Robey5
Well-known member
Hello all. I have spent a LOT of time on this board lurking. Some of the posts and builds here are QUITE impressive. Over the time I have looked around here, I have been able to "borrow" some ideas in my quest to get a home (err, garage) that I can work in, store play things in, and be comfortable with.
SO - My wife and I are always into something.
She: a small business owner, and works part time worker for her family's business, an avid physical fitness nut, regular snow boarder (gets about 30 ride-days a year).
I am a commercial guy in the automotive industry. A degreed engineer who later went on to get a finance-focused MBA and have been working for a T-2 supplier for a while. My interests include sports cars, playing beer-league baseball, playing beer-league hockey, drinking beer, wood working, and staying in shape (not necessarily in that order).
After we tried to make a sensible addition on the ‘quad’ that we lived in for over a decade, and could not really get it to work (height variance and set-back problems with our ‘lot’ … thank you local Building department to make moving an easy decision…) we decided to look for a bigger house.
This time, it was with a focus on bigger, more storage room and a full basement. There was a number of other factors that included the ‘need’ for a bigger garage, an open floor space, more property (to build an additional garage in the near future) etc, but it was a ‘clean slate’ for us to start from.
We bought a house that was ‘spec built’ by a builder some years back, who proceeded to loose his hide (including this house and the surrounding property) in 2009. The house set vacant and partially finished for a few years, and was purchased by a developer in it’s partially finished state. That didn’t bother me, as far as I was concerned, it was ‘done settling’ with this time that it sit.
What I later had an issue with was the ‘builders warranty’ that did not get honored when we had a serious issue with a faucet supply line that sprang a leak and flooded our new home’s guest bedroom, and our kitchen and soaked everything in the water’s mission to get to it’s lowest point (the basement).
Over the next several weeks, my wife and I worked our way to try to get the developer to ‘fix’ the problem that ended when we decided to make a damage ‘claim’ with our home owner’s insurance.
This was quite a disappointment; a “new” house, and a MAJOR claim from our insurance company about 4 weeks after moving in. To add insult to injury: discovery of this disaster was when we returned from a week’s vacation at Hilton head, SC. In other words, that day’s return to home from vacation was quite a disappointing endeavor. What was worse: we hadn’t received any offers on our “old” house (which later sold for about $15k less than we were forecasting, and $5k less than we PAID for it over a decade ago.)
Now to the rehab: it took over 3 months for the destruction process to start, after we pulled some of the wood floor that had swelled from the amount of water than went through it – the contractors we chose just got started with the demolition. In sum, we’ve lived in a house that has been in a partial state of completion for longer than not.
On to the good: The (attached) garage is about 20X32 (3 car garage) with a 10+foot ceiling. This is enough room for the time being to be able to ‘grow into’.
It has a full basement. With 10+ foot ceilings; exposed rafters and a 200A electrical service with a sick amount of room in the electrical panel to expand.
The master ‘suite’ has a his/hers vanity and his/hers closet (now, I can actually put all my gear in one place, including my wicked shoe collection!) and there is a large amount of brick on the exterior. They used a bit more siding than I would have liked, but the way that we fixed this ‘issue’ is by getting a contractor to apply a pretty bitchin stone veneer up about half way up the wall on the exterior.
For anyone reading, this will be a thread to capture what we will do to the garage, including it's contents ... as well as get some input on the way to organize better. This also will be a place for me to capture the build of the detached garage when that gets kicked into action.
Because this forum is all about the pictures, I will post the old, and the new to put the move into perspective.
SO - My wife and I are always into something.
She: a small business owner, and works part time worker for her family's business, an avid physical fitness nut, regular snow boarder (gets about 30 ride-days a year).
I am a commercial guy in the automotive industry. A degreed engineer who later went on to get a finance-focused MBA and have been working for a T-2 supplier for a while. My interests include sports cars, playing beer-league baseball, playing beer-league hockey, drinking beer, wood working, and staying in shape (not necessarily in that order).
After we tried to make a sensible addition on the ‘quad’ that we lived in for over a decade, and could not really get it to work (height variance and set-back problems with our ‘lot’ … thank you local Building department to make moving an easy decision…) we decided to look for a bigger house.
This time, it was with a focus on bigger, more storage room and a full basement. There was a number of other factors that included the ‘need’ for a bigger garage, an open floor space, more property (to build an additional garage in the near future) etc, but it was a ‘clean slate’ for us to start from.
We bought a house that was ‘spec built’ by a builder some years back, who proceeded to loose his hide (including this house and the surrounding property) in 2009. The house set vacant and partially finished for a few years, and was purchased by a developer in it’s partially finished state. That didn’t bother me, as far as I was concerned, it was ‘done settling’ with this time that it sit.
What I later had an issue with was the ‘builders warranty’ that did not get honored when we had a serious issue with a faucet supply line that sprang a leak and flooded our new home’s guest bedroom, and our kitchen and soaked everything in the water’s mission to get to it’s lowest point (the basement).
Over the next several weeks, my wife and I worked our way to try to get the developer to ‘fix’ the problem that ended when we decided to make a damage ‘claim’ with our home owner’s insurance.
This was quite a disappointment; a “new” house, and a MAJOR claim from our insurance company about 4 weeks after moving in. To add insult to injury: discovery of this disaster was when we returned from a week’s vacation at Hilton head, SC. In other words, that day’s return to home from vacation was quite a disappointing endeavor. What was worse: we hadn’t received any offers on our “old” house (which later sold for about $15k less than we were forecasting, and $5k less than we PAID for it over a decade ago.)
Now to the rehab: it took over 3 months for the destruction process to start, after we pulled some of the wood floor that had swelled from the amount of water than went through it – the contractors we chose just got started with the demolition. In sum, we’ve lived in a house that has been in a partial state of completion for longer than not.
On to the good: The (attached) garage is about 20X32 (3 car garage) with a 10+foot ceiling. This is enough room for the time being to be able to ‘grow into’.
It has a full basement. With 10+ foot ceilings; exposed rafters and a 200A electrical service with a sick amount of room in the electrical panel to expand.
The master ‘suite’ has a his/hers vanity and his/hers closet (now, I can actually put all my gear in one place, including my wicked shoe collection!) and there is a large amount of brick on the exterior. They used a bit more siding than I would have liked, but the way that we fixed this ‘issue’ is by getting a contractor to apply a pretty bitchin stone veneer up about half way up the wall on the exterior.
For anyone reading, this will be a thread to capture what we will do to the garage, including it's contents ... as well as get some input on the way to organize better. This also will be a place for me to capture the build of the detached garage when that gets kicked into action.
Because this forum is all about the pictures, I will post the old, and the new to put the move into perspective.
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