Between 265 & 485 SQ/FT Seedy city 2 car garage

[jb3]

Another major problem to fix is the exterior block walls are spreading out and are no longer level. They are about 3 inches combined tipped outward.

ive made my stud wall even with the outside of the garage, and im planning to arrest this situation by putting heavy plywood on the exterior and going out over the block from the stud wall and headers. Then I can screw into each individual block all the way up the wall and lock it in place, but evenly over the whole wall. There are a few loose blocks and my fear is connecting just at the top will just pull the top block out of the wall instead of actually stopping the tip.

On the left side the studs are level and snug against the wall on the bottom.

 

[wasfast]

Is it possible the cross ties for the roof framing aren't holding. The roof pushing down causes the walls to lean outward.

 

[jb3]

Is it possible the cross ties for the roof framing aren't holding. The roof pushing down causes the walls to lean outward.

There actually arent any apart from a single top of wall level 18ft 2x4 running front to back.

Adding some would not hurt for sure, though the strength and feature fee vaulted ceiling is pretty nice. Feels a lot bigger than 18x18 with that peak

 

[jb3]

Installed the sheathing, im going to put a piece of pressure treated decking along the bottom screwed in until future concrete. Everything is being done backwards on this project



I connected the 3/4in plywood to every block on either side as planned, it is not going anywhere now



I still have a pretty serious permanent bow in the roof as you can see from these planes trying to meet, but no more movement is now possible. Im going to call it character



The generic Lowes pine bead board paneling is pretty close to the pattern on the back of the garage doors, so i may use that as vertical siding and paint it.

I also have some rewiring to do to the limited wiring in the building. Squirrels have sampled this

 

[xtremek]

Looks good enough to me. Well done.

 

[captain14]

Very good progress. How much electric work are you planning for this building? Some more lights and plugs inside? Maybe one outside on the new wall?

 

[jb3]

Its actually so small that im not sure i need more than one or two outlets to be functional. Ideally Id like one outlet on each wall, but im not sure what kind of load i have available, or even which unit its piggybacked on currently. The wiring on the main building is somewhat random.

I grabbed a pair of filthy 4 foot old fluorescent light fixtures off the street which should do well lighting this garage with new bulbs.

 

[jb3]

i had not posted this specific angle before, but this image shows street access. It also shows the space im going to call the "garage yard".

After consideration and measurement what im planning to do with this space is allowing a 4 foot gap out from the house for yard access to the left side, im going to enclose it with a 6 foot privacy fence and a gate.

This will knock several things on the head at once.

1- it will give me 3 car parking (one garage spot) for my stuff, while still providing 3 car parking for an apartment in the driveway. (Crucial in the area as this building and garage are less than a block from a major hospital, and the 2 hour street parking limit enforcement is what i would charitably call "rabid".)

2- it will go a long way to completely enclosing the back yard, something I've been nagged about for years by tenants with dogs.

And 3- it will go a long way to giving tenants of the building near total privacy in using the yard while i may be in the workshop, and the reverse.

This way i can have a project vehicle in the shop, and still work on a DD in front of the shop inside the enclosure without bothering the residents apart from possible car shuffling.

 

[BlakeTheCarGuy]

Nice garage and progress. It’s nice to see the old ones brought back to life.

 

[jb3]

My bead board siding is up, this shows the portion nailed up



This is my piece of pressure treated decking about the height of a future foundation wall. (Please disregard the logo being upside down. I had a friend helping me, and well, hes just the kind of idiot who puts things on upside down. At least hes consistent, matching the short wall to the long one)



And the exterior complete apart from some additional trim and paint. Everything from approximately 2 feet down is screwed on and removable. Hopefully the bother of doing this pays off in the future when i can do concrete



I am now ready to construct my doors! The thing I've been wanting to do since the beginning

 

[captain14]

Looks good. The feeling of being able to lock the shop up after a day is great.

Are you going to paint or stain the bead board?

Sometimes good help is hard to find. Is he at least entertaining?

 

[xtremek]

Not letting any grass grow under your feet.

 

[jb3]

Looks good. The feeling of being able to lock the shop up after a day is great.

Are you going to paint or stain the bead board?

Sometimes good help is hard to find. Is he at least entertaining?

I am planning to paint to match either the first or second story of the house, which is a green two tone, dark green over a Lima sort of green with white trim.

Sounds horrible but it works well on the house

 

[jb3]

Not letting any grass grow under your feet.

under a bit of a time limit to move some stuff

 

[nadogail]

May you enjoy your garage in good health.

