- Joined
- Mar 20, 2014
- Messages
- 418
I'm still in the process of putting my workshop together, so I thought I'd start a thread rather than continually post in the sticky thread.
Pauline, my ever understanding wife, signed off on the idea of a workshop in the garden - on the proviso it wasn't too big and took up too much room. There was a couple of shrubs in one corner of the garden she'd never been too keen on, so I took them out. The space it gave informed the max. foot print of the workshop.
I went for a wooden shed - mainly as they're inexpensive, and quick to put up. Plus in the UK, you don't need planning permission for them as they are deemed to be 'temporary structures'
I put down a beefy wooden frame as the base. It's 100 x 500mm (2 x 4s) pressure treated beams bolted to metal levelling feet, sat on dense concrete blocks set into the ground or the existing paving where the base extends over it:
There's 9 feet in all - 1 at each corner, 1 in the middle and another 4 half way along each long span. I put some extra cross beams in with joist hangers (the company that supplies the feet suggest this to ensure less bounce in any floor).
The black cloth is just there to suppress any weeds.
After levelling it all up, it was just a matter of waiting for the shed to arrive. It didn't take very long to put up. The two guys who delivered it had up on the base in about 1/2 an hour.
It's 8' x 8', with a stable door and thicker than normal wood siding.
As I plan on using the workshop all year round, insulation was next. I used 25mm solid insulation boards between the studs, with them sat flush to the inner stud surface & away from the outer wall skin to leave an air gap.
The door was also insulated, and then I then boarded out the inside with 9mm OSB. The roof was insulated after the two gable ends had been boarded, and it also got skinned with OSB.
All the internal boarding was painted with white kitchen / bathroom paint so it reflects light, and is grease resistant to a certain degree. After I got all that done, Christmas got in the way - so I left it during the festive period... But started looking for electricians to hook it up to the house electrics.
The local electrician I got in the new year did a very tidy job. He ran armoured cable from the house consumer unit out to the workshop, and then installed a small consumer unit in there to feed the sockets and the light. He put in 6 metal clad double sockets and 5' high frequency strip light, and ran conduit between the lot of them:
Continued in next post...
Pauline, my ever understanding wife, signed off on the idea of a workshop in the garden - on the proviso it wasn't too big and took up too much room. There was a couple of shrubs in one corner of the garden she'd never been too keen on, so I took them out. The space it gave informed the max. foot print of the workshop.
I went for a wooden shed - mainly as they're inexpensive, and quick to put up. Plus in the UK, you don't need planning permission for them as they are deemed to be 'temporary structures'
I put down a beefy wooden frame as the base. It's 100 x 500mm (2 x 4s) pressure treated beams bolted to metal levelling feet, sat on dense concrete blocks set into the ground or the existing paving where the base extends over it:
There's 9 feet in all - 1 at each corner, 1 in the middle and another 4 half way along each long span. I put some extra cross beams in with joist hangers (the company that supplies the feet suggest this to ensure less bounce in any floor).
The black cloth is just there to suppress any weeds.
After levelling it all up, it was just a matter of waiting for the shed to arrive. It didn't take very long to put up. The two guys who delivered it had up on the base in about 1/2 an hour.
It's 8' x 8', with a stable door and thicker than normal wood siding.
As I plan on using the workshop all year round, insulation was next. I used 25mm solid insulation boards between the studs, with them sat flush to the inner stud surface & away from the outer wall skin to leave an air gap.
The door was also insulated, and then I then boarded out the inside with 9mm OSB. The roof was insulated after the two gable ends had been boarded, and it also got skinned with OSB.
All the internal boarding was painted with white kitchen / bathroom paint so it reflects light, and is grease resistant to a certain degree. After I got all that done, Christmas got in the way - so I left it during the festive period... But started looking for electricians to hook it up to the house electrics.
The local electrician I got in the new year did a very tidy job. He ran armoured cable from the house consumer unit out to the workshop, and then installed a small consumer unit in there to feed the sockets and the light. He put in 6 metal clad double sockets and 5' high frequency strip light, and ran conduit between the lot of them:
Continued in next post...
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