I’ve posted the individual updates as we went — the excavation, the posts, the framing, the metal, the doors — but I wanted to put together one piece that tells the whole story front to back. Because looking back at where this started versus where it ended up, it’s honestly a little wild.
It started with a tree. A tree that had to come out before we could even think about breaking ground on a 40×60 shop with double lean-tos and 16-foot walls. I had the string lines up, a rough plan in my head — boat and camper storage on one side, tractor and side-by-sides on the other, an 18-foot slider door right through the middle — and a backhoe I was still learning to run. That backhoe broke down more than once in the early days, which should’ve been a sign of how this whole project was going to go: not in a straight line.
The first real gut-punch came when we hit rock drilling post holes. Not “annoying, keep digging” rock — solid basalt, the kind you need specialized equipment to drill through. That single problem was enough to make me scrap the original location entirely and move the whole shop to the back corner of the orchard. Transplanted trees, tore out fence, ran the laser to find grade, and started over. That’s the kind of decision that stings in the moment but ends up being right — I like this spot more than I ever liked the first one.
From there it became a rhythm of small wins stacked on top of each other. Twenty-nine post holes dug. Then the process of actually setting 20-foot posts with a backhoe and no real equipment for it — which, if you watched that part, you know we struggled hard on post number one and then figured out a system that got us down to about 20 minutes a post. That’s the whole shop build in miniature: fumble through the first one, find the groove, then go.
Having my dad up for parts of this meant a lot. He’d just retired, and getting him on site for the post-setting and the framing wasn’t just extra hands — it was hanging out with him on his morning coffee schedule, hearing him say “why don’t you get the fire pit going” and being right about it. I owe a lot of my work ethic to him, and getting to build something with him before we even get into the Kiowa is something I don’t take for granted.
Concrete day almost got the best of us — mud so bad we nearly lost a truck in it, four sheets of plywood sacrificed just to get equipment out of there. But friends who’d never poured concrete before showed up and made it work. Then came framing, trusses (shoutout to my buddy Matt’s material handler — 40-foot reach, absolute game changer), roof metal, house wrap, siding, and finally the sliding doors that I’m still stupidly proud of.
There were setbacks along the way that didn’t feel small in the moment — a bad ankle sprain from, of all things, a wreck league volleyball game, that laid me up right when momentum mattered. A missed camera trigger more than once, so a few milestones only exist in my memory and not on film. Full weekends burned on nothing but screws — literally over 700 in one day putting up siding.
And then, inspection. No electrical yet. No lean-to doors yet. But it passed. And that’s good enough for me to call this chapter done.
If you’ve watched the whole series, you know this wasn’t a fast build or an easy one. It was a backhoe that kept breaking, a location change, hitting rock, an injury, missed footage, mud, snow, and a whole lot of “we’ll figure it out.” But that’s the whole DPV formula, right? The grind and the payoff aren’t separate things — the payoff means more because of the grind.
If you’re thinking about building your own shop: build it as big as you can afford. I’ve worked out of a 6’2″ basement ceiling I couldn’t stand up straight in, a cheap 12×16 shed, a single-car garage, and a 30×30 carriage house shop — and I outgrew every single one of them. You don’t need a 40×60 with double lean-tos to start building cars. But if you’re going to build, build for where you’re headed, not just where you are.
This shop is where the next chapter of DPV happens — including the Kiowa. I can’t wait to get moved in and start making content in here.
Wheel it, Wreck it, Wrench it, Repeat!
Days of Pain and Victory 
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