AustinMiniMan
Active member
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2009
- Messages
- 34
I'm a long time lurker and I've gotten some awesome inspiration from this site- I don't want to admit how much time I've wasted on here. Some of y'all's work is simply incredible. Anyway,
The house my family lives in(I'm 19) was built in 1875 and has been in my family since 1878. I come from a long line of gear-heads, and as such we have a series of garages built by successive generations. Our main shop is a 5-car converted horse stable built sometime before 1910. However, in our backyard we had a couple of garages that had fallen into disrepair. Our need to have a space to work kept getting in the way of us needing to store cars, and as such I decided to refurbish one of the backyard garages into a car storage/show garage.
Here's what I started out with about 5 weeks ago:
And here's what it looks like now.
It looks... almost exactly the same. On the outside at least. The outside wasn't the priority, and besides, it didn't look too terrible. However, the inside was a different story. These photo are after all the junk was cleaned out, so it actually looked worse than this. Notice the rotted floor on the left, the collapsed lean-to, etc.
The back lean-to had special meaning to me, as my great uncle built it to accommodate his '57 Fleetwood. It was actually made partially of old signs and by all means should have been torn down. Unfortunately I'm a history crazed fool and didn't have the heart, so I essentially built a new structure over it to keep it water-tight while keeping it original looking from the inside. There's even writing on it from him in the 50's.
Here's what was left of the back of it:
And the new built over it... note, this is against the property line and no one at all can see it, so I wasn't too concerned with aesthetics.
The walls had gotten relatively rough and the studs weren't even close to being spaced evenly. Also, the bottom plate was completely rotted. So I replaced the bottom plate with treated 4x4 and added more studs out of the same. I left the old ones in place, but I jacked the top plate up slightly, so the 4x4's are actually taking most of the load. All in all the rot wasn't too horrible.
Luckily, 80% of the shop was concrete in great shape. However, the far left side was rotted wood. So, I decided to do a concrete block floor. Basically, there were three sections to the floor, the right half was regular concrete, the middle left was concrete block, and the far left was wood/dirt. So I was just continuing the pattern. After tearing out the work bench and rotted floor I made three trips to Lowes. My poor Rover deserves a round of applause for its valor that day. My back wasn't terribly happy, though.
The strange thing is, whenever the garage was built, this was the intention with the floor, as it fit perfectly with only about a fourth an inch of clearance. I.e., I didn't have to cut a single block. After I laid it I dumped a few bags of concrete on it and swept it in. I hosed that down and it was enough to stabilize the floor. I then grouted it to fill in the gaps and make it smooth.
There used to be four random supports; only two of which even had any load on them. I ran a 16' 4x4 across the length and put in a single 4x4 post. Probably a hell of a lot stronger than it was before.
Here are a couple of old photos of the garage. For the time being, pretend I was trying to be artistic by taking a photo of a photo, and not just being too lazy to scan.
First, my Dad in the '80s:
And second, my great Uncle(Who I happen to be named after) in the early 60's. That's an Austin A90 Atlantic parked in it. :
I added a few interior lights and an outside light. They're all remote-controlled from relays.
After the structural work was done, I paneled the lower half of the walls and stuccoed the upper half. The green color is the original color of the garage, matched from some paint chips I found in the walls.
So, finally, where I stand today:
And lastly, my Uncle's Brunner Compressor that was in the shop, now waiting to be restored. I'll admit, the final product is not an tenth as spectacular as some of the work on this site, but it turned a junk pile into a usable space. Overall, I'm pretty chuffed. And having more space for cars is always a good thing!
When tearing apart some of the walls, I realized something about the garage. It was actually three garages. The middle area, where the woody wagon is parked, was the only original bay. I think that was built around 1900-1910. Then, the left part, where the new floor is, was added later, maybe around 1920. Then finally, the entire right side was added, around 1930. Because of this, some of the structure is... interpretive. But its got a hell of a lot of character. I still have some odds and ends to finish up, mainly finishing the floor in the lean-to and painting the floor. But, as they say, all in good time. -Ted
The house my family lives in(I'm 19) was built in 1875 and has been in my family since 1878. I come from a long line of gear-heads, and as such we have a series of garages built by successive generations. Our main shop is a 5-car converted horse stable built sometime before 1910. However, in our backyard we had a couple of garages that had fallen into disrepair. Our need to have a space to work kept getting in the way of us needing to store cars, and as such I decided to refurbish one of the backyard garages into a car storage/show garage.
