NXCoupe's Shop Build

[Nxcoupe]

Ok, last post of the night. So i call the electrician guy and tell him I'm finally ready. He says, aw damn, I'm covered up right now. I'll send my Uncle out if that's ok. I said sure, send him out. He comes out and is a great guy, we talk politics and make fun of the rainbow brigade next door, and I figure he'll do a decent job at a fair price. I tell him to let me know when and how much. His nephew had told me 800 to 1k. About a week later, I get a text and he says 2k and he'll be out, and that if he has to buy anything, that'll be added on top. I ignored his text. I'm fuming on the couch, in sticker shock, and my wife says, why don't you call Rob? I had forgot all about Rob. He's a friend, and he's an electrician, well of sorts. He likes beer, like, a lot! So I call him. He says, I'll be out tomorrow. He shows up right on time and did one hell of a job. And all of a sudden, I had electricity in my shop! Thanks Rob. I asked him how much did I owe him, and he said, 180 bucks. I gave him 500. It worked out great. The pic of the cart at Menards is nearly 700 bucks worth of stuff. We ran the cable and we ran conduit with CAT6, phone line, and Coax cable in it. I'll hook that up later on. The ladder was our wire rack, we put it on spindles so we could let it roll out. Worked really well

 

[1 Wild R/T]

Sam was great, today they would try to cancel him any way they could....

Can't see how one of his ex's could be involved... He died in a car crash near Laughlin Nv, Drunk kid in a pickup truck crossed the centerline & hit him in his Corvette...

 

[Nxcoupe]

Sam was great, today they would try to cancel him any way they could....

Can't see how one of his ex's could be involved... He died in a car crash near Laughlin Nv, Drunk kid in a pickup truck crossed the centerline & hit him in his Corvette...

The news report said his ex was driving. Maybe they were wrong?

 

[1 Wild R/T]

The news report said his ex was driving. Maybe they were wrong?

I remember it as a GF but I'll go look... Bad deal either way...

From Google
"And he had just married Malika Souiri, 27, who was in the passenger seat during the crash. She suffered a concussion."


And from another article, looks like my memory is fading in regards to Sam, he was driving a Trans Am, not a Vette like he usually drove...

"two young men, in their late teens, driving fast in an old pick-up on a Friday night.

The cab of their Chevrolet truck was reportedly filled with beer cans as they sped through the desert on U.S. Highway 95, swerving into oncoming traffic near the California-Nevada border. Moments after hitting Kinison's Pontiac Trans-Am head-on, fatally injuring the comedian and knocking his new wife unconscious, one of the teen-agers said, according to witnesses: "God! Look at my truck!"

 

[Nxcoupe]

I remember it as a GF but I'll go look... Bad deal either way...

From Google
"And he had just married Malika Souiri, 27, who was in the passenger seat during the crash. She suffered a concussion."

Ok then, thanks I got it wrong for all these years.

 

[1 Wild R/T]

Ok then, thanks I got it wrong for all these years.

End of the day Sam's no longer with us... Saw him twice, first time in Tahoe, bribed the usher & wound up seated at a table practically on the stage, partied with Sam for about an hour after the show.. Second time was a much bigger venue in Fresno & I got the typical seat in the 32nd row...

Sorry for taking this off track.... Though actually you started it....

 

[ckessel]

Man, you've been having fun like me on my garage. Great set up. Do you have enough clear height for a lift under the trusses?

 

[Nxcoupe]

It's a 16 ft ceiling. I should have noted that. Yes, plenty to spare. Sorry you are experiencing anything near what I have.

