Between 705 & 1200 SQ/FT Eric's Tucson Garage Project

[Eric W11]

I'm at least going to look into epoxy. Had it at a previous place, and it was great for clean-up. Might get a lift at some point, but mostly this is to move cars that are in the attached garage over so the daily drivers don't have to sit outside. Also have workbenches, storage shelves, and power tools (drill press, bandsaw, bench grinder, belt sander, etc.) that will get more space.

The garage on the house has the bare minimum space between the garage door frames and the walls, so along one wall I've got the bandsaw, drill press, and a workbench that all stick out into the doorway, and I've got the Miata crammed in there. Will be great for the tools and workbenches to have enough space to get cars in & out without hitting car doors on anything. I have a piece of foam taped on the bandsaw so I can open the Miata door and not do damage, and there's more stuff between the Miata and the next bay so I can't even open the right side door at all. (It's all such important stuff - air compressor, portable swamp cooler, tool cart.)

Yes it's hot, so I'll do a mini split AC in this garage.

Roofers got started today, with whatever this product is that goes under the tile.

 

[jbrentd]

Coming along nicely, Eric!

 

[Boostingaz]

@Eric W11

I can give you a floor coating guy if you need one. There do fantastic work backed by a great warranty. I did a custom color mix, they will let you adjust and change colors to your liking on some of them that are not premixed chips.

 

[rattle_snake]

operating room sterile I like it!

 

[Eric W11]

Only progress last week was delivery of the bags of stucco mix on Friday. Contractor says he can't find anybody. I'm not surprised. Conditions are such that builders need to complete everything underway ASAP to avoid more customer cancellations or price decreases. So when you see on the news that the Fed adjusts interest rates to "cool off" the economy - this is exactly where it hits. Relatively small projects like this grind to a halt. Maybe it really means next week there will be stucco on the building, but I'm not holding my breath.


Kind of funny exact calculation: 2 full pallets + 3 bags.

 

[PugetDude]

I'd still come up one bag short.

 

[Eric W11]

8/16 and 8/17 - insulation. Into the rainy season - been raining almost every day here. Inspection also on 8/17 - not approved. I think there was a miss in coordinating the inspection before the insulation - inspector wants to see the wiring. Also noted that the roof wasn't farther along - contractor's been good with clearing these, so I expect it to be worked out quickly. But with the rain, probably can't make progress with either the exterior wall stucco or the roof, which seem to be the next major steps.

 

[luvtheheat]

8/16 and 8/17 - insulation. Into the rainy season - been raining almost every day here. Inspection also on 8/17 - not approved. I think there was a miss in coordinating the inspection before the insulation - inspector wants to see the wiring. Also noted that the roof wasn't farther along - contractor's been good with clearing these, so I expect it to be worked out quickly. But with the rain, probably can't make progress with either the exterior wall stucco or the roof, which seem to be the next major steps.

What kind of insulation is that? R value roof/wall?

 

[Eric W11]

Contract says R19 walls, R30 ceiling. It's fiberglass. Seems to fill the full depth of the 2x6 walls, and what I've seen of the pieces in the ceiling seems to be maybe 10"-12" thick there.

 

[Eric W11]

Yesterday (8/23), first day of stucco. This is a base coat to cover the structure. Had really good luck with the rain - there was some extremely heavy rain in the area overnight, but nothing right here.

Second day, today, is texture. Two different textures. One for the walls, smoother on the "bump outs" at the base of the main door.

 

[Boostingaz]

Looks great so far.

Did they try and talk you into synthetic stucco?

 

[PugetDude]

Progress! Looks good, I was about to post asking if you had an update.

 

[luvtheheat]

Looks great so far.

Did they try and talk you into synthetic stucco?

What is synthetic stucco?

 

[Boostingaz]

What is synthetic stucco?

It's an acrylic based stucco rather than the traditional cement based. It has elasticity to it so it is not as prone to cracking. It can so provide a smoother finish. It's also tintable, so it is applied already tinted to your final color eliminating the need for painting. It is supposed to have an extremely long maintenance free life.

I looked it to pretty hard when doing my garage but ultimately decided to stick with traditional.

We are going to be building a house on our property for my parents and I think I am going to use the synthetic on that so that I have both and can do long term comparison of the two.

 

[PugetDude]

My neighbor used synthetic stucco on his house., built three years ago.
It's been redone twice for microcracking and is already starting to fade.
Choose wisely.

 

[Boostingaz]

My neighbor used synthetic stucco on his house., built three years ago.
It's been redone twice for microcracking and is already starting to fade.
Choose wisely.

Exactly what I've heard from everybody I talk to. This is why I didn't do it. The only guy that had amazing things to say about it....was the stucco guy hahaha. My painter said he's tried to touch that stuff up at owner requests and it's damn near impossible to do small repairs and make them look good.

