I read somewhere that you can build one of Van's all metal airplanes for for a tool investment of around $1500-$2000.  That maybe true, but you will be building the airplane with minimal amount of tools.  I have purchased all new tools so I have spent more on tools that some builders that shop e-bay and other used markets, however, when you realize that this vehicle will carry precious cargo at thousands of feet in the air at speeds of around 3+ miles per minute, I have not skimped when it comes to tools (and I have got my wife's permission to purchase whatever tools I need to build this thing right).  To date, I have spent in the neighborhood of $7000 on obtaining the right tools.  I started with little more than just a couple of hand tools, air compressor, band saw, and a small drill press.

About a year ago, Tami and I were sitting in the garage and she tells me “Let’s make the garage a real man cave.” At first, I was like are you kidding me? I thought about how wonderful it would be and then I thought about how much work that would entail that didn’t contribute to building the RV.

I simmered on the idea for a while with no commitment. A few weeks later, the heat pump I put in the garage at the beginning of the project crapped out. It was a cheap, no name, chinese made heat pump. I got the heat pump from Johnstone Supply through a friend. When I tried to get parts for it, they basically told me good luck as that was why they stopped carrying it is that they were unable to get parts for the unit. In frustration, I decided to replace the heat pump with something a little nicer. This meant tearing into the garage wall, replacing the line set, etc.

I asked Tami if I was still “authorized” to renovate the garage. I got the green light to tear the garage (airplane shop) apart.

At first it was just going to put in a furnace and replace the heat pump. As it turned out, I did a lot more, a whole lot more.

Here are some pictures that show the final results.

A picture of my entertainment portion of the garage. Additionally, the garage got enhanced with:

• The floor got an epoxy paint job. This required using a concrete grinder to grind off the old floor finish and getting the floor down to raw concrete.
• I put in a ceiling fan to circulate air in the garage. I was finding with the 10 foot ceilings, that the ceiling was 10 degrees plus warmer than down on the concrete.
• I put in a number of cabinets to store the plethora of things that must go in the garage.
• A love seat to relax after a long day of building or working the day job.

This part of the garage turned out to be an after thought. This wasn’t originally in the “man cave” modification. This turns out to be my favorite part of the garage. Some of the features here:

• A 46” 1080P HDTV mounted to the wall.
• A surround sound receiver. This does all my video and audio switching.
• HDTV cable TV receiver.
• Blu-Ray DVD player
• Apple TV (to play podcasts, TV shows, Movies, music from my iTunes library).
• A gigabit network router to tie all components into the home network.
• Sirius satellite radio
• The installed cabinets hold a ton of stuff. The countertop and under cabinet lighting should allow a place to review prints without taking up my bench work space.

I wanted to try my hand at putting in a hardwood floor. It turned out okay and looks better than any garage entrance I have seen. There is a lot more work here than what one might think.

Additionally, I put in two step lights. One in the picture you see here to light up the steps and another around the corner to light the walking path when you come into the garage. These are cool. They provide just enough light so you aren’t tripping over things in the garage at night. They are powered with a 13 watt CFL bulb.

This wall of has a lot more going on than one might think.

• I moved the heat pump inside unit up higher on the wall so that I could re-claim use of the wall space for the cabinets next to the fridge and the new sub-panel. The heat pump has wiring to power it up, refrigerant lines, and condensate drain lines that all had to be run inside the wall.
• I had the H&V contractor who put in a new AC and furnace in the house, hang a 45K BTU gas furnace from the ceiling. The heat pump works well until an outside temperature of around 20 degrees. Prior to the furnace, I used a propane bottle tank heater to supplement the garage heating. With Katie, I didn’t want to have any open flame or hot device in a location where she could touch them and get hurt. The furnace is great and it is out of the way.
• We found the fridge at Lowes and is a cabinet depth fridge. I found this fridge and told Tami I liked it. She goes there is one over yonder that is on clearance. I went over and looked at it and Lowes knocked off $800 because it had been delivered to someone’s house and it didn’t work. Looking at the repair tag, the repair shop found that the wiring harness for the compressor was not plugged in. They plugged it in and worked fine. No scratches or dings. I scarfed it up ASAP. Getting the fridge created a new problem. How to get the water in the door to work? SOOO, I had the plumber come out and run water to the garage. That is right, the water and ice in the door work. WOO HOO.
• I wired a new sub-panel and re-did all the garage electrical. When the house was built, the garage had one circuit to run the outlets and the garage lighting. When I was running the mill, the air compressor, and the lights, it would trip the circuit breaker. Now I have 4 different circuits for outlets, 3 different circuits to run 240 volt devices, dedicated power for the fridge, etc. That was a ton of work!!!

On the South wall, I put up some wire shelving. This used to be dead space and not used for anything. I used to have a cabinet here taking up floor and wall space. By moving the shelving up high on the wall, I use the totes to hold the smaller airplane parts and it freed up wall space.

A look at the open garage floor space. I now have a lot of room for the fuselage.

The CNC mill and horizontal band saw. Under the benches, I got the small totes and slid them under the benches. They too hold a ton of stuff and are out of the way.

