40x60 fixer upper in Maine!

[7ate9]

I bought my first garage(s) in November. It's 40'x60'x16' with, if I remember correctly, 14'x12' doors. Also on the property is a small two bay garage, 24'x24' I think.. and a house as a bonus, so the wife is happy too! I work with my father restoring antique cars for a living so the plan is to move the business here.

All the buildings are in various states of disrepair, nothing major though. Just some rotted trim and pealing paint mostly. Not much to say about the small garage so I'll focus on the big one. It was built around '85 and used as a school bus garage. After the school bus business was over it was used a garage for heavy equipment, dump trucks and whatnot. My dad even rented out a portion of it to do auto body work in for a short time as it was his brother in-laws. Most recently it's been used as storage for a bunch of junk..

Some Photos for your viewing pleasure!

THE GOOD!
well... it's a big garage..
it is insulated
it has new metal roofing

THE NOT SO GOOD...
both garage doors are old, uninsulated and rotten
window sills are rotten
there's a few cracks in the block stem wall
the lighting is quite dim
I tossed the old home built woodstove so there's no heat
It could use a good painting inside and out

FUTURE PLANS!!!
First of all the plan is to fix all the not so good things about it. We've aleady put in an air compressor and a 2 post lift and bought 40 gallons of primer and gloss white paint for the inside. We haven't painted it yet though.. We also picked up a 125,000 btu forced hot air oil furnace that isn't hooked up yet. hopefully it's enough?

We're planning on filling in the left garage door and adding an office off the front of the building on that side. We'll pull cars in and turn left into three roughly 20x24ish working bays down the length of the building. The remaining 16x60 down the right side will be used for quicker in and out work.

We're also going to put up a mezzanine over the left half of the garage so we'll have a 9' ceiling down that side. The idea was to cut down on the space we have to heat and have a place to store parts. We found a company that is going to build a truss that will span the 60' length of the garage so there will be no posts holding it up. Then we can hang the floor joists from the bottom of the truss.

Next thing to do will be adding onto the back of the building another 30' or so for a spray booth, paint mixing room on one side and a metal working/storage area for more parts and shop equipment on the other side.

The last thing on my wish list (if I live long enough) is to continue the roof down the right side (towards the small garage where the Ford truck is) out about 16' to turn the garage into kind of a salt box. This area will just be used as cold storage for future projects and whatnot.

I should mention that progress is going to be quite slow as time and money is not always as plentiful as I'd like it to be.

Any questions, comments, concerns, criticism is expected and welcome! thanks for taking the time to read about my new garage!

~Devin.

 

[Jay Sco]

Oh man that is going to be awesome! Nice car collection too.

 

[Modifieddriver]

I think that's gonna' be a great project. The building has character.

Why not turn the small garage into the paint booth?

 

[CNGsaves]

+1 on using the smaller garage for "short building" needs like 1/2 of it being a paint booth - - - ie like the right side. Then left side of small garage can be temporary office.

I'd recommend your "salt box" idea to connect the two buildings be modified as follows: (a) connect buildings together with office in between the two garages, (ie protection from weather when working between 2 buildings) and (b) use any extra space behind office be under "salt box" canopy roof to be your cold storage. This would hide all clutter from public view - - could cut door into right sidewall of the larger garage near the back of saltbox area.

With big building, I'd think twice about immediately taking away all that height. It could be very useful to have multiple lifts and put that height to good use . . . or to handle bigger/taller vehicles (ie like a motorhome).

Good luck with transformation of the garages. Looks like 3 "keeper" cars pretty much done (Cougar, 50's Chevy, and Camaro) . . . any more details and pics of these you can provide??

 

[7ate9]

+1 on using the smaller garage for "short building" needs like 1/2 of it being a paint booth - - - ie like the right side. Then left side of small garage can be temporary office.

