Building a Private Lab and Workshop
Scroll DownYears in the Making
(Note: Mouseover any imperial measurement in this article to see the approximate metric equivalent)
In 2020, I bought a small house in rural Virginia on a little hillside next to the interstate. I wouldn’t have usually entertained the idea of uprooting my life to end up in a minimally maintained 70-year-old house in a busy trucking corridor except that the property was also home to two insulated steel buildings: one 1200sqft and the other 3000sqft and the price was right.
The larger of the two buildings is 30’ wide and 100’ long, with 3 overhead doors and 3 entrance doors. It’s massive. The previous owner appears to have been in the process of dividing it into 3 bays in order to rent them out. There was plumbing roughed in for restrooms and wooden frames prepared for electrical panels, although only one panel was installed. They had also framed out the beginnings of an office or restroom area of some kind, it was hard to tell just by the framing what the intention was.
The space was actually a little overwhelming. I was moving from a 500sqft commercial space in Boulder which I was renting in lieu of an apartment and which was becoming a little cramped with tools. Still, suddenly sextupling my shop space was beyond anything I had dared to plan for. In fact, I had thought a lot about what my ideal workshop space might look like and in my wildest dreams I built this model of a 1200sqft sloped-roof shed:
So finding myself in possession of twice as much space, while fantastic, was also a little daunting because a big steel building full of efficiently organized workspace is a dream but the same building full of broken garbage and abandoned projects is a show on A&E. I knew that avoiding that terrible fate was going to require some planning and so I set about organizing the space.
You Gotta Keep ‘em Separated
One thing that I knew I wanted in a shop space was the ability to separate the clean stuff from the dusty/smoky/dirty stuff. The hazard of having so many interests and hobbies is that they’re not all compatible. You can easily end up with paint overspray on your sewing project, or sawdust in your turbomolecular pump, or grinding sparks in your pick-and-place machine… any one of several bad things could happen. So the plan became a two-tiered approach:
A Spectrum of Contamination
Firstly, it makes sense to just put all the really dusty stuff at one end of the building and everything that needs a clean environment at the other end. To prevent the migration of the bulk of the particulate, I can put up a wall with a vinyl strip curtain to separate the woodshop, etc. from everything else. Of course this won’t be a perfect barrier, so we can think of the building as having a gradient of particulate contamination from east to west. Sawing and sanding wood, welding and cutting steel, working on engines, this stuff can happen at the far eastern end of the shop, behind the vinyl curtain. The middle portion of the building won’t be ultra-clean but should be free of sawdust and grime, so it’ll be good general project space. Finally, I can put my SMT assembly line and stuff like that at the west end of the building.
I framed out the large dividing wall that would isolate about a third of the building and ended up cladding it in 1/4” OSB. This wall doesn’t perfectly seal that area of the building. It should be high enough to keep the dust contained but, if needed, I can always finish it to the ceiling.
To this day I’ve yet to install the vinyl strip curtain. This is partially because around this time, my brother needed a place to stay and I let him use that third of the building as a painting studio, band practice space, and general hangout. This arrangement lasted about 2 years and a lot of his stuff is still there so it may be some time before I can establish a permanent wood/metal shop there. Luckily, I also allow my dad to use the smaller building as a woodworking shop, so I can just use his if I need to make a lot of sawdust.
Boxes in boxes
Secondly, there would be a few things that just need their own rooms. For various reasons including climate control, ventilation, safety, and cleanliness, I would need a few spaces that were completely separated from the rest of the shop goings-on. I’ve always wanted a dedicated chemistry lab with a fumehood and this is the perfect opportunity to build one. And as long as I’m going to build a chem lab, a small positive-pressure room for molecular biology and genetic engineering projects would be really cool. Finally, a nicely temperature controlled room with some ventilation would make the 3D printers and laser engraver pretty happy. So there are three rooms that need to be built.
I started by tearing down the existing framing and reusing a large portion of the pre-framed walls to make the first room. In total, the room is about 7’ deep and 18’ long and is divided by a water-wall which I built over the rough-in for the restrooms. The resulting spaces will be the chem and bio labs. I built another room, only 12’ long against the opposite wall of the building which will house the 3D printers and laser engraver. The chem lab and 3D printer room both got windows that I made out of square glass tabletops which were left in the building when I closed on it.
Drywall went up on the inside of the rooms pretty quickly, and I installed LED light fixtures along with the rest of the electrical. I still haven’t primed these rooms, but I did finish the drywall so it’s at least ready for priming. I also intend to install rubber cove base in these rooms, but I’m waiting to do the built-in cabinetry first because the cove base will run along the kickboard.
Things remained in this state, more or less, for a few years. My salary stagnated as record inflation ate my buying power, I got very busy launching a product and taking CM work and making YouTube videos, and eventually I burned out extremely badly in a way that really kept me out of the shop for a long time. However, in 2025 I landed a more lucrative gig and found myself with the time and resources to start improving the workshop again.
