buying/building a freestanding shop/barn?

[TominZebulon]

Chris, I would probably have to say no to making it worth it. The lumber is usually #3 and you would have to go through a whole stack to find the straight boards you would want to make the workbench. I am only 5 minutes from BDC and 15 minutes from Lowe's and will always drive past BDC to get my lumber.

[brenthenze]

Wow, thanks for all the advice, guys--Tom, I'd love to see your materials list if you have it handy!

Mike, I've looked at the HD building--it looks to me like good, solid construction, and I've definitely thought that that might be the way to go, though I'd want to scale it up a bit (and I have to admit that I'm secretly attracted to the idea of building something from scratch if it can be justified by cost--just don't tell my wife!)

The prefab buildings are a little plain right out of the box, but some design touches could easily be added--some bigger windows, a barn door, maybe a hay door with one of those pulley contraptions to hoist stuff to the second floor (just because they're cool).

Bernhard: I'd never even considered getting registered as a farm! This may be a dumb question, but wouldn't the property need to actually *be* a working farm in order to qualify? And is the cost of a building permit really greater than the cost of whatever permits are necessary to register as a farm? (My property is only 1.5 acres...though we do have a rather nice little garden, imho, and if this were an excuse to get chickens, I'm all for it!)

[NCPete]

Brent,

living in Farmville, shouldn't you automatically qualify as a farm?????

[zapdafish]

http://www.84lumber.com/

84lumber has plans/kits as well if you are going that route, they are located right down the street from me in holly springs.

if you click on the projects tab, they have garages, pole barns, and storage barns, one of them might suit you as well

[DaveD]

I'll take the other side of this coin and say you should stick build it from scratch. The prefabs/kits I have seen over the years just seem to cut corners to me. They seem to be minimum material sizes and maximum spans. If you want to reengineer windows/doors, etc then someone needs to know what they are doing. either you or the guy at the kit place.

I recently built a 12x12 shed for a friend of mine (I know its smaller and not a shop) and every prefab shed we looked at basically 'sucked'. There was $2500 in material (including the treated deck flooring) in the one I built and even with the labor charge he was really happy he went for the stick build one.

A 16x24 shouldn't be too hard to build. The 2 story part will be tricky if you don't like heights. I built a single story 24x42 addition myself (except for the footers/concrete/brick) the carpentry work took 2 weekends of a couple of friends helping and 2 weeks of my time to fully weather it in. That included setting scissor trusses by hand.

You should draw out a 2 story 16x24. It might look weird being 2 stories.

The 1st floor ceiling height should be at least 9' so you can stand plywood up without bashing the ceiling. 10' would even be better.If you are going to load the 2nd floor with lumber, etc then I'd go for 2x10 ceiling joists. I like the idea of an outside stairway. Build a trap door into the shop ceiling so you can get material up/down easily, including plywood. I'd build it all on 16" centers and probably 2x6 walls if I want to insulate it real good.

Working up a material list shouldn't be too hard once you know what you want to build.

Remember that any building code is a set of 'minimum' standards. Plan accordingly.