Shop/house

rokntoy

rokntoy

FUCKIN SLAYER!!!
Joined
Sep 2, 2006
Location
Elkin, N.C.
Does anyone live in or know of anyone that has done this! Basically a big metal shop with a nice living area sectioned off to live in?
 
One of my buddies did. 50x70 red iron with 1/3 of it framed out as a small apartment. One bedroom, living room, bathroom, kitchen/dining room. Maybe 800sqft. It's a perfect in-between before he builds his house.
 
We briefly considered building our shop first, then a loft to live in for a few years until we built the house....but we figured we might put off and never get around to building the house we wanted.
 
I know from watching too much motortrend on demand that a handful of MT/Petersens/Etc automotive journalists have or had that exact same setup.
 
After high school I worked for a welding shop in Charlotte. The owner Jeff now lives out here in the country a few miles from me. He bought 7 acres and built a 60x120x20 steel building. Half is his fabrication shop and half is house. I don’t know what he has in it but I can say that it is amazing. The floors in the house portion are beautiful stamped concrete with tubing for heat laced throughout. As of now he’s only made one level actual house but he has the ability to add a second 60x60 level upstairs that would double his “house” square footage. On the house end he’s done some stone work and built a large wrap around porch that makes it seem much less “steel building”
Inside it’s like the taj mahal. I love the idea of starting with a square and being able to lay out the floor plan any you you’d like.
 
Back in 2000 I built a 50 x 85 x 19 metal building. Built a two story house in one end and shop the other. Had a 14 ft wide covered parking down one side. I tied the internal wood framing to the perlings with hurricane straps. Absolutely loved that house! It was so efficient you could fart and raise the temp of a room. I had a hard time with financing due to it being unusual construction for the time. It was my ultimate dude palace!
 
When the wife and I were looking to move here we had the thought of buying property and putting a barndominium on it. They are incredible popular in Texas and I actually bought a set of stamped plans from a company. I reached out to as many contractors as I could find and none of them would take the job. Common response was “we’ve never seen/done anything like that and don’t know the codes”. Look them up it’s the absolute best of all worlds. Still want to have one someday!!
 
I looked into this in depth a yr or so ago, the county i live in is unfamiliar with the process and therefore aren't very much help at all. Ive learned that like most county/government departments like inspections/zoning that if they don't know the answer right off then they default to "you can't do that". I ran into this when I went to get a permit for an accessory building(aka shop) on a piece of land that I dont have a house on yet. Was told cant do that, never could get a reason why out of them other than thats the rule. Was told I had to apply for a variance, $500 just to apply, went to do that and was told by another lady that doesn't apply to my situation. So in the end I got them to print the rules for what you need for a farm, so I could build a farm building. Well right there in the rules was a tree farm, which my land is in, they didn't even know this was a possible avenue. Gave me a paper to fill out and provid proof of the tree related stuff and all of a sudden I can build a farm shop and don't even have to have a building permit, just electrical. Go figure. I went from cant do it at all to not needing a permit.
 
Saw this one for sale a couple months back. So much room for activities!

2352 Centennial Rd, Union Mills, NC 28167 | Zillow

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skyhighZJ said:
When the wife and I were looking to move here we had the thought of buying property and putting a barndominium on it. They are incredible popular in Texas and I actually bought a set of stamped plans from a company. I reached out to as many contractors as I could find and none of them would take the job. Common response was “we’ve never seen/done anything like that and don’t know the codes”. Look them up it’s the absolute best of all worlds. Still want to have one someday!!
Click to expand...
They are common around here in Camden, SC. It's a big horse town... I think there are 2 or 3 on our road alone. There is also one they just built the house. The barn was there first. Out of curiosity I looked up the tax value. $2.3M :eek:
 
skyhighZJ said:
Common response was “we’ve never seen/done anything like that and don’t know the codes”.
Click to expand...
They have some really interesting problems from a building science perspective, mostly related to vapor transfer. Could be expensive to solve later down the road.
 
Not sure if it would be any easier/better/worse, but when I was going down this road; I planned to not concrete the house section, but have a traditional wood floor and crawlspace. I had also thought about spacing the interior walls/framing a few feet off the exterior wall, so that you could get between them to repair/add wiring/plumbing in the future.

In the end, my wife wanted to buy vs build and didnt want to "live in a metal building" because it didnt look like a conventional house.
 
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