A 2 car garage is never enough. My 20*44 4 car build.

I have been browsing Garage Journal for 6+ years and in that time have had three garage projects. I thought I would post them here to hopefully give people ideas, offer help, or answer questions in detail. This was my second project.

This project picks up 6 months after I was done with my $1000 2 car project. See my first thread if you are interested HERE.

At this point I had an insulated / heated (220v electric) 2 car garage, a 10*12 shed, and a VersaTube "boathouse" as I called it. A friend of mine was trying to start his own business and so he was selling off his toys. He made me an offer I couldn't refuse on a project Corvette and project boat.

My old boat was a 16.5' Ski Tique with a 305 SBC. It was very small and I was able to roll it behind the garage with a trailer dolly and a helper. During prime boating weather the boat + trailer would JUST BARELY fit in the garage. While it was plenty fast, it left a lot to be desired for me. The project boat was 90% of the way done and it was everything my old boat was not. The problem was it didn't fit in the garage, and it was too big and heavy to try to keep behind the garage or even in the yard beside the garage. I also had the new (to me) Corvette I had to keep somewhere.





Thanks for looking!

-Hillrod

At this point I was in a much better financial position due to a new job with a significant pay bump and I initially began looking for new houses. I thought that I had found the perfect place. It was a ~2,000 sq ft split level on the end of a cul-de-sac backed up against a cornfield with a 2 car garage and an almost new stick built 30*40*12 shop. Unfortunately it was a short sale, and my contingency of needing to sell my current house made me ineligible. It ended up selling for exactly what I was going to offer them.



Everything else I looked I saw as another "starter" home and it didn't make sense to move without making the jump to my permanent home. I decided to bite the bullet and double my garage with a plan to stay in my house another 5-10 years.

Since moving into my house I had been eyeing up a garage kitty corner from me that appeared to be about 25*44. I measured my yard and determined that if I could get zoning to permit me, I could convert my 2 car garage into a 4 car (2 car tandem) by adding another 20*22 garage behind the original and knocking out the former back wall creating essentially what my neighbors had.

I began reading zoning laws and discovered that I was only permitted a ~550 sq ft detached garage and was looking to build a 880 sq ft detached. I spoke with my alderman and the city zoning staff and determined I had a reasonable shot of getting my proposed garage approved. I kissed $650 goodbye and mailed it in along with my variance application and spent the next 3 months going back and forth with city staff until I had their approval. With that on paper, my zoning hearing was pretty much a formality.



I attribute part of this to the advice city staff gave me: Walk around and introduce yourself to all your neighbors and state that you are applying for a variance and you wonder if they had any objection to that. The reason for this is the city mails something to all neighbors within ~500 feet of your property and they are much more likely to be supportive if I first asked their permission. After visiting the 2nd house with my clipboard and copies of plans to hand out I realized that people thought I was trying to sell them something and initially were just trying to get me to go away! Once they found out I was their neighbor with an automotive hobby who wanted to build a bigger garage they were nothing but supportive. To my surprise, not a SINGLE neighbor had any issue whatsoever. Not even the ones I was warned were crabby. A great way to finally meet the neighborhood after 3 years of living there!

-Hillrod

I came to find out the city is very easy to work with compared to contractors! Many calls went unanswered, many voicemails not returned. I even had a contractor picked out and I was all set to sign and give him a down payment but he no called no showed. I eventually found a contractor that let me buy my own materials which I was able to do during a 11% off sale at Menards. I was able to later buy all my insulation, interior plywood, and paint with my 11% credit.

I had an even worse time finding a concrete contractor. One of the only phone calls I had returned quoted me $15,000 to pour a 5" 20*22 slab. I eventually had the slab done by a landscaping firm that had never done a garage slab before for about $5000. I was comfortable with it because they had done plenty of driveways and the city would be inspecting their forms before they could pour.

While trying to sort out contractors, I wasted no time getting prepped for the upcoming work. I sold the "boathouse" to a friend, moved the shed to the other corner of the back yard, removed the cabinets, plywood, insulation, and electrical in the back wall I had put there less than a year before.





-Hillrod

Subbed !

After nervously watching the days tick by I came home from work one day to find a GIGANTIC dump truck somehow backed behind the house and one lone guy working away with the 12-16" of fill that was needed. He dumped the fill in the driveway behind the house but in front of the garage. He then used a skid steer to move it from the driveway to behind the garage.









The next day he had the forms ready, and the city signed off.




After a couple days passed I woke up for work and there was a concrete truck parked in the road and the road and the skid steer back. They had to bring all the concrete from the road past the house then across the yard and behind the garage with the skid steer.




They came to do saw cuts the next day and unfortunately their lack of experience really came out here. The saw cuts were not straight and they chipped the concrete so they were not clean and crisp, and they gave me no option for polishing or sealing. Fortunately they knew enough not to do a broom finish on the pad! Honestly, I was bummed out about the saw cuts, but was otherwise pleased with the work especially considering I couldn’t find anybody else willing.



