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Went to visit the new 1200 sq ft new shop in OKC last FRi. the concrete is in, and the building is just a metal shell on a concrete slab. So it will need some type of overlaid floor, and wall. the A framed 14 ft ceiling will have cross beams using 2 by 8/s. Was looking at the cost of 7/16 in osb for flooring seems that the price has tripled from 5.50 to 16.75 at homeless depot in 12 yrs. We could put in extra 2 by 4 studs along the walls and frame it all in with sheet rock. We are moving in right after thanksgiving . Thanks in advance for your ideas and suggestions. I would particularly like to hear from those that have a large outdoor workshop and what you have done to create a good working environment.

We have a free standing stick built shop about the same size (1260 sq ft) with a extra 500 sq ft of walk around attic accessed by attic ladder. We used 2x6 studs to allow more insulation and don't regret it. It's divided into 4 spaces including an assembly area, machine tool space (dirty shop), finishing room and small pantry (extra freezer and refrigerator, food storage and music components). It was designed so that next occupant of this lovely place can easily convert it to a big two car garage with room for storage and workspace. We've been using this shop daily for 13 years and still love it, the assembly area and pantry are the only climate controlled spaces. Concrete floor with knee walls (allows 9' ceilings using 8' studs), concrete siding over Tyvek and sheathing and drywall inside with high gloss paint. We've recently been converting to all LED lighting (big improvement) although we still use halogen in the finishing area.

All my shops have been concrete floor including my new one.... I just put industrial carpet tiles like used in hotels in the showroom area.

Covered all my walls in the working area with pegboard from an old corner store, bought that at my local habitat for humanity re-store. 48 ft of 8 ft wall covered for $23. This is the heavy vinyl coated stuff and not the cheap home depot stuff!

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

My space is not stand-alone but does include a concrete slab and walls. Where partitions have been added I've covered the walls in 1/2" white melamine. This allows me to surface mount electrical boxes, guitar hangers, or whatever, wherever, and it's bright and easy to wipe down. The melamine may seem expensive but compared to finish-taped drywall with paint it's not so bad. As for padding the floor I use Hog Heavan 1" runners down the main paths and the same at all work stations. Very cushy!

I'm hoping they installed a vapor barrier under your new slab..?

Best, M

My shop has concrete floors, insulated walls and an attic. The walls are covered in OSB- which makes it super easy to hang anything since you don't have to hit a stud. I have a small area partitioned for a finish booth. If I could, I'd have it partitioned to separate the dust making tools from my benches.

The two biggest improvements I did when I bought the place were to paint the walls and ceilings white (which added a ton of reflected light) and install evenly spaced and well distributed LED lighting.... well and the HVAC thing.

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My current (and final) shop is a stick-built 20' x 40' garage with a finished upper level. The upper level is insulated but sealed off from the lower level by a large trap door at the top of the stairs, which allows humidifying only the lower level. The floor is concrete, as has been the case with every shop I've ever had. In my experience, the porous concrete serves to stabilize temp and humidity, making recovery to the target levels quick after the door is opened in cold or dry weather. I use fatigue mats at the benches.

The walls were originally drywalled but in rough shape, so I paneled them with a wood-grained board from Lowes. Looks and works wonderfully. $19/sheet.

LED shop lights are wonderful too.

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It will probably be alright.

If you can afford spray foam then do it. It's fantastic stuff for controlling RH and is an amazing insulation too. I would think you would want some sort of epoxy finish on the concrete too. Hopefully they put a moisture barrier under the slab but one over it will probably be a good idea for what ever floor you go with. I would probably go with sheet rock too.

Is the spray foam a industrial type ?? what type . ?? I used the canned stuff from HD around our bsmt window and its fallen down from the concrete wall ???. after
15 yrs.The vapor barrier is in Michael !! Lots of great suggestions here which I really appreciate . I was in columbus mar 2018 visiting our son at the OSU, and will be back in may or june of 2019 for his graduation GREG , Hope that your new shop is better than the bsmt one in grandview sounds good !! . I/m assuming your still doing repair work. greg , Once again thank you . I am still open to suggestions. Going to check FB marketplace for used materials we are 35 mi n of OKC off I -35, any OK local luthiers who are in the area are welcome. Cheers

My wife and I were recently going to sell our house and move into something different (that plan got delayed indefinitely), which led me to do a lot of thinking about what I would want from a shop if it were standalone.

RH control is a high priority, so yep, insulate well, get good quality modern HVAC equipment (which nowadays has a lot of RH control built in), and think about incorporating extra humidification and dehumidification into that equipment. For the size space you are talking about, I think a mini split is the crowd favorite right now.

