Our New Ultimate Home
Discussion
Finally got the foundation in for the new shop beside our house. This will save driving 21 miles each way to the current one.
http://home.comcast.net/~rosenracing6/wsb/html/view.cgi-photo.html--SiteID-1442241.html
Will have full machine, welding, and metal fabrication for building, modifying, and improving Ultimas.
It's up to 50'F. here. Time to take the CanAm out for a drive. Will be warmer than yesterdays 39' drive!!
Jack
http://home.comcast.net/~rosenracing6/wsb/html/view.cgi-photo.html--SiteID-1442241.html
Will have full machine, welding, and metal fabrication for building, modifying, and improving Ultimas.
It's up to 50'F. here. Time to take the CanAm out for a drive. Will be warmer than yesterdays 39' drive!!
Jack
Thanks for the kind words guys.
It just got to the point that since I didn't need to be at the airport that much, having the shop there was wearing out my van, and taking too much time.
Several years ago, we were able to purchase that small parcel of land beside our house that was too small for a house to be put on, but large enough for a shop.
As for making the shop larger, there was something about it already looking larger than the house, and then there's the "wife thing". In order to get the workshop, it's also costing me to re-design the interior of the house; mainly a new bathroom for the missus.
Al; many a great car has come out of a chicken coop, just make sure you don't lay an egg!! Just yoking!! By having read your past posts, I know your car will be First Class.
Dave. Having spent some time in England, I realize that space is at more of a premium, but of all the Brits that I have known, that has never been a problem. They have always made do with what they have, and have appreciated it more when completed.
Brad: As I've stated in the past, the GTR is a far more practical car than the CanAm, and given the choice, that's the way I might have gone, despite the fact that I like the appearance of the CanAm more.
Mack, yes there will be heat, although not quite sure what system at this time, but we have worked out how to make a small part-time spray booth. Will send you pictures as building progresses.
Once the dust clears, and we're in the shop, we'll start back working on producing some of the mods we've come up with.
Thanks All
Jack
It just got to the point that since I didn't need to be at the airport that much, having the shop there was wearing out my van, and taking too much time.
Several years ago, we were able to purchase that small parcel of land beside our house that was too small for a house to be put on, but large enough for a shop.
As for making the shop larger, there was something about it already looking larger than the house, and then there's the "wife thing". In order to get the workshop, it's also costing me to re-design the interior of the house; mainly a new bathroom for the missus.
Al; many a great car has come out of a chicken coop, just make sure you don't lay an egg!! Just yoking!! By having read your past posts, I know your car will be First Class.
Dave. Having spent some time in England, I realize that space is at more of a premium, but of all the Brits that I have known, that has never been a problem. They have always made do with what they have, and have appreciated it more when completed.
Brad: As I've stated in the past, the GTR is a far more practical car than the CanAm, and given the choice, that's the way I might have gone, despite the fact that I like the appearance of the CanAm more.
Mack, yes there will be heat, although not quite sure what system at this time, but we have worked out how to make a small part-time spray booth. Will send you pictures as building progresses.
Once the dust clears, and we're in the shop, we'll start back working on producing some of the mods we've come up with.