 

[Nxcoupe]

I hate laptop keyboards and shortcuts. Just got fucked again, as I type 30 or 40 wpm and it deleted so fast I couldn't stop in time. Anyway, I'll start all over again. So, we got power out to the shop and contemplated the next moves. We discussed painting the floor and went with the logic that without lighting the back sides of the shop would be very hard to see if we missed any places or not, which was a bit flawed but, you know. We decided to put the ceiling and lights up and get light, then prep floor and paint. I looked around for ceiling sheet metal and found a guy on market place that was selling 12' by 38" outside wall sheets for 33 bucks each, no tax, picked up in Indy. I thought it was decent but figured since actual ceiling sheet is a thinner gauge and should be cheaper, right? I called the first place and they wanted 37 a piece plus tax. I called the second place and they wanted 43 bucks each, plus tax. I got with the guy in Indy and told him I'd take white. He said they were out of white but he'd let me know when it came in. About a month later, he got with me and said he had plenty of white now. So Neil and I jumped in my truck with enclosed trailer in tow and headed Northwest. We got there and I tried to negotiate with the guy a little but he wasn't budging. I figured since I was buying 90 sheets, I'd get a bit of a break, even $.50 each would have made me happy. But nope, so we went to work carrying in 90 sheets of steel. It's not lite and multiply each by 90 and you get the idea. We were beat and just melted in spite of the 50 deg temps in April. We laid them on the floor of the trailer not really knowing any other way to secure them? So I paid the guy and we jumped in the truck, grabbed lunch and then headed towards home. Getting on the highway we were going up a steep incline on the onramp and I goosed it a bit to get up to speed and felt a jerk and bang and the truck jerked backwards a bit, figured the load settled a bit, we kept going. Sure enough, we hit traffic, stopped, and the person in front of me was not paying a lick of attention and jammed on their brakes, and I had to do the same, we were nearing to be stopped when suddenly a huge bang and the truck lurched forward about 3 feet. Good thing I had assured clear distance. When we got home and opened the trailer door, we saw what happened. The trailer has a workbench of sorts with a stack of drawers and a 1/2" diameter rod going down in front of them to hold the drawers closed. Good thing too, because that thing is shaped like a U where all the sheetmetal slid forward and whacked it. It also damaged about 40% of the panels, but not too bad that a Hammer didn't straighten it out. The big damage was to my receiver on the truck, it ovalled out the pin hole so the trailer would slam back and forth depending on whether you were stopping or going. What a fiasco.
I rented a scissors lift and picked it up and brought it home. A word of advise, you have to take an online operators safety course before you can rent one. I did it, and it was free. We used three guys, using our heads and arms, we raised the panel up, supported it with our heads while we got screws and drills ready, while the center guy used his arms to hold up the panel. First row and a half absolutely killed us. By the time we were done with the ceiling, we could knock out 3 or 4 rows in the same time and not be that hurt. I picked white for the reflective qualities. That is all the garbage out of my first storage unit, 2 more to go. We, or I, had to move this **** all around in a real life version of tetris so we could get to the ceiling, wiring, lights, etc. It SUCKED. If it hadn't of saved me 300 bucks a month, I'd of let it sit there.

 

[Nxcoupe]

I was pretty set on putting LED lights in after speaking with some of my friends about it and seeing how bright their areas were with those lights. I also was informed of the electric savings of LED over florescent lighting. It's staggering. I searched around and found a good deal on 8' LED lights in a 10 pack, 95 watt, with some cords and plugs, etc. for 16.87 each. So not bad at all, that price included shipping to my house. I went to Menards and bought 20 ferring strips, 1 x 3 boards, which turned out to be garbage wood and over 60 bucks! Sheesh. Those used to be .50 cents a piece. Damn. So anyway, I went home, snapped a line down the 'middle' of the boards, some were warped so badly, the 'middle was more like trying the find the middle of a banana. anyway, I went forward and put the clips on inline so the lights would snap in without an issue. I predrilled holes so the screws would go through the crap boards without cracking them. I then countersunk the holes with a 1/4" bit so the head of the screw would sink below the light. I used 2" or so barn siding screws with the washers removed. I got them all ready, got the lights prepped and started laying them out. I did all this by myself. It wasn't too hateful to do. I got up quite a few, then hooked them up and turned them on. All I can say is WOW! That's a lot of light from such a little bulb.

