Barndominium/Shop or "real" House?

[LouNY]

Last week was kind of a miserable week for working outdoors, temps down into the low teens and windy, then it "warmed" up to the 30's and low 40's with rain and wind.

 

[WinterDeere]

Last week was kind of a miserable week for working outdoors, temps down into the low teens and windy, then it "warmed" up to the 30's and low 40's with rain and wind.

Yeah, we had a brutal early December, here. Several mornings of single digits, with afternoons in teens and twenties, with many of those days too windy. I was trying to do wiring on a trailer, and it’s real hard to keep fingers working on tiny splices and crimps at those temperatures, let alone make heat-shrink tubing shrink or solder a splice.

 

[ETD66SS]

Yeah, we had a brutal early December, here. Several mornings of single digits, with afternoons in teens and twenties, with many of those days too windy. I was trying to do wiring on a trailer, and it’s real hard to keep fingers working on tiny splices and crimps at those temperatures, let alone make heat-shrink tubing shrink or solder a splice.

I am really looking forward to my heated concrete floors in my shop after 30+ years of working on vehicles and equipment in the cold.

 

[WinterDeere]

I have 5 garage bays here at the house and a 6th much larger at a rental, and my shop is both heated and air-conditioned, so I get to do most vehicular work indoors in heated (or cooled) comfort. But this trailer is too big to fit in any of those here at the house, with any sort of ease.

I will admit to one big mistake, tho. My shop has two heated bays that are only 20 feet deep, since it's built into a standard 18th-century carriage barn, which were pretty much always 20 feet deep. I should have put more effort into expanding the footprint of the structure in a way that gave me deeper bays, when I electrified, insulated, and re-sided the building. I was having trouble envisioning an easy way to do that without violating property setbacks or really blowing the project up bigger than I'd budgeted. But as is often the case, a plan to have done so became apparent to me after the project was completed. Doh!

I have two 25 foot deep bays attached to the house, but my tools are 150 feet away in the carriage barn, so not real practical for working on things.

 

[pmsmechanic]

I have two 25 foot deep bays attached to the house, but my tools are 150 feet away in the carriage barn, so not real practical for working on things.

It wouldn't take me long to have 2 sets of basic tools.

 

[WinterDeere]

It wouldn't take me long to have 2 sets of basic tools.

Attached garage is for cars, kids bikes, sports equipment, and refrigerators and freezer. I'm happy enough having all my tools in the detached shop.

At some point, despite having spent a fortune on building out that old carriage barn, I might very well blow up the whole thing and start over with a larger footprint. I'm currently paying to rent a very large garage bay to store a few boats, and it would be very nice to make space to bring them home, in addition to making more space for working on larger vehicles indoors.

 

[ETD66SS]

I finally finished putting up all the pex tubing under the subfloor.

I have all the tubing running to the area under the stairwell, still need to clean that up when I figure out how I am mounting the manifolds. For now I left all the pex tubing extra long.

For the under fridge area, I insulated the pex from the sub-floor so I'm not over-taxing the fridge when heating the floor.

Issue I am having now that maybe some of you can help with is distance between the opposing countertop and the range island. My current layout has about 44" between them:

Right now the range is backed up all the way to the gas line to get that 44", I may consider moving the gas line about 6" to get me more room because when I stand in my mockup, the range feels too close to the fridge. Plumber says jogging that over 6" is not a problem.

Here is a mock up picture of the spacing, the cardboard box represents the fridge location.

I'm reading that a comfortable galley kitchen spacing is 42", so I am 2" over that. Some people prefer 48".

 

[Carl_NH]

48" is not too much - we have 72" between the Fridge to sink and stove side. Two can work in the kitchen and not trip over each other.

Overall it's looking good!

 

[civilian]

How many are working in the kitchen at a time? Can two appliance doors be opened at the same time and provide work/walk space between them? Our kitchen works great with one person. When the kids come home, two people in the kitchen is tight but doable. Jon

 

[WM75Guy]

We went with 42" for our aisles. The appliances open to an aisle. We moved the dishwasher over and put a cabinet between it and the sink so it lines up with the aisle. On the other side of the sink is a trash cabinet that slides out. Two people can pass in the aisles fairly easily.