I built a thing!

I live on a nearly 3 acre plot in the center of 350 aacres of farmland in eastern Kalamazoo county. I have 6 neighbors within 2 miles of me. My home has is about 1700sf with a traditional farmhouse layout, it's been in SWMBOs family since the 1890s. We are literally the fourth owner of record and the first to not be named Scholten. 

The house had a large 2 car attached garage built in the 1980s. There is plenty of room for 3 and possibly 4 cars if everything is kept neat and tidy. I am neither neat nor tidy. Over the last three years a mass of crap, car parts, lawn mowers and junk gas rendered the Garage M'Haul unusable. I needed to do something. 

I traded some of my scrap and a bit of labor for a pallet of sheet metal and square tubing and set forth to create room in my garage.

The pallet contained what was possibly an incomplete VersaTube steel building kit. It "should" have all the parts but at least two of the exterior panels were damaged at some point. 

Labor day weekend I labored and this is my result:

The addition of some greenhouse grade polycarbonate panels and some battery powered motion sensing LED lights were the only real deviation from the original building plan.

I now have storage room for both lawn tractors, all of the landscaping maintenance items and equipment. This will all lead to bringing the vehicle garage up to standard.

Wow

That is spectacular. Nice color too. 

It's a 12x18 with a 7' roof that it measured at the hip not the top. I am going to look for a solar powered fan to mount on the back wall because it will retain some heat. The idea is to make it functional to hold equipment and allow Kelly to do greenhouse duty as well.

Cool. 

Is it fully enclosed? I realize the pic are from "in progress" but in the end are there 4 full walls? 

Where does one find a good deal on a possibly incomplete steel building kit? I need one of these in a bad way for yard equip. Craigslist in my area is on crack

In reply to John Welsh :

Yes, 4 walls and a full size garage door. I am intentionally not powering it to classify it as a storage shed. 

In reply to EastCoastMojo :

Well, technically this was free... I'm certain you will not find this deal. The original owner of the building bought it three years ago from Menards for $2400. He worked on our assembly line at Denso. He never installed it, it sat on the pad behind his house. He changed jobs within the company a year ago.My manager does construction side work and traded labor for the barn. I had a set of LS headers, harness and PCM that I wasnt going to use that he wanted. I helped him with moving around his hot rods one afternoon and he delivered the pallet.

Total cost involved was actually a negative number of we go back to how i got the LS stuff.

Rear view

In reply to JmfnB :

Cool. Menards at $2400 is still better than the stuff I'm finding on craig. Free would be awesome, but I'm not that connected.  Build looks great BTW! I love the idea of using the clear corrugated greenhouse panels to let in some light. Brilliant. 

EastCoastMojo said:

In reply to JmfnB :

Cool. Menards at $2400 is still better than the stuff I'm finding on craig. Free would be awesome, but I'm not that connected.  Build looks great BTW!

GRM didn't like the hyperlink so here is the text:

https://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/carports-shelters/metal-carports-shelters-extension-kits-frames/versatube-12w-x-18l-x-7h-garage/1901412/p-1444422151908.htm

Rear view reminds me of a school bus. Any chance it'll get painted yellow with a black stripe and some lettering?

In reply to JmfnB :

That's some fine "horse trading" to result in a free barn! 

No power sounds like a good reason to get a generator, now that you have a good place to store it! 

In reply to AngryCorvair :

Kelly says it's a bus stop. I say it needs silver paint and old Greyhound graphics.

In reply to John Welsh :

House is wired for one 

I was of course initially thinking of this below.

Hopefully the brakes on that Thing suck, or the skinny chick is going ass over teakettle in the near future.

nutherjrfan said:

I was of course initially thinking of this below.

I'm certain the same body panels were used.

This thread has much less air cooled VW content than I expected.

JmfnB said:

nutherjrfan said:

I was of course initially thinking of this below.

I'm certain the same body panels were used.

I saw one running errands over the weekend.

Not too shabby. And those decorative bricks really do a great job at separating the grass from the grass!

N Sperlo said:

Not too shabby. And those decorative bricks really do a great job at separating the grass from the grass!

They do! KmfnB is in charge of landscaping. There is 3 yards of crushed concrete for the inside as well as 2 yards of gravel for the outside that are coming for the weekend. 

Ha. KmfnB. That's great.  If you go back to Harold Thong will she become Harriet?  

John Welsh said:

Ha. KmfnB. That's great.  If you go back to Harold Thong will she become Harriet?  

Still Kelly... Kelly Muffin Thong