 

[ckessel]

Let there be light! On my unit, saved the floor painting for last. Walls got painted, lights and signs hung up with a scissor lift since the one side is 18' at the peak. Didn't want any skid marks on the paint or have it get torn. I've installed welding damage, DOH!, since then plus some paint overspray. Its not a showcase but I do like to keep it as clean as possible. I run the shop vac whenever I create debris, don't want to grind it into the paint under the creeper or other casters.

 

[Nxcoupe]

Let there be light! On my unit, saved the floor painting for last. Walls got painted, lights and signs hung up with a scissor lift since the one side is 18' at the peak. Didn't want any skid marks on the paint or have it get torn. I've installed welding damage, DOH!, since then plus some paint overspray. Its not a showcase but I do like to keep it as clean as possible. I run the shop vac whenever I create debris, don't want to grind it into the paint under the creeper or other casters.

I haven't gotten to the floor painting debacle yet. Buckle up, it's gonna get rough. Lol. Sounds like you got yours all finished?

 

[Nxcoupe]

So with the ceiling up and lights shining brightly, I decided it was time to get started on the floor painting. Remember when I ordered the paint? December, keep that in mind. So another part of the hold up was trying to find a machine that made concrete have a 100 grit sandpaper surface. Being an ex body guy, I know what 100 grit looks and feels like. I thought that sounded pretty damn rough, but I went with it. After calling every tool rental in the area with no luck, I went to one of the local places in person and they showed me what they had to offer. We settled on a floor sander with a very rough pad on it. I took it home, wrestled it out of my 4wd truck bed, and plugged it in. Neil was there when I turned this thing on, and it took me with it at first. I was dancing my way across the floor holding on for dear life before I figured out the trick of keeping control of it. I did a few feet and stopped. It barely scratched the surface. So I loaded it up and took it back. They refunded my money without a hassle. I thought that was pretty cool of them. They are now my rental place of choice. I decided to call the guy who sold me this stuff and just ask him point blank, what do I need? I did just that and George was helpful and said you want a floor grinder, preferably a dual head unit, with 60 to 80 grit diamond bits in it. Finally, something I could actually go and get. I called and ended up having to go to another location to get the machine I needed and you have to buy the bits. They'll rent them to you for about 20 bucks less than buying them. No brainer to me. I bought them. They are held in the machine by magnets. We loaded it with a fork lift, which didn't give me the warm fuzzys, until one of the guys said, here, take these ramps to unload it. I got home, put the ramps on the tailgate and down we went. Sheesh, that thing is frickin heavy! Got it off without any injuries to it or me. I hooked up the vacuum cleaner it comes with, plugged everything in and hit the vacuum, then turned on the machine. Now they don't show you how to work this thing at all because most of these guys have never done it themselves. I had to figure it all out. The vacuum is just there to keep the airborne dust down. My clean, smooth floor looked and felt like walking in Afghanistan again. What a mess! Remember when we rented the scissors lift to get the ceiling and Search lights up? Well that POS put tire marks all over my fresh concrete, so I ended up having to make multiple passes with the grinder to get them all up. Never again! I tried using a broom, then tried the vacuum. Nothing really worked well. I ended up sweeping with a broom, then using the squeeqy attachment, I was able to suck up all the fine dust the broom left behind. I put a new filter in my vacuum and was concerned that it would get clogged like as soon as I started as dusty as this place was. When I rented the grinder, their vac came with bags to put in. They worked well, so I went to the hardware store and bought the new filter and a pack of bags. I installed the new filter and put the bag in. Man that works! Great suction and the filter is still looking like new. All the dust goes into the bag so you just lift it out and throw it away, no muss, no fuss. It took about 8 hours to do this section and clean it up. Maybe 10. I wasn't keeping track.