A few things had happened in the shop, despite not being “finished” with it. I had started this whole exploration into vacuum tubes and glass blowing and, as a result, I had acquired a whole new set of tools that needed “clean” space. I had also decided that I wanted a bridge between the labs, with the eventual goal of creating a mezzanine level on top of them. Originally, I demarcated this bridge with a pair of 2x6 boards, thinking I would build a truss to stiffen it eventually. My first order of business when I resumed infrastructure work on the shop was to replace these with 4 9½” engineered I-joists which should be rated for the span. Until there’s an actual mezzanine, the bridge will also act as a convenient place for lighting and power drops for the high-vacuum stuff, which will live in the space between the lab rooms.
I bought the OSB cladding for the lab rooms in 2025 and it sat on the pallet over the winter and well into Spring until my partner came to visit and she helped me get a jump-start on installing it. Having a second set of hands for once was really helpful when it came to marking, cutting, and installing all of that sheetwood.
With the cladding up, I was motivated to get the exteriors of the lab rooms finished as quickly as possible. The first order of business was paint and clear coat. I painted the bottom 4 feet of the walls black to hide scuffs from moving things around and to add some visual interest. Then I covered everything in a coat of water based interior clear coat to prevent moisture damage and darkening and to make the OSB easier to clean. I also had signage made for the outside of each lab room.
With the outside of the rooms painted, I was finally able to build something I had imagined since putting a wall right next to the main shop entrance: A PPE station! I bought acrylic dispensers for gloves, earplugs, masks, goggles, etc. as well as coat hooks for lab coats. It also made sense to put a first aid cabinet in the same spot. Although it’s a private shop and I’m not strictly required to have one, I also bought a Safety Datasheet binder and holder since I expect to keep a lot of potentially hazardous chemicals around. Finally, this wall is also a convenient spot for the shop’s network gear so I installed a small cabinet.
The last bits of finishing on the lab exteriors were trim for the doors and windows, handles for the doors (and a lock for the chem lab door), and rubber cove base around the base of the walls. I also wanted some corner trim to hide the ugly butt-joints between the OSB sheets, but actual corner trim of that style is weirdly expensive and hard to source. I ended up buying 8’ lengths of 1/8” angle iron and just drilling some countersunk holes in them for mounting.
Big Bench! Big Bench! Big Bench!
One feature of the “general project workspace” that was important to me was a long workbench along the back wall that could also act as storage underneath. I decided on an extremely lazy design, using 2x4 lumber, joist hangers, and more OSB!
The benchtop was made by laminating two layers of 3/4” MDF. The entire 24’ span of the benchtop was ripped from 3 full sheets of MDF. I staggered the overlaps for strength and laminated them together with plenty of wood glue. MDF is great because it’s dense (well, medium dense), dimensionally stable, and flat. The downside is that any water spilled on in will basically ruin the surface, so applying a protective finish is important. I chose an oil based urethane thinned with naptha so that it would soak in and densify the surface. I applied it repeatedly until it wouldn’t absorb anymore and then let the penetrating layer thoroughly dry before sanding and applying an unthinned coat of urethane. The result is a hard, flat, cheap work surface.
The backboard of the workbench provides bracing to the frame as well as a convenient spot to mount tools, battery chargers, stuff like that. I finished the backboard with the same interior clearcoat that I used on the lab exteriors. I bought a few 16-outlet power strips and LED tube lights to install on each section of the bench. The power strips are just Amazon Basics and they’re screwed to the backboard and plugged into each other in series. I don’t expect a lot of load on any of those outlets, but if bench tools find their way to living there, I can split them up to other outlets. The way I ended up installing the backboards, it was convenient to make the bottom portion recessed so that cables and cords can be run to under the bench. I bought a bunch of plastic totes and I plan to build some racks under the workbench to slide them into so that I don’t have to disrupt an entire stack to get to the bottom totes. The tote racks will provide additional support to the workbench as a bonus, which is nice.
This is the current state of the shop. The wiring is finished everywhere but the 3D printer room so everything has lights and outlets, including the high-vacuum lab and I’m starting to shift my attention back to vacuum tube stuff and YouTube videos for a while. Normally, autumn would be a great time to work on things in the shop but I’ve just learned that I’m going to be unemployed at the end of the month, so it may be some time before I’m able to finish out the labs. In the meantime, I’ve been doing my research with regards to HVAC, fume hoods, flow hoods, and all of the other things that need attention before they’re functional.
As you can tell by the floorplan, there is still plenty of work to do before I feel like the shop is “finished.” In reality, no space like this is ever finished. I expect it to evolve as my requirements for it evolve. Not only does it need to be a functional space, but it will also serve as a nice backdrop for video content. Ultimately, the big idea is not just to keep it to myself. It would be awesome to host resident hackers as well as small conferences and events in the space and I’m planning some features that will make that easier. At least it’s in semi-functional condition at the moment, so projects will continue!