The Building Shed
Deciding on the design, while time consuming, was the easy part. There were a myriad of decisions to make next and one of the first ones was where to build. I was living in Winston Salem, NC which is about 4 to 5 hours from the coast. Not that far but when you think about hauling a boat that's 46 feet long it becomes a long way to go. So I thought about moving to the coast. My job in the medical field allows me to be very flexible with my job, I can pretty much find work anywhere but my family is local, my kids are in school here and the bottom line is, if I live at the coast I am going to be easily distracted... "Oh, it's such a nice day. Let's take the dinghy out for a sail." So, Winston Salem it is, but where in Winston Salem. The choices were: 1) Build on my current lot. 2) Build on a remote location. 3) Buy or lease warehouse space. I eliminated option 2 right away. I was going to live where I was building regardless of what it took to make that happen. This project is too big to lose time every day to travel to and from the job site. That also affected option 3 to locating a warehouse large enough, and zoned appropriately, for living quarters as well as the construction site. Even to this day I think that this is the way to go. Find a warehouse with a loading dock and a drive in bay. Construct a loft or corner apartment in it. That gives you site security, convenient housing, and a short commute to the jobsite. The downside is that it is hard to find industrial realty that is zoned for living quarters, at least in this area and the decor' is a bit "industrial." Not exactly pleasing to the women in my life. However, if I had found the right space I would have chosen this route. Javier and Luz did just that with their Tiki 38 build in Granada, Spain. They have finished the boat and gone sailing so I don't know how long their website will stay up but for now you can view it here. If the link is down, please let me know. While I was looking for warehouse space I noticed an old greenhouse on some property that had been recently listed for sale. Stopping one day I walked down to the greenhouse to take a look. It must have been abandoned 20 years earlier, it was overgrown with kudzu, the plastic was history and it was full of old greenhouse stuff! It looked like something out of a Stephen King Novel. However, the framing was in good shape and the ventilation fans looked pretty good. The footprint was 20 feet wide and 70 feet long. I really only needed about 50 feet but it would be easy enough to shorten the spacing between frames in order to shorten the overall length. The only real disadvantage was the greenhouse frame was only 10 feet high but I could raise the height by either using a short framing wall or adding tubing on with couplings. Considering using the greenhouse it has a few distinct advantages. First and foremost was the low cost. Once it was purchased there was no additional costs, no monthly rental. Second, it was on my property so there was no commute, all my tools were at hand and security wasn't an issue. Thirdly, it didn't require permanent footings. Once I was done with it all I needed to do was reseed the lawn. So I got in contact with the owner of the property and after some brief negotiations I was the new owner of a greenhouse. It took about three weekends to dismantle the framing and then transport it home on a friends trailer.
Prepping the site took a bit more work.
First and most time consuming was obtaining the zoning permit. Once that was
done I need to prep the building site. The grade dropped off about 5 feet
to the rear corner so I brought in 20 cubic yards of fill dirt to "almost" level
the building site. Another friend, Grayson, came over with his tractor and
a box scrape to grade the site for me.
Then my son, Ben, and I got busy putting
the framing together. We used pvc pipe for the stringers down the length of the
greenhouse and 1/4 inch bolts with lock nuts at each connection. Once the entire
frame was assembled we lifted a few sections at a time to put on 5 feet long
extensions that were joined to the frame with screw couplings. The frames were
spaced to give us a length of 55 feet and with the extensions in place it was 15
feet tall. Then over a few days we framed in the ends with 2X4 studs, framing in
for doors and fans. After that we pulled 6 mil UV treated plastic that I
ordered from FarmTek. This was topped with a shade tarp the blocks 70 % of the
sunlight. Both the plastic and the shade tarp were custom ordered to fit
the structure.
My nephew Chris helped me dig a trench from the house out to the
new boat shop that we used to run a service line from the power panel out to a
new sub-panel in the shop. My buddy Jeff provided the service line and a spool
of 12/4 romex and Grayson donated the sub-panel. I picked up a few
fluorescent light fixtures along with 3-way switches and plug receptacles and
Grayson came back over to help me wire the shop. One of the nice things we did
was to drop two power plugs down from the ceiling. These will be a huge
advantage once I am working down in the hulls. The end result was that I had a
boat shop in the backyard with lights and power. The hard part was referring to
it as a boat shop instead of a greenhouse!
Although I had a great shop to work in, it
didn't have a level floor. We had graded the site closer to level but it still
dropped off about a foot or two over the 55 feet length. To provide a level
surface to build on I built a strong back in the center of the shop using
pressure treated 4X4s that were sunk in the ground three feet as footers. 2X10
studs framed the strong back and 2X4 studs on 16 inch centers down the length.
Then I topped the strong back with 1/2 4X8 sheets of plywood. The platform was
painted white in order to use it as a lofting surface for the keels.
You can see all of the boat shop pictures here.
Once this was done it was time to start building the boat. Or was it? First I had to make some decisions.