Above 1200 Sq/FT Casa de Frijolee - SoCal to Hawaii - gear head style

I've been reading garage journal for a few years now off and on (reviews of tool boxes etc).

My wife and I bought our first house fall of last year here in southern CA and I have some interesting plans for it so I wanted to start a build thread of sorts.




The garage is a 20x21 but will mostly get treated as a single car version. I'm a bit of a gear head so what I'm shooting for is both workshop and garage/storage.




I work as a mechanical engineer so I like building interesting / functional things. Quick example: my coffee table. This was the side product of an oil starvation problem at Buttonwillow a few years back (con rod seized and windowed both sides of the block).




I made the heads, cam, and crank all hang off the end so it's a bit of an exploded view (which I'd never seen before in an engine coffee table). Yes, it's in the living room and yes, my wife loves me a lot.

There's certainly a ton of inspiring work on here, but I'm also glad to see folks getting clever with the small spaces (aka the 12-gauge garage etc).

I've been making enough progress that it's time to start showing off the efforts. More to come.

-Joel

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Awesome! Can't wait to see the updates!

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

If it's like that table, bring it on!

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

This looks very promising, I'm following.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Very cool table. Does the RX-7 have an LS conversion?

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Pretty sweet table. Interested in your space, same size as mine.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Yes there's an LS in the RX7, plenty of info on the swap over at www.norotors.com if folks are interested.

In the meantime, here's where I started: Pretty basic.

Shots from all corners.

















As mentioned, the two big goals were having a nice space to work in and plenty of functional storage. That meant two of the first goals were building a proper attic and getting a nice floor down.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Nice bones to start with....
Can that water heater be moved? Maybe into the garage attic?

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

ratdoggy said:

Nice bones to start with....
Can that water heater be moved? Maybe into the garage attic?

Click to expand...

It was brand new when we moved in so I couldn't justify the expense up front. If it ever dies, moving the heater and/or going tankless is a great way to save some space I agree.

The move itself was HECTIC. I ended up buying another project car and cutting a hole in the fence during the move. Also picked up a welding table that needed a great deal of love. From a pure expedency perspective, I decided that I'd try to do the floor during the move, everything else had to come after.

-Joel

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Floor research started before we ever moved in. It seems like their are 5 major buckets of finishes that most folks congregate around:

-Traditional opaque epoxy with paint chips.
-Acid Stain w/ clear coat
-Tile
-Race Deck (or other surface interlocking bits
-Polished

Of the above I kept getting drawn back to acid stain. A) hadn't heard of it prior to coming here so I liked the fact it was a little more unusual than some. B) works well on old concrete. C) mottled appearance would be good for hiding stains and scratches.

Garage floor finish info:

Had a friend who did an over the top pole barn build using acid stain and he had a very positive review... http://www.norotors.com/index.php?topic=11002.0). I think the build is mirrored on here as well.

Longevity appears to be all about the quality of the clear coat you pick. There are some pretty amazing finishes available and you can do all kinds of crazy patterns with masking if you're so inclined.








I was thinking of doing something simple and with a relatively light stain as the intent was to give it a bit more depth but hide scratches better than the loud colors since it's not so far off from the basic concrete. I've actually run across some folks who swear by just polishing/sealing the concrete like what you'd find at Home Depot or Lowes.

Since I planned to use this garage pretty hard, my focus was on finding the best top coat I could to keep it nice. Polyurea and Polyaspartic seem to be popular with a urethane top coat.

The picture I keep coming back to that seems to meet all of the above is this one.


It's just simple, classy and clean. The goal was to do it with mostly greys, some light blue, and hints of black. It ended up a little different considering I tried a couple things, but I'm still pretty stoked on the end result.

The mottled look seems simple enough for an amateur to do via dabbing rags (there's a variety of videos on youtube), but I ran out of time and ended up doing straight spray.

Anyways that's how I picked what I picked.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Pulling up some more notes on Acid Stain for posterity sake, please excuse me if this is a little disjointed between being written in past and present tense.

Here's the best two videos I found on DIY acid stain if anyone else wants to try for a marbled finish.

