nucleustylz lude
Member
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2010
- Messages
- 5
UK tiny double decker garage
Hey all, been lurking on here from the UK for the last few months looking for inspiration. And WOW! What inspiration you all are!
All I can say is, I wish I lived in the US – your garage sizes are spot on! Most of the garages in the UK are laughable to be honest, barely big enough to get a car in, let alone physically get out of the damn thing and anything else you wish to store in it.
Anyway, this leads me onto my garage build, it too is poky, but with a twist makes it better than most. It won’t be a patch on most of yours but its mine and I love it!
Sorry the pics aren’t the best, it’s mostly mobile phone camera pics. I just got a new camera and will take some up to date decent shots to post soon.
So I’ll kick off with a few pics and some words to what I’ve done with my space…
When I bought my house 6 years ago now, the seller literally threw in with the sale a separate garage in a block of 5. I already had a double spaced driveway with the house, like so:
But the thought of actually having a garage from years of being on my Mum’s drive or out on the roadside doing work was just awesome. And most of all it was free! No extra to the agreed sale price of the house! Jammy or what!
Here’s what I ended up with:
(This was when work started – see below)
Probably the most random garage I’d ever laid my eyes on, but hey it was mine!
It consisted of one two storey garage in a block of five, the first floor being of a wooden deck construction, with a small loft hatch access at the back. The garages are constructed off a mix of reinforced concrete basement retaining walls and blockwork divisions between the units and actually form the ground for gardens to the houses above. My street is set in a steep valley. And construction differs vastly to take account of the varying ground levels. Weird I know – you should see my house layout!
The first couple or years it was merely storage – the space had no power or lighting, or any electric feed at all. Some of the wood deck was riddled with woodworm (treated asap!) and the door and cladding had seen better days – rot and decay spreading everywhere. Plus I had a hole at the very top of one of the blockwork piers – so god knows what nested in my garage for this time!
I picked up a cheap second hand fibreglass garage door locally and literally the day I went to assess with some friendly helpers what work would be involved, the existing door dropped out of its frame the minute I opened it up! That was the start of a busy weekend – all systems go as a result.
We decided just to strip the whole lot out, door, frame, top cladding and that frame. Here’s what it looked like, started taking pics once we had the door frame in:
Here’s some pics of a few weekends work, the initial being straight away to get the garage secure and then the finishing over some months to get it cosmetically looking ok:
The new door I’d bought was a foot taller and as a result clashed with the first floor deck. I’d planned to remove a third of the deck anyway as it had the treated woodworm areas – I wouldn’t trust walking on it. So the first floor area is now a third of below and allows not only the door to open fully but access to move large items up to the storage area from below – think bikes, etc.
The door frame unfortunately had to be moved back a foot to sit on the front blockwork pier due to the way the door runners had to be fixed. So annoyingly I lost space off my new garage – hopefully rectify this in the future with a better door, a roller shutter style would be ideal.
The wood frame was treated with exterior grade white paint and the upper cladding was replaced with tongue and groove plastic cladding and I added an openable window for light and air upstairs.
First week of getting the door on, the stored **** went upstairs and for the first time my baby got a nights sleep in her future home, it’s a 1993 Honda Prelude, which I’m currently supercharging:
However, lack of any security locks other than the handle lock, I was met with a broken handle that week and a footprint on the roof of my Prelude!
Luckily nothing was taken and there was no real damage to the car. But straight away I replaced the broken handle and added a garage defender ground anchored door stopper and second clasp and chunky lock up top. More things to get past than all the other garages there – should deter them enough now, bloomin scum!
Then from here, work went inside, straight away with the flooring made good with levelling screed and a tin of garage floor paint, I went with a controversial baby blue colour and it came out great!
Then some months later we worked some more on the exterior finishes:
I proceeded to block up the high level opening – off a ladder might I add! Then the side walls and holes exposed blockwork was treated to some make shift mortar render, and all given a lick of exterior masonry paint – we even painted everyone else’s pillar/piers between garages, because 1) We’re nice neighbours and 2) cos they looked horrible too!
However, work halted with other more pressing jobs in the house and our son Caleb expected during last year. However I regret to say we lost our a week over her due date – we were devastated. Nothing really got done, on anything up to Xmas time! Life has been tough since this to do anything…anything at all.
It has only been recently that over the last few months the work has concentrated on kitting out the upstairs area into better storage space and a workshop area for me.
My brother is a floor layer by trade and proceeded to help me plywood the floor for rigidity and add a little more strength to transfer loads. Then install some very nice industrial rubber flooring he had left over from a project. So for free, I was over the moon! He also had some nice stainless nosings with strip inserts:
Getting the storage items down:
Look at all the cr@p I had upstairs!
He worked so quickly on a week he had off work, that he treated me to building a wall of racking storage which I had planned to do. Good old Bro! Absolute quality!
Hard to see with all the stuff!
I also had a small section of blue metal racking off of ebay for about £5 ($7ish to most of you) locally + moved up my tool boxes and mass of parts I’ve accumulated!
