Here are my initial plans... again, a two story shop. Bottom floor will be a metal shop. Figuring 12ft ceiling with a concrete slab floor. Top floor will be a wood shop with a 10ft ceiling. Both levels will be accessible by vehicle and will have a 12ft by 10ft roll up door as well as a 3ft 'pedestrian' entry.
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I really do like this plan, but there is no way that I would put the money into creating it if it was my money.
Every building design starts out as a square or rectangle on a flat slab, and then gets more expensive from there. Forget the roof design for now. If it's a rectangle, it's as cheap as you will ever get. Adding angles, valleys, dormers and everything that makes a roof interesting just adds to the final cost. What is killing your budget is your foundation. It's not just going to be expensive, it's going to be MASSIVE EXPENSIVE!!! If you are dead set on your location to build, and you are dead set on having two levels, then the actual height of the lower level is insignificant because all your money is going into that retaining wall.
First question is what do you plan to do with the shop. Pretend that you lived on 100 acres of flat land. What would you build and what would you do in that building? How much metal work do you do and how much time do you plan on spending doing wood working? What tools do you already have and what are the last five projects that you have done in woodworking and metal working? How much of this is something that you plan on doing in the future, but don't regularly do already? The reason I ask these questions is that I've never met a wood guy that does very much metal work, and I've never met a metal guy that likes to do wood work. Having two separate buildings dedicated to each is extravagant!!! I'll also add to this in that I've never met a gear head that did much wood work, or even all that much metal work outside of what it takes to fix a vehicle. For me, having a wood working shop is the most important thing. I can fix tractors and vehicles in there when I have to, but that's secondary work that I really don't care for. I can also do a little welding and what not with metal when I have to, but it's not what I enjoy doing, so it's also secondary. I can put my wood working tools aside when I need to do something else. That's why my shop is 24 feet wide, so I have room on either side to put stuff while doing something in the middle of my shop.
Next question relates to the building site. Do you have to have a concrete foundation? Pier and beam on massive posts would be a huge cost savings.
If you built it all on one level, what size would it have to be? Figure out what your "for real" dimensions are and not what you would like for it to be. We all have limits and there is a point where it becomes over the top for no significant reason. My next shop will be 30 or 32 feet wide. 24 feet has worked well for me, but I have a little more space where I'm going to build and I would like more space, but I honestly don't have to have it. I would never go less then 24 feet wide. Then figure out your length. I'm shooting for 48 feet on my next shop. That gives me 18 more feet then I already have right now, and I'm about full with everything that I have without really needing to buy any more tools. That's a lot of shop. How much do you really have to have and how much is just spending money with the hope that you will need the extra space in the future? There is a point where you turn into one of those episodes of American Pickers and the space just becomes a hold all for all your junk that should have been thrown away or sold decades ago. How many people with really big shops actually use all that space and how many are just massive junk storage buildings? It's a question that only you can answer, but it is also something that you have to be brutally honest with yourself in what you will do with the space and not just a vague dream of something that very likely will never happen.
and to change directions, have you considered ever option with the existing detached garage? What if it didn't exist? If you had the open space there, could you build what you want in that location? While it sucks to demolish a perfectly good building, sometimes that's the fastest, easiest, cheapest way to accomplish what you want. Don't think about what happens to everything that is in there right now, just envision what you could build in that spot and how well it would solve all your concerns. Location is ideal, you already have power there. You should be able to use the existing slab and then add on to it to make a much larger building. Parking garage in the front with a workshop in the back.
Remember, start out with a basic shell of a building that size that you want it. Then scale it bigger if you can, or make it smaller if you have to. Just be sure that you can fit and do what you want in there and not focus on all the what ifs and maybe I would like to do something in the future aspects of the building. Decide on what you HAVE TO HAVE and then go from there. Two levels means two different shops, which means lots of empty building when you can only be in one shop at a time. My guess is that one building will end up being a storage shed and the other will be the one that you actually use.