I had thought about this as well, but there's a few reasons why it wouldn't work out too well. When we bought the place I promised the small garage to my wife so she could have a place to park her cars.. Also I wouldn't like pulling the cars outside to get to the paint booth. Another thing is the size, doing restoration work a lot of the cars we paint are completely apart so we need a large booth for the car and all the parts. Some of the cars we work on are almost 20 feet long, that only leaves a couple of feet on each end of the car. I like having enough room for a three ring circus inside my spray booth. Lastly we want a full down draft spray booth and that just wouldn't be feasible to turn that garage into one.

I'd recommend your "salt box" idea to connect the two buildings be modified as follows: (a) connect buildings together with office in between the two garages, (ie protection from weather when working between 2 buildings) and (b) use any extra space behind office be under "salt box" canopy roof to be your cold storage. This would hide all clutter from public view - - could cut door into right sidewall of the larger garage near the back of saltbox area.

The idea wasn't to connect the two garages. I'd leave about 10 feet open between the two buildings.

With big building, I'd think twice about immediately taking away all that height. It could be very useful to have multiple lifts and put that height to good use . . . or to handle bigger/taller vehicles (ie like a motorhome).

Yeah, it's hard to explain writing it out like this I guess but the 9' ceiling would only be over the half of the building that all the cars are lined up on. The other half with the lift would still have a 16' ceiling.

Good luck with transformation of the garages. Looks like 3 "keeper" cars pretty much done (Cougar, 50's Chevy, and Camaro) . . . any more details and pics of these you can provide??

Thanks everyone for the kind words and advice.

As for the cars, there's a 33 Ford 1 ton panel truck that you can't really see on the passenger side of the '56(?) ford truck, those two are both customer projects that were sitting waiting to get worked on.

The '70 Cougar is my oldest brothers car that he just bought about a year ago, it's in descent enough shape, but has a few amateurish repair issues that need to be fixed.

The '57 Bel Air is my older brothers. Cool story with this car, my dad bought it when he was in high school back in the stoned age (the 1970's) It was a wreck from San Bernardino California. He fixed the car up and painted it in vocational school then sold it a few years later. About 7ish years ago we found the car and my brother bought it. It now has a Corvette 427 with a 4 speed muncie and a 12 bolt posi rear. After he bought it we did a complete paint job, added disc brakes and a 3" flowmaster dual exhaust. Next he want to have an interior done (its brown at the moment...)

The '77 Jeep CJ5 is one of my toys. Nothing too special about it other than the stroker 4.0 inline six I built for it.

The '68 Camaro is my fathers. It was his mothers car that she left to him when she died. It's had a rough life.. It's been wrecked and rebuilt twice plus a few other minor incidents here and there. But they were built to be driven and that stuff happens.. It has over 300k miles on it now.

Next in line is my '37 Ford pickup Hot Rod. It's been chopped, channeled, lowered and shortened. I moved the front wheels ahead about 13" and put in a 283 with a tri-power. It'll be fun if it ever gets done.

Then there's the '41 Plymouth. Kind of a shop project, its been channeled and chopped and has a Camaro sub frame under it.

On the lift is my younger brothers '54 Chevy Bel Air. It's a pretty sweet little car that he got for a song and a dance... It's got the original straight 6 still in it. We just finished putting in a 5 speed out of a 90's Camaro and a s10 rear end.

Lastly is the blue '67 Ford truck, my younger brother and me bought this together off our step cousin er sumthin.. We haven't really decided what to do with it yet. It was just such a good deal we couldn't pass it up.

Here's a link to our facebook page where you can check out all of our projects!
https://www.facebook.com/DRLeightons

and for you non facebookers I'll get some pictures on here, I promise! But, for now, I've got a birthday party to get ready for.

 

[Modifieddriver]

The '67 Ford truck looks solid. Unlike what I would expect up there. My '69 was rusted out and sheetmetal repaired in '75, and then repaired again. Finally sold it in '80 after I moved south.

 

[7ate9]

The '67 Ford truck looks solid. Unlike what I would expect up there. My '69 was rusted out and sheetmetal repaired in '75, and then repaired again. Finally sold it in '80 after I moved south.

Yeah, it's only spent the last ten years or so in Maine and never driven in the winter. It was originally a texas truck and has almost no rust on it.

 

[draider]

Looks like a great place! Looking forward to progress pics.