The Garage - At Last...
One of the things I liked about the house was the space that was available to expand the garage. The photo below is taken from the rear of the house, where a portion of the garage can be seen in the rear of the photo. The existing garage was approximately 20'X20'.
This portion of the property was covered in concrete which needed to be removed. The was the very first work that was done on the property.
The door that can be seen in the wall on the right went into a small hallway that contained the clothes washer and a small cupboard. The cupboard was located where a clothes dryer would normally be placed; there was an electrical outlet inside the cupboard for a clothes dryer. The owner/builder of the home had never had a dryer; not all that unusual when you consider the weather in this here part of the world. The two posts in the foreground connected sections of a fence that enclosed the swimming pool which is located to the right of where the photographer is standing.
The large window in the wall was for the breakfast room. This window faces west. You can also see the 5 ton air conditioning (AC) unit on the ground below a small window beyond the door to the laundry/hall. The window is for a small bath with a shower.
In the afternoon, between May and mid October, it was impossible to keep the breakfast room cool in the afternoon. They had tried to reduce the impact of the sun by putting a film on that 4'X5' window but the AC unit just could not cope with the extreme heat. The same issue existed on the other side of the house for the bedroom that was on that side of the house. With the morning sun on the east wall of the bedroom it was impossible for the 4.5 ton AC unit on that side of the house to keep that room cool.
As a result of the heat/cooling issues we knew we would have to redo all of the ducting as well as install more efficient AC units. Given that the two AC units were top of the line when installed we are happy that the technology for AC has improved, but more importantly, we knew that we really needed to focus on insulation in order to be able to keep our cooling costs at a minimum.
On the left side of the above photo you can see small square raised concrete block structure located just off the concrete. Note the metal grating for a cover. This was the "pit" for the pool equipment. It was quite common practice in the 1050/60's to locate the pool equipment below ground. It was cooler and there was not as much "head" for the pump to contend with at start-up. Truth be told, all it really did was provide an excelent environment for Black Widow Spiders. Removing the pit and relocating the pool equipment was the next thing that was done after the concrete was removed.
The photo below shows the plot/floor plan for the remodel. This gives a much better view of what we were starting. At the top left corner of the plan you can see an area that has a wall around it that is the new location for the pool equipment. To the far right of that is the swimming pool itself. The above photo was taken from the right side of the pool, facing towards the front of the property. The concrete in the above photo continues all the way around the pool.
I hired the two lads in the above photo to break up the concrete while my wife and I worked on removing a considerable amount of debris/trash that was along the opposite side of the house. We removed three dumpsters full of concrete, each piece of which my wife and I picked up and loaded into the dumpsters. The project had begun!
The plan also shows the other changes we were about to make to the structure.
Starting with the third bedroom at the upper left of the plan, we changed that room from a bedroom to a bath for a new master bedroom that was shown it a previous post. This will give us two master suites; the old master will become the guest room. The third bedroom will become SWMBO's sewing room which will also have a Murphy Bed.
The area where the office is located at the middle front of the building is where the front door used to be located.
The dashed lines between the Living/Dining room shows the location of a wall that separated a formal living room and family room. That wall is now a huge glue laminated beam that runs more than 22' across that portion of the building and ties into another beam that picks up the load at that end (more on this later).
We combined the old dining room with the kitchen. The old kitchen was located in the area where the existing kitchen is located at the rear of the building. The portion of the kitchen that abuts the mechanical room in the store room (about to become shop) was previously the dining room.
The area at the top right of the plan is now a laundry room; previously a breakfast room.
We expanded the small bath on that side of the house to include the hallway that led to the outside door referenced in the above photo.
And last, but not least was the area in the hallway to the garage. We were going to make the area where the radio dispatch station was located into a closet (more on this later too).
And then there was the garage. The plan was to widen the garage by seven feet and bump the bay on the west side of it out to the rear. This would provide one bay that was 45' deep; long enough to park the truck in the new portion of the building at the rear of the garage such that the door to the west side yard, when open, would be against the front bumper of the truck. The area in the front portion of this bay would hold a small room for my compressor at the very front (street side) of the garage with a work bench along the outside wall. The parking bay itself will hold our daily driver.
The other bay of the garage will hold my motorcycles and moto/sidecar rigs.
Once we got the various sections of foundation for the additions poured we could begin the work on the garage itself. The photo below shows one of the three glue lam beams that went into the construction of the garage.
We could have reduced this to two beams but I was too cheap to put out the cash for a steel beam. By using two beams instead of a steel beam this meant we would have to have a post in the garage. This was not a problem given that the post was to be located in the corner of the small room that sticks into the garage from the hallway that goes into the house from the garage. This can be seen in the plan, above.
New walls went up.
And the rafters went up, below. The cantilevered area runs along the entire back side of the house. This provides excellent shade in the summer.
Also, note that there are no windows on the west side of the garage. there are two personnel doors in/out of the garage that lead to the yard.
Note that all new construction is 2"X6" and that we "furred" out all the existing exterior 2"X4" construction to 2"X6" to allow for additional insulation.
The concrete pad to the left of the photo below provides ample parking space for our travel trailer.
But, as is always the case, reality entered the picture. While it was nice that we found a copy of the original plans in the house we did not know when we had the plans made was that the foundation did not match that which was on the plans. The area where the small room is located turned out to be an after thought by the original owner/builder. While wall of that room that is closest to the garage door was in fact supporting the rafters for the garage and the interior of the house it was sitting on top of only four inches of concrete. Given that we were about to put a rather large glue lam beam across the top of this using the "foundation" to carry the load of a 6"X6" post something had to change.
We discovered this when we broke out the concrete in that area of the garage floor as can be seen in the photo below. Also shown in the photo below is the hole that we created for the new location of the post that would support the two beams that were needed to span the garage. And yes, this is what the engineer required us to do in order to create a footing to support the beam. We actually had to do this in several locations. Another footing was poured inside the house for a 6"x6" post to support the small beam that picked up the load of the large beam that replaced the wall between the living/family room.
Here's what the garage looked like after the walls/ceiling were mostly completed. We decided it made no sense to keep the small room/closet as we were working to install the glue lam beams so we decided to reclaim the space for the garage; given there was never any foundation for the area it made more sense to put it back to the way it should have been when constructed.
I know, who wants a beam in the middle of their garage. Well, if you look at the location it is exactly in line with the center of the garage as it relates to the areas where vehicles can be parked. In reality it really does not come into play. It will be a good place for an air chuck, among other things.
At this point we were ready to install the new header for the expanded opening for the garage door which will be the next topic for discussion...
Jim