Thanks All
Jack
Hi Jack,
I've done the temporary paint booth thing with plastic sheet and PVC pipe for the framework. Works a treat. Check with your local laws for spraying paint where you live. The most important thing in a home built booth is airflow. Most temp booths are cross flow. Preferably you'd like to create a positive pressure booth with a fan at the back, but my experience is that it takes a lot of airflow to clear it out quickly and if its in a garage expect it to seep through the seams into the shop. Now I must give a little disclaimer. This is the setup I use, but I do not endorse it or recommend it. Its just how I do it. I cut a large square whole in the back of the booth and custom cut a spray booth filter to fit the hole 3'x3' or so. At the front of the booth going out my garage, I run 6 to 8 cheap box fans to suck out the fumes and overspray. This provides some pretty impressive airflow and there's very little overspray present. With regards to safety you should really use fans with a fully enclosed motor and make sure the blades don't spark, but I'm of the personal opinion that the concentration levels are so low with my setup that I'm not concerned. Besides my blades are plastic. For me, it was more important to spend my money on a good fresh air supply. I'm a one beer guy when it comes to ISO's. The biggest tip I can give is to put your entry right next to the exhaust of the booth if you choose to go with a negative pressure design like I've done. This way when you open the door(or unzip the door as I do) you don't get a bunch of trash sucked in the booth onto the paint. The guys over at Paintucation have built temporary booths similar to mine (some use a 2x4 framework) and are great to talk to about all paint related questions. I've got a real good article for setting up a gun if you ever need it. You'll also catch me practicing with water quite a bit (which really helped when I was first learning). Also, the Paintucation videos are exceptional. If you ever decide to paint an ultima(which you probably won't), I recommend taking the body completely off. The overspray gets all over the chassis, even with it carefully masked off. Good luck and keep us posted with some photos.
Cheers!
-Mack
I've done the temporary paint booth thing with plastic sheet and PVC pipe for the framework. Works a treat. Check with your local laws for spraying paint where you live. The most important thing in a home built booth is airflow. Most temp booths are cross flow. Preferably you'd like to create a positive pressure booth with a fan at the back, but my experience is that it takes a lot of airflow to clear it out quickly and if its in a garage expect it to seep through the seams into the shop. Now I must give a little disclaimer. This is the setup I use, but I do not endorse it or recommend it. Its just how I do it. I cut a large square whole in the back of the booth and custom cut a spray booth filter to fit the hole 3'x3' or so. At the front of the booth going out my garage, I run 6 to 8 cheap box fans to suck out the fumes and overspray. This provides some pretty impressive airflow and there's very little overspray present. With regards to safety you should really use fans with a fully enclosed motor and make sure the blades don't spark, but I'm of the personal opinion that the concentration levels are so low with my setup that I'm not concerned. Besides my blades are plastic. For me, it was more important to spend my money on a good fresh air supply. I'm a one beer guy when it comes to ISO's. The biggest tip I can give is to put your entry right next to the exhaust of the booth if you choose to go with a negative pressure design like I've done. This way when you open the door(or unzip the door as I do) you don't get a bunch of trash sucked in the booth onto the paint. The guys over at Paintucation have built temporary booths similar to mine (some use a 2x4 framework) and are great to talk to about all paint related questions. I've got a real good article for setting up a gun if you ever need it. You'll also catch me practicing with water quite a bit (which really helped when I was first learning). Also, the Paintucation videos are exceptional. If you ever decide to paint an ultima(which you probably won't), I recommend taking the body completely off. The overspray gets all over the chassis, even with it carefully masked off. Good luck and keep us posted with some photos.
Cheers!
-Mack
Mack
Great post. A lot of good ideas that will be helpful to all. I like your idea of several fans rather than one big fan. I'm fortunate, that if I decide to put the exhaust out the back, all I'll do is coat a few scrubb pines. Don't know if you have them in Texas, but they grow like weeds here!!
Will send you some photos when interior is in place. Because there's a mezzanine, and lolly columns, there's a natural framework for the plastic.
I hope my days of painting whole cars is over, but there are times when you just want to do a small panel or two, and this time I'm going to try and avoid over-spaying the whole shop.
will be in touch
Jack
Great post. A lot of good ideas that will be helpful to all. I like your idea of several fans rather than one big fan. I'm fortunate, that if I decide to put the exhaust out the back, all I'll do is coat a few scrubb pines. Don't know if you have them in Texas, but they grow like weeds here!!
Will send you some photos when interior is in place. Because there's a mezzanine, and lolly columns, there's a natural framework for the plastic.
