Recent content by BeerM3

With no forklift on hand, I had to figure out a clever way to get the 3/4" flooring sheets up to the next level. Youtube to the rescue! There were several variations of a hinged lift scattered around out there. I made one with leftovers and scrap laying around.

I skipped a step! Because the garage width is 28' pushing the limits for what a 11-7/8 I-Joist can handle as a floor, I opted to stiffen everything up with a center beam. Because it's a 3-ply LVL, it wasn't hard for 2 of us to lift each one into place and then screw it all together with the...

As part of my Craigslist and Marketplace scavenging to help keep costs in check, since it's now 2021 and lumber is stupid expensive due to a supply/demand problem in the housing sector, I found I-joists salvaged out of a red iron building that had only been used to span a closed in area. No...

Sure, yeah, we should be done by 3 or 4 I think.

You guys got this? I'm gonna go grab a beer.

Time to start getting vertical with this thing. It's early October of '21 and I have a couple months to get walls up before it has to go on hold until spring. I recruited helpers when I could, but I think they caught on eventually and went to airplane mode on the weekends!

Now it's starting to look like something. I should just tell everyone this will be a carport and save a whole lot of time!

Dad my fingers hurt. Granted I was probably already pushing my construction abilities with the foundation walls, but I know for a fact I have no business pouring a slab bigger than 3' square! I hired pros for the next phase. Man, they made it look easy, and really good. We sloped the...

After backfilling, leveling, and leveling again with a compacted 5-6" gravel layer, I had a base ready to start insulating for the slab heat. Laid in the (nasty) chicken foam, taped the seams and rolled out a layer of poly over that. Then it was time to start the rebar layout. The bars were...

Walls poured, sewer stubbed, forms stripped and hauled back out of the pit, advil ingested. I started the backfill and compaction process after adding 1-1/2" foam insulation to the wall interior. I decided early on to go with radiant floor heat and creating the thermal break is a critical...

Family & friends showed up at 6am for the big day. It went mostly without a hitch. Even after triple checking, there was one %#$@ pin that I missed that caused a form to bulge, but it held! The bulge is still there but it's obscured so...live and learn. That'll be my first and last attempt...

Back to it! After getting what felt like some astronomical quotes for the foundation, a local friend that ran a salvage yard mentioned that he had several old forms. They weren't pretty, and I picked up the cost of the additional pins and wedges needed, but they worked. I was only setting the...

Being the beginning of the pandemic shutdown and material prices starting to skyrocket, like $40+ for a 4x8 sheet of OSB skyrocket, so I started to scavenge. I found a pair new Overhead Door brand garage doors that weren't quite what I had originally considered, but could absolutely work and...

Early on my wife said "Oh! What if we add a 2nd floor game room type thing?". To be honest, in the back of my mind I'd originally contemplated the idea of doing a garage apartment and renting it out to help offset costs. In the end, even though zoning in our particular block didn't allow that...

I suppose should back up and actually talk about what I'm actually trying to build? I've worked in the design industry for years and originally worked up some plan and elevation ideas in AutoCAD and Sketchup, but eventually decided to dive in head first and teach myself Revit, which is BIM...