Acid stain with overlay of acrylic stain (but one of the better ones for showing the whole process and "ragging")
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bx4gXJ4jkE

Acid stain straight up for a stone like finish w/ multiple colors (only thing I'm not clear on is the reference to "filling in with Dupont leather" in the below.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGe52c75BjQ

Did some looking into Kemiko's stain and they seem to be good stuff (excellent reputation on GJl, etc). I was still shooting for something like the picture with the blue Aston Martin above. Kemiko has some very helpful photo galleries that include details of what was used where here: http://www.kemikostainforconcrete.com/photo_gallery1.html

Colors they have available:



Original plan:
1) sweep, vacuum, power wash
2) sand with home depot surface finisher (fine tooth diamond blades)
3) sweep, vacuum again
4) acid stain with a Kemiko stone tone black applied a little inconsistently with a sprayer (let some natural grey show through), dilute part way through for a different shade (see galleries for pictures of what dilution does).
5) second acid stain pass this time with a diluted Kemiko stone tone aqua blue ragged into place.
6) neutralize and let dry
7) two coats of sealer

I think that works, but the decision point really became the sealer. I could have used Kemiko's matching product "Stone Tone Sealer 2" in gloss or flat finish.
http://www.kemikostainforconcrete.com/kemikoprice.html <- Price list and descriptions for all Kemiko's stuff.

Another option I seemed to come across frequenty would have been to use, Wolverine's AcryliSeal 3501 (http://www.alphagarage.com/product_info.php?cPath=22&products_id=62) which seems to have a great rep among garage journal users. I know it's compatible with Kemiko as the manufacturer actually recommends that stain in this thread: http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40979

Wolverine claims some proprietary things about AcryliSeal that give better performance than "standard" water borne acrylics (of which Kemiko's sealer seems to be). I don't necessarily trust that but it does have many very positive reviews. Kemiko's can be done with air spray gun which I'm all for (I'm guranteed to be better with a spray gun than roller). I'd need to contact the Wolverine to determine whether I can do that with AcryliSeal and/or whether leftover product has a shelf life since I likely don't need 5 gallons.

Last note re: shark grip. Some folks do this as a last top coat with xylene. Found an interesting post from http://www.decorativeconcrete.com/content/shark-grip-11

I still dont understand why everyone rolls on solvent acrylic sealers. Ive always sprayed on solvent acrylics. It goes on nice and thin, is 10 times faster and no roller marks. Plus when using something like shark grip, it goes on nice and even. Just keep the can shook up. I use a 30% solids diluted with xylene about 2 parts sealer 1 part xylene. If your sealer is 50% solids dilute it 50/50 and it should spray on nice and thin. When spraying them on you can do 2 coats real quick. The trick is adding xylene otherwise it will go on too thick. Use a Chapin pump sprayer with a medium/fine tip

Click to expand...

Funny, but at the end of the day I ended up buying 100% of my stuff from Legacy Industrial and just doing this exactly per their recommendations rather than straying outside the norm.

I finally decided that I couldn't mix and match manufacturer's least something go wrong and everyone be pointing at the other guy's stuff as the reason for my issues.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Welcome! Should be a great space, especially with such a small car in there. Good luck on the rest.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Thanks Dubber. I've been flipping through your thread as well. I've basically tired to skim any garage gallery thread for small spaces with a high view count. Definitely some clever ideas floating around.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Want to do something similar to the grey for my floor. For some reason I reconize the car but not sure from where?

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Last post on acid stain planning, leaving this one written as past tense (I wrote this up for the v8 rx7 board). This was back in August about 3 weeks before the close of escrow. The real deal experience is next.

-Joel

>>>>>>>>>

Ordered all the material for my garage floor. Confused the heck out of myself reading reviews for a while there. It's quite challenging to prove what's what in the flooring business. At the end of the day I decided I 1) needed to keep it to one manufacturer so no one could point to someone else's stuff as being the problem and 2) wanted a better sealer than a water based acyrlic, so that meant either an epoxy or polyaspartic.

Those two things lead me to www.legacyindustrial.net. Scotty is one of the forum vendors over at the garage forum and was very helpful when I spoke to him on the phone. I was ready to order the more expensive polyaspartic coating. However, in a garage setting Scotty suggested 2 coats of the standard clear epoxy sealer. He also told me I wouldn't need the urethane coat when using a motled appearance underneath plus straight epoxy would be easier to touch up if I really am using it hard (always good sign of an honest vendor when they tell you that you DON'T need something). I did have to send the epoxy to my folks in NorCal to avoid environmental surcharges. but that just tells me it's good stuff, and they'll be down south for the move week anyways.

Headed my way:
-1 gallon of azure blue acid stain (2 gallons recomended for full coverage of my 450 sq/ft needed, but I'm going for motled look so I'm going light on this)
-1 gallon of black acid stain (part of which I'll cut down 1:1 w/ water giving brownish shades, part of which I'll leave full strength)
-5 gallon kit of Standard Clear Epoxy Sealer
-16 oz of their soft skid (extra fine, suggested to use no more than 3 oz per gallon mixed)
-rollers and frames (probably could have gotten this cheaper elsewhere but wanted to be sure I'm not getting something incompatible)

Grand total with a freight surcharge to "a N-W state" (annoying when they advertise free shipping) ~$650 = $1.45 a square foot.

