Workshop Progress

We are beginning to dip our toes into the uncharted territory or interior workshop construction.  To make this shop functional, there's one small thing we need.  Electricity.  With a bucket load of other projects that had to get done right away, we have resorted to plugging in an extension cord in our bedroom and running it out the window into the backyard to plug in our neighbors miter saw that he loaned us.  You see, we have a brand new beautiful saw, but no power in the shop to turn it on.  Sad face.

A weekend freed up so Brent took the opportunity to progress toward that electrical goal.  I helped for all of an hour, got bored and frustrated that I couldn't do more to help him...plus, that OSB is really heavy...so Brent and I agreed that it would be best for our sanity if I went inside to take a nap.  He didn't actually say that, but that's what I told myself.

Anyway, he installed the outlets and pulled wiring to them.  Wish I could tell you more about that step but I would fall asleep from boredom before I could finish the sentence.  After the outlets were wired, he put insulation between the studs and screwed OSB over top.

Not to exciting, huh.

It's a little hard to see all of the electrical he's been running behind all these cabinets but I can assure you, it's there.

Lookin' good and working hard, Brent!  Sorry I swept up that pile of sawdust and then didn't put it in the trash can so now you have to work around it.  Right next to Brent is our wood stove that we'll be installing.  South Dakota winters get cold but this workshop is gonna be hot, hot, hot!

Once the walls had been insulated and sheathed, he moved onto the same process for the ceiling.  

In this next photo you can see the shop layout starting to come together.  We had a bunch of random cabinet bases to use as the bench to support the saw.

The black and yellow plastic totes under the saw currently hold our wood drop off.  We use the scrap in our backyard fireplace and eventually will use it in the wood stove to heat the workshop through the winters.

We found this wall organizer at Menard's for $30.  It holds a ton of screws and all of the other little hardware pieces that we usually have just floating around.

 Here's the roof, mostly insulated with a little bit more sheathing to go.

 And lastly, we added some exterior lighting to the workshop.  We are still without electricity back there, so we can't turn them on yet but they are motion activated so we didn't even have to put them on a switch.

To wrap up the outside we'll still need to add some gutter.  I'm trying to talk Brent into using rain chains instead of downspouts if they aren't too expensive.  Does anyone have experience with rain chains and whether or not they work well?  Luckily, we don't really have to worry too much about keeping water away from the foundation like you would in a house but we still need the water to shed away from it.