I hope my days of painting whole cars is over, but there are times when you just want to do a small panel or two, and this time I'm going to try and avoid over-spaying the whole shop.
will be in touch
Jack
Painting a car really takes a lot of time doesn't it? I've had a couple of start at 6p.m. end at 3 a.m. experiences. Paint...let it flash...paint...let it flash...etc...etc...I've got a lot of respect for the boys who do that for a living. All the prep work and sanding is such an enormous and physically exhausting work. Power tools really help with that. Yeah Jack, I have one large shop fan and tried that route, but 3 small box fans easily pulled more air than my 1 large fan could push and was able to pressurize the booth with. Now the big boys with their industrial automotive spray booths that are $100k move so much air that the painters don't even wear respirators. Talk about air changes per minute. Chingow! Not recommended of course, but I spoke to a guy who was a painter for a large dealership and he didn't even get a buzz. Some people can handle ISO's better than others (I'm not one of those people). Those booths can also heat up to 180 deg. F. for force drying.
The other cool thing that I use my temp booth for is bodywork (if I have a lot of it). Keeps the sanding dust down considerably and I wish I had used this more when I first began the bodywork on my Sports.
P.s. Do wear a respirator when sanding fiberglass. Many of the ol' schoolers used to think that the sanding dust from fiberglass was not small enough to damage your lungs, but now everyone has sort of realized that the stuff doesn't cough out. You definitely need protection with Carbon fiber and Kevlar which are broken up into even smaller particles than fiberglass when sanding.
Cheers!
-Mack
The other cool thing that I use my temp booth for is bodywork (if I have a lot of it). Keeps the sanding dust down considerably and I wish I had used this more when I first began the bodywork on my Sports.
P.s. Do wear a respirator when sanding fiberglass. Many of the ol' schoolers used to think that the sanding dust from fiberglass was not small enough to damage your lungs, but now everyone has sort of realized that the stuff doesn't cough out. You definitely need protection with Carbon fiber and Kevlar which are broken up into even smaller particles than fiberglass when sanding.
Cheers!
-Mack
It's a good thing I don't have to work on the Ultima, since I'm doing the interior.
Roof trusses might start going up today.
http://home.comcast.net/~rosenracing6/wsb/html/view.cgi-photo.html--SiteID-1452441.html
The neighbours don't seem that happy with me!!
Roof trusses might start going up today.
http://home.comcast.net/~rosenracing6/wsb/html/view.cgi-photo.html--SiteID-1452441.html
The neighbours don't seem that happy with me!!
eliot said:
USCANAM said:
too small for a house to be put on, but large enough for a shop.
They would fit about three 4 bedroom houses on that plot here in the UK.
(I'm not joking)
Eliot.
Eliot.
Remember what they say
"It's not the size that counts, it's what you do with it"
On the serious side, I gave a lot of thought before I even made this post, not wanting to offend builders in other parts of our world that are not blessed with the space that some of us have here in the U.S..
It was not always this way for me. I built my first hydroplane at age 14 in my parents small 1 car garage in Toronto. Their car stayed in the driveway.
Throughout my building life; boats, iceboats, planes, and cars, it has just been recently that I've had the facilities to work in a less cramped arena, and I feel that I've paid my dues, and I deserve it in my remaining years. I'm fortunate that my wife let's me have that view.
What I've found in my many years of building, if the desire is there to build it, you'll find a way to do it. I've also learned to accept my limitations and resources, because no matter what you have, there will always be someone who has more. Enjoy and appreciate what YOU have, and what YOU can do with it.
The main reasons we undertook this building venture was to have the shop closer to home and avoid all the wasted time and driving we've been doing, and to show that we are taking a serious step in working with SuperCars.
Hope we can be of help to you.
Regards to all
Jack
>> Edited by USCANAM on Friday 26th March 13:37
The weather has co-operated in the construction. Roof should be finished today.
