First time homeowner garage

[tigerxj]

Hi all, I've lurked for a while, haven't posted much. My wife and I are building a new home and I will finally have my garage/workshop space the way I want it. This will be a slow process updating since we are still building the house. Finishing out the spaces will take some time (for my wallet to recover).

Background: just started my first real job since graduating high school...I'm a family doc so it was a 7 year journey after college to get here. I have the perfect job and we can finally afford to build/move. Previously we lived in a town home with no garage, and then in a duplex with a 2 car space but a chunk was taken up by the geriatric stairwell the landlord had built in the garage.

Our new garage will be about 23' wide by 22'-6" deep. We will have an unfinished basement. We have designed it with a shop area for my tools/projects and an unfinished storage area. Our goal is to keep the garage clear of clutter and reserved for cars and auto tools, and use the basement for the dirty stuff/sawdust and storage.

We will have 5' french doors from outside into the shop, and a second set into the storage area. This way we don't have to carry big bulky items through narrow hallways or doorways and tear up dry wall.

I will likely repurpose my current garage cabinets on the basement and build new work benches. In the garage we'll probably go with sears or Sam's type of work bench and storage. We will eventually finish the garage floor with a local company that does great work. I'll probably just seal the shop area since I'll hopefully do some welding down there. The flooring guys can put college logos on the floor, and since I will be in a college town this is perfect!

Onto the pics. As I said, we broke ground a few weeks ago, had a ton of rain. We poured footers last week, walls were poured two days ago, slab going down Friday.

Forms going up, this is looking directly at the garage area

Walls being poured

Finished walls. Water proofing and backfilling for the slab today after inspection. I didn't get a good picture of the garage area on this one. The main wall here is the left side of the garage. You can tell we have a lot of backfilling to do. This was the entrance/exit area for the excavator, so they had to cut it down more than the rest of the foundation.

I will update with more progress pics of the garage and shop as it happens. I'm hoping we can get my son and daughter up here on Friday to put their hand prints/footprints in the slab in my shop area.


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[tigerxj]

Got a few pics today. Had our under slab plumbing put in and inspected.

This is looking at the entrance to the garage

This is the shop area looking through what will be the double doors. There will be a personnel door on the left from the main basement area. It will have the bar/kitchen area adjacent to it, which is what the plumbing stubs are for. Storage area is in the rear

This is just the same shot from the other side (front of house)

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[karlmust]

It's a nice start to a big project! Looking forward to seeing more! Subbed!

 

[dubber]

Nice project! I'll be back to check the progress.

 

[tigerxj]

As it frequently goes with these builds progress is slow. Initially we were at the mercy of the weather and had about 10 days or rain around they dug the hole and the footers. Now we are on our 11th day if sunshine and 80s. We were supposed to have slab poured last Friday but the gravel truck was delayed due to repairs. So we finally got the gravel down yesterday. I'll post some new pics a little later


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[tigerxj]

I'd never seen them shoot gravel in before so that was pretty cool

Took a ton of gravel to fill

Got the waterproofing done. Poured walls should help some too


Basement under slab is done and ready for slab pending inspection

The basement will be unfinished for now, but as you see roughed in for plumbing and they will make the necessary changes to the load bearing walls per our design. Here are the basement plans. My goal is to make it feel like I just walked into my favorite bar in town. We will eventually have ping pong, shuffleboard, darts, and of course the bar and media area. We decided against pool because my dad has a table in both of his houses. One never gets used, the other at the lake gets used some but only by the kids and only late at night when trying to sleep. We've also had a few broken windows and cracked tiles from over enthusiastic cue balls. Ping pong is a lot quieter and I think more fun

 

[Kevin54]

Looks like it's going to be a very nice build and looking forward to seeing it go up.

If you would, could you put your location into your profile? Just the state would be fine. It helps when answering questions when they may pop up. Thank you.

Welcome, and keep those pics coming

 

[tigerxj]

Looks like it's going to be a very nice build and looking forward to seeing it go up.

If you would, could you put your location into your profile? Just the state would be fine. It helps when answering questions when they may pop up. Thank you.