I'm not going to have time for a test case so I'm committing despite not knowing the full history of this floor. $120 in acid is worth the risk and it doesn't need to be a dark color for what I'm going for. Sequence:

-Sweep/ vacuum
-Degrease with diluted simple green
-Use a 36 to 50 (50 is ideal) grit sanding pad on a rental surface finisher. With a new floor this might remove lime, on a old floor the goal is to open pores to expose lime in case it's been acid cleaned.
-Sweep/ vacuum
-More simple green
-Rinse thoroughly
-Acid blue coat using a chapin sprayer with no metal in the nozzle (legacy sells these but I can get them cheaper locally so that'll punch me up to about $700)
-Acid black coat (chapin sprayer w/ a little ragging.)
-Wait
-Neutralize (1 cup baking soda/ gallon of water)
-Neutralize again
-Rinse
-Dry
-2x coats epoxy
-Wait 48 hours
-Move in.

A link with a bit more info on acid staining from Legacy Industrial is here: http://legacyindustrial.net/images/How to Stain.pdf

No problem right?

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Acid Stain Prep

Starting point: 50 year old garage slab that was pretty well used, overspray from a couple cars that were painted in the 80s.




I was on a crazy tight timetable given I was attempting this on a house we were about to move in on and escrow was late to close. I did manage to finish the whole process in about 36 hours and was moving in 3.5 days later. A week or more would be a lot friendlier if I’d have had that, but I didn’t.

Tuesday night… Two friends (Mike & Steve), my father, and I knocked out the prep in about 5 hours. By far the key tool was the rental Home Depot surface finisher. Hot tip, if you show up and rent within 4 hours of closing time you can keep it until 9 am the next morning while paying only the 4 hour rate.

We got going at about 8:30 pm after tucking my girls into bed.




All that brown is old paint. Acid stain reacts with free lime in the concrete. New slabs are best, but if you need it clean it you want to sand enough to get a fresh surface exposed but not so much you’re into aggregate (as that won’t stain either).




Rental is “bring your own shop vac” but has provisions for a hook up. Taking a break, this machine ran basically not stop for hours and hours.




Mike’s sanding technique is excellent. By the way, this spins in a constant circle and makes a lot of torque so the angle you tip it determines where it wants to go. I think it was a 18” disc? I liked tipping it a little sideways so it tried to shove me backward and then I’d lean in hard to get some load on it. Mike astutely pointed out that you should always start it up in the middle of the floor least it run wild in an unexpected direction.




The sander takes two consumables, you use what looks like a ¾” thick scotch brite pad to engage the teeth on the disc.

This pad then supports the sanding media. I used 60 grit sanding screens. It literally looked like screen door material impregnated with grit and they are omni-directional so you can flip them over. I bought 10 sanding discs and went through about 6 of them (returned the extras). You only need one scotch brite pad thing. Belt sander and palm sanders were used a great deal as well.




About 1 am we shut down the sanders and moved into cleaning phase. Sweep and vacuum.




Still had some blemishes but what we left was not coming up so I decided to call it part of the patina I was going for. Masked the walls but did kind of a crappy job and my tape didn’t want to stick. This is one area I should have done a bit more work.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

The biggest thing I think I did differently most was playing with two very distinct colors of stain and using that to add some diversity to the floor. If you really wanted the shade of grey and blue, I'd likely recommend doing this with full strength blue stain and dusting some black paint over the top. Lightly applied black really does shift to brown, but it should still go well with some other natural wood details I'm working on.

It's still pretty interesting looking: Teaser shot of the results:

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Staining

Rinsed with water and simple green.




Brushed it around a bunch.





You can cut down the stain with water so staining a damp floor is no big deal. I ended up using the $10 Home Depot Bleach sprayer. Sprayers made for acid stain can be $100+ but I read reviews from several pros who say those won’t last either. As long as you get one with no metal parts it should last for one job just fine.




Stage 1: blue 50/50 water dilution. A gallon of dye (after I’d cut it down into 2 gallons) was probably enough for 600 square feet. Since my garage is ~450 even with the entry hallway, I went back over a few spots. It sizzles as it goes down. Neat-o.




Pictures don’t do this justice as for just how pretty this looked. If I had to do it over again I’d seriously consider going straight blue without dilution. It’s rad.




