Our new heated garage workshop, AKA 'the man cave'
Project:
A few months back, we bought a small propane-fired heater for the garage. I've read up on safety concerns with propane or kerosene heaters, so I plan to install a carbon monoxide alarm in my work area so I don't run the risk of asphyxiating myself. Most of the problems happen when people leave them on and go to sleep. Anyway, the heater should provide a warm spot in the garage for when I need to work out there on cold days, but heating the whole garage with a small heater like this would be impossible. The other day, we bought 6, 4x8 foot sheets of OSB (oriented strand board) for $30 so I could enclose the back corner of our garage and heat just that part instead of the whole thing. Today, I constructed the "Man Cave". The first part was easy - take a couple of sheets of OSB, stand them upright, and screw them to one of the rafters. Next, I added the door. This was an interior door that we took from a demolished closet upstairs. To add the door, I had to reinforce the hinge points with 2x4 blocking. It's a hollow-core door, and pretty light. The rafters are 4 feet on center, so to make the second wall, I had to cut notches in one top corner of each panel. I tied the OSB panels together with 2x4 and OSB scraps and all purpose screws. The final two sheets of OSB went on top of the rafters, to make a 'roof'. This prevents the heat from escaping and provides for a lot of extra storage space above the cave. I cut and nailed one 2x4 support between two rafters to help support the 'roof'. I plan on adding many more of these, probably every 16 inches, to adequately support any load I put up there (which may include myself, if I have to crawl around up there. I finished it off a bit with some old license plates on the wall. Every good man cave has to have some license plates, right? It really won't take that much to heat, because I plan on insulating it on all sides with fiberglass batts. We bought quite a bit of fiberglass last winter that we haven't used yet. Hopefully, this will provide a warm space to take care of those messy winter projects we don't want in the house.
Wow, that's messy
You know, I probably should be ashamed of the state of my garage, but I'm not, really. Some people are addicted to cigarettes, some to alcohol. I'm addicted to 'stuff'. If it looks like it might serve a purpose in some far-flung future, I'll save it.
Every so often I do a 'purge', and throw a bunch of stuff out that has well and truly lost it's ability to be useful, but mostly I hang on to stuff well past when I probably should.