(click the pics to enlarge)
Shop Rebuild 101
(click the pics to enlarge)
Ok... Another project...
Just what I need, huh? Well, this project should help me with my many boat projects if I ever get finished with it. I almost bit off more than I can chew on this one. Actually, I did bite off more than I can chew now that I think about it. LOL! Thank goodness for my buddy Trey who can swing a hammer and cut a straight line much better than I can. Without his help I might not have ever got this one finished. It's not finished yet, but there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel. And it's getting brighter!
So, sit back and enjoy our struggles to turn this falling down, worn out, & abused building into a respectable, functional shop again. A shop where we plan to turn out some awesome classic boats, such as Trey's '61 Tomahawk, Kristen's '57 Glass Magic, Michael's '56 Whitehouse, & my early 60's Powercat. Not to mention many, many more.....
Surveying
the Damage...
(click the pics to
enlarge)
Well, as you can see it's been neglected for quite a while. Trees and grass are growing everywhere, and the roof is about to fall in. The roof has only had rolled roofing on it for years and has been leaking for a very long time.
The inside was worse than the outside. Besides being dirty and half full of junk, there was rotten wood everywhere. The roof was sagging dangerously on the west side and rain had been pouring in the panel box for over a year at least. Since the power had been disconnected and they would not reconnect it until the roof was repaired, we opted to run the generator instead of installing a temporary service. A little noisier, but a whole lot cheaper!
YUCK!
First thing to be done was get a load of 2x4's and 2x6's. Then we started jacking up the roof a little to see what would happen. After deciding it wasn't going to fall in on us we put some kickers into place and jacked 3 or 4 trusses up high enough to clear the top plate. Someone had spread plastic in the ceiling (as a water barrier I guess) and I pulled it all down while Trey took the chainsaw to the rotten trusses. There's no turning back now.
We cleaned out the rotten top plate and started replacing it a section at a time. Then we made some patterns and started up the skill saw. After a little trial and error we had the first three sections patched up in about 2 hours time. At this point we thought it was going to be smooth sailing. Were we ever wrong about that...
It rained a little that night so we had to squeegee out part of the shop before we could get started. We had started next to the bathroom wall the day before so we decided to go ahead and replace the bad sections over the bathroom area before moving back toward the front of the shop. We figured a couple of hours and we'd be finished with the bathroom area. After cutting half the bathroom wall out to get to the rotten trusses, we finally got everything jacked up, braced up, and the new sections tied in. Unfortunately, the 2 hours we had planned on turned into about 6!