Stage 2: black 50/50 water dilution. The black prays yellow and ends up brown (black/brown is full strength). I decided to stick to my plan about a 2 stage color application to try for the patina look I had in my head. I didn’t think I was getting the walls in areas where my masking wasn’t great but turned it out I did have a bit of splashing. Droplets leave marks, but not real ill effects. I’ll repaint at some point when the rest of the drywall goes in.

This is how I left it at about 2 am.




The next morning was a neutralize and rinse step. This is kinda cool because you get a first look at the colors. Different folks recommend different ratios of baking soda to water. I used a full box and about 3 gallons of water which was pretty close to what Legacy Ind. recommended. Brushed it in and around pretty hard. Rinse, repeat.

Came back about 4 pm Wednesday afternoon (thankfully I’d taken the week off for moving prep). It’s weird how the colors barely show when almost dry. I say almost because I discovered that it really wasn’t that dry at all, particularly at the seams (note the dark lines).




Started monkeying with a heat gun but decided that was too slow. Moved on a map gas torch, then Mike brought me his as well so I was double ******* it. If I had just had a week to let this dry naturally, it would have been so much easier. Knees were dying by the end and that’s with knee pads.




Macro shot. Every little crack had moisture in it that would wick the surface the second you put heat on it. Then it’d dry, you’d move on, then come back and hit the same spot again. Some areas I must have torched 10x. If you see a dark outline on crack it’s still wet.



Wednesday evening decided it still wasn’t dry enough to be trustworthy so I decided to give it an overnight and hit the clear coat Thursday AM. I still need 2x coats of clear and I was moving on Saturday so I was getting nervous at this point.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

looks good!!

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Epoxy Clear Coat

It was now Thursday AM right before a move on Saturday… One more once over with a Torch and I decide it must be dry enough because I’m simply out of time. The Legacy Industrial clear comes in a 5 gallon kit, which is 4 gallons in a big pail and a single gallon of hardener on the side. I used a clean paint bucket and mixed this in stages.

First came all the curbs around the outside edges got cleared (but no stain) just because it darkens them up a bunch.




Starting working my way from the hallway outward.




Basically just poured a puddle after mixing well then spread it around as far as it’ll go. Long handle rollers are a must.




It goes down white and then settles into clear, here it is half milky with the colors just starting to pop.




One nice thing about applying white is that you notice grit and loose ****. See the little dot in the middle. That’s a healthy grain of sand or aggregate likely from painting the curb foundation. The dark spot on the left is a little depression.




Picked it out the grit with a finger then re-rolled. You’ll never know it was there.




Worked my way back and forth, you can see it in the various stages of clear curing.




The money shot. End result is super cool, particularly under bright lights.




One last lesson learned. I knew I was going to have too much so I ended up going a little thick as I got toward the opening. Don’t do that. Better to waste product. When it goes on thick I found it bunched and puddled on me (kind like painting cars if it “alligators”).




Also notable, was that the clear seems to attack the blue stain (but less so the black). Not much, but my rollers all turned light blue after the clear. I used 4 of my net 5 gallons to do 2 layers on my 450 square feet and I probably should have used 3.5 gallons net as I’d say I had a quart too much in each round I was trying to get down and shouldn’t have.

Another surprising finding. I had a few damaged areas with some decent chips in the concrete. Where acid puddles colors get deeper and darker. Kinda neat.




Second layer went down Thursday afternoon (it felt dry to the touch, but it was ever so slightly sticky to walk on. That didn’t seem to hurt anything so I went for it). The process was the same as the first coat except I used the recommended anti slip agent and picked Extra Fine, which I like a great deal.

Hindsight: Final lesson learned, don’t let the clear puddle in deep cracks or it’ll stay white/yellow and never dry out to clear (have one spot like that in my floor). Other than that I think I’ve touched on the others. Mask your walls well. Don’t be afraid of full strength stains particularly in the milder colors. Keep clear coats thin. Use long handled rollers. Make sure it’s dry dry dry.

The floor is very tough, but not impervious. I dropped a hammer from 6 feet up and that gave me a small chip. Broke out a drywall section in the attic and found when throwing pieces down from 9 feet up that was enough to scratch it, but not much. I wanted this to be nice but not so nice I can’t use it and in that regard I think it’ll serve me very well.

So that’s my floor.

Saturday am we moved in. The garage stuff were the last things to move but on Saturday night I installed a 1000 lb welding table and rolled in all my tool boxes. Another day of dry time would have been better but I still got everything in without incident. Good times, and a very positive review from me for Legacy Industrial.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Wow, the floor is very cool. Reminds me of a color case hardened finish. Do you think it will fade over time under the epoxy clear?