-Hillrod

Materials arrived!!!! The contractors were nice enough to meet the delivery truck on site to ensure everything was there even though I ordered the materials myself.






The concrete cured over the weekend and the contractors were on site early the next week. They wasted no time framing up the addition but unfortunately they didn't follow my elevation drawings I gave them. Instead they followed the Menards drawing which was really only created as a result of my parts list which resulted in framing out an extra window and having the spacing of the other windows off. Instead of arguing with them and delaying the project, I just went and bought another $100 window and lived with it.
















With the outside done it was time to demo the former back wall, now the mid-point in the garage. It looked like a tornado went through. It was my first glimpse of just how BIG my new garage was going to be! It felt awesome!



-Hillrod

I spent Black Friday doing brakes on a co-worker's car in my again unheated garage lamenting that 4 weeks prior, I would have had a heated garage.

I also bought my very first brand new car! It had 64 miles on it in this picture.




The garage had three preexisting 120v NM feeds in regular white pvc conduit: one 10 gauge 30 amp for outlets, one 14 gauge for garage door opener and lights, and one that was controlled by a light switch in the house for the flood light. It also had a 240v NM wire direct buried through the yard. This was all preexisting when I bought the house, and I had only rewired within the garage.

This is how it looked in the house. The rest of the garage was just as bad when I rewired it when I initially finished the original garage.




I knew that none of this would pass an inspection, so I abandoned the 120v feeds and installed a sub panel and temporally used the 240v feed for the sub panel. I ran two 240v circuits, one for my air compressor, and one for my welder. 1 15 amp light circuit, multiple 20 amp outlet circuits, 20 amp outdoor outlet, and 20 amp circuit for heater. The city conditionally passed my electrical inspection for the interior of the garage with the agreement that the feed from the house would need to be inspected at a later date.




Burying my problems until spring. You can see just how shallow the old wires were run.





-Hillrod

With the interior electric done, I was able to hang my insulation. I tackled the walls myself and paid my tallest friend in tacos to help me with the ceiling.



I opted to have the contractors come back and hang the plywood as I struggled with it when I finished the original garage and was never happy with the fit and finish. This turned out to be a mistake as the fit and finish the contractors left me with was worse than the work I had done myself. It is all about being willing to take your time to get it perfect, something a contractor does not have the luxury of.



What a difference $75 in paint makes!







I got a hell of a deal on some large kitchen cabinets that were ordered in the wrong size for some apartment buildings. Got them hung them all up leaving space for my heater.








Built myself a workbench with leftover materials and the best circular saw $30 will buy.




Some cheap lights and that white paint really pays off:




A friend and I tackled the job of trim work. Cheaped out and used pine…should have gone with hardwood.





-Hillrod

Soon as the salt was gone, I brought cars/boats home and the garage was full!







-Hillrod

As spring was now here, I had to dig myself a trench to properly bury my gas line and a new electric feed. I began by digging up the preexisting NM romex and while I had low expectations I was shocked by how poorly it was done. The 240v feed was only about 2 inches below the grass! The three 120v wires were only about 6" down. Clearly no permits were pulled for this. I was lucky that the wires never got damaged especially with the bulldozer driving over them for a week straight.



After speaking with the inspector he permitted me to direct bury my UF wire at 30" and bury my gas line at 24" in a single trench. I went with 4 wire 6ga UF vs THHN in conduit as the main panel was on the other side of the house and as my basement was unfinished I was able to staple the UF cable to the bottom of the floor joists. I debated renting a trencher but since I was only going 35' or so it wouldn't save me all that much work. My parent’s helped out for a couple hours and my sister stopped by as she was in town too but she grew tired of it after about 20 minutes ha.



Sorry can't seem to find any pics of the UF wire or gas line.

Since the UF wire is solid core just like the NM I had worked with in January I decided to hire an electrician to actually run the feed line. Lacking the proper tools and experience for the gas line, I also hired a plumber to run that. Both passed inspection.


I then closed out my building permit, and attempted to obtain a permit for my garage heater. The city staff member literally laughed in my face when he asked about the structure. He informed me that I would need to have a commercial insulated garage door, add 2" of foam to all walls in addition to the R16 I had in them, add a significant amount of insulation to the attic, and put foam around the entire parameter foundation (which would require breaking up the driveway to install in the front).

To this day I cannot fathom why they would sign off on my insulation and gas line inspections while never giving me a clue that I would NEVER be able to get a permit for the heater. Strange thing happened tho, I was walking in the garage one day soon after and I tripped and accidentally connected the gas to my heater...

-Hillrod

Great write-up, tanks for sharing! I wish my garage had clearance behind it for a double deep. That was one of my original plans was to have half the garage double deep, but when we built our home, the wife wanted the garage turned away from the road.

Things were going great for the next few months. I planted grass and soon after got a big rainstorm and I thought all my grass seed washed away, but 6 weeks later I had my lawn back.