Here's what I started out with about 5 weeks ago:
And here's what it looks like now.
It looks... almost exactly the same. On the outside at least. The outside wasn't the priority, and besides, it didn't look too terrible. However, the inside was a different story. These photo are after all the junk was cleaned out, so it actually looked worse than this. Notice the rotted floor on the left, the collapsed lean-to, etc.
The back lean-to had special meaning to me, as my great uncle built it to accommodate his '57 Fleetwood. It was actually made partially of old signs and by all means should have been torn down. Unfortunately I'm a history crazed fool and didn't have the heart, so I essentially built a new structure over it to keep it water-tight while keeping it original looking from the inside. There's even writing on it from him in the 50's.
Here's what was left of the back of it:
And the new built over it... note, this is against the property line and no one at all can see it, so I wasn't too concerned with aesthetics.
The walls had gotten relatively rough and the studs weren't even close to being spaced evenly. Also, the bottom plate was completely rotted. So I replaced the bottom plate with treated 4x4 and added more studs out of the same. I left the old ones in place, but I jacked the top plate up slightly, so the 4x4's are actually taking most of the load. All in all the rot wasn't too horrible.
Luckily, 80% of the shop was concrete in great shape. However, the far left side was rotted wood. So, I decided to do a concrete block floor. Basically, there were three sections to the floor, the right half was regular concrete, the middle left was concrete block, and the far left was wood/dirt. So I was just continuing the pattern. After tearing out the work bench and rotted floor I made three trips to Lowes. My poor Rover deserves a round of applause for its valor that day. My back wasn't terribly happy, though.
The strange thing is, whenever the garage was built, this was the intention with the floor, as it fit perfectly with only about a fourth an inch of clearance. I.e., I didn't have to cut a single block. After I laid it I dumped a few bags of concrete on it and swept it in. I hosed that down and it was enough to stabilize the floor. I then grouted it to fill in the gaps and make it smooth.
There used to be four random supports; only two of which even had any load on them. I ran a 16' 4x4 across the length and put in a single 4x4 post. Probably a hell of a lot stronger than it was before.
Here are a couple of old photos of the garage. For the time being, pretend I was trying to be artistic by taking a photo of a photo, and not just being too lazy to scan.
First, my Dad in the '80s:
And second, my great Uncle(Who I happen to be named after) in the early 60's. That's an Austin A90 Atlantic parked in it. :
I added a few interior lights and an outside light. They're all remote-controlled from relays.
After the structural work was done, I paneled the lower half of the walls and stuccoed the upper half. The green color is the original color of the garage, matched from some paint chips I found in the walls.
So, finally, where I stand today:
And lastly, my Uncle's Brunner Compressor that was in the shop, now waiting to be restored. I'll admit, the final product is not an tenth as spectacular as some of the work on this site, but it turned a junk pile into a usable space. Overall, I'm pretty chuffed. And having more space for cars is always a good thing!
When tearing apart some of the walls, I realized something about the garage. It was actually three garages. The middle area, where the woody wagon is parked, was the only original bay. I think that was built around 1900-1910. Then, the left part, where the new floor is, was added later, maybe around 1920. Then finally, the entire right side was added, around 1930. Because of this, some of the structure is... interpretive. But its got a hell of a lot of character. I still have some odds and ends to finish up, mainly finishing the floor in the lean-to and painting the floor. But, as they say, all in good time. -Ted
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One thing you should have done though was something different with the way you laid the blocks for the floor. One small crack somewhere and you are going to have an apartment complex for rodents. The way they are laid leaves nothing but tunnel runs.
)