I think I will stick to paying for good paint

 

[Eric W11]

I didn't know about synthetic stucco, and if it costs more, it wasn't offered. Today the big doors started going in. Maybe a bit out of order, but it's just as well, as the lifts are side-winders. The electrician didn't know this either, so the wiring was set up for ceiling mount. Looks like the door guys started "adjusting" the wiring, but the contractor told me that he'd have the electrician redo it.

Oops on my part - I'd assumed that when there's an 8 foot high door and a 13'-6" ceiling, that the door would get "high lift" tracks. Nope, stupid door is hanging more than 4 feet down from the ceiling. That kills that side of the garage for trailer/camper parking (and makes trailer/camper parking on the other side a precision exercise), and kills that corner for a lift. I think I'll have them finish as-is because lead-times for anything have been horrible, and costs to change now could be more than working with our favorite garage door service later. (I've bought this low-hanger as-is regardless.) Looking online, costs for high-lift are all over the place. The right way to do it requires a different spring, pulleys, cables, and track. Some get away with reconfiguring the track only, but with this "lift" being so high, a complete high-lift setup is probably necessary.

Yes, there's a little opening at this back door at the stress relief cut in the slab. Undesirable critters will get in there. Will need to find a way to fill this - that's an oops by the contractor - this door opening was supposed to have a drip-tray or whatever it's called that they put at the front door.

 

[rattle_snake]

Looking good!

 

[Klokwerk]

I like a good stucco! Looks like a quality job so far!

 

[pima67]

Tom Cat Glue boards placed on both sides of the doors will catch lots of bugs, scorpions, lizards & mice. Even caught a Gilia Monster once. I released him/her and lizards using paint thinner. I also use them at the house doors and catch bugs & scorpions.

 

[jarhead]

enjoying all the details, going to br a nice space.

What are the walls around the property for? Is it a fence or a barrier to keep critters out? Any snakes?

 

[Eric W11]

Walls - 2 real requirements - first there's a swimming pool, so wall is required by code (and probably insurance, if code didn't), second so I can let my dogs out and not have them disappear into the neighborhood. I haven't seen any snakes here yet, but we saw about 1/year at another house we had around here. Not all rattlesnakes, but mostly rattlesnakes.

The walls might make a decent critter barrier - but the gates are pretty open, so mice are an issue. Have had a bobcat take on one of my dogs in this yard, so walls aren't much of a barrier to them. I've seen coyotes jump this size wall, but haven't seen one in this yard yet. Another annoying critter in the area is javelina.

 

[jbrentd]

Looking good! When my OHD was going up, I came home when he was about half way through the job. He wasn't happy with me (at first) that he had to re-do some things, but we all agreed it was on the GC for not telling him to do make the tracks as high as possible.

 

[Boostingaz]

If it's a standard size see if he thinks he can easily reuse it elsewhere. With the next person having zero lead time it might get him an quick door sale and install job. If so will he swap out that back garage door for a metal roll up? Then it would just be a case on the wall and give you all that headroom back.

 

[Eric W11]

Wednesday, Drywall started to show up. Today (Friday), drywall guys did a short half day. Might have had another job earlier or something, but were only here maybe 4 hours. Said they'll be back tomorrow to do some more. They are putting the insulation back in place that had blown out or was taken out for the door opener re-wire.

 

[Wayne67vert]

The wide angle camera lens threw me for a loop. I couldn't imagine where the curved inside wall is located. LOL

 

[bugman-74]

There will always be little "gotchas" as you build. Consider them lessons learned. I would just do the high lift tracks myself later, if that is within your skillset.

Looks like I used the same stucco contractor (in 2020) - FWIW he did good work on my 2000 sqft shop.

I had the same issue with control joints under the garage door seals. I'm sure you could stuff it with backer rod and use some sort of flexible self-leveling Sika product. Personally, I just mix up a little quick cure concrete and give myself a 1"-2" section there for the garage door seal to seal against. The experts may disagree, but in my opinion filling that small of a portion of the control joint isn't going to harm anything. Crummy example picture attached.

Another improvement in reducing the scorpions and spiders at my place has been to swap the garage hinges for green hinges (you can also just adjust your tracks, but I found the green hinges seem to maintain a tight seal better over time).

 

[Eric W11]

2nd day of drywall work. Full day for them today. They left the top 18" of walls uncovered to allow the inspection to complete (needs to see the wiring through the top plates). With the holiday on Monday, inspection wouldn't be until Tuesday at the earliest. Yes, they missed cutting the opening for one of the ceiling light junction boxes. Will be 6 fixtures. I know 2 of them are above the large door, but the large door will be closed most of the time, and I have those two on a separate switch for when the door is open.

 

[4xdog]

Looks terrific. Does it feel the size you expected now that it's all enclosed?

