In which John kicks the winter blues

By renovating the uninsulated workshop. 

I have a nice little workshop at the current rental property. It is the west end of an east-west pole barn. Space is roughly 14 feet wide by 20 feet deep, and is panelled with tongue and groove inch boards.

^west wall, as seen from the walk-in door in southeast corner.

^northwest corner.

^northeast corner and east wall. East wall is an exterior wall that is under the open-faced shed.

^southeast corner with walk-in door and south wall with garage door.

The garage door takes rain when there's enough south wind, and snow when there's enough wind swirl around the roof edge and corner. Ridge cap takes rain/snow with wind from north or south. Space is a bit drafty, and generally miserable in the winter. My attached two-car is also uninsulated, so I have no warm place to work during the cold third of the year. 

The spousal support unit has green-lighted spending some money to make this space more friendly to winter wrenching (I think she may be about ready to get me out of the house however she can).

Goals, in no particular order. Water-tight. Insulate. Apply wood-fired heat. Retain as much old panelling as possible. De-clutter. Tool board, because always wanted one.

Once complete, the plan is to start building motorcycles in this space until I have sufficient funds to buy a bigger and better shop building.

Bear with me, this may take a while.

So off I went to the orange hardware store with a borrowed truck and flatbed trailer.

Came home with 4 sheets of 1/2" plywood and 11 sheets of 1/4", and two pallets (!!!) of 15"x32' R13 fiberglass insulation.

(Note: I bought 26 rolls of the stuff, enough to do this project and another about the same size. The little old lady running the cash register was an outright shiny happy person to me, as were the forklift operators that hauled the stuff out. When I got home and started unloading, I realized two pallets is not 24 rolls. Two bales are 24 rolls. Three bales per pallet. We'll see how motivated I am to return the extra when I get done. Still weighing how guilty I should feel about that.)

Wife was out of town the next evening, and I was pretty sure I wasn't going to work on Friday due to long commute and heavy forecasted snow all day Friday. So I stayed up real late Thursday prepping the space.

Pulled everything off the north wall and out of the north corners.

(Yes, that's a bathtub. Not happy about it being there, taking a bath in cast iron in an unheated and uninsulated space is truly miserable.)

Northwest corner, once unburied, was occupied by a metal cabinet (shown here out of its natural habitat after the fact)...

...behind which was a lovely packrat nest filled with a whole bunch of RGS* that I suspect arrived there via gravity and the lack of a backstop on the metal cabinet and via actual rodent activity.

And here's the space the cabinet/mouse palace used to live.

A couple more glamour shots of the cleaned up wall.

It was pretty late by this point, but I still had some momentum, so...

36" centers on the studs. Mostly. Its a shed. Makes for a lot of cutting to fit.

Also of note in the above photo. The tin roof leaks a bit. I don't usually see it leak, just come out to find the floor and bench wet or snowy. I think most of the issue is the unsealed ridge cap, but I decided that it made sense to put a vapor barrier above my insulation. Stapled up two big pieces of 3.5mil plastic to the bottom of the purlins and wrapped under the rafters. Thought was that the unsealed corrugations would allow enough air circulation between the plastic and the tin to keep condensation minimal. More to follow, as I've already started second guessing this.

And that's all for Valentines Day progress. Called it a night and had a small Scotch to reward myself.

*-Really Good E36M3.

That looks like fun!  Go ahead and add your wood fired heat soon 

Subscribed because I used to live at that house...........

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you don't talk trash on the previous tenant on an open forum.

Sure enough, Friday was a snowy mess. Called in to the office, and worked on the shed instead. 

I want to hang my hand tools on the north wall. With three foot centers, there's no real tidy way to use full sheets of plywood. Except that the first stud is only two feet from the east wall, which puts a sheet ending on a stud. I decided I wanted the horizontal seam at 30" off the floor rather than 60", since that puts the seam farther from eye level. 

Was still debating what to do with the northwest corner (just out of frame on the left, above). So I hung up the first piece of 1/4" on the ceiling.

The unsupported uphill edge got kind of wavy between the rafters. Will have to brace those edges up as the ceiling progresses.

All that took about 5 hours of solo work (some of which was just sitting and looking at it waiting for the answer to materialize). Called it quits for the day.

Love the project!

All of my projects use a lot of "standing and staring" type input.

