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Great Western Buildings founder Eric Beavers sat down for a chat with one of our Colorado customers, Keith, for direct feedback on his building experience. Keith is a devout woodworker and metal fabricator who was looking to expand his workspace and build a shop dedicated to production with metal. He turned to Great Western for his custom 24 x 24 steel building kit back in 2018. Keith’s story is unique in that he handled virtually every aspect of this project himself from the foundation and erection to wiring and permits.
Keith was fabricating with metal and working with wood in the same shop and decided that, after some close calls, he needed a dedicated space for metal fabrication.
“I don’t really like to admit it, but I set a couple of small fires in the wood shop by not cleaning up the sawdust as well as I could have,” Keith told GWB.
Keith’s building is an excellent example of a utilitarian design. It’s a highly functional 24 x 24-foot building with a 10 x 8 garage door, a personnel door, and two windows on the back.
“I didn’t want to occupy the walls with too many windows because it’s a work shop, so wall space is valuable,” said Keith.
Keith added some modifications to support his fabrication, too. For example, he added a four-foot liner panel all around the bottom of the walls to prevent sparks from getting to the insulation. This ensures that, even in a steel building, the sparks can’t reach anywhere they shouldn’t. In addition, Keith added a vent to exhaust the fumes from his CNC plasma cutter.
Keith truly approached his building project with a “roll up your sleeves mentality” right from the get-go. He broke ground on the project by renting a mini excavator and leveling the property in preparation for pouring a foundation. However, Keith didn’t stop there. He proceeded to build out the entire concrete footing himself. Furthermore, he embedded J bolts into the slab of concrete.
“I measured 500 times because I wanted those bolts to be spot on…so I actually made templates for all six locations where the J bolts needed to go…I think I was maybe an eight of an inch out of square,” said Keith.
Keith managed to borrow a boom lift to erect his building and fabricated a device to fly the building’s components into place. Overall, he reports that his building went up rather quickly and with little to no headaches. However, everyone makes mistakes, and Keith is no exception.
“I was trying to maximize productivity. I stacked my wall panels and, not thinking, just looking at the plans which had different options for their placement would be, I marked and drilled holes for every option where the girt placement could be,” reports Keith.
“It looks like a tank. Like all the rivets on a World War II tank,” added GWB’s Eric Beavers.
Once the building was fully erected, Keith proceeded to install the electrical system himself. The one bit of the construction process he didn’t perform himself was the installation of the his insulation. Keith outsourced that job to a friend, which resulted in him having a bit of a scare.
“They had salamander heaters in there to keep the temperature up inside the building…it was the overspray and fumes from the spray foam getting sucked into the diesel salamander heater then getting blown out,” said Keith.
Keith was kind enough to provide an in-depth pricing breakdown on his building, which we’ve included below. For miscellaneous costs, Keith estimated his additional spend. However, these numbers are as accurate as he could get them.
Great Western Building Kit | $10,500 |
Permits and Inspections | $1,900 |
Electrical and Insulation | $2,230 |
Foundation/Concrete | $5,820 |
Misc. Supplies, Materials, etc. | $1,200 |
All said and done, Keith reports that his building cost him about $21,700 plus pizza, beer, and a bottle of scotch for his friends that helped when he needed a hand. Keith’s building is a phenomenal example of how affordable a metal building kit can be if you’re willing to get your hands dirty and put some sweat equity into your project.
“I can’t emphasize this enough: if anybody is going to want to do this themselves, really really get into what the code is in your area…the time spent upfront will save you countless days, weeks, or months down the road,” said Keith.
As is a recurring theme with our customer interviews, Keith adds the only thing he would do differently if he could start again would be to go with a bigger building. It’s easy to see an empty floorplan as a limitless supply of new space. However, it’s worth keeping some perspective and your potential growth in mind when designing your building, whether it’s for commercial or personal uses.
Overall, Keith’s new metal shop went down without much of a fuss. Be sure to watch the full-length video above or on the Great Western Buildings YouTube channel for an in-depth understanding of Keith’s experience in erecting his custom steel building kit in Colorado.
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