Mancave

Have you ever found yourself necessarily sidetracked in pursuit of very specific goal?  Let's say, for example, you set out to install new hardwood floors your kitchen, but after you pull up the old flooring you discover the sub floor has dry rot and needs replaced.  As you go replace the sub-floor, you find termite damage in the floor joists...so of course, those have to be fixed before you can replace the sub-floor and install your new finished flooring.  The next thing you know you are in the crawl space and find giant cracks in the foundation that must be fixed before you can replace the joists, lay the sub floor and then install your new floor.  Well, I sort of ran into the same thing as I began designing the interior layout of my shop.



Don't get me wrong, the outbuilding is perfectly fine...no cracks or design flaws to address.  Nope, the problem is all me.  When I first stood inside my giant, vacuous shop, my mind ran wild with ideas.  I thought to myself, "how on earth am I going to use all this space?"  Several ridiculous notions came to mind:

Whatever I was going to ultimately settle on had to meet a few basic requirments:

1. It needs to leave ample space for restoring my truck (after all, this is why I had this giant thing built in the first place!)  
2. It cannot interfere with the shop's left-sided bay (this is the bay that has the 14 foot overhead door...I do not want a potential buyer with an RV to be discouraged that he/she couldn't fit a large coach on this side of the shop)
3. It must be build-able by yours truly (enough of this outsourcing stuff!)

After weighing the pros and cons of all my ideas, I settled on a Mancave.  After all, how can I possibly be expected to restore a truck without a comfortable space to which I can retreat to reflect upon the work I have done and to plan my next steps?

In all seriousness, the more I explored the concept the more I realized such a space could serve several functions (both for me and my family).  First and foremost, it would satisfy my longstanding desire to design something de novo and build something to demonstrate my manly skills to my wife (I know your are rolling your eyes as you read this, honey).  Second, I have always loved architecture (particularly, the residential architecture commonly found in the west and pacific northwest)--this would be a chance for me to incorporate some of the design elements commonly found these types of homes into my own home.  Third, it would provide a "home" for my coveted Super Chexx bubble hockey arcade game and Foosball table:

Both of these man-boy gems are carry overs from  my bachelor days...I've been hanging onto them in hopes of one day adorning a basement with their grandeur.  The home we just bought doesn't have a basement (nor does it have a room suitable for these boy toys) so needless to say they didn't "make the cut" when we moved in (consequently, they are sitting in the outbuilding covered with tarps).

A fourth advantage to building a mancave is that I can see it functioning much like a basement for our current home (albeit a detached basement)...a place to watch movies, exercise and perhaps even a fun venue for my kids to have sleepovers with friends.  When I proposed the mancave idea to my wife, I shared with her these very ideas (placing particular emphasis on the fourth point) and she just looked at me like "yeah, right...dry those reasons out and you could fertilize the lawn with them."  Despite her cynicism, she gave me the green light to get started (and a tight budget to boot). 

With the wife's go-ahead, I turned to Google SketchUp to bring some of my ideas to life.  I knew that whatever I designed should probably be limited to no more than 25% of the shop's floorspace--specifically, the southwest 1/4 of the the shop.  Doing so would leave the left-sided bay unobstructed for future RV owners and it would also grant ample space for my tools and truck with plenty of room to spare.  Additionally, it would permit parking another car in front of the mancave on the shop's right side should the need ever arise.  I also felt it was important that whatever I designed take advantage of the shop's 15 plus foot ceilings.  The architectural elements most important to me were large structural beams and lots of Douglas fir (my favorite wood species).  With this in mind, I created the following concept:

Conceptual Rendering (mancave below, exercise space above)

 

Cantilevered beams add space to gymnasium above while conserving valuable shop floor space below

Mancave floor plan/layout

As you can see from the renderings, the mancave's structure is intimately related to the adjacent workshop space and work benches.  So follow this logic:  before I can get back to wrenchin' on Fry-Pan, I need to unpack and organize my tools and workspace...but before I can do that I have to complete the mancave (hence the kitchen floor analogy at the beginning of this post).  Herein lies my dilema..."must build mancave before work on truck" (insert neandertal's voice here).

As the astute will notice, my concept does violate one of my original design principles--it infringes upon the shop's left-side bay.  Specifically, the work benches encroach upon this space.  While I recognize this as a compromise to my initial guiding design principles, I should point out that removing a couple of work benches to accommodate a large coach/RV is far less daunting a proposition than demo'ing an entire room with large beams and electrical circuits.  Hence, when the time comes to put our home on the market, I will either preemptively remove the work benches before listing the home or simply offer to do so for any buyer as a condition of sale.  So there...problem solved.

With my concept solidified, the next step was to get into the nitty gritty of the design--specifically, I needed to settle on exact dimensions, construction techniques, my electrical plan, and all the other considerations necessary to complete this project successfully (and safely). To do this, I called upon friends and family with expertise in each of these areas to ensure a sound construction plan...but that's another post for another time.