Thread: ***Oakes' Shop Build***

Oakes Detail's Garage Build!

We moved into our new permanent location here in West Chester, PA back in April of 2011 after searching the winter for a suitable, much larger space than our three car one in the south end of town.

After crossing treacherous terrain, enduring harsh winters and hot summers fighting off swarms of Scuderias and Aventadors...we found a home we could make "ours." Quick summary on the unit...

-3,000 square feet on the ground floor, roughly 900 square feet for the second floor.
-Three 10x12 overhead doors and one walk in

...Other than that a basic industrial box. When we got here, it used to be a cabinetry business that left behind a ton of stuff, including some random paneling and more 220 lines than I have ever seen.


So we stripped it down, and cleaned it up within about 4 days since we already had a packed itinerary lined up. Some rough photos of when we moved in:

How it looked when we started:





What we've done up until now is replaced the paneling with drywall in the existing wall structures, painted all the bare wood to give it a cleaner look and just set it up to run shop. Here's what it looks like as of last night, August 19th 2011.


How it looks now:






I somehow manage to get work done even with this set up here haha! My official desk is due in anyday. Who can spot the other L4P sponsor in the photo?!















Our plans from here on are plenty, however with 10-15 cars through here a day it doesn't allow for much to get done otherwise.

Here are the plans:

- Ground floor epoxied slate gray - we considered Race deck, however I'd rather not spend a week playing puzzle pieces with 3k sq feet.
- Second floor loft is getting extended to the wall in the left rear corner to add approximately 225 sq ft.
- Two offices, kitchenette and lounge being added on the second floor with shop view windows.
- Aluminum "L staircase" inplace of the ever so classy wood setup.
- Waiting for our order of lighting to get in for the "correction tunnel."
--- Five 8ft light strips.
--- Two 4ft light strips.
--- Two 6 light "pods" with swivel mounts.
- Tunnel also receiving an exhaust system to help with humidity and dusting.
- Tunnel gets drywall and paint.
- All three garage doors replaced with new insulated power doors.
- More sweet pieces of furniture to store all the supplies and build components for the personal cars.


We will update as we do more, and anyone is more than welcome to stop by anytime! It's no dream garage yet and still has a ways to go, but fortunately we're too busy to allow any more construction or downtime just yet. It'll do for now, but trust me, if I'm going to be here everyday its going to become droolworthy





Thanks for looking!

-Oakes

Looks great, Nick! Might have to have you do the new ORT Project car before H2O

You know I'm always down! Thanks!

Looks great! Do you have a lot of local competition? Seems hard to find a good detailer in SE PA.

this is awesome! looking forward to seeing the rest of it!

Great work on it so far! Can't wait to see what the finished place will look like.

I have a lot of detail shops around me, but I wouldnt consider them competition honestly. What they do/are capable of in comparison is far different, and I stay busy regardless. Theres a TON of dealers in the area so thats their main focus, although I do have dealer and body shop work coming through.

Thanks for the kind words!

looks great.

Thank you sir!

Looks veryy nice! Got some nice cars coming thru too!

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