I'll be closing next month on a new home. We're now empty-nesters and it's just what my bride wants and I like it because of the 4-car garage (3 wide, one tandem). The plan is for my wife to use one stall part-time for unloading her minivan and the rest becomes my shop. I couldn't be happier!!
The garage already has a nearly-empty breaker panel with 100A service but I'm a big fan of lots of lights, lots of 120V and 240V outlets and (generally) on separate breakers. My quandry is the inside of the garage is nicely finished with white-painted sheetrock. Hence my quandry. I'm loathe to tear out all of the sheet rock (outside walls are insulated) to run wire, yet I'm sure my wife would not be a fan of surface mounting EMT conduit or armored cabling. The majority of the outlets will be along the walls although a couple may drop from the 9.5' ceiling. The strings of lights are also obviously roof-mounted.
I believe my best solution will involve surface wire molding but figure someone here has been down this path before and might be willing to share their experience and offer a recommendation. The breaker panel is munted in the back wall of the tandem stall so there will be a fair run to get to the various outlets. As a resuly I'm expecting I'd start with a large molding at the panel and split off to smaller molding once out of the tandem.
I'm looking for a solution where the materials alone won't kill me, as a rough calc with one supplier of commercial wiremold had the molding & receptacle boxes exceeding $1,500, which is more than I'd like to spend. What have been your experiences? Any brand / model or series recommendation? Living in Alaska, shipping on anything mail-order will be impractical due to freight rates; I just don't need bulletproof.
Opinions and advice welcome!!
Jim in Alaska