 

[Nxcoupe]

Once all done, after at least 3 passes with additional touch up passes to problem areas, the floor was prepped and ready for paint. I want to note, this is NOT 100 grit roughness, more like 320. So he was sorely misinformed on that. Once we had it all prepped, it was time to start painting the floor. I had my friend Cameron mixing the paint, while Neil and I spread it out, him on the squeegee and me on the roller. You pour the paint out on the floor, the whole bucket, do 2 mixed gallons at a time, then squeegee it out and then roll it into the concrete and make sure it has complete coverage. I marked out with tape the 260 square foot areas we painted. As we applied the paint, we lifted the tape. Ok, sounds simple right? Remember when I bought this paint? And when I planned to use it was in Jan/Feb/March timeframe when the concrete was pretty cold, well, when we started painting it was 85* in the shop and the concrete was close to that. we had the fast dry formula and the combination just did not work as I had hoped or expected. It was dry before I even got finished rolling it. Then when I pulled the tape up, we had tape marks. All marks of a group of inexperienced guys painting floors. It doesn't look fantastic, but it does look shiny and unless you get right over it and look down, the imperfections aren't apparent. Plus, with equipment, cars, welding, cutting, dragging stuff across it, etc, it'll be just fine. Easy to clean up too. Just use a dust mop. This stuff is basically a plastic, and is completely different from epoxy. I was able to walk on it after an hour and drove cars on it 2 days later because the weather was going to go to crap.
Next, we had to move all the crap from the north side of the shop to the southwest corner of the shop. It was a pita. I did a lot of it myself. The pic above is the start of the totes being stacked. I had help with some of that, but did most of it myself. Once we got the stuff off the concrete, I rented the grinder and put my stones in it, and went to work. This time, it only took one pass and it was ready, as we did not run the scissors lift over the clean concrete floor, so no tire marks. I got it done in one day, so I rented it that morning and took it back the next day. Neil came over and helped me get it up onto the truck.

 

[Nxcoupe]

As soon as we were finished with the floor, I called George, the paint guy, to discuss the issues we had. I also needed to order more paint to do the rest of the floor. He agreed the fast dry was completely wrong for the temps we experienced end of April, beginning of May. He said we needed the slow dry, so I placed the order, it ended up being 5 'kits', gallon of part A and a gallon of part 'B'. When we ordered the first batch, 20 gallons, half A, half B, he told me they came in gallon cans and you just mixed the 2. Oh contrare, it came in 4 5 gallon buckets and my buddy Cam took 2 days to get his back in shape again after pouring a gallon at a time out of each one, and the part B is like molasses coming out of the container. Never again. So I ordered up the individual cans of A and B, and the gray pigment and off we went. I also ordered white pigment for the engine room floor because I want it to be spotlessly clean and white will insure that. About a week later, the paint showed up.

 

[Nxcoupe]

It took a few weeks for us to get organized and everyone together to paint the floors. I gathered up the boxes of paint and brought them out to the shop, we spread out a tarp like we did before to mix on, and opened the boxes. ****! they packed gallon cans in with the gray and white pigment and the heavy jugs crushed the pigment jars and gray paint was everywhere inside the box. Now what? We had some gray left over from the previous job and decided we'd go ahead and use that plus what was in the kit that was still good. The white had broken, but luckily hadn't spilled much if any out of it. Miracles do happen. So we decided to mark off the areas we were painting using a chalk line and snapping the lines down. This method is the way to do it. It worked like a charm, no tape lines. We got the white mixed and started applying it, it was about 90 degrees in the barn at that time, and as I was rolling, I heard that old familiar sound of the paint sticking to the roller, and I freaked. We hurried up and finished, and I asked Cam to look at the cans, sure enough, fast dry, and we unpacked the others and some were slow dry and some were fast dry, so they shipped me whatever they had on the shelf. My bad, I should have checked when i received it, I'm bad about that. So we mixed as much of the slow stuff as we had with the gray we could muster, and got most of the floor painted. I called and George got it handled, but it wasn't before I left for vacation, so it just had to wait until I got back. I told you guys this was a total uphill climb.