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

zkling said:

Wow, the floor is very cool. Reminds me of a color case hardened finish. Do you think it will fade over time under the epoxy clear?

Click to expand...

Thanks. A little different than what I originally pictured but I dig the results. As to fading, pretty much the only concerns I ran across were folks talking about the clear yellowing. The finish I picked should hide it even if it does. There are distinct pros to non-uniformity.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

I like it, I really do. Great work and a valuable tutorial, thanks.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Thanks Dan, I found half a dozen write ups but not a lot of folks who noted why they picked what they picked and also documented the process beginning to end. Figured it might help someone else.

Would any of the moderators care to comment whether "cross posting" is desired? IE since GJ seems to be all about knowledge share is it worthwhile having a separate dedicated thread with the acid stain info so folks can find it easier when searching?

-Joel

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

That floor looks great! Thanks for sharing all the details.

Love the coffee table too. My wife was not as understanding when I brought up a similar idea. Maybe someday!

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

That floor is so impressive, great work!

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

With the floor out of the I had a ton of work moving over my former garage. I had already resigned myself to having this be a one car garage plus workshop and found that some of the most influential readings on garage setup were from Jack Olsen and the 12-Gauge Garage.

Thank you Jack!

http://www.12-gaugegarage.com/
http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=55006

There are a great many similarities in our garages. They're both roughly 20x21 and intended to be treated as a single car garages plus workshops. Both intended to do a good variety of tasks. I have some things that have to live in my garage that Jack doesn't (IE washer dryer) but I also have the ability to add rafter storage.

The new home was the exact same layout as our current garage (we bought in the same neighborhood we'd been renting in). That's made some reasonably specific layout planning possible as I measured spacing on the garage and side doors at the former home. Here was my old layout (scaled paper dolls are faster for me than CAD when just trying to get some thinking straight):




And what it used to look like in real life. Ppardon the mess... This was taking during moving and that wasn't exactly easy.










Had a couple goals of things I wanted to do better this time:

-Add a sink
-Add a welding table
-Move as much routine storage up to the attic as possible.
-Upsize available work benches. I was ok on storage but not on work surfaces
-Move my open shelving units somewhere near a bench so I have a place to set them down when I needed to dig.
-Move speakers away from kids rooms
-Build and then find homes for 2x Rx8 seats I've been planning to turn into garage chairs.
-Keep the rafters relatively low to help with attic storage space.

I found myself debating leaving one wall fully empty (or with fold down goods only) a la the 12-Gauge Garage.



That has the pro of leaving a bit more walk around space for the car but it's hard to have everything on an island and I do have lot of tools.

I'm pretty tool heavy so I almost picked up another of the big harbor freight 56" chests. The idea was that both of the big chests go on the driver side wall, and I shove a material rack between them. That would gives me some void space between to help open my door into. The big island in the middle was shown as a 4x8 welding table but that was always intended to float based upon on what I could find locally.



The north wall becomes my version of Jack's "main bench" and will have a 10' long butcher block top. I originally intended to span between my old work bench and the lower half of my blue craftsman box. I was thinking I might paint both some day to help them match. At the end of the day I decided reworking cabinets was too much work so I bought 2x Harbor Freight 44" boxes instead and I'm now to do my own version of the Steev-o Bench.

Wrapping the southeast corner on with 2x 24"x48" boltless shelving units lets me store plenty of stuff, have easy access to the welding table for unloading crates. All my really dirty tools (band saw, dual sander and drill press) live on the main door end of the welding table. Lathe, table saw, mobile air compressor, and shop vac will live underneath.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Welding Table

I don't recommend buying a welding table that's in need of love during the middle of an intense move. Still, when you already have a borrowed race car trailer (I seriously owe a friend many a drink after this), that's what I did.

Used welding tables can vary widely in condition and the cost folks want for them. I lurked on craigslist for about a month before I found the one I eventually bought. It was an hour and half drive south for me, had only one picture but was advertised as 1/2" deck and 4'x8' size and that meant it was in the ballpark for what I wanted. It was also going for $250--the price of the steel as scrap--where-as quite a few folks were asking $1000 or more for things I thought were roughly comparable.

Saddled up about a week before moving and drove south. Gent I bought it from was impressed I showed up as apparently he'd been stood up by several folks. It was in this cool little maker's art studio so we backed my jeep right down the center of the building (and around a couple tight corners -- also backing, which was entertaining).



1/2" deck as advertised. DIY, leveling feet were an unknown bonus!




Naturally it rained on the way home (one of the only times SoCal got rain last year), but a slightly rusty delivery didn't deter my kids from checking out daddy's new toy.