Welcome, and keep those pics coming

Thanks, just updated it.
Clemson SC...we are building on about 8/10s of an acre, sloped, wooded lot. I think it may have been cleared at some point because there are not many big trees on our particularl lot, but other parts of the neighborhood do have some big trees. We saved as many as we could, and will definitely put some in along the property lines to shield us from the neighbors. Unfortunately, my neighbor on the right side pretty much put their house on the setback when they built it 40 years ago. I have plenty of room to be able to pull a vehicle around to the back yard (mainly for the jeep or for hauling landscape stuff back there). HOwever because they are so close to the setback and the property line, they pretty much cleared all their trees between our houses. So if I want to maintain any semblance of privacy I had to leave all the bigger trees. This will leave me just enough room to pour a sidewalk around to the back yard. I even had the surveyors move the house over 5' so that I wouldn't lose those trees.

I dabble in novice furniture building and various other honey-do wood projects. This is the main reason I wanted to separate the shop from the garage because I hate getting all the sawdust all over everything. Its also why we separated the storage area. My main issue with this set up is that the shop and garage couldn't be much futher apart. Fortunately most of the stuff I use for wood, isn't required on the cars, and vice versa. So most of my wrenching and auto tools will be in the garage, and the wood stuff in the basement. This may force me to either go with two compressors or a portable one whenever I decide to do that, because I would like air tools. right now I have a small pancake that doesnt do much.

My other main use for the spaces is my Jeep, i'll post a pic from my phone in a minute, I just finished painting it with bedliner in my garage about 6 weeks ago.

 

[tigerxj]

The jeep


This is on a road called muster ground rd, which is a seasonal service road in one of the state parks on the NC SC border. There is a string of man made lakes that start at the NC/SC border with Lake Jocassee and follows the SC/GA line until you hit the savannah river. Jocassee is a beautiful lake with several waterfalls that cascade directly into it. We drove up there during all the rain we had when the rivers and the falls were rushing. This particular river is Whitewater river, which a mile upstream contains the one of the tallest waterfalls east of the Mississippi, the Upper Whitewater falls

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[tigerxj]

I drove by the job site today and my heart sunk because there were no trucks out front so I was afraid we didn't get the slab done today. But when I pulled up...

Yippee! I'm pretty pumped that we will have pretty decent afternoon shade over the garage. My current garage faces south with no trees in front or across the street to block the sun so it's hot as hell in the afternoons.

I'm meeting with my super today to drop off a check for the change order to add the plumbing to the basement, so I'll ask about the schedule for framing. Hopefully Friday.


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[tigerxj]

This is my current garage. Excuse the mess, we have been partly packed up for more than a year because we have been looking for a place since last summer. The current garage is about 18'x19'. It has a stairwell that my landlord built over the brick stairs when his geriatric mother lived here, so they take up a lot of room, making it more of a 1.5 car garage. Adding the cabinets made it smaller.

In this first pic you might be able to see the two fridges. Electrolux has a facility down here and every year they have a scratch and dent sale. I got a brand new black 18cuft fridge with a dented side panel for $150, and a new stainless 18cuft fridge with an ice maker for $250. Haven't unwrapped the stainless one yet so I don't know the extent of the damage. We'll probably stick the stainless one in the basement for the bar, and the black one in the garage for food.

The cabinets I got from my dad. He is in commercial real estate and construction. Had these in a medical office he sold, new owner didn't want them so he let me have them for free. They are custom so they are various sizes with wall cabinets ranging from 17" to 34", and base cabinets from 16" to 33". I'll probably put most of these in the basement shop and do gladiator or similar in the garage. Hung them all with French cleats, so they would be easily removable. Got the idea from garage journal.


We have a small chest freezer. It's been nice but I underestimated how much it ***** to dig through for something at the bottom. Especially when there is 5 gallons of breast milk in there. We may stick this in the basement, not sure yet, because of the new fridge/freezer for the garage.

Everyone of these cabinets is full of **** I hope to eventually sort out into storage, shop, and garage. You can see my fireworks racks sitting on top of them. I love pyro!

The one nice thing about this garage was the separate area in the back. This is where I kept most of my tools but eventually outgrew it. The filing cabinet was actually free as we'll, lockable, and holds a ton of my power tools.

And I'll finish up with my little guy exploring his new basement for the first time!