 

[ckessel]

We could swap stories for sure. My new garage is done and occupied. Been doing some vehicle work in there. Our permit is not written off yet, got an extension, because I have to at a minimum drywall the lid in the old garage. This is because with the new build, size of it/being attached to the side of the house/county rules for fire protection, it had to be retrofitted for fire sprinklers along with the house. I want to move/add some electrical stuff in it then indsulate it like the new one then drywall lid and walls. Kicker is, need dough. We've been running extremely thin since our finances got drained due to the first contractor. See "lessons in patience to me" in this section of the forum.
On your painting, I did my own at our old place in 06 when we were down by San Diego. I sourced some solvent based material in a light tan color. It was in 2.5 gal buckets with multiples to do 1k sqft of floor. I figured out how much each load would cover and then taped off sections so I could keep it consistent on coverage. About 2/3rds of the way through I saw that even though it was the tan color, each section was a different shade of tan. Grumble grumble grumble. Just kept on going and figured that once the floor was occupied, you wouldn't notice it as much. Lesson learned there. Dump all of the color component into one big bucket, stir it all up for awhile, then pour back into the smaller containers.
We've been slowly trying to build up our cash reserve but its an uphill battle right now. Both of us are working part time. I'm on SS due to 2020 issues so I can only bring in a certain amount before getting penalized. Starting tomorrow I go on the DL list for 6-12 weeks as I'm getting some Neurosurgery done on Thursday down at USC. See "updating the super street Mopar" in the members build section. After I get back on the mend I'm going to see if I can put the SS on hold and get back to full time work which will help here at home. I may have a line at a dealer I worked at back in the mid 90's to be back in the parts Dept. I already let him know what's coming this week so he said get ahold of him when its time be be off the DL.

 

[Nxcoupe]

We could swap stories for sure. My new garage is done and occupied. Been doing some vehicle work in there. Our permit is not written off yet, got an extension, because I have to at a minimum drywall the lid in the old garage. This is because with the new build, size of it/being attached to the side of the house/county rules for fire protection, it had to be retrofitted for fire sprinklers along with the house. I want to move/add some electrical stuff in it then indsulate it like the new one then drywall lid and walls. Kicker is, need dough. We've been running extremely thin since our finances got drained due to the first contractor. See "lessons in patience to me" in this section of the forum.
On your painting, I did my own at our old place in 06 when we were down by San Diego. I sourced some solvent based material in a light tan color. It was in 2.5 gal buckets with multiples to do 1k sqft of floor. I figured out how much each load would cover and then taped off sections so I could keep it consistent on coverage. About 2/3rds of the way through I saw that even though it was the tan color, each section was a different shade of tan. Grumble grumble grumble. Just kept on going and figured that once the floor was occupied, you wouldn't notice it as much. Lesson learned there. Dump all of the color component into one big bucket, stir it all up for awhile, then pour back into the smaller containers.
We've been slowly trying to build up our cash reserve but its an uphill battle right now. Both of us are working part time. I'm on SS due to 2020 issues so I can only bring in a certain amount before getting penalized. Starting tomorrow I go on the DL list for 6-12 weeks as I'm getting some Neurosurgery done on Thursday down at USC. See "updating the super street Mopar" in the members build section. After I get back on the mend I'm going to see if I can put the SS on hold and get back to full time work which will help here at home. I may have a line at a dealer I worked at back in the mid 90's to be back in the parts Dept. I already let him know what's coming this week so he said get ahold of him when its time be be off the DL.

Well good luck and sorry to hear you are a member of our exclusive club of garage build gauntlet runners. Hope everything goes smoothly for you and get back to work. Dealers are definitely looking for experienced employees. Again, good luck.

 

[ckessel]

Thank you. What's life without daily challenges? At least we don't need cry rooms or safe spaces with stuffed toys, pacifiers etc.

 

[HawkRod]

All I can say is WOW! I has some issues when I built my 3rd bay garage, but that is small (33' x 15' + 10' x 10").
Glad you persevered and (hopefully by now) got through it.

I never treated my garage floor (it is still bare concrete) because I was afraid it would be too slippery if it got wet. I heard some say to mix sand in it so you have better traction. Is your floor slippery when wet?