There was one problem though. This thing was TALL. Like 42" tall. I also didn't like how the legs were kind of spindly. It had only the three connections and each connection tied the upper to the lower by 1x 1" stitch weld along the diagonal leg of the triangular gussets. Fail those 6 welds and the whole thing would collapse like dominoes at the legs went parallelogram on me.

Decided to cut out the top bars which were oriented veritcally and tie them back in horizontally instead. My parents were in town to help with the move. I put dad to work with an angle grinder instead.




New orientation. I also dropped the leveling feet about as low as they'd go.




We'd loaded this with an engine hoist and a long chain wrapped around the top deck (pretty damn scary in hindsight) then used the winch on the trailer to drag it forward. I had no such wrench to drag it backward so I had to get a little creative. Drilled and tapped 4 holes so I could drag it with a come along and then pick it up with my hoist.




It sat on my driveway wrapped in a tarp for most of my move week while I worked on the legs, but when moving day arrived it was go time whether we were ready or not... Coffee table headed out.




Getting the weld table into the garage was about the last thing we did on move day. This had to have been pushing midnight. Pulled the trailer into position clearing the garage door by only about 1/2" to get it as far over as possible). Shoved the legs into a corner, tried to get the engine hoist as close the final position as possible (using scrap carpet padding under the metal wheels to protect my only-just-barely-cured floor...) :banghead:




... and then heaved ho. Pulled the trailer back out. I think the debate going on in the airborne shot was whether to level the table to the slab (which slopes) or just level the table to earth (aka gravity). I decided stuff rolling might be annoying so we leveled it to earth. Added some felt pads to the leveling feet just because, measured thrice, and then set it back down.




...and then it sat buried in boxes for the next 4-5 months while I did other work including an attic (more on that later).

Skipping forward when I finally unearthed the table I still had some work to do.

I had decided to flip the table deck over to a little cleaner surface (the other side was well scarred) and that meant pulling off the leftovers of some welded **** that was still on there. I started off using the angle grinder than then realized some of the welds were cold with poor penetration. Apparently welding directly to 1/2" steel isn't the job of an average mig. I switched over to the mini sledge and big chisel and beat most of the stuff off. After that it was back to the grinder.




I realized in the midst of moving I never did take pictures of the end result of my fortifications so here's few more shots of the bracing I added. My little 110v miller was perfect for 1/8" gusseting... It's now officially the beefcake table I was looking for.






After grinding I went after this with my belt sander to smooth things out that last little bit. I don't plan to do any production work on this so I'm not planning on blanchard grinding or going completely nuts.




I did however, "season" the top surface liberally with some WD-40. Can was out of air so I drilled a hole a dribbled directly.




I wanted to lock the deck down to the legs but wasn't excited about welding as I'd seen how hard that was going thick to thin. Instead I decided to used some healthy stainless countersunk bolts I had lying around. Unfortunately, these were 3/4" diameter heads and the biggest countersink I had was 5/8". Don't have the right tool? I chucked these up in my little benchtop lathe (1950s era Crasftman) and turned them down until they'd work. Drove my countersink in a little deeper and I was good to go.








Last detail, bolted down my big vise so I can actually put some load into this. It was just a few more tapped holes in the deck but it's solid and I'm happy with it.




By the way, learned a few things about hand drilling heavy steel, specifically, don't use tiny pilot bits. I broke something like three or four 3/32" bits before I stepped up to 1/8" and had much better success. That seemed to be about the sweet spot for it cutting without snapping drill bits via excessive load. You'll still be there for a while but it works out eventually.

-Joel

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

PS: As near as I can calculate this table weighs right around 1000 lbs.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Excellent documentation and super glad it worked out for you!!
Thank you for allowing us to be a part of your awesome project.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

LegacyIndustrial said:

Excellent documentation and super glad it worked out for you!!
Thank you for allowing us to be a part of your awesome project.

Click to expand...

Thank you Scotty and the Legacy Industrial team! I was needing to shoot you a line and let you know this was here, so I'm glad you found it. You guys were a huge help getting the details right on a tight schedule and I'm very pleased with the floor. It's already had tons of compliments from everyone who's seen it.

As I think I mentioned in the write up: any Vendor who will tell you what you don't need to buy gets an immediate vote of confidence from me.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

I really like that floor, I hadn't ever seen much on acid staining prior to this thread. Could you share more info the RX-7? I had a '91 when I was in high school and would love to have that car back, along with a few of my other high school vehicles. Also what sort of work do you do as an ME?
JB

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

Acid stain is pretty interesting stuff. Even as it becomes more well known among DIY folks, I'd expect that most of your neighbors will still have never heard of it (at least no one around me had).