 

[Eric W11]

Feels like a pretty good size right now. I'd say it's the biggest garage I've ever had to work in, but one of the other places we've lived was close - but rather unusual. It was 3 cars wide, but the single door on the left was double deep, so nominally 4 cars total. That house had so many major items needing work that I never got that garage really organized. Hopefully I can put more time into organizing this one.

 

[ScottW]

Looking good Eric. Sorry to see you having the same problems with door tracks I had on my house garage. I think you also have the same problem I had when I tried to make them change to the higher lift tracks, my contractor had not put the necessary framing higher up In the wall to have the spring up there. So I also decided to live with it for now, maybe tackle it later if it still bothers me. Since the house was ahead of the shop I was able to get them to upgrade the framing over the large door where my lift will be (notice the two 6x6s added to the center and four 2x6s added to each side).

 

[PugetDude]

Could be worse... I have 15' ceilings in the garages up at the cabin- with 7' doors and standard height tracks. Cannot imagine who thought that was a good idea.

 

[Eric W11]

I don't have immediate plans to need a higher door there, but if/when we get a camp trailer or something like that, I'm not going to wait to impale it on this door track before having the track moved up out of the way.

Identified the colors. First, I took some photos to the big box store, and grabbed a bunch of samples from there based on photos. Hopelessly wrong. Then, I remembered that they sprayed s-hooks along the roof line (holiday light hangers, I guess), so I took one of those to the store with me. Still not a good match. My wife was with me that time, and she suggested we go to the branded paint store that we know did this house. (We know this because prior owner left a little bit of the main color in a can with the brand name on it, but nothing for the trim.) That store scanned the hook and identified one page in their sample book. The salesman said "it's this one", which I could see was too light, but one shade darker was right on. So we brought both of those paint chips home, and the darker one matched exactly. The color name is comically bad - "baked potato". At least the color is identified.

She also had the good idea to call the HOA - they emailed me a list of possible colors, but they didn't have the specific colors for this house. The list did confirm though that "baked potato" is one of the possible colors. The main body color we can get from the can that's still here. I did bring that color number back to the paint shop and they said it's too old for them to have a chip, but they could still make it.

The outdoor fixtures are unpainted ceramic - closest shape I could find to what's on the existing house. Something told me to go early this morning and get a can of "baked potato" and paint those lights. I was through painting 4 of the 5 of them when the electrician showed up this morning to hang them on the walls. He also did about half of the breakers and all of the switches & outlets. Held off on hanging the ceiling fixtures until they tape the drywall (& maybe paint).

I'll have to pull the cover plates & mask the switches & outlets for paint, so not the optimal order, but I'll take progress where I can get it.
This photo makes the unpainted fixture look wider than the painted one, but it's a trick of the lens - they're all the same size.

Back wall - switches near the door, couple of outlets on the wall, and the 220V for a compressor.

Side door - covered outlet down low, AC disconnect box, and light fixture for the entryway.


Back wall - another outside outlet, and lights on both sides of the door.

 

[PugetDude]

The last house I had painted here in AZ was also "baked potato" - You're obviously using Dunn Edwards Paint.
Garage is looking good.

 

[fouckhest]

Great build, looking forward to seeing more progress!

 

[Eric W11]

Electrician here yesterday to run the power from the house. Used the existing cut through the sidewalk where the old hot tub power and water for the yard irrigation runs.

Finished up the panel as well, and it's got power!

 

[Eric W11]

Cleared most of the open inspection today. Unfortunately, last week the original inspector wasn't available, so they sent someone else, who couldn't pass it because he hadn't seen what was behind the drywall & stucco. Today's inspection was written up as though the only thing left open has to do with the roof, which needs the tile in place to complete. Contractor has been trying to get the roofers, but things are tough with bigger projects everywhere scrambling to get done as fast as possible before more buyers cancel (due to rising interest rates).

At least now it's cleared to finish the drywall, tape the seams, and paint the interior.

 

[zc15]

Actually, I saw the lengths in one of your posts above, but I am still curious about the dimensions and thickness of the angle iron

Hey @Eric W11 , could you tell me what the dimensions are on the perforated angle iron used for your garage door tracks, specifically the smaller door?

I picked some up from a garage door supply, but just wanted to make sure it would work for my length. My lengths of angle iron are 4 feet long, and the angle iron is approximately 1.25"x1.25"

 

[Eric W11]

ZC - the angle stock measures 1 1/8" x 1 1/8", so yours should be good. Looks like maybe 1/16" thick, but I didn't measure that.

Drywall work restarted today - got some of the taping done:

 

[Eric W11]

More progress today - roof tile delivered! Taping guy did a bunch more of the tape. Drywall guy showed up later and finished off the small section near the ceiling, and patched the odd way that they'd cut around the door opener controllers.