I need to get off my ass and design my Montana shop so I can get it built. When I bought the house I figured I'd have a shop within 2 years. I've now owned it for 3 1/2 years.

I want to get a design started so I can work on a foundation plan. Right now I think I want it 50x80 feet or thereabouts, with the doors on the long side. I want to be able to put cars in it 2 deep and have room for work benches and space between them, that's why the 50 foot depth. I may be able to go a little longer than 80 feet but not much as I want a road to be able to drive around the shop.

I also want to divide it into 3 sections, one being a "clean" shop with finished cars or assembly area, one being a "work" shop with welders, saws, grinders, etc., and the last section being where I store parts, materials, my tractor and attachments, ATVs, and snowmobiles.

I'm currently thinking 30 feet wide for the "clean" shop, and 25 feet wide for the other two areas. My current "clean" shop is 38 wide and 34 deep, so 30 feet seems too small. The new clean shop would be 1500 square feet which is only 208 sf larger than my current one. But I can't get 2 cars deep in my current shop. I think 25x50 would be large enough for the "work" shop and is about 106 sf larger than my current "work" shop.

I wonder if I should shrink the storage shop to 20 feet wide, or add 5 feet overall to give me two 30 foot wide areas. My wife thinks I'm crazy for building such a huge shop but we all know they're never big enough.

I'll probably put a 4-post lift in the clean shop and a 2-post in the work shop. All 3 shops will have 220V welder outlets and will be heated with separate heaters.

I want 12 foot ceilings in the clean shop and work shop, and 16 foot in the storage shop. I plan to put a 14 foot high door on the storage shop so an RV will fit....I don't plan to own one but it's for re-sale some day. I thought about dropping the storage shop floor 4 feet to do this but decided to raise the roof instead. Also, I plan on having a small 15x30-40 living quarters over the opposite end of the building from the storage shop. it would be like a tiny home with one bedroom, a bath, kitchenette, and small living room with windows to view the mountains.

Looking straight on at the shop the storage shop will be on the left (east) end, and I'm currently thinking the work shop would be in the middle with the clean shop on the right (west) end with the living quarters above it.

So the first thing I need to decide is the footprint, then how to partition it. I plan to use SIP construction which gives me 6" walls with R23-26 insulation. I may use SIP roof construction as well but I'm not sure at this point. You can actually get to R-50 with them.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome. I need to finalize the footprint and get a rough design to the architects at the SIP company so they can do the design for me.