 

[xtremek]

How are you going to seal the horizontal seams so water doesn't get behind them?

 

[jb3]

How are you going to seal the horizontal seams so water doesn't get

Im going to caulk them and then paint, and also add a gutter later

 

[jb3]

ive constructed the doors and put them up temporarily, but made a blunder in i failed to account for the swing of the door in my door frame, so will take down the man door and trim it.

They are pretty light and strong using those aluminum panels, so apart from failing to measure them to close, im fairly happy with the appearance.

I need to add a lot of trim and do some other fitment stuff, but another step closer to a locked situation

The door frames ended up pretty basic-




Oops! Would be nice if they close! Oh well, fairly easy fix



I surface mounted the hinges so i could do this with the man door. Its plenty big enough to bring a fridge through which was a requirement, and totally out of the way when fully open




Next on the list is fix the size blunder, install all my trim and locking mechanisms, then assess from there on next step

Also a little detail is needed for the 2 inner bolts of every hinge, so might try and give the front of this garage some minor character there

 

[captain14]

jb3,

I was thinking about your recycling the garage doors. You should post a couple of build pictures and the final set of doors installed.

This is an ideal candidate for the repurposing thread.

The repurposing thread

Are those clams edible? Mike Not until Pines performs a sniff test.

www.garagejournal.com

 

[jb3]

jb3,

I was thinking about your recycling the garage doors. You should post a couple of build pictures and the final set of doors installed.

This is an ideal candidate for the repurposing thread.

The repurposing thread

Are those clams edible? Mike Not until Pines performs a sniff test.

www.garagejournal.com

Once i get all the screw holes caulked and the doors painted i will do that!

 

[jb3]

Rummaging around in my stockpile of left over stuff i found 10 of these door frame trim pieces.

I need to block up off the doors to get two inner screws on the hinges and these, while not very interesting to look at, are so close to the perfect size that it would be a shame not to use them.




When the doors are green and all the hinges and trim white they will give a minor amount of character to this featureless shed.

 

[runit]

What are the plans? man cave? Storage? Combo of both?

 

[xtremek]

Very slick use of scrap.

 

[jb3]

What are the plans? man cave? Storage? Combo of both?

Im going to attempt to store all my business stuff (van load) and all my car hobby stuff in this 324 square foot cube.

These possessions currently messily occupy two large two car garage spaces and an attic.

Basically this thread is a going to be about storing 20lbs of **** in a 5lb sack. I also want to work on my hobby stuff, so i need to leave space in that sack for an active rat and his moldy cheese

 

[jb3]

Ok got my doors complete (im planning to add a regular knob at some point but for now a left over van puck lock set will work)

Ive been irritable all week because they didnt close and of course it took all of 15 minutes to fix when i finally got here



I over hinged them because i want to mount stuff to the doors themselves also, so we did the 180lb man swing test on both and they did well! No drooping.
Im no going to exceed that on the inside of either door




Next we staked out and put in poles for my garage yard area fence. This gives me another 324 square feet of gated space!

Eventual gate location-





And enclosure area-






Next is to construct the fence and outer gate, but now i can lock the door to the garage itself so pretty psyched.

There are actually 3 fence gates to construct, 2 to the back yard for tenants and mine

 

[LWB]

Nice job. The doors look great and are hefty!

 

[m6z]

Wow, you're making great progress.

 

[jb3]

Another minor improvement!

There is a single overhead outlet inside the shed. I was impressed with how effective some amazon garage lights were in another thread. They screw into a regular fixture. A lot brighter already

I think two of these lights will provide all the overhead light im likely to need in here

Before-



After-

 

[xtremek]

Looks really good. Did you get the LED lights with the foldable wings? It's amazing how much light they put out.

 

[jb3]

Looks really good. Did you get the LED lights with the foldable wings? It's amazing how much light they put out.

Thats exactly the one, definitely amazing

 

[jb3]

Todays project was to work on a way to store tenant stuff occupying space im my garage.

Initially i was thinking i would buy one of those flimsy metal sheds from the depot and slap it up for them, but the last time i bought one of those was 10 years ago and i had a bit of a faint moment at the current prices for those metal sheds.

Then i thought there is plenty of garbage lying around in the garage and basement and perhaps something can be run up.

I have a pile of old fence posts that have been rotting for years and their time to shine might be now. There was a left over 3x8 sheet of plywood so the gods have spoken, the tenant shed will be constructed of old fence posts in the random 3x8 dimension i have available.

