Since my last post, we got the outside of the shack painted (except for the door).

It is the same color as the house and with the Hardie siding made to look like stucco, you cannot tell the difference between it and the house from more than 20 feet away!

I put the eaves vents in as well.  I glued a piece of aluminum screen on the backside of the vents to keep some of the bugs out.  In the desert, we have more than our share of bugs and they will crawl into any spot that is outside the wind.  We have already had to kill two nests of carpenter bees inside the shack!

The vents on the back seem to be pulling away from the siding some so I am going to run some screws through the corners just to make sure they are secure.

On the inside, I got it wired and insulated.

On the wiring, I went with 12 ga throughout, rather than 14 ga.  That means it is safe to use 20 amp breakers rather than 15 amp.  That gives Tina 4400 watts of power through the shack.  Her two biggest power consumers are a 1500 watt heater and a 600 watt soldering iron.  She can run both of those on the same circuit and still not trip the breaker.

I also ran 6 ga wire to the shack from the house, so the panel is good to 60 amps.  I figure I might want to build a cook shack at some time in the future.  So being able to pick up 15 amps off the Art Shack to run a ceiling fan and a couple lights will be a hell of a lot easier than a run to the house.

The insulation…  Holy Crap!!!  I went with just plain fiberglass R-19 in the walls and R-38 in the ceiling.  That is about double the insulation of our Minnesota house.  Even with the windows of the shack open, the insulation holds the temps within 5 degrees of the high or low for at least 6 hours!  That is incredible!  Tina should be sitting fat in July and January.