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[tigerxj]

I made these mockups with the gladiator design tool. Ignore colors I was trying to distinguish between the cabinets.

As I mentioned my cabinets are several different widths so I created "floor obstacles" to simulate the base cabinets and used a mixture of their wall cabinets to make up the width of my wall cabinets. The brown box on the right is the 4 drawer filing cabinet that I store the boxes power tools in. My cabinets don't have drawers so I'll probably keep it. The orange and black boxes in the back simulate my bandsaw and a yet to be purchased drill press. I'll probably build workbenches for the shop instead of buy, and probably just plywood for the top of the cabinets. The center bench will be two 4' sections on casters so I can reorient and move outside, make an 8' table, move to the side if I need to carry something to the storage area

The exterior French doors are 5', to the storage area 4', and to the main living area 3'.

I haven't settled on a plan for the garage yet, but I have more time than money after building the house so that won't be a problem!


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[tigerxj]

I think I forgot to mention one of the reasons we chose this lot is because this is behind us separated by a creek

We started framing today so hopefully more pics this afternoon


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[Gentle_Ben]

This is an awesome build, I will definitely be following this!

 

[tigerxj]

Noon:

6pm:

This is looking through the exterior French doors into the shop area. They screwed up and left out the doorway into the main basement area so I let my contractor know about that

This is looking through the interior French door opening into the storage area

Overall shot from the back yard

And from the top if my dirt pile

The rest

And the ACC women's rowing championships were hosted at Clemson today. They won an individual nat'l champ in 2009. I've had worse Fridays.

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[Bib Overalls]

Do I see 2x6 studs on the exterior walls? What kind of insulation will you be using?

 

[kjdhawkhill]

We have a small chest freezer. It's been nice but I underestimated how much it ***** to dig through for something at the bottom. Especially when there is 5 gallons of breast milk in there. We may stick this in the basement, not sure yet, because of the new fridge/freezer for the garage.

Eventually it clears up. The half deep freeze is still the best investment I made between #1 and #2.

 

[tigerxj]

Eventually it clears up. The half deep freeze is still the best investment I made between #1 and #2.

Oh it was a great but especially for how cheap it was. Actually bought it when I was in med school so my roomie and I had more space. For boobie milk it's the best thing because it keeps for a year. But it's hard to keep other stuff in there.

As far as insulation, I'll have to ask my dad and contractor. My dad does commercial real estate and commercial/residential construction, so he's been a huge help on this build looking over the shoulder of the crews. They indeed are 2x6 walls in the basement of exterior and load bearing. I may be wrong but I think that's a code requirement in SC and the main and 2nd level will be 2x4, but I could be wrong. This is my first build like this so I'm learning a lot. I did work on various painting crews and things like that for my dad when I was a kid, but didn't care enough at that age to pay much attention and thus didn't learn much, which is a shame because my dad has built some beautiful homes, ranging anywhere from townhomes in the $120k range all the way to custom homes in the $5-10million range. I think the biggest he's done was this 10000 sqft or so home in Asheville.

My dad is a third generation builder/real estate. My great grandfather built a lot of iconic buildings in downtown and north Asheville in the 20s, including the Jackson Building (our last name is Jackson)





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[Bib Overalls]

A doctor with a little experience in the trades. You don't see that very often. My Uncle was a carpenter before WWII and he used his GI Bill benefits to attend med school. He eventually became a John Hopkins trained opthomologist. One of his greatest attributes was the ability to talk with anyone about just about anything and converse at their level. I attribute that to his trades background, his intelligence, and his advanced education. Don't forget where you came from and it will serve you well.

 

[tigerxj]

A doctor with a little experience in the trades. You don't see that very often. My Uncle was a carpenter before WWII and he used his GI Bill benefits to attend med school. He eventually became a John Hopkins trained opthomologist. One of his greatest attributes was the ability to talk with anyone about just about anything and converse at their level. I attribute that to his trades background, his intelligence, and his advanced education. Don't forget where you came from and it will serve you well.

Thanks for the words. I think the ability to talk to people (a gift from my dad) is what got me through med school since part of our grades were patient evaluations of the students.

They started putting the TJIs down today, should have the T&G down by the end of the day. Also had a crew backfilling the front of the house which I didn't expect till after framing was done

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[tigerxj]

Our dirt pile is finally (mostly) gone.

