welcome to part one of the build of sam's workshop whether this be the new workshop
of green acre homestead or the new home of sam craft it all starts here
step one of this workshop build is the foundation now i'm going to be building this as if it was
a storage shed off of a commercial lot that they came and plopped and dropped here on
the property i'm just going to be building it here on the property instead of somewhere else
the reason i'm doing a building structure such as that is i want to have the option
should we ever decide to move this change it or i don't know sell it and upgrade i don't know
we have that option to do that in the future as opposed to building a permanent
fixed structure to the ground that kind of locks us in and well you have no choice at that point
probably the number one reason i'm going that way is because my current workshop is fixed locked in
can't go anywhere and i don't want to repeat that mistake so we've roughly got our capstone
blocks laid out here on the ground roughly have the 10 foot long 4x4s laid out in their skids
now is the fun part of going through digging down leveling everything and getting ourselves
a firm level base foundation to then build everything on top of i hate foundation work
how i'm going about doing this foundation is to lay out one line and to be very picky on that
first i spend a lot of time on this front edge this front skid making sure it is level it is
exactly angled the way i want the whole building to face because that's going to be the runner
point or the skid that i measure everything else off of once i had that leveled out and in line
exactly like i wanted i then used my tape measure and measured the rest of the skids off of it
i knew that my spacing for my particular building is three foot three inches from center to center
on the skids so i just measured it eyeballed where the blocks were to go then i could cut
out the soil around the block giving a lot of room about an inch and a half perimeter wiggle
room to make sure i can move them around and that is how i went about laying out everything as far
as how to dig a hole i don't have a lot of tips on how to dig a hole except i did finally find a
a style or a pattern that works for me with our soil type and just what i'm doing right now what i
did is i scored around the perimeter of the block and then i stabbed my spade in about three to four
inches into the ground that gave me a rectangle cut into the soil after that i went ahead and
chopped up that rectangle into about four bricks and then i removed the bricks one at a time i
made a pretty clean removal of the sod and the topsoil as well as made it manageable sizes for
me to be able to toss or throw or at least carry to another area and it seemed to work okay for me
it's pretty efficient as far as what i'm able to do so i don't know maybe it'll work for you
i purchased all of the 4x8 by 16 solid concrete blocks also called capstones i purchased those
myself for this project but the larger blocks the traditional eight by eight by sixteen blocks
i am actually repurposing from our garden at our current homestead we figure why not we're gonna
have to eventually bring stuff over might as well tear up a little bit of raised bed gardens that
are well dormant and dead right now this time of year anyway and save myself about 350 a piece at
least i think that's what the price are currently and repurpose some material so just a little
explanation of why those larger blocks look really dirty pretty and old because they're dirty cruddy
and old by far the most tedious part of this whole project is doing this foundation thankfully though
with the design of building i am constructing and my foundation style i don't have to be
dead on within half inch quarter inch on everything that is really beneficial because
this style foundation digging 20 footers of sorts plus blocks and leveling and spacing
can be extremely difficult to do with one person the reason my foundation doesn't have to be
dead on is that my floor is going to be on top of it and my skids are not designed to end
with the outside perimeter or the ends of the building the skids as they are right now are a
little bit longer than the building so i'll be able to trim them to fit at the end and then as
far as the width the building floor is actually going to overhang the widest part of the skids
by about a foot on each side that way it gives me a little bit of wiggle room if it's not perfectly
parallel or perpendicular or whatever p word for geometry you want to use it's going to be okay
everything will be solid secure perfectly fine in the end and you're never really going to notice
the only time we're going to see this is out of sorts or wonky is right now as i'm building it
and as we construct it once it's all covered up no one will ever know now i use the phrase
no one will ever know in the sense of it's still going to be structurally sound it's
still going to be solid there's not going to be any corners cut i'm just saying that if it's off
a half inch here or there you shouldn't see it in the end notice how i'm backpedaling
i go from no one will ever know to you shouldn't see it in the end oh well so i am down to my last
row i have the blocks roughly laid out i want to go around dig my little footer holes and that'll
be it i hope that will be it for the majority of the digging and grunt work of this project
so i'm gonna go ahead and jump in here finish this last row to be done with said grunt work
set it down
two more two more two more one two
almost almost
all of the holes have been dug for the foundation of this workshop
next thing i'm going to do is bring over some patio paver base
it's kind of a mixture of rock and sand and it compacts really really well i'm going to put about
half a bag of piece in every single one of these holes and then tamp it down to a level firm base
from there i'll put the block on i'll make sure it is perfectly level and then we'll build up
from there finding the lowest point possible to get level on all of these across the board
so
wow
now that all the holes are dug and prepped back filled and tamped with the paver base we can
finally finally finally finally begin putting the blocks on the ground leveling each one and
start to actually visually do something with this project uh it's been all day
just to get to this point and visually not a lot seems to have happened that's the way it goes all
the hard work's down under the ground so that the stuff you see above ground doesn't fall or look
wonky i'm going to start at that corner the one closest to the camper over there the reason i'm
starting at that corner is that the high spot of the terrain and the ground and the lay of the land
i'm going to start there with as short as block as possible while keeping all the wood
up safely away from the ground and all that stuff and then i'll work my way across just putting the
first blocks on this row down and leveling them i'm not going to worry about bringing them all to
the same level yet i just want to get them in line and level on the ground after that and i
get the four by fours put on top of them i'll be able to see how much i need to come up and down
to bring everything correct and support across the span of the beams once i have this first run
done i'll move across and repeat the same process that then is going to dictate the spacing and the
whole level plane of this workshop going forward all right daylight's burning let's get working
as far as shims for the foundation i used a variety of block cap stones regular eight inch
tall stones i use two by fours i use one by all treated plus i use some shingles in case you don't
know using shingles for shims is a really cool method because they will not rot or deteriorate
and they're perfect for allowing you to sneak up on the perfect level lines
well it is absolutely the end of the day and that took all day to do i did nothing else today
other than work on the foundation mine is the one run to the hardware store to get the paper base
i've been out here since nine o'clock this morning and it is right now 5 30 in the evening it's a lot
of work it is a whole lot of work i think my back and leg is going to be feeling it
as soon as i finally stop that's why i cleaned up everything the extra blocks the scrap pieces
of wood all the tools everything is cleaned up because i know once i sit down i'm done
for the day well guys hopefully you enjoyed this first official groundbreaking of the new workshop
here on our property if you have any questions or comments be sure and leave them for me down below
otherwise take care we'll see you guys next time on the homestead
you