Tales of a two shot s**t-shack...

[Ruffgeezer]

**** shack no more, 18'6x16' workshop is up!

Thought I'd better show you guys what I'm about to start working on this side of the pond, I have seen a lot of your threads here, got some great ideas, but unfortunately we are STILL stuck at the start line...

This is the land as it lies, our house is the white one on the right, but we don't have the luxury of a garden (the parking space with the blue car in is our neighbour's).

When the 2 garages on the left of the picture (both labelled) became available, we thought that down the line, if we tried to sell the house, off street parking would help.

So what are sectional garages like?

Inside number 3 the floor is damp but most of the panels here are intact:

Inside number 2 however, you can see a couple of panels that have "blown" (the steel rebar has rusted and pushed the concrete up and off in places)

The owner of the garage on the right of the first picture has granted permission for us to remove his on the understanding that any space gained by our new building is left on his side so he can put a caravan on it.

About 3 weeks ago we agreed this, and he said he'd sort out having the power cut off and the garage emptied for removal. This in mind we found someone to remove them for us for a very good price, but the owner of No.1 still hasn't taken the power out or emptied it, oh and is away for nearly a month now.

I am getting pissed off with the waiting now, I've had my quote for the new building, it'll be a 4 week lead time for it being made and delivered from when the slab is cleared.

What the ultimate end game will leave us with is a 16ftx18'5" Garage with a single door to the right (where the middle one is currently) and a personal access door on the left, but damn my feet are itching to get started...

 

[Pynikal]

wow cant wait to see this come to a head.

 

[AlmostEngineered]

What a great space! I would love to have the opportunity to have a detached shop so close to my house - even if I only used it for collecting more projects.

I always love seeing how things are done in other parts of the world. I'll be keeping an eye on this!

 

[buzzbug]

Can't wait to see this build, good luck mate.
I've seen enough grand designs to know that now is the time that you want to be building..........i say track down that neighbour and kick him in the bum so you can get started.

 

[JasonW]

Wow, I thought parking was tight here in Southern California. What is the origin of these spaces? Did a group of neighbors join together to buy the land and put up the garage at some point?

 

[Ruffgeezer]

The land as it lies is a complete mess of rights of way, but I believe they were all once owned by the same person (I believe he had them constructed too) they are fairly typical of council spec garages over here...

Right onto this week's update; Well time for another update I think.

As good as his word, the chap who bought the garages turned up on Monday with money and a BFO trailer, here is what went down:

Arrival; the doors are first to go, one loaded already:

As he takes the first load (doors and hinges) I grabbed a quick shot of the work so far;

And at the end of day one, a couple of strips of roof are taken too:

Day two sees the rest of the roof taken as well as most of the outer wall on the left hand unit:

Note the pile of tin down the side? More on that later...

He came back this evening, hoping to complete the job (as I write, he has just come back)

Oh yeah, that tin? A full load for trev (my trusty rusty van, bought for this project) to take for weighing in tomorrow, so hopefully a bit of cash back...

 

[DSanders]

Will be interesting to see what you make out of it! Another Brit here, no space and avoiding the ****** planning permission. Living in a flat currently so no garage or workshop, but my folks have a fair bit of spare room on their farm. Hmmmm.

 

[Ruffgeezer]

Well a Trevload of tin work gave me a paltry £10 return at the scrapper, but still better than a kick in the ****, the slab should be cleared tomorrow night, so I'll get on to Boston Sectional to come down and survey for the new building.

 

[Ruffgeezer]

More news as the work comes along apace, check out my dusty slab!

Everything from the van to the fence to a width of 10ft from the house on the left is ours, that's LittleRuff and MrsRuff helping tidy up:

We splashed a bit of water about in an attempt to keep the dust down, in the background you can see the last bits of the old garages that I took apart this morning to speed the clearance up a bit:

Trying the slab for size with the Ax Vts:

The next step is putting the trench in for the power to be laid on.

 

[Ruffgeezer]

**** shack no more, 18'6x16' workshop is up!

Wow, I kinda forgot to keep you guys updated, well since I've been laid up for nearly 3 days with some god awful virus (only today can I actually lift my head without it causing considerable pain) I thought I'd check back in and start updating here again.

