Operation Man Cave - an ongoing project

Predator257Roy

New member
Back in February we moved from middle Tennessee to central Florida. Hunting has been little and projects have been many. We moved into a single wide on 20 acres. I had ruled out trailers as possibilities for a home, but we loved the property, backs up to state forest land. I now reside in a trailer, have no mortgage, which makes living in a trailer really great, and I rather like my trailer home. Maybe a house later, but the trailer is fine for now.
Space is slightly hard to come by in a trailer home, plus a heavy gun safe may tip it over or go through the floor. Not to mention deer heads clutter up the walls and a reloading bench is just out of the question - according to the Miss' but I understand.
Horses are her passion, shooting and hunting mine, fishing too now that I'm in Florida. She needed a barn for her horses, me, just some room for me. Compromise, I get man cave room in the barn, totally sweet! Electric, a/c/, refrigerator, tv, reloading bench, gun safe, roof and four walls! Not to mention steel door with a lock! My place, all mine!
I'll make this an ongoing post, with updates to Operation Man Cave. Of course the wife and horses get first first consideration. I'll pick away at the man cave little by little. But they both go hand in hand. You will see progress on the whole barn.

First we picked a good location.




A good pad is an important foundation. 11 dump truck loads of sand, and a weekend on the rented Bobcat.



With my schedule, there is no way I'm going to do all of the work. I'll be the general contractor, still enough work to do. Hired out someone to get the main barn up. 60'x40' with a 14' overhang

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Barn builder done, got the hard part out of the way. The roof is up, I have a barn.

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Time for concrete. I've done concrete, don't want to do it, and can't do it myself. Willy gave me a good price and since we both knew what we were talking about, I got it the way I wanted. Compacted the base, 4" thick, 6" edge for a better look, 4000psi concrete and footers where appropriate ( we'll get to that shortly) all reinforced with wire, rebar and tied into the posts. 6 mil poly under everything.

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No, I'm not afraid to get into the concrete. Reminds me of a job as a younger man. ( I'm the only white dude out there if you can't figure out who I am)

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So, back to what I said about footers in the appropriate place. We were going to do traditional stick framing for the man cave because of cost, but with this being Florida with hurricanes and all, I like block. What'd you do when someone nearby is selling a bunch of block on Facebook Marketplace for dirt cheap? You buy it all! Just the right amount or the project! Block walls need footers.

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No, I don't do block.

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After a few days of block work, they pretty much knocked it out. Exterior half wall around the whole barn, stalls, and my man cave is blocked. The blocked area is 12'x36'. 12'x24 is mine, separated by a framed in wall, 12'x12' of it is my wife's tack room.

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My future man cave.

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My wife has always wanted a pretty barn. And, I want a nice man cave. Concrete just won't do, for either. I've been wanting to try this or a while.
Acid Stained Concrete!
I sprayed it on and let sit or 36 hours. I wanted a deep etch and penetrating stain. I went longer on time to make sure the color took to the concrete. I had previously rolled on a concrete surface hardener which used excess lime and chemicals in the concrete to harden it by means of a chemical reaction, supposed to give the surface a hardness of quartz. That worked against me on the color, that's why I went way longer on the acid set time before neutralizing and rinsing. I used Kingdom Products Vintage America concrete stain. Old Brick color, accented with Black.
http://www.kingdom-products.com/product/vintage-america-acid-stain/

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This was after rinsing off the residue. It is wet, should look like this when sealed, dries a dull color.

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The sealers came in, so this coming weekend, that will be the project to get done.

 
Hey Bobby, just move into the barn! Seriously that acid stain is a nice touch. Where are you hosting your pics and are you uploading from a mobile device.
 
really nice work..

I am curious about what you learned about how to do the high up scaffolding work, and what made that easier. If anything.

Also nothing wrong with the pics. If you click on them, they take you to your hosting site and I was able to see them large and really look at them.