Only downside I've really found is that you have to be careful presenting it, I was at a 2 y.o's birthday part and had a dad bragging about their water-based paint flake floor from Home Depot. I started telling about the research I'd done about water vs. solvent based epoxy systems and why I picked acid stain and I could tell the guy was getting a little bummed about the choices he'd made.

Not my fault! But still you have to be a little careful presenting it to not invalidate others choices when plenty of folks are perfectly content with the more common opaque epoxy/paint flake versions.

That said, acid stain is way cool. If I had had more time I would have loved to have tried a pattern or some stencil work. I was already working with a couple colors of stain so it' wouldn't have been that much more of a stretch, just didn't have the time and I was already trying a few weird things blending colors...





I would tend to think the other reason not to do a pattern is that it's a little bit like a tattoo and you better be damn sure you're going to be happy with what you're getting for a long long time. This last one, I thought was insanely well done, albeit checking the reflections it looks like they grooved the concrete as well.




To your other questions:
I work as a technical team lead designing rides in the theme park industry and run a small LLC on the side selling car parts (www.roninspeedworks.com). I'm also a husband, a dad of two awesome little red-headed girls, a gear head, and a follower of Christ. It's enough.

Build thread on the RX7 is here if you'd like to check it out. http://www.norotors.com/index.php?topic=1274.0. Seem like there are a great deal of car guys on here and it looks like you've got a really nice Cobra. Is it everything you wanted?

-Joel

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

frijolee said:

I work as a technical team lead designing rides in the theme park industry and run a small LLC on the side selling car parts (www.roninspeedworks.com). I'm also a husband, a dad of two awesome little red-headed girls, a gear head, and a follower of Christ. It's enough.
-Joel

Click to expand...

Full plate indeed. Looks like you have your priorities right.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

frijolee said:

To your other questions:
I work as a technical team lead designing rides in the theme park industry and run a small LLC on the side selling car parts (www.roninspeedworks.com). I'm also a husband, a dad of two awesome little red-headed girls, a gear head, and a follower of Christ. It's enough.

Build thread on the RX7 is here if you'd like to check it out. http://www.norotors.com/index.php?topic=1274.0. Seem like there are a great deal of car guys on here and it looks like you've got a really nice Cobra. Is it everything you wanted?

-Joel

Click to expand...

That would be fun to get to play with theme park rides all day, do you ever insist on riding them before they are open to the public, or are you just on the design side not the construction side? I'm an ME as well but in the oil industry with I love, but it would be fun to be around something like that or cars all day. I have two little girls as well that keep me hopping most of the time, your girls are little dolls and appear to be close to mine in age. A friend told me I was a DODO, Dad of Daughters Only, so welcome to the club.

I love the cobra, it is a blast to play around with, but needs some updates to be where I want it to be. I'd like to upgrade pretty much all of the mechanical from engine to rear end then all of the suspension, brakes, and wheels and tires. It was complete when I bought it and I'm glad it was as I picked it up before I even started dating my wife and had kids earlier than planned. So it is was a kit I likely would have never finished it and had to sell it off at a loss. I typically describe the car like this: It is hot in the summer, cold in the winter, wet in the rain, loud, uncomfortable, but is about as much fun as you can have without facing a felony. I'll check them out when I get a chance, thanks for the info.

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

cool man i look forward to seeing where this thread goes

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

timm95 said:

cool man i look forward to seeing where this thread goes

Click to expand...

Moving on then!

Making Space

Our new home isn't huge. It's just under 1700 square feet and storage is lacking. I'm amazed at how much stuff has to find a home when you have kids. By the time all the basics clothes, toys, and misc goods were in, I had no place left to put camping gear, coolers, Christmas ornaments, big tools, spare car parts, much less gardening stuff like chain saws and leaf blowers. (Side note: I think I might be the only guy on my entire block who does my own yard work. Still, we're living on a budget and I like a little outdoors time on the weekend so why not?)

I was looking for some serious cabinets, originally thinking they'd live inside and obviously you can't hang around the Garage Journal forum for too long without hearing the names Stronghold and Lista from time to time. Well, maybe thanks to the publicity of the 12 Gauge Garage and others, prices are way up on these things. Shopping new? Forget about it. Prices on the Strongholds I was looking at ranged from $1 to 9k and 1k is a pretty small unit.

http://www.grainger.com/product/STRONG-HOLD-Storage-Cabinet-WP172731/_/N-o0e?s_pp=false&picUrl=//static.grainger.com/rp/s/is/image/Grainger/4UZ08_AS05?$smthumb$

I wanted some big dogs, but many noted sources seem to have dried up. The SoCal shop that used to auction off machine shop closures is gone. I lurked for far too long on Craigslist not finding much in the way of deals. Finally I caved and contacted a seller who was asking more than I wanted to spend, but at least had the right things. It was a pair of cabinets both 78 tall and 24 deep. One was 5' wide with drawers, the other 6' wide with shelves.