The shell and floor should be done by next week, then it's my turn.
http://home.comcast.net/~rosenracing6/wsb/html/view.cgi-photo.html--SiteID-1466784.html
The shell and floor should be done by next week, then it's my turn.
http://home.comcast.net/~rosenracing6/wsb/html/view.cgi-photo.html--SiteID-1466784.html
Jack,
I noticed you went with stick frame construction. This is sort of unusual in my area. Did you consider a metal building? Now that I think about it, its probably easier to insulate than a metal building for those colder temperatures. Looks a lot better than a metal building. Are you going to finish out the inside as well? Do you plan on building cars up in the loft or will you use that for an office? Looks great!
Cheers!
-Mack
I noticed you went with stick frame construction. This is sort of unusual in my area. Did you consider a metal building? Now that I think about it, its probably easier to insulate than a metal building for those colder temperatures. Looks a lot better than a metal building. Are you going to finish out the inside as well? Do you plan on building cars up in the loft or will you use that for an office? Looks great!
Cheers!
-Mack
Mack.
Questions...questions...questions. I love them.
How come no one has asked me how I'm going to get a car up and down from the loft?
I kept hearing all these ads on the radio about how cheap it is to put up a pre-fab building. Not sure if they have these same ads in Europe.
When I looked into it, the quotes I got were far more expensive, and it would have been more compicated to insulate and finish the walls the way I wanted them.
Through a friend in the local Porsche club, I was put in touch with this contractor who is also into sports cars. He was highly recommended by my Porsche friend, as he had done some work on his mother-in-law's house.
As for construction, you might notice he used 2x6's, rather than the usual 2x4's for the framing. Also here in Massachusetts, your foundations have to go down 4 feet because of frost, which adds to the cost.
It looks like if necessary, there's room in the loft to assemble 2 Ultima sized cars, and still leave plenty of room to move around. Initial thoughts were to have a lot of storage up there, but the contractor is going to put a floor on the trusses that are over the lift area, and that will be give me about 200 sq. feet of storage.
At this point, hopefully the floor will be poured early next week, and we can start finishing the walls, and fabricating the barn type doors. Had a quote on electric overhead doors, which might not clear the van. The fact that they were going to be over $1000 each, made the barns doors look extremely attractive, since I can make the 4 doors at about $100 each.
The outside of the shop will be vinyl, same as the house. The house was just redone, so the shades should match.
A lot of inspiration for this project evolved from seeing photos of Craig Bramscher's shop. Now he can blame me for his next one, which rumour has, that it's exceptionable!!
Jack
Questions...questions...questions. I love them.
How come no one has asked me how I'm going to get a car up and down from the loft?
I kept hearing all these ads on the radio about how cheap it is to put up a pre-fab building. Not sure if they have these same ads in Europe.
When I looked into it, the quotes I got were far more expensive, and it would have been more compicated to insulate and finish the walls the way I wanted them.
Through a friend in the local Porsche club, I was put in touch with this contractor who is also into sports cars. He was highly recommended by my Porsche friend, as he had done some work on his mother-in-law's house.
As for construction, you might notice he used 2x6's, rather than the usual 2x4's for the framing. Also here in Massachusetts, your foundations have to go down 4 feet because of frost, which adds to the cost.
It looks like if necessary, there's room in the loft to assemble 2 Ultima sized cars, and still leave plenty of room to move around. Initial thoughts were to have a lot of storage up there, but the contractor is going to put a floor on the trusses that are over the lift area, and that will be give me about 200 sq. feet of storage.
At this point, hopefully the floor will be poured early next week, and we can start finishing the walls, and fabricating the barn type doors. Had a quote on electric overhead doors, which might not clear the van. The fact that they were going to be over $1000 each, made the barns doors look extremely attractive, since I can make the 4 doors at about $100 each.
The outside of the shop will be vinyl, same as the house. The house was just redone, so the shades should match.
A lot of inspiration for this project evolved from seeing photos of Craig Bramscher's shop. Now he can blame me for his next one, which rumour has, that it's exceptionable!!
Jack
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