I got the project boat all together and dipped in in the water for the first time in 10 years.








I was too lazy to run cat5 when I had then trench open, so I setup a point-to-point link that fed a wireless access point. This fed my wireless thermostat and laptop I had setup on my workbench.



Bit of advice, don’t put another wireless transmitter so close to your garage door opener. Even though they operate are completely different frequencies, it significantly reduced the range that my garage door opener worked at. I picked that spot to keep wires out of my way as it was the only place on the ceiling with non-switched outlets.



-Hillrod

Power Sedan said:

Great write-up, tanks for sharing! I wish my garage had clearance behind it for a double deep. That was one of my original plans was to have half the garage double deep, but when we built our home, the wife wanted the garage turned away from the road.

Click to expand...

Thanks! I had initially considered building the new portion taller to accommodate a hoist down the road but decided I wanted to go for the stealth look so it looked like a 2 car garage from the road.

Marriage is all about compromise, so is it safe to assume she parks outside now? :-D

My MaxJax experience (warning there is a wall of text in this post):

I had never intended to use this garage as a ******** shop. It only had 8' ceilings and it was a tight squeeze with 4 cars in it. It was primarily to be used for storage while doing light repair. This all came to a halt when the motor blew up on my Corvette. I had previously borrowed friend's shops but found that the time required to build and swap a motor were longer than I could reasonably ask for from friends. I began researching if I could swap the motor without a hoist and found that it was more involved, and frankly, I felt it was rather dangerous. With 8' ceilings and the need for clear floor access, my only option was a MaxJax.

When I initially heard of the MaxJax I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. The more I looked at it, the more I felt that it had a monopoly on low ceiling clear floor market. If it had competitors it would be laughed off the market. It has no auto locks, the manual lock setup only has two positions, it has less than half the material (lower manufacturing/shipping cost) than pretty much any other 2 post on the market, and later I found that the hydraulic hoses were so short they were often in the way of me working on a car. All of this for a MSRP of $2200, as much as many full size full featured 2 and 4 post lifts.

However, they had me. Nobody else made a hoist that would work. Costco had a sale for $2000 with free shipping which I went with due to Costco's no BS refund policies. I had it shipped to my buddy's shop as he has a forklift. He called me to advice that it appeared to have been nicked by a fork at some point but he unfortunately didn't notice when the freight company dropped it off. He plopped the pallet into the bed of my truck and I took it home and dragged it from the truck bed onto a 1,000lb hydraulic cart I bought for my upcoming Vette engine swap.

I was able to get the MaxJax off of the pallet piece by piece without much trouble. As I put it together I noticed more and more damage. I wasn't able to turn one of the wheels attached to one of the posts because the mount was bent. A huge creasant wrench was able to bend it back close enough for it to work. The columns had superficial scratches in them, and the hydraulic cylinders had broken plastic plugs.








One word of advice if you end up buying one. The lift blocks are offset and if you set them in opposing directions the hoist will bind up. I contacted Danmar support about the binding issue and they had no idea that they were offset…




I was able to work through everything and got it setup and working with the help of a friend with a SDS rotary hammer drill. As I alluded to above, I feel that the MaxJax is a niche product where you pay a premium price for a substandard product. To add insult to injury I received mine with a fair amount of damage. There is a matter of opinion on placing blame on shipping damage. Is it my fault for not refusing the shipment? Is it the shippers fault for causing said damage? I believe it is the manufactures’ fault (as these are all drop shipped) for not properly protecting the product for shipping. I've seen plenty of other hoists shipped that were packaged FAR better than my MaxJax.

I contacted Dannmar to voice my concerns that I had to live with scratches and ripped labels, possible cylinder seal damage from broken plastic fittings, and having to bend the steel back to get the wheel to bolt on. After A LOT of back and forth I ended up getting a new sticker (which was badly folded in half and looked worse than what was on the unit), some black spray paint (which I felt would make the unit look worse if I used), an oil drain (which was too tall to work under the MaxJax), and some old style frame contact pads (which are completely awesome!) I actually now use oil drain and frame contact pads with my BendPak XPR-10AS-LP (which I have no complaints about!)

Would I recommend a MaxJax? They do work as described, but I feel they are too expensive. I feel they are worth about $1,500. I did see they have a new model out that has auto locks in it but I can't seem to find much information about it. I'd love to hear more even though I no longer have a need for one.

Time for some action shots:











Little did I know I would be moving a year later…

-Hillrod

wisconsin hillrod said:

Thanks! I had initially considered building the new portion taller to accommodate a hoist down the road but decided I wanted to go for the stealth look so it looked like a 2 car garage from the road.

Marriage is all about compromise, so is it safe to assume she parks outside now? :-D

Click to expand...

Nope, she'd proudly parks herself right smack dab in the middle. Gotta give her props though, she's been successfully parking without any innocents to date, "knock on wood".

Glad i caught up on this story after reading your new thread