Granted, I'm no example of how a project should actually progress.

I have felt your pain.  My shop is the middle level of a three story barn.  23x23 inside with a small steep staircase.  Built in 1890 and it was a horror show to insulate and put the plywood on the walls.

This summer, funds permitting, I will be fixing the floor and start on the ceiling.  I have already started buying LEDs to replace the 4' flouros, BIG difference.

You will love having walls etc.

Saturday was Mrs. InKansas's birthday, but she was out of town for most of the day and when she got home she was pretty tired, so she took a nap and I went and stared at my problems.

I decided the best place for a small wood stove is where the mouse palace was, at the north end of the existing work bench. The space is a little over two feet square, so a heat source there will have to be pretty small and well shielded. I've had my eye on a particular wood stove for an RV installation, and figured this would give me an excuse to test drive the stove before putting it in a living space.

So I got one on order. Grizzly model by Cubic Mini Wood Stoves out of Canuckistan. $550ish shipped.

Photo for scale. (Not me, I don't own any nice sweaters or black jeans)

I've been stewing on buying one of these for months now. When I have had this much opportunity to think about it and then I actually pull the trigger, I usually wind up like this:

This is certainly accurate in the instance of the stove. It'll be here at the end of this week.

If I'm going to wedge that little guy into the spot at the end of the bench, I'm going to have to cut out some of the old panelling and put up some cement backer board. Probably limit the cement board to one span on the north side and one on the west.

In order to say that I'd done something with Saturday other than just spend money, I cut and hung the last two pieces of plywood, covering up to where I'll start the cement board. It was dark by then, and the wife was awake, so I braved the snow to go get a pizza for birthday dinner. No photos of any of that, so here's our youngest instead, doing what she does best.

I managed to con the wife into taking me to the orange hardware store on Sunday in exchange for brunch (win-win!). Picked up four pieces of ½” cement board, a box of cement screws, some mineral-based insulation, and an assortment of stove pipe parts. She got herself some new houseplants, which made her day and kept her busy for the afternoon.

I had one of the neighbors come by to sanity check the plastic vapor barrier idea after lunch. She’s an old-school construction expert, retired hippy, and a pretty awesome human being. We hemmed and hawed and eventually decided that the plastic wasn’t the ideal solution. Better to get the roof tight. I need to find some pre-manufactured ridge cap seal to match the corrugations of my tin, and once the weather warms up I need to check all the roofing nails and dope up any voids where the rafters and purlins pass through the exterior walls. I was planning on doubling up the insulation in the ceiling anyway, with the paper facing against the plywood on the lower layer and toward the tin on the upper layer, so that should function as a vapor barrier for any moisture that does manage to get past the tin.

So down comes the plastic. Oh well. Not a very significant investment in time, effort, or money. I’d have hated to have it cause problems down the road. Might as well do it right.

I used a variety of hand and power tools to remove the paneling north of the work bench, starting just to the right of the wall outlet and continuing around the corner.

Hung a couple pieces of insulation in the spaces where the paneling was, but it was about dark, and the temperature dropped through the floor, so I threw in the towel.

There weren’t good studs to attach the cement boards to in the corner of the building, so I made two to fit.

It’s hard to see (my lighting sucks), but there’s a bit of a gap between the studs that allowed me to run the first piece of cement board full-width like so:

I put the last piece of insulation in the west wall where the next piece of cement board will go, and marked the cement to fit around the workbench structure where it attaches to the wall.

Scored along the marks with an angle grinder (I really need to get a respirator). Test fit:

Damn. Cement board fouled the bench at both the upper work surface and lower shelf. I screwed around with trying to round the corners of the bench to let the cement board slide into place, but eventually just cut the last couple inches off of the bench.

This made it so the cement board fit into the space on the west wall, and gave me a better surface to mount cement board to the north face of the bench. Finished product at the end of a short Monday:

Once I have the stove and know where I’m going to mount it relative to the rest of the world, I’ll cut and mount a piece of cement board on the ceiling. Then I can fit a couple of pieces of cement board to finish the walls. I’m going to put some of the mineral insulation in the ceiling where the stove pipe passes through. Once all that’s done, I can proceed with the rest of the ceiling.

Apparently there wasn't an exchange of tracking info when the stove crossed the border, so the Canada Post tracking number I have still shows it in Montreal, but it should be here tomorrow (Friday)... Hopefully that means I can make some progress this weekend.