Hey all, been lurking on here from the UK for the last few months looking for inspiration. And WOW! What inspiration you all are!
All I can say is, I wish I lived in the US – your garage sizes are spot on! Most of the garages in the UK are laughable to be honest, barely big enough to get a car in, let alone physically get out of the damn thing and anything else you wish to store in it.
Anyway, this leads me onto my garage build, it too is poky, but with a twist makes it better than most. It won’t be a patch on most of yours but its mine and I love it!
Sorry the pics aren’t the best, it’s mostly mobile phone camera pics. I just got a new camera and will take some up to date decent shots to post soon.
So I’ll kick off with a few pics and some words to what I’ve done with my space…
When I bought my house 6 years ago now, the seller literally threw in with the sale a separate garage in a block of 5. I already had a double spaced driveway with the house, like so:
But the thought of actually having a garage from years of being on my Mum’s drive or out on the roadside doing work was just awesome. And most of all it was free! No extra to the agreed sale price of the house! Jammy or what!
Here’s what I ended up with:
(This was when work started – see below)
Probably the most random garage I’d ever laid my eyes on, but hey it was mine!
It consisted of one two storey garage in a block of five, the first floor being of a wooden deck construction, with a small loft hatch access at the back. The garages are constructed off a mix of reinforced concrete basement retaining walls and blockwork divisions between the units and actually form the ground for gardens to the houses above. My street is set in a steep valley. And construction differs vastly to take account of the varying ground levels. Weird I know – you should see my house layout!
The first couple or years it was merely storage – the space had no power or lighting, or any electric feed at all. Some of the wood deck was riddled with woodworm (treated asap!) and the door and cladding had seen better days – rot and decay spreading everywhere. Plus I had a hole at the very top of one of the blockwork piers – so god knows what nested in my garage for this time!
I picked up a cheap second hand fibreglass garage door locally and literally the day I went to assess with some friendly helpers what work would be involved, the existing door dropped out of its frame the minute I opened it up! That was the start of a busy weekend – all systems go as a result.
We decided just to strip the whole lot out, door, frame, top cladding and that frame. Here’s what it looked like, started taking pics once we had the door frame in:
Here’s some pics of a few weekends work, the initial being straight away to get the garage secure and then the finishing over some months to get it cosmetically looking ok:
The new door I’d bought was a foot taller and as a result clashed with the first floor deck. I’d planned to remove a third of the deck anyway as it had the treated woodworm areas – I wouldn’t trust walking on it. So the first floor area is now a third of below and allows not only the door to open fully but access to move large items up to the storage area from below – think bikes, etc.
The door frame unfortunately had to be moved back a foot to sit on the front blockwork pier due to the way the door runners had to be fixed. So annoyingly I lost space off my new garage – hopefully rectify this in the future with a better door, a roller shutter style would be ideal.
The wood frame was treated with exterior grade white paint and the upper cladding was replaced with tongue and groove plastic cladding and I added an openable window for light and air upstairs.
First week of getting the door on, the stored **** went upstairs and for the first time my baby got a nights sleep in her future home, it’s a 1993 Honda Prelude, which I’m currently supercharging:
However, lack of any security locks other than the handle lock, I was met with a broken handle that week and a footprint on the roof of my Prelude!
Luckily nothing was taken and there was no real damage to the car. But straight away I replaced the broken handle and added a garage defender ground anchored door stopper and second clasp and chunky lock up top. More things to get past than all the other garages there – should deter them enough now, bloomin scum!
Then from here, work went inside, straight away with the flooring made good with levelling screed and a tin of garage floor paint, I went with a controversial baby blue colour and it came out great!
Then some months later we worked some more on the exterior finishes:
I proceeded to block up the high level opening – off a ladder might I add! Then the side walls and holes exposed blockwork was treated to some make shift mortar render, and all given a lick of exterior masonry paint – we even painted everyone else’s pillar/piers between garages, because 1) We’re nice neighbours and 2) cos they looked horrible too!
However, work halted with other more pressing jobs in the house and our son Caleb expected during last year. However I regret to say we lost our a week over her due date – we were devastated. Nothing really got done, on anything up to Xmas time! Life has been tough since this to do anything…anything at all.
It has only been recently that over the last few months the work has concentrated on kitting out the upstairs area into better storage space and a workshop area for me.
My brother is a floor layer by trade and proceeded to help me plywood the floor for rigidity and add a little more strength to transfer loads. Then install some very nice industrial rubber flooring he had left over from a project. So for free, I was over the moon! He also had some nice stainless nosings with strip inserts:
Getting the storage items down:
Look at all the cr@p I had upstairs!
He worked so quickly on a week he had off work, that he treated me to building a wall of racking storage which I had planned to do. Good old Bro! Absolute quality!
Hard to see with all the stuff!
I also had a small section of blue metal racking off of ebay for about £5 ($7ish to most of you) locally + moved up my tool boxes and mass of parts I’ve accumulated!
