the same circuit. Maybe I went a little overboard but I’ve got 21 outlets split across 10 circuts — I even ran 2 240v outlets; one up high for heat and one low for a welder, plasma cutter… or whatever.

Since this is to be the stable for all the Clarke Family toys as well as a place to work I wanted to pay close attention to insulation. If I would have built a real garage I could have put R-19 in the walls but since it was built with 2×4s I was stuck with R-13. I tried to fill the entire wall cavity with insulation without leaving any gaps at the top or the bottom. Before I put the drywall up I even added some more over the power runs and around the outlets.

The drywall went up fairly easily but I’m no pro — I always say I’ll never do that again but unfortunately I think I will. In the end I hired a friend of a friend to come and finish it for me - I didn’t have the time (or the patience?). Since I placed the shop so close to the house (about 15′) I wanted to keep things as quiet as possible so I used 5/8″ on the walls and 1/2″ on the ceiling. I rented one of the insulation blowers from Lowes and laid a 9″ base through the ceiling… I also installed a powered attic vent to help circulate some air up there.

Since these pictures were taken I’ve installed the wall base (black rubber) along the bottom of the walls and moved my toolbox, air compressor, etc in. I’ll get some new pictures taken and post them in the next few days.

Oh, I attempted to start hanging the ceiling (as you can see from the pics) and my drywall guy said they need to run the other way and be offset.  We tore it down and fixed it before I got any farther.