Now, who cares if I get booted to the “dog house”. Now I have all the luxuries of the house and remain surrounded by tools and airplane parts. Now I have to figure out how to work on the plane without scratching the garage. That may be the downside. My garage is so nice, how do I use it without buggering it up. Now back to building an airplane..

I have been upgrading my storage in the garage as I am running out of room to store parts and equipment.  Every time I work on the plane and especially during a priming session, I have to move a bunch of stuff around so I don't trip over it or have to climb around it.

Case in point, I have the fuselage kit sitting on the floor in the garage and it takes a lot of valuable floor space.

When I prime, I have a folding table that I put out in order to Alumiprep and Alodine the parts.  That doesn't leave very much floor space to move around.

I was surfing Brad Oliver's web site and I see that he put up some Hyloft racks from the ceiling of his garage.  I got to thinking that would be a good place to put the fuselage parts and free up some garage floor space.

I checked Hyloft's web site and they had their largest 45" x 45" rack on sale.  So I ordered 2 of them to make a 45" x 90".  Each 45" x 45" rack is good up to 250 Ibs.  So the configuration you see below is good for 500 Ibs.

http://www.hyloftusa.com

NOTE:  Their shipping was really reasonable and prompt.  Hyloft got it shipped out the next day and it came UPS ground.  They charged me $30 for shipping, but these two racks were 60+ Ibs so I thought the shipping fees were reasonable.  It costs me $30+ to drive to Omaha and half the time I go up there for something, the store in question is usually out what ever I am looking for.

I unpacked the fuselage, separated the majority of the paper from the parts and put them on the rack.  I had plenty of space. 

Now I have the fuselage all put away.  I have cleared up the floor space on the garage and with winter coming, I think that I could actually get at least one of the cars in the garage.  That is something Tami has been bugging me about the last two winters.

I have been struggling for some time with how to control the temperature of the garage and make it comfortable to work on the plane when the weather is less than cooperative.  It gets really hot and humid here is southern Nebraska during the summer.  We have already had several days in the low 90's and we haven't even gotten into June yet.  It just makes the building process a painful endeavor.  You spend more time wiping the sweat off of the aluminum parts than you do building.

So when I went looking for a solution to cool the garage, it quickly became apparent that a window air conditioner or a stand alone room air conditioner was not going to be enough.  I have windows in the garage, but they are narrow and tall casement windows.  Wrong dimensions for a window air conditioner.  The room air conditioners still needed a supply and exhaust, but they did make templates to mount those ducts for casement windows.  This solution became unworkable as they just didn't have the capacity to handle the heat load of the garage and I would have to leave the garage window open and unlocked all of the time.

I then came across an air conditioner known as a ductless, split-type, air conditioner.  It has a standard central air external compressor and it pipes cool refrigerant to an indoor unit that has a self contained fan, "A" coil, and thermostat.  Not only that, but these come in a heat pump version too.  That is friggin' awesome as it doesn't usually get really cold here so the heat pump option would work well to heat the garage (most of the time).   Last winter, I heated the garage with a infrared portable, outdoor propane heater.  It is also this winter that our family lost some in-laws that were spending their retirement winter in Florida when their RV exploded in a propane explosion.  My folks would probably cringe if they knew how I was heating my garage.  The heat pump is a safe option as there is no open flames or gases and will not ignite vapors when I am working with the hazardous airplane chemicals and that makes this purchase also one of shop / home safety.

This type of air conditioner is a little more complicated to install than a window air conditioner, but it will be quiet and have ample capacity to cool the garage.  So I spent the majority of Memorial Day Weekend running after parts to wire it up and mount it.  I am just now waiting for Jeff (a friend of mine) to come by and plumb up all the refrigerant lines.
I am excited to see how well this works.  I fear I might have bought one that is too big.  I expected the garage door to be a huge loss for the cool air so I went one size larger than recommended for a standard house/room equaling the garage's square footage.

Just a shot of the roughed in indoor unit hanging on the wall.  This thing is cool (no pun intended).  The blower dampers are controlled by remote control to blow the cold/hot air out of the bottom or out of the top.

2-Ton (24,000 BTU) outdoor unit.  It is a little over sized for a house with the garage's dimensions, but with the huge garage door, I expect to lose plenty of cool air when compared to a well insulated house.  The heat pump BTU's are probably about right for the garage size.

The best part about this is that I was able to obtain this wholesale!!!  WooHoo!!!!  And it was on-sale.  DOUBLE WooHoo!!!  It was one heck of a bargain (if it works the way it is supposed to).

After my last priming ordeal (which turned out pretty good actually), I had a ton of shadows in the paint booth. On Saturday, Tami and I ran to Omaha to get some miscellaneous parts and I bought a 4 ft shop light and a 8 ft shop light to put over the workbench. I was so impressed with the amount of light I had, I decided to upgrade the lighting in the whole garage. For about $250, I got lighting which provides ample visibility in the whole garage. Tami's light I was using to brighten the paint booth alone was $200. Tami gave me some grief about spending money that didn't directly get installed on the airplane, but she was happy to have her light back.

As part of getting the lighting improved in the garage, I did some straightening up and re-organized the location of the Goldwing and the John Deere. I now have enough room for the wing crates that I expect to get in the next two weeks. Van's billed me for them on 12/05. I haven't heard anything from the freight company yet.