Looking towards the front yard

Back yard

We had a couple issues with the basement framing they will need to address. First was probably oversight on my part as I missed it in the revised basement plans. To accommodate the bedroom we had to redirect flow from the stairwell so you exit straight into the living area rather than making a turn around the corner. The opening is only 2-6, which is too small to really be able to carry anything big down there. Since the storage area is down here we want it as big as we can get it. We will have them bump the studs against the support for the LVL, and get us probably 4" more width.

They left out the doorway to access the shop from the main basement. The way it is framed the only access to the unfinished part is from outside through the double doors.

it's supposed to be on this little 3'-8" wall adjacent to bar area with a 3'-0" door.

Lastly the powder room is supposed to be about 6'-6" square. They framed it closer to 10' deep, which makes it awkwardly large but also eats up valuable unfinished storage. Basically wasted space

The back wall was supposed to be about 4' closer to that PVC stub.

Builder assured me they will address the punch items after the get the framing up. I suppose they are trying to get in the dry as quickly as possible so they won't hold anything else up.


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[Bib Overalls]

It pays to be vigilant.

 

[tigerxj]

Found another, although I'm sure it's temporary. They Toenailed a 2x4 ledger board onto one of the microlams, and the TJIs dead end at the microlam, so they are just sitting on the ledger. In another spot they correctly used joist hangers. I'll be touching base with the super today to make sure they address this

Low light crappy cell phone pic

On a bright note they got the T&G down and started framing the main floor. These walls are 2x4. This is basically the kitchen and laundry room

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[Mr. Roboto]

Nice progress! When is it slated to be completed?

 

[bonecrrusher]

I'm in the middle of new construction as well.

We went with a higher quality builder - and they still manage to screw things up.

So I've learned just to drive over to the new house every few days - and keep track of things. We've brought up the issues we found - and they have been addressed.

 

[tigerxj]

We were told 3-3.5 months from ground breaking. I assumed 4 months which would have been 8/1. I don't know if we'll make that. I just hope we beat the students and football season because the population triples when school is in session.

They seem to be doing a good job. Being this is my first house I've built, I'm probably overly paranoid they are going to miss something. Because it's only 10mins from my work, and I drive by on the way home, I usually stop by 2-3 times a day.

Some of it I'm starting to understand is done to speed up the overall framing process, then they'll go back and "finish".

For instance they did not leave an opening for the stairs from the main level. I assume because the divider wall in the stairwell (it has a landing) is not in yet, which will set the opening. So they just framed a wall blocking off the stairs so they could move on.


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[tigerxj]

Progress. Crew stayed past 7pm tonight. Finished the main floor framing. I think they will be doing the 2nd floor joists and T&G tomorrow, and maybe 2nd floor framing by Friday. I won't get up there tomorrow Cus I'm working in the urgent care so I'll be pumped to see the progress Friday morning.


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[bonecrrusher]

Framing and roof will go up quick - then it slows wayyyyy down...

 

[turtl631]

Thanks for the words. I think the ability to talk to people (a gift from my dad) is what got me through med school since part of our grades were patient evaluations of the students.

They started putting the TJIs down today, should have the T&G down by the end of the day. Also had a crew backfilling the front of the house which I didn't expect till after framing was done


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Cool build. I'm in a similar boat, dad was Union ironworker and I just finished residency last year (ER). Just bought a place with a large (for the city) garage that's pretty bare bones, and I'm super excited to get some nice flooring, walls, lighting, work/storage space, and heat in there. Deferred gratification man!

 

[tigerxj]

Cool build. I'm in a similar boat, dad was Union ironworker and I just finished residency last year (ER). Just bought a place with a large (for the city) garage that's pretty bare bones, and I'm super excited to get some nice flooring, walls, lighting, work/storage space, and heat in there. Deferred gratification man!

its a long road for sure, tough to watch everyone around you enjoying life, but its definitely worth it. God bless you in the ER though, front lines for sure. I do 3.5 days/week in my primary care office and 1 day a week in the urgent care (it pays better and its a nice change of pace) but by the end of my UC shift I am pretty ready to get back to my office. I couldn't imagine doing ER, but I'm sure you feel the same about FM!