Thank you for sharing, and i am looking forward to seeing your progress.
 
Thanks!
Actually I haven't used scaffolding. The barn builder and the block layers both used it. Doing either thing would have been slower without scaffolding and more dangerous.

On the backside of the barn I have mortar covered the yellowish colored Hardi board. The pictures don't show it as it is the front side. Either this weekend or next I hope to mortar cover the front side. I hike all 250 pounds of mortar up a ladder over the coarse of the day on a handheld spackle/Sheetrock table thing in one hand, and smear it on the barn with my trowel in the other hand.

I want the pics pigger in my post, I chose the forum link in imageshack. But am new to it, so maybe doing something wrong. I didn't intend on y'all to have to click on the pics to actually see them.
 
no matter, it's worth clicking on to look at.. Nice work and i really like the acid on the concrete. (anything you can share on that acid process would be greatly appreciated)
 
Acid staining, especially a slab out in the open where water usage and prep work is minimal is super easy. In a basement or a kitchen would be more difficult but totally doable, just have to use a shop vac.
Between using 4000psi concret and a chemical hardening agent ( it uses up excess lime and chemicals in the concrete and fill up pores while making it harder) I inadvertently jeopardized the outcome of the acid stain because it needs porosity and chemicals such as lime to react with. That is why I left it on for 36 hours as opposed to the directed 8 hours. The staining process was easy and straight forward. I ordered the stain, which was $55 a gallon, my 2440 sq ft called for 7-8 gallons, I bought 8 gallons. You need a Sprayer able to handle acid, no metal parts. I bought a Chapin Acid Staining 2 gal Sprayer. You want to start with a clean slab, at least 30 days cured out ( unsure of the science behind this). Simply spray on the slab in circular motions, slightly random, not in a type writer pattern, overspraying is fine and keeping it random. We also used a broom in a random circular, swooshing, swirling fashion to help work it in and spread it around. You don't want to do a sweeping pattern as it can leave marks. I'm not sure if this was important while using a full strength acid ( it is dilutable 1:1). I don't think I will brush nest time, just spray. That's it, let it sit. The longer it sits the darker the color you get and the deeper the stain, it starts within seconds of application.
When finished you apply ammonia or baking soda to neutralize and stop the reaction. I used buckets of water with ammonia and baking soda poured on the slab. In an area where excess water would not be able to be used, thoroughly spraying the base mixture would be advised. I then rinsed off the slab several times with a hose and water. If doing this in a house or something, you would mop it up several times over and vacuum up the water while you did this until the water was clear. I just hosed it off and ran a squeegee over it to help it dry.
Slab must be DRY to seal it! That's this weekends project. When steeled, it should look it did when it was wet.

You can get super crazy and artistic when doing this stuff. Just check out YouTube for acid staining, slabs, driveways, countertops. Its all the same principle, different techniques with different outcomes. I saw guys who did this stiff and made it look like a legitimate hard wood floor. I spent hours watching YouTube for this. This was my first time doing it and it came out great.


 
You know..

With all the work and that fine barn, a man needs a nice built in bbq. Hopefully you have some left over blocks.

Save some of your wine bottles and make a mold and pour some concrete counters for the bbq with broken wine bottles glass in the bottom, polish, then some more of that acid stain and it would really look great. I bet you have a little acid left over.
(just make sure to add a spot for a cooler next to the grill. That is key.
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Originally Posted By: ADK The leaves are starting to turn here already. I'm as envious as he!!.
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Yeah, not for a while here. I'm out there sweating bullets!
Should have some more pics soon. Did some sealing last week of the outside aprons and such. Sealing inside hallway today. We'll see how it turns out.
 
This was done a few weeks ago, all on a ladder. I mortar covered the Hardi Board with a specialty Quik Krete product (about 250 pounds worth) and just gave it a light trowel finish. The different colors are a result of two different days. It will be painted later, the same color as the mortar covered block around the barn.

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