Wow, looking good John!

Saturday was a write-off with visiting an elderly friend, looking for a missing dog, and fire department training. I needed something productive to occupy my mind on Sunday, so rather than sit aimlessly in the house I went out to the shop and started on the west wall.

After some deliberation, I decided the best return-on-investment would be to hang the panels for the west wall before hanging the ceiling. This will make for less cutting to fit the ceiling panels around the studs in the west wall.

So, first thing first – hang some insulation. With the bench and paneling already installed, I had to be a bit tentative. Measured the void in the wall, marked and cut the insulation, stapled in place as best I could with the limited openings available. There are a number of diagonal braces between the studs, which made for an added challenge to the measuring and fitting process. For the most part, the insulation slipped down into the cavities without much difficulty, but I had to “push rope” into the section next to the window, as there was some additional bracing across that cavity.

All you can see is the exposed insulation above the paneling, but the whole wall is done, aside from the southernmost section left of the window. My plan there is to install the paneling that I removed from the stove location there to match the paneling on the rest of the bench, so that’s a job for another day.

Used a long straight edge to mark where the ceiling panel will die against the west wall (in doing so, I discovered the horizontal rafter braces don’t match perfectly. That’ll be an exciting challenge when I go to put the ceiling in). Measured the size and shape of the space between the top of the bench paneling and the ceiling mark, and decided the most efficient method of breaking up the area into sheet-sized chunks with edges that fell on existing wall studs. I think I can cover up the installed insulation with one sheet, if I’m careful about how I cut it.

Stove should be here today. Pretty stoked about that.

Staying tuned to see how the stove works out.

Major award?

Stove’s here! Gratuitous pictures:

Got it unpacked, legs bolted on, and hauled out to the shop. My trash can has been living in the house garage, so I’ve been throwing my trash (bent nails and wasp nests) in the stove nook. Picked all that up and set the stove in there. Looks like I can keep a comfortable 7” buffer to all three surfaces. Stove pipe wants to pass through a purlin, so I’ll have to do something creative there.

I want to get the top surface of the stove even(ish) with the top of the workbench. The top surface is designed to be a cooking/warming surface, and getting that level with the workbench will feel like a natural decision. Also, that’ll bring the center of the door up to around 2’; I don’t want to stoke this thing on my hands and knees.

Sat and stared at it for half an hour or so, thinking about how I want to build the stand for it. I was about out of daylight and reasonable working temperatures, so I’ll build the stand later.

unless that's a 10-gallon jug, the stove is a lot smaller than i was expecting.

In reply to AngryCorvair :

Good- those things get HOT.

Nice Work!

For a stand, how about some concrete block, some left over cement board on top, and some tile?   Your place is coming out pretty cool.  Keep up the good work.

It was a balmy 29 F when I got home, so after a short throw-the-stick session with one of the dogs, I went out to the shop. I’ve discovered that, as long as I’m not lapsing into long stretches of sitting-and-staring, I can stay reasonably comfortable at outside temps as low as 25. If I’m going to sit-and-stare, it better be above freezing, or my hands start to get cold.

I had a general design in mind for the stove pedestal, and during some downtime at work, I did some napkin engineering.

I kept working on this after I took the photo, and ultimately wrote across the bottom of the page “berk it, we’ll do it live”.

Cut some 1” angle to 19.5” lengths, drilled 5/16” holes in some 1” strap and cut to 1” lengths. Bolted four of the 1” squares to the bottom of each of the stove legs, then eyeballed the legs to about the correct angle and tacked them to the squares. Marked where the bottom of the legs needed to be on a piece of scrap plywood, and set the contraption up on its less-than-sturdy legs. Tweaked the legs around until they were more or less in line with each other, and applied further tack welds to each. Marked and ground down the legs to eliminate the discrepancy between their angle and the right angle cut I left on the bottom. Was a little bit three-legged, but I wanted to install some adjusting feet anyway. Each leg got one of the remaining 1” squares, each square got a captive nut, and each nut got a bolt threaded in from the bottom.

I have some work to do with this still. As drawn in the top-right corner of my workday doodling, I want to fit some sheet steel in a curve to the top half of the stand to protect the lower portion from any sparks that get away from the stove, and below that, a section of expanded steel grating in a curve into which I want to stack my teeny-tiny pieces of firewood (stove only takes 7” pieces).