 

[tigerxj]

Framing and roof will go up quick - then it slows wayyyyy down...

Yep I've followed your build. fun to watch it shoot up from the ground then all the stuff that actually makes it a house happens. Wife's pretty pumped too, I think she has a hard time visualizing it on paper, but seeing it in person is starting to blow her mind. But honestly it is for me too. After spending the last 12 years moving every 4year in and out of apartments and small townhomes, it will be nice to finally have some space.

I'll admit when I saw the footers dug, I thought "man that looks smaller than it did on paper", but once the slab went down and my son started running around on it, we both thought "ok this is big". our current place is about 1500sqft, previous place was 1300sqft no garage, so our perspective is changing, which is funny because my parents live in a BIG (empty) house.

 

[tigerxj]

Well they are finished with the house!

Kidding obviously, but we did find a house in Asheville with the same plans. My dad recently broke ground on 5 spec homes in this neighborhood and when looking through his camera found a house he took pics of that happens to be our same floor plan

Ours will have the front entry garage, and we will be going with white trim and white windows. Our siding will be more of a gray. We also deleted a few windows to cut costs, so it won't look exactly like this


First time "parking" in my new garage! Relax I checked for nails first

They started sheeting yesterday. We had a lot of wind, so maybe that's why they didn't get as far as I thought the would.

And a backyard view

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[tigerxj]

Met my dad out at the house over lunch. I mentioned that casually to our super and when I arrived the project manager, the super, and the owner of the framing company (who is a civil engineer) were all there. My dad basically spent an hour going over everything with them. Even little details like pointing out nails that were sticking out that would cause problems with hanging drywall and making sure the fix them before drywall. Got them to widen a few doorways for us. Nice having him around for this stuff because I tend to stay pretty quiet on stuff I don't understand well

They will be stick building the roof. Our street is pretty narrow, our lot is narrow, our house is wide, and the front yard is small so we don't have any where to store them. They are hoping to have the roof done by Tuesday. I think they are planning to work Monday. We'll see. I'll be impressed if it's done Wednesday.

 

[west_perf]

beautiful build man, I love that area of SC. Might end up with a second residence up there in a few years. Look forward to seeing it through completion. I'll be up that way this summer and will check out that State park and lakes you mentioned upthread.

 

[polexican23]

great house.
Let me know when the next fridge sale is. I will paypal you some cash to send me a new fridge. Shipping would still be cheaper than the prices at the big box stores.

Using hockey tap currently on my handles for the fridge we have.

:subscribed

 

[tigerxj]

beautiful build man, I love that area of SC. Might end up with a second residence up there in a few years. Look forward to seeing it through completion. I'll be up that way this summer and will check out that State park and lakes you mentioned upthread.

Yeah it's a great area. Right at the foot of the blue ridge escarpment and surrounded by lakes, only about 4 hours to Charleston, 2 to Atlanta, 2 to Charlotte. We came up to Highlands, NC this weekend, only about 70 minutes, for an engagement party, went for a hike on white side mountain, which is part of that escarpment

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[tigerxj]

great house.

Let me know when the next fridge sale is. I will paypal you some cash to send me a new fridge. Shipping would still be cheaper than the prices at the big box stores.



Using hockey tap currently on my handles for the fridge we have.



:subscribed

I think they do it about once a year around early May. This year they are limited to the 18cuft models with freezer over fridge, some have ice makers, but they are all shrink wrapped so you can't see any of the damage before hand, and you can't hand pick them, they just grab the next one off the stack.


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[tigerxj]

These are from yesterday...garage has walls! We'll stop by tomorrow on the way to the lake.


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[tigerxj]

They didn't nearly get done what I thought they would. We've got a great builder but I'm just not sure about this framing crew. They got the joists up for about 90% of the second floor. Still didn't finish the exterior sheeting on the back of the house, and then partially started on the house wrap. They must be ADD or something because they are jumping all around. I think they will be out there tomorrow and hopefully put down the T&G for the 2nd floor so they can start framing and building the roof.

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[bonecrrusher]

I haven't been to Whiteside - looks like I need to add that to my list of places to hike.

If you are ever up in Bryson City - look up the Road to Nowhere.

There are a ton of places to hike in Pisgah, Grandfather Mountain, Boone, etc.