Well once the duct for the cable was delivered, I chucked it into trev and took it to work the next day, threading these things is a pain in the ****!

1) Attach weight to string and poke into ducting:

2) Spend rest of lunch break swearing at a spanner that refuses to emerge from the other end:

Today, ably assisted by my dad and uncle, we got the trench dug, filled, ducted and backfilled, it took around 5 hours in total, and would have gone a lot smoother if some ******* hadn't dropped 3" of limestone over half of the land to be dug.

The crew on the easy section:

My paw after attacking nearly 40ft of 3" thick limestone with a mattock, my palm hasn't been this blistered since I discovered master...er...manual labour!

Father Ruff (closest to camera) with the trench depth gauge to his left, hard at removing the spoil:

Depth gauge in action (600mm/2' for those interested):

He's smiling here, but after we lined the trench out with sand, he fell into the bag a little later on:

All covered up, you'd never know we'd been would you?

In the next few weeks, the garage would arrive

=========== Moving on a few weeks ====================

So on friday night, I prepped the slab for the new garage, this entailed knocking off the old cement and sweeping all the rubbish to one side, it having rained, it was quite a messy job, here I am looking grubby on the empty slab for the last time:

After collecting a car load of tat on Saturday, we arrived back Sunday evening to find the garage fairy had delivered us this:

This morning, I discovered that there is a 7 o'clock in the morning, even on bank holidays, after 2 hours of work, this is what they are up to:

And I think these bits go on somewhere too:

Amazingly quick work, and a huge looking space to boot!

More updates to come, I'm not far off wiring it all now...

 

[AHotRod]

Keep the faith, your doing a great job!
It will be worth all of the sweat and blisters.

 

[Ruffgeezer]

Managed to get a great deal on a door and a window this week, only trouble is there is no key for the lock, so some industrial sized swearing will be in order to remove it.

If any of you guys are building or upgrading your garages, I can heartily recommend visiting your local double glazing bods, and asking what second hand bits they have in, my door and window? £40. Thanks to http://www.turnersofhorncastle.co.uk/ for that!

Its not obvious but the bottom of the lock has been drilled already, so I'd hoped to bash a screwdriver into it and jemmy it round to remove it.

However...

Hairslide-***-lockpicking kit:

Trev assisted with more tat hauling and earns a new sticker:

Oh and here is the building nearly finished:

Daddy' little helper means that all walls are now whitish...

 

[ddawg16]

Ruff....nice thread....glad to see you get it done before the ****** weather gets worse....which it will....

Time to go to the pub and have a pint...or two...is it still 3.50/pint? Lord, I remember when a pint of lager was 45p.....

 

[Ruffgeezer]

Yeah its a shame we couldn't get it powered before it started getting dark at 4pm, but it is not far off.

 

[Ruffgeezer]

Ok, I seem to have let you guys get WAY behind with the build, so a few updates in one;

9th September:

This looks pretty good doesn't it? (the wall isn't permanent, we will re-lay that on Wednesday)

Only problem is, soppy ******** here forgot to allow for the minimum height of the meter cabinet, so the window is too big.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuq!

By the 16th, I had found a new window, so the wall could be built;

Ok well not the finest block work in the world, but on Wednesday, with help from my dad and his friend Phil (owner of a BFO disc cutter) we got the block wall up, it is fairly level and using some brick ties, we have secured it to the timber work in the middle of the garage and it will have the upvc door frame screwed into it as well.

Next up is to build a frame around the top for the new window, we have measurements from the frame, so a little bit of working out later, we have a plan, and a boatload of **** scrap wood to make it from.

I'll have to go digging for pictures for more updates, we are a lot further on now than the above suggests.

 

[Ruffgeezer]

Ok, I've got my updating hat on just for a while, so as I left you, I had the building up, the cable in the dirt but no power laid on... I'll pick up from there!


This seems like a lifetime ago, an with the winter closing in, we battled to get the garage weather tight until we could get the window fitted; luckily a large board from the "might come in useful someday" pile fitted almost perfectly:

Weather tightish and awaiting being plugged in to the mains, it's taking shape!

