How Much Does It Cost To Build A Workshop?

I “Googled” this question, phrased as “how much does it cost to build a shed?”  That is a hard question to answer as there are a lot of variables.  One site said $18.00 to $22.00 per square foot.  Another said that “according to the Craftsman National Building Cost Estimator program”  the cost would be $22.85 per square foot. Some sites gave hints how to save money, such as doing your own labor, using used or recycled lumber, etc. 

My woodworking shop did not cost me $22.85 per square foot, which would have been over $5000.00.  If you have been reading my blog for the last several months you know that I did my own labor, salvaged material from an old house and obviously cut my expenses to the bone.  I’ve kept pretty close account of my expenditures and so can give you my cost to build my workshop.

This is a photo of the old house that I salvaged my building materials from.  There was adequate framing lumber, siding, roofing and wall boards to construct my workshop.

   I had to purchase concrete blocks (although there were a few that had been used under the house to add support to sagging sill logs), concrete mix, fasteners, electrical wiring and some old windows.

In this picture, to the right, you can see the stacks of used lumber I had hauled home.  Almost all of the lumber used for framing was rough sawn.  Most of the 2x4’s were truly 2” by 4”, the 2x8’s were 2” by 8”.  There was a great deal of work involved pulling all of the old nails out of the boards and getting it hauled home.

The first expense I had was the cost of gasoline for my little truck.  The old house was 25 miles from my home and I had numerous trips up and back.  I tried always to bring a load of material back whenever I went up.  Based on the number of trips, the average cost of fuel and the approximate MPG I got I invested $250.00 in gasoline.

Here is my material cost for what I had to purchase.

Used windows     $40.00

Concrete blocks and concrete mix     $125.00
Fasteners  (nails, screws, staples, etc.)     $115.00
Electrical (breaker box, wire, cable, switches, outlets, etc.)     $290.00
Miscellaneous     $20.00

So, for material cost of $590.00 and gasoline cost of $250.00 (a total of $840.00) I have a 16’ by 14’ workshop with a storage loft above.  Instead of $22.85 a square foot I have cut my cost to $3.75 per square foot.  And, if I count the square footage of the loft as additional my cost drops to $1.88 per square foot. 

My parents were married in 1929 at the beginning of the “Great Depression.”  They learned to live frugally and I grew up learning about recycling before I ever heard the term.  So, recycling an old house into a workshop is just a natural for me.

This is the end result.  It has taken me a little over a year since I starting dismantling the old house pictured at the top of this post to get to this point.  It hasn’t been a fulltime job of course and could have been done much more quickly if I had hired a contractor to do the job with all new material, etc. but I just did not have that extra $4500.00 or so to spend.

IF you would care to read the story from start to finish of the project scroll down and find the listing on the left under “labels.”  Near the bottom of the list is the label “woodworking shop.”  Click on this and all 14 or 15 posts will be pulled up, of course the latest one will be first.

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Update On Woodworking Shop

Since I last updated you on my progress I have been able to spend several hours working on the shop.  I finished the flashing on the porch roof and patched the nail holes in the used metal roofing.

Most of the work has been on the inside of the shop area.  When I tore down the old house I initially was thinking of the framing lumber and the metal roofing.  However, I noticed that the walls and the ceilings had been made with tongue and groove lumber.  Quite a bit had already been removed but it looked to me like there would be plenty for my needs.



The picture above was taken inside the old house before we brought it down.  What you are seeing is a couple of walls and a partial ceiling.  These are the boards I used on the walls in the workshop.  Below is a couple of photos taken this afternoon in the shop.

The diagonal boards are structural braces.  Because of them I had to cut all of the wall boards with angles.  It took a bit longer perhaps but I got the job done.  Now the fun begins to get benches and tools set up.

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Workshop Update

It has been several weeks since I last updated everyone on my woodworking shop.  That has mainly been because not much new has been accomplished.  I have worked a few hours in the last few weeks and have a start on putting tongue and groove boards on the interior walls.  The biggest, or at least, the most visual addition has been the porch.  Yes, a porch on a workshop.

It sort of evolved.  I needed some sort of step at the doors and I thought of trying to move my table saw in and out and decided some type of floor extending out from the shop would be helpful.  And, a little roof or awning over the doors would be nice on a rainy day.  We had an old porch glider that came off of the house porch when we got our porch swing.  Connie suggested the porch be large enough to have a place to put the glider.  So, here is a photo of the result.  I have yet to finish the flashing where the roof meets the wall of the shop.

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From My Email

I received this quite some time ago and keep thinking I need to share, so, here it is.

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ALFALFA HAY

When I first got goats, way back in the early 70’s, I read all of the dairy goat magazines I could find.  I subscribed to Dairy Goat Journal and Dairy Goat Guide.  One thing that all of the articles seemed to agree on was that to get good milk production the goats needed good alfalfa hay.  That was no problem then.  I was living in Southern California and the only hay I could find to purchase was alfalfa hay.  It was grown where it was irrigated and where they were able to get it baled without danger of rain.  All of the hay was baled to be shipped and was in 3-wire tied bales, averaging 125# per bale.  One got only 16 bales per ton.

When I moved to Illinois I could get alfalfa hay occasionally.  I fed some clover hay and some other poorer hay from time to time.  But, moving here to South-Central Kentucky I didn’t find much alfalfa hay being produced in the immediate area.  I was able to get some orchard grass hay which seemed to be pretty good but not quite to the degree good alfalfa would be.  The last couple of years we have been able to bale enough hay here on Cedar Ridge Farm to feed Darryl’s cows and my goats, but it was just mixed grass hay.  This year, due to the dryness, we were able to only get two cuttings of hay.  Consequently there doesn’t appear to be quite enough to feed all of the animals all winter.  Darryl found some grass hay, which will do fine for the cows, at a fairly good price.

I wanted to look around a bit and see if I could find some hay of a bit better quality.  Darryl saw the ad first and drew my attention to it.  A man was advertising some alfalfa-orchard grass hay.  I made contact and Darryl and I made the approximate 50 mile trip two weeks ago to buy 50 bales of this hay.  Even though it is getting toward the end of this lactation the goats have actually increased their milk production a bit.  So, the better hay seems to be doing what it is supposed to do, and the goats seem to like it.

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Four Letter Word

We got SNOW, that four letter word often associated with winter.  Our forecast was for maybe a half inch to an inch of snow.  We received rain on Saturday (almost an inch) and it turned to snow Sunday morning.  It snowed off and on most of the day with about what the forecast had called for, but it forgot to stop.  It snowed Sunday evening and throughout the night.  This morning (Monday) we had quite a bit more around than the half inch to a inch.


You can’t tell how much snow is on the van from this photo but I went out and stuck a 12 inch ruler into that on top of the van.


If you look closely you can see the green ruler stuck into the snow.  It is near the center of the picture.


In this close-up you can see that there was 8 inches on the van.  I measured several other places and the measurement was from 8 to 9 inches.  I believe this is the largest snowfall we have experienced since moving here in 2004.

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INFESTATION OF MICE

A couple of evenings ago as I was leaving the barn after finishing the milking I noticed movement near the goat’s feed pan.  I stopped to watch

and it was a mouse, no, make that several mice.  They were not bothered by my standing and watching them eating the leftovers.  I decided then and there I’d needed to declare war on the little beasties.  Yesterday morning I drove into town and purchased some new mouse traps and some cheap brand of peanut butter to use as bait. 

By evening I had caught 3 and I reset my traps.  This morning I had another 5.  But, the one thing that is a puzzle is that one trap was totally missing, carried away by a very powerful little mouse I assume.  It may have been the one eating Nolan’s cheese.

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