After some discussions over the course of a week (both of us thinking this wasn't going to happen a few times) we finally agreed on a number. So once again the borrowed race car trailer saw use.



Seller ended up being a kindred spirit and runs a machine shop. Really nice guy and we've done business for Ronin Speeedworks since. Getting these loaded involved a forklift, winches, sheets of scrap plywood to not rip up the deck, etc.

Once on, I realized that the straps I had might not be enough. I'd brought a couple big straps and a variety of rope (including climbing rope). The strength might be OK but getting everything tight was going to be a little dicey. Seller sends up breaking out his welder and we add in some additional tie down points (after I call the trailer's owner and get permission to upgrade it)



Then the guy runs in back and straight up gives me 4 or 5 big straps he has lying around: older but still of the 5000 lb large variety. Seriously blew me away. I tipped him all the spare cash I had on me ($80 or so). Sometimes people you meet via Craigslist are a little off, sometimes you meet some really solid individuals. This was certainly the later.

I got the cabinets home uneventfully. Sometime earlier, I'd decided that these were going to live outside. They're so heavy I'm not worried about my camping gear walking away and the doors are just too big for the spaces I had in my garage. However, getting them off the trailer and into the backyard was another challenge. There is no forklift on the back end.

Published documentations claim my cabinets weigh 970 lbs and 1087 lbs. I was hoping to have four of us moving these, but only two friends could make it when the time came. The only gate to go through leads from grass to gravel.

Answer? Back the trailer onto the lawn (spotters to avoid destroying sprinklers). Lower ramps through the gate and as far into the backyard as possible. Cut plywood to deck the ramps. Use a mechanics jack every time you negotiate a seam between plywood panels. Destroy several moving dollies but use them anyways. Note to future self, 1000 lb rated dolly will still shatter wheels if you go over a bump...

Complete nightmare.



Once we had each sitting on wood in the gravel area and and no longer had gravity (aka the ramp) on our side we hit an impass. Without shoveling my gravel area flat we just weren't being successful getting these things to move. The destroyed moving dolly wheels certainty weren't doing me any favors either.

Plan B? Shoulder Dolly Straps.



See these two relaxed guys moving their sheetmetal filing cabinet with ease? That wasn't us. We did have two sets of straps. However we only had three guys. Do you see where this story is headed?

Steve and I shared a strap about a foot from the end so we had a little more than half the load. Mike wraps his strap around the feet on his end and handled it himself. Yes, you can lift your share of 300 odd lbs using these straps as it's all in the legs. The second you have to take a step though and all 300 lbs goes on one leg? Bad news. There's all the wildcard that the straps don't stop this thing from tipping side to side. Mike has the end so he has **** for leverage. Steve and I are both pushing horizontally and trying to keep it straight while not letting it fall over and crush the other guy.

Complete nightmare with the added bonus of serious injury or death on the line. Damn these things are TALL.

Well, turns out the good Lord sometimes smiles on us despite our folly. A few quick prayers for safety got answered and we got them into their new home without incident. Note #2 to future self: Lifting shoulder straps are awesome but make sure you have an even number of dudes.



I have these sitting on paving stones dug into the gravel and I'm keeping an eye on them in regards to settling, but no issues thus far having been through a few rainstorms.

Anyone have ideas on future weatherproofing? I'm now getting some light surface rust on the tops so these will get painted with something better in a while. What's an appropriate paint for keeping metal whole while living outside? POR-15 is supposed to be rad against corrosion but UV durability is poor.

-Joel

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

I hear the same Comments about the light fastness of por 15 when people talk hotrod frames. I know when addressing the same issue with powder coating they have mentioned top coating them with paint.

Maybe see if they make it in a lighter color so then if/ when it fades it still looks about the same. I don't think the color bleaching makes it work any less.

Everything I can think of that's tough isn't very color fast, even roll on truck bed liner seems to lose color

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

A second thought is to use some impliment / tractor paint. It's generaly not that expensive and is put on stuff that people beat the hell out of Ina daily basis. Worth a look?

Re: Casa de Frijolee - a Gear Head's 2-car garage

PPG DelFleet.