The legs did require a bit of adjustment, and I may reposition the top of one leg so I don’t have to use the adjuster quite so heavily, but in the end the top of the stove was even with the bench and level both directions, so I’ll take that. I set it in place and adjusted for even spacing between the sides and the back (winds up being right at 7” all ‘round) and whipped up a makeshift plumb bob to test my expectation about the stove pipe.

I was all set to sit-and-stare at that puzzle, but it was below the temperature threshold and I was hungry, so time to go spend some time with the wife.

Life attempted to get in my way last night. First a flat tire in the parking lot after work, then a long discussion about bathroom and kitchen remodeling with SWMBO. But still managed to find some time to make progress on the shop.

The stove pipe wants to pass through a purlin. It also wants 2-3” of space free of combustibles.

My solution:

Not real pretty, but solid and it works.

Since I cut off the section of purlin with my center mark, I used the wrench-rope plumb bob to mark the center on the inside of the roof tin, and mark a slightly elongated circle matching the 3.5" diameter flue pipe.

Drilled holes through the tin from the underside, being careful to stay well inside the line.

Used an angle grinder to finish it off.

Took the ladder around to the north eave and used a pair of pliers to carefully bend up/out the edges of the hole. No photos, it was dark. I left the drilled/cut hole on the small side so that I could bend the edges up in an effort to help keep any moisture from coming past the cut edge. That worked famously. Flue pipe fits through and the roof tin keeps pressure on it. I’ll be able to seal up the small gaps with high temp caulking.

The bottom end of the flue pipe is almost identical in diameter to the outlet on the stove. I struggled to get it to slip over the stove outlet, but after a quick Google, I see that I need some caulking or installation cement between the two. If anybody has any brilliant insight about getting the pipe and the outlet to go together, I’m all ears.

Going to do some research today, pick requisite material up after work, and see how much I can get done tonight and tomorrow. We’re expecting snow and temps in the single digits on Sunday, so I’m pretty much writing that off (unless I have wood heat by then).

Nice! we're almost neighbors... i'm on east side KC.

I screwed up.

Fortunately, it didn’t get so far as major property loss or death.

TIL that there are different “grades” or “classes” or “types” of stove pipe, and they are not created equal (even if many are marketed as “stove pipe” or “flue pipe”). Solid fuels (wood, coal) make a lot of heat, and require a Class A chimney setup (multi-walled stainless steel with either air-gap or solid insulation material). Pellets (any alternative solid fuel like manufactured wood pellets or plant/crop waste matter) produce less heat, so they require a lower standard of heat resistance in the flue pipe. Gas stove vents produce even less heat, so they only require B-Vent piping (in my case, double wall galvanized). Looking back, that makes perfect sense.

Well, the 60” sections I bought a couple weeks ago for $17 each were really cheap… but they’re B-Vent. If exposed to the kind of heat this stove’s exhaust will produce, best case, they’d have melted/burned and maybe burned the building down while I was back in the house making coffee and waiting for the stove to heat up. Worst case (and more likely, given the timing), I would have gone back to a nice warm shop and got started working before the flue got hot enough to burn off the galvanizing, in what will be a fairly unvented space…

So I’ll be taking those back to the big orange box store for a refund.

Small stoves aren’t a big thing in the US. As such, 3” Class A is all but unavailable. I finally got frustrated enough trying to find a local supplier (or even a reliable domestic supplier, for that matter) that I just ordered five 2’ lengths from the stove manufacturer at $50 each, bringing the running total for stove and parts to just about $900. Still need to source flashing/rain cap/storm collar.

In the meantime, I’ll tape a piece of plastic over the outside of the hole in the tin to keep out the snow we’re supposed to get Sunday.

Goal for this weekend is hang some plywood on the west wall over the bench, fit some 2x4s to support the ceiling seams, and finish the stove stand.

In reply to Ognib :

I've been keeping an eye on your mini sprint build. It looks like you're far from short of engineering, but if you ever need a hand, Steu2011 and I are both semi-local engineers.

Thanks!  I appreciate the offer of professional feedback.  

Having no formal education as such, I'm an eyeball engineer at best.  However I've been studying the hands on aspects of the subject all my life along with building & modding my own cars since I was a kid.