Material horde-



The best spot for such a narrow shed seemed to be a lean to on this corner of the garage.

Thankfully that blue thing in the picture was far enough away from the building to do this, as it may weigh 1000lbs and has 18 inches of soil in it.



4x4 PT frame work is up, height of outside wall was dictated by whatever the fence posts are, end posts for a split rail fence. I rotated the slots in on the theory that the could serve some shelving or storage purpose later.






I still have to skin this thing, but i do have some OSB shelving in the garage that could be the roof, and there is still more garage door material available that could possibly be some of the exterior

The plan is a door in the center and it *should* fit my.. I mean the tenants, smoker, and some gardening tools and patio stuff. Its high so ill put some shelves in there.

 

[jb3]

Also finally repaired a broken section of old fence today. This fence section is garbage and was knocked off the posts by a branch almost 8 years ago. At the time i was working out my schedule to get by there and put it back when i received an irate call from the neighbor on that side about the fence.

A nasty bit of uncalled for unpleasantness, so in the neighborly spirit i thought i would teach her a lesson by taking my sweet time to repair it. Then i forgot about it entirely for more than 6 years.

In that time period this crappy fence has been laying around rotting at an accelerated rate in various spots in the yard, but i was feeling charitable to the neighbor today and finally repaired it.

Just in time for other sections to fail probably. This fence is not long for this world.

 

[xtremek]

Looks like you had a decent weekend, productivity wise.

 

[jb3]

Looks like you had a decent weekend, productivity wise.

Im trying to get there as often as i can at the moment as I've had an open apartment in the building for too long.

Due to various personal circumstances there have been some major delays in preparing the apartment. It was badly abused and needs a kitchen, full repaint and repair to every single wall, at least 6 windows, and other odds and ends. I admit that part of the delay is i HATE repairing old horsehair plaster and embarked on repairs for walls that should have been replaced with drywall. Building stuff in the yard is way more fun but doesn't get me closer to a new doe eyed tenant.

Meanwhile there is the preparation of this garage for me and also a large number of other things i just haven't been on top of in the yard for years.

My order of priority here next is-

-Finish shed extension to building and eject tenant property from garage
-Finish sections of fences separating garage space from yard, gates can be later
-move items in to garage and project car into garage yard.
-return to finishing the apartment and get it listed.

THEN i can go back to having fun in the garage and yard.

Typing that out was helpful as i generally have one full day a week to work on this and need to focus

 

[Bustedwheel]

I come to GJ just for builds exactly like this. Great work.

 

[captain14]

Here’s a couple of pictures of your garages little brother with a similar bump out and garage door. This is near me in the next town over. The original garage is probably a 10x20. I’m guessing the current door replaced the original wood door when they added this on. That’s the size of my garage built sometime after 1939.

 

[xtremek]

Funny seeing these garages reminds me of an old neighbor's garage. His was 12' wide and had a 6' bump out on the back of the garage. The rear wall was only about 5' tall at the back.

 

[jb3]

I come to GJ just for builds exactly like this. Great work.

Thanks!

 

[jb3]

Todays progress was hampered by an unfortunate reality. Im broke for a few weeks due to an expensive personal situation.

I decided to try and get as far as i could with whatever i found in the garage.

Luckily in the back of the garage i found not only enough OSB for the roof but a pile of old shingles under garbage on the floor on the left! Score.




I also made a change to the front of the lean to to accommodate an outdoor table i had forgotten was the property of the tenants as well. Widened the door-





Next i realized had i planned this shed better i could have just easily continued my bead board siding out onto the shed seamlessly. Since i failed to think that far ahead, i had to do a bunch of complicated shimming of a fairly tortured plane to do it, but i like how it looked after, like it might actually be flat and level, instead of leaning in two directions like it is!



Then I continued the bead board siding out until i ran out of the boards i had left. I then for lack of any underlayment for the roof used some tyvek i still had, and used up the left over shingles from the garage floor.

I am left with this partially sided and partially roofed lean to, but shot my bolt for materials and fasteners unless i have more lying around somewhere




I am planning to hide the concrete feet with another piece of decking i have. I used them because i had 4 and only had to buy 2, but my daughter pointed out they look like elephants feet, and now thats all i can see. I should be able to hide them with about a half inch gap over the gravel

 

[captain14]

jb3’s Custom Carpentry and Trim Service.

“ We Do It All With Your Materials on Hand. “

Just a small business names and slogan?

Making good progress. Maybe if you look on CL or FB, you might be able to pick up just enough free materials to finish the shed.