I have a small vinyl plotter here that I experimented with to make this, it never made it as far as the wall, but I may revisit it properly one day:

Starting the window frame, Father Ruff was kind enough to pose for a picture whilst preparing the first upright:

In the evenings, I'd run an extension cable to the house and carry on painting and moving **** from one corner to another:

99p's worth of shelves from ebay helped tidy the place up a little:

The window came from a closed down double glazing sales room, it is admittedly smaller than I'd have liked, however that is good for security, we used some uPvc tongue and groove panels to finish up around the window, and I will pebble dash the blockwork to match the rest of the garage when the weather allows.

The power cable, awaiting juice:

The utilities crew came and dug a big hole ready for the power to be tapped into the street supply:

They had a mini digger, which I consider cheating!

A right old mess!

An important moment, a small car fits in around all the other shite that has arrived already!

The unruly shite has a habit of taking over when your back is turned... just look at all this ****!

The edging stones were another ebay bargin, costing under £1 each, but I must confess I haven't used all of them, and the rest are still where they are in this picture, which is right in the way! Also notice the seeds of the wiring going down:

Some scavenged wood shelving has gone up, as well as the beginnings of the work bench, which is tiny by comparison to most on here!

An evening's work and a lot of scraps of wood made a fairly tidy work surface:

I had no idea what I was doing, but I reckon this should make it strong enough?

Workbench finished, the old drawer front will be the base for some sockets for the bench:

Moving a lot further on, the lights are in as is the whiteboard, as well as Baileycat, the foreman of the garage:

I now have a drawer FULL of hammers, more hammers than I could probably ever need...

Snow and flash painting; I buggered this pic up by getting in it to fire the flash:

Tidyish, but looking busy, once I have the slab for parking down I will sell the cement mixer on again (I snaffled it for £60 when the bearings failed on my old one)

Cable tray; each circuit has it's own colour cable ties so any potential fault diagnosis is easier, as is any alteration (and yes there has been a few of those already!)

Part of the agreement with my Wife when we bought the garages is that some of the land outside would be turned over to a bit of garden for our girls, well a chance conversation with our outgoing neighbours provided 2/3rds of the fencing required, and that went up with very little trouble, as for getting some lawn down however, that was another matter!

This land in front of the garage has a right of access across it, and I could never in my mind think of how best to approach making it my own, marking it off was a good start though:

A chance yard sale meant acquiring a nice bit of pub signage, not bad for £5!

My eldest, Beth was only too happy to help finishing the fencing for "her" garden:

Fencing finished, and it isn't obvious but we had dug a good 9" thick crust of limestone out of this area, and replaced it with some topsoil, ready to lay turf on:

I elected to put down some 20mm sharp gravel on the communal area, I figured it'd still drain ok, but wouldn't be susceptible to damage from vehicular traffic like paving slabs would be:

And that's it, nearly up to date!

 

[AHotRod]

WOW! .... now that's an update, Congratulations, job well done!

 

[Ruffgeezer]

In other news, I went along to another auction around a month or so ago, and bought a load more old tat, and today I stopped by the now closed garage, as I saw the owners car was outside, so err... guess who is going back tomorrow to mop up any useful bits that might be left behind?

 

[Olliecampbell]

Good to see another British garage taking shape

 

[Ruffgeezer]

Thanks Ollie,

I went back to the now closed garage, and sadly it was pretty bare inside, but I did however rescue this:

Plus another 2 peg panels should I ever need them, I think it looks good there, it'll soon have the new shelves (in the right of the pic) that I snagged when the garage's contents were sold off a few months back.

 

[Ruffgeezer]

Ok so after all the auction stuff I've been collecting up recently, I must confess I have been getting behind with keeping the garage tidy, and with the faint whiff of a viewing on our house, this little lot had to be attended to:

I started at around 7pm this evening, not arriving at conclusion until 10.30, I think you'll agree with me on 2 things here; 1) No matter how much space you have, it isn't enough. and 2) It doesn't take 2 minutes to fill it with ****.

I did get my Motorcraft peg board up properly though, I think the spray job on the shelves below really brightens them up, I'm glad I took the time to do it now!

