Building Valvolux's home - Part 1

Part one

Valvolux Amplifiers needed a permanent home, so high on the list of requirements when choosing an abode back in 2008 was a suitable garage or similar enclosed area that could be converted into a reasonably secure and insulated workspace for me to tinker in. It was important to provide a space that Valvolux could grow into without getting too cramped in the forseeable future.

So it was a stroke of fortune that my wife and I both fell in love with the house that is now our home, which just happened to have a large 2 car brick garage out the back. Much to my wife's delight I was determined to make this shed the most awesome room in the whole house.

With the rest of the house crumbling around us and biting off way more than we could chew we threw ourselves into some serious renovation work. (It is a testament to this that we spent the first year of our residency here sleeping in the loungeroom).

Brick, concrete and tin shell full of our 'stuff'

The shed was just a brick, concrete and tin shell of approximately 10 x 3.6 metres in dimension. A very large dog had been living in it and it really didn't smell too good. My plan was to turn it into a secure, well insulated and comfortable room in which I'd be happy to spend long hours working on electronics but also with a small area down one end for entertaining guests and receiving customers (and maybe we can fit a small bar in too – ed). I had a really good idea of what I wanted in my head so drawn up plans weren't necessary, I just decided to go for it and solve each problem as it arose.

The first job to tackle was replacing the rusting corrugated iron roof with zinc aluminium. I wanted to ensure absolutely no leaks in this building and to also negate any possibility of having to replace the roof later on down the track.

With the parts ordered and delivered we of course had to choose an insanely hot weekend in the middle of summer to work on a hot tin roof.

With the help of some mates we set about pulling the old sheets off, giving the woodwork a really good clean(including discovering the previous owner's little stash of naughty pictures cut neatly out of magazines and then crumpled up and stuffed into the eaves...strange indeed).

 Cleaning out the stickmag stash!

Great view from up here, looking forward to getting the shed roof vegetable garden happening one day. The Dandenongs are there somewhere in that low cloud

With the new roofing sheets already cut to size it was a fairly simple but physical task to put them in one by one and then secure the whole lot with hundreds of tek screws. 

Last one almost in. With thanks to Chris, Marco and Nanne

And so now with a new roof on it was time to start thinking interiors, this will be covered more fully in part two to be published soon.