I know that concrete is very practical and inexpensive, but if there were any way to put down a wood floor on top of the concrete, I would do it. It looks better (IMHO) and it feels better (most folks agree). You might as well be comfortable in your work space. I would get the cheapest, ugliest, knot-ridden wood plank flooring you can buy locally and put it down over an appropriate subfloor (maybe plywood on top of Delta-FL).

Whatever you put on the walls to cover the insulation, I think French cleats are a very practical way to take advantage of wall space. You can always move stuff around, and it makes the question of what is underneath it sort of irrelevant, so drywall is fine.

LED overhead lighting, of course. I don't know why anybody would outfit a new shop with anything else in 2018.

Since you have cross beams overhead, it might make a lot of sense to create an attic space for storage (insulate well, obviously) and put in a trap door with stairs.

Windows. Put in a few well insulated windows for some natural light. Not too many, because you need the wall space.

Doors. It makes a lot of sense to future proof the building by framing the most obvious wall (the one closest to a driveway) with a lintel for a garage door, but don't install a garage door. Put in a set of insulated double doors and finish the extra space in the hole to match the doors.

Anyway, that's what I would do. Have fun putting it all together!

Thanks don excellent ideas , it is a pretty wide front entry door. What is a lentel , thought it was a legume ????, Now researching flooring, the cheapest hdwd I could find is 1200 sq ft of mixed ash hickory and w oak in OK for $600 and dried red oak in MO for 900$, yes I want to seal the concrete and lay down 7/16in OSB, and a hdwd floor over that OK is hot and humid for at least 6 mo of the year. So the RH problem definitely needs to be addressed, due to limited funds .will tackle floors first , then walls , then ceilings then attic space.

A lintel is the thing that you install over the opening for a door; it spans the opening and supports the rest of the wall above the opening. For a garage door opening, it tends to be a 6” wide piece of steel that has a right angle profile, as long as needed to span the opening and solidly anchor on the walls that define the opening. If you don’t need a larger door, that’s fine. I’m just offering it as an idea to let the building be converted to a garage someday.

I've never heard that term. Always called that a header.

I actually misspelled it. It is a lintel, not a lentel. Sorry about that. I've gone back and fixed it in the prior posts, due to my embarrassment. I make my living reading and writing; I ought to know better.

If you are talking about Great Stuff then yes that is great stuff for filling in around windows and stuff. I used a lot of it myself. But yes I am talking about the open and or closed cell foam from companies that have the equipment to spray it in place. Industrial stuff I guess. It's expensive but it's the best. I had my shops subfloor done, it's a pine tongue and groove floor and the roof. The walls were done with pink batts to save money.

Any room for plumbing, Ernie? Water is obviously useful to have close by for the work, but I also would not like having to trot to the big house to take care of urgent business, or simply wash my hands or brushes or whatever.

A standalone shop has a lot of upsides, but one downside is that, in a lot of ways, you are building a house minus the kitchen and bedrooms.

I think lintel is a much more elegant term than header but header is what all the builders I know call it. More power to you, I've been known to misspell my own name I always blame old age.

Wow yes, Header is what we call it out west. I/ve made a few of these in my previous incarnation as a carpenters helper in Denver in the 70/s. Not gonna touch the old age nothing, everyone said it was the golden years. Yea sure $#!!. No there is no water . but the back of the house is only 20 ft from the shop. So no problem there, at least not now. I will definitely comparison shop on insulating the wall s and ceiling.Thank you all felllow OLF geniuses to share what you have done it all helps!!

Definitely use header where it is the familiar word to the builder! Maybe lintel was originally meant to refer to stone work; I dunno. I hear it here and there to refer to whatever does that job. Anyhoo, if the walls are wooden studs instead of masonry, you don’t really need to plan now for a later garage conversion. You can always cut a hole in a wall made from wooden studs and put in a header.

Don there is a 3 car garage facing west , and a concrete pathway from the garage doors to the front door of the s. facing workshop . so that we can scoot any lumber/ supplies etc on a 4 wheel dolly to the shop. First priorities in nov will be to get the floor down , in preperation for the moving and arrival of all the large power tools and equipment in jan, Thank you

Lintels in the east and headers headers in the west, bulkheads in the east, fir downs in the west. Like with our brothers across the pond (and to the north) we are peoples separated by a common language. Jargon on!

And don't worry about misspellings when we have "vacuum camping bridges" on the board.

For those contemplating a shop building. There is a treasure trove of used building materials in your local FB marketplace.

Be careful using the canned expanding foam around doors or windows. If construction happens fast, you will have the interior trim on before you realize you can't open the window because the foam has swelled and squeezed the sash. There is a special non-expanding foam for this purpose and my local mid-Atlantic Home Despot and Blowes have it.

Another poorly understood set of terms is muntin/mullion

Ed