The garage at dusk, just the downlighter & bench light on:

I'm still not 100% finished with the tidy up, and there are a lot of tools I need to sort through and thin out a bit:

The opposing corner, could be better I guess:

The electric consumer unit is now hidden in it's own cabinet, giving a decent sized shelf below the window, once I've moved the edging stones out, I'll paint it all and the wall behind.

A new acquisition; a BFO spanner that will probably never come in handy, unless I need to brain somebody with it!

Tomorrow, I'll start on cleaning the house!

 

[bjh]

Re: **** shack no more, 18'6x16' workshop is up!

Well once the duct for the cable was delivered, I chucked it into trev and took it to work the next day, threading these things is a pain in the ****!

1) Attach weight to string and poke into ducting:


2) Spend rest of lunch break swearing at a spanner that refuses to emerge from

Little late to help you this time, but a shop-vac and a very light initial leader string with a bit of rag tied to the end can make quick work of threading conduit. Stronger stuff can then be pulled through, and don't forget to leave a leader in there for future runs

 

[mike_81]

Re: **** shack no more, 18'6x16' workshop is up!

tip for next time. get a light string (think small white twine). tie the end to a piece of kleenex and unravel the length of string needed to go through the tubing.

stuff the kleenex about 4" inside the end of the pipe or tubing.

go to the other end and hook up a shopvac to it and **** the kleenex through.

then attach your heavier string/rope to the twine and pull that through.


the shopvac will pull the kleenex through in a matter of seconds (did it 6 times when wiring my home theatre up), worked on 1/2" and 3/4" flex tubing and 2" central vac pipe.

 

[bashr52]

Re: **** shack no more, 18'6x16' workshop is up!

tip for next time. get a light string (think small white twine). tie the end to a piece of kleenex and unravel the length of string needed to go through the tubing.

stuff the kleenex about 4" inside the end of the pipe or tubing.

go to the other end and hook up a shopvac to it and **** the kleenex through.

then attach your heavier string/rope to the twine and pull that through.


the shopvac will pull the kleenex through in a matter of seconds (did it 6 times when wiring my home theatre up), worked on 1/2" and 3/4" flex tubing and 2" central vac pipe.

A plastic sandwich bag works good for this also!

 

[ratdoggy]

Re: **** shack no more, 18'6x16' workshop is up!

tip for next time. get a light string (think small white twine). tie the end to a piece of kleenex and unravel the length of string needed to go through the tubing.

stuff the kleenex about 4" inside the end of the pipe or tubing.

go to the other end and hook up a shopvac to it and **** the kleenex through.

then attach your heavier string/rope to the twine and pull that through.


the shopvac will pull the kleenex through in a matter of seconds (did it 6 times when wiring my home theatre up), worked on 1/2" and 3/4" flex tubing and 2" central vac pipe.

This works great. I was trying to run some wiring last weekend and could not fish it through for anything and was getting frustrated. I remembered watching them run electric at my work with this trick and it worked great. My wife was just amazed (I never told her that I saw it done before )

 

[Ruffgeezer]

Thanks for that guys! I must admit we tried blasting the string tied to a rag through it with the airline, but with the length involved it was a no go.

There is nearly 90ft of pipe there!

 

[bjh]

Thanks for that guys! I must admit we tried blasting the string tied to a rag through it with the airline, but with the length involved it was a no go.

There is nearly 90ft of pipe there!

The magic is the suction from the far end, that'll do 90' easily

 

[Ruffgeezer]

Yeah I wish at the time I'd have given it a bit more thought.

However, it's done now and I'm happy to say from a construction point of view, the build is finished, all wiring is done and I'm now just getting the interior how I want it. That being said we have had someone view our house and we are on their short list, so I might not get too comfortable yet!

Sorry for the poor picture, it looks like it was taken on a toaster! But you can see we have hauled the large fridge freezer into the garage and the smaller one in to the house:

I also found a sheet of steel that I'd kept from those interactive whiteboards I scrapped ages ago, it was big enough to back my new sign, which is only thin plastic and not aluminium as I originally expected, but never mind, I just love the look of it!