A Rhodes Building Systems metal shop building with lean-tos and roll-up doors

Shop & Storage Buildings

The building on your own place. Built for how you work, not for a code inspector.

What we mean by a shop building

Not everything we build is commercial. A good share of our work is the building somebody puts up on their own land: a shop to work in, a place to park equipment out of the weather, hay and feed storage, a cover for the RV or the boat, a ranch headquarters that is part shop and part office.

These are the same steel frames we fabricate for commercial work, engineered to your spans and loads, and we still pour the foundation and put the building up. What changes is what the building has to satisfy. A commercial job answers to code, accessibility and inspection. A shop answers to you.

Shops and working buildings
Equipment, implement and hay storage
RV, boat and trailer covers
Ranch headquarters and saddle and tack buildings
Combination buildings — working bay on one end, finished space on the other

The decisions worth getting right early

A shop is cheap to plan and expensive to change. Almost everything people wish they had done differently comes down to the same short list, and every one of them is nearly free while the frame is still on the drawing board.

Clear height — measure the tallest thing that has to come through the door
Door size and placement, and whether you need to drive straight through
Where the power goes, and how much of it
Slab thickness and the apron outside the doors
Lean-tos and porches, engineered now even if you build them later
Insulation, if you intend to work in there in August

None of that is exotic. It is just the part of the conversation that a company shipping you a kit has no reason to have with you.

Lean-tos, porches and covered space

Covered space with no walls is the cheapest square footage on the job, and on most shops it is the part that gets used hardest — equipment parked out of the sun, a place to work outside in the shade, a porch on the finished end with fans in it.

A lean-to hangs off the main frame, so the frame has to be engineered to carry it. That is why it belongs in the first conversation rather than the third year.

Covered porch along a Rhodes Building Systems shop building with ceiling fans, windows and a walk door — A covered porch on the finished end of a shop building in Central Texas.

When part of it gets finished out

Plenty of shops end up with a finished corner: an office, a bathroom, a break room, a place to sit down out of the dust. Because we are a general contractor, that is not a separate project you have to go find somebody for — the electrical, plumbing, mechanical and interior finish are ours too.

If the finished part keeps growing until you intend to live in it, you are talking about a barndominium, and that is a different conversation about design, insulation and finish. We build those as well.

A completed Rhodes Building Systems shop building with lean-tos, a covered porch and oversized roll-up doors — Shop building with lean-tos on both sides and a covered, finished end.

Common questions

What is the difference between a shop building and a commercial building?

Mostly what it is for and what it has to satisfy. A shop on your own place is built for how you work: door sizes, clear height, power where you need it. A commercial building carries code, accessibility and inspection requirements that drive a lot of the design. The steel and the way we build it are the same.

Can I add a lean-to or a covered porch later?

It is far cheaper to design it in now. A lean-to hangs off the main frame, so the frame has to be engineered to carry it. Tell us up front even if you plan to build it in a few years, and we can engineer for it and leave you the option.

How tall should my shop be?

Clear height is the decision people most often regret. Measure the tallest thing that has to come through the door and go up from there — a lift, a raised dump bed, an RV with the air conditioner on top. Adding height while the frame is being engineered costs very little. Adding it afterward means a new building.

Do I need a slab under the whole thing?

Not always. Some owners pour the working bay and leave the storage side or the lean-to on gravel. It depends on what is going on it and what you want to do later. We pour the foundations for what we build, so we will talk through it with you.

Will you build a shop on my land if I already have plans?

Yes. Bring what you have — a sketch on graph paper counts. We do our own design and drafting, so we can work from your drawing or start from a conversation.

Ask us about your project →