Glacial progress in North Central Montana

[MauleMinded]

My gal and I purchased a property in Small-Town, Montana in August of 2013. There was no garage; however, that was part of the appeal, since the property had plenty of room to build one, and we had plenty of ambition.

Fast forward a few years, and we are still cranking away at the initial dream of someday having a heated workshop that will house all of my projects, including a 1970 Maule M4-220 airplane that is in for a total rebuild.

Along the way we have had no shortage of tangent projects, not limited to: reframing the entire roof of our house, adding 3 dormers to the house (6 total counting the new garage dormers), adding eves to the house, and building a timber-frame front porch.

Basic details of the garage.
32' wide by 28' deep.
10' ceilings in the garage w/planned living quarters above (~750sqft).
Monoslab w/radiant tubing poured in.
Garage doors: 12' x 9', and 10' x 9'.
Separate 200 amp service to garage/apartment.
2-course block stemwall
Advanced framing, with a full layer of 2" XPS rigid foam wrapping the entire building.


Here are a few teaser photos to give you an idea of where we are at with the garage...

This is what the property looked like when we first purchased it in 2013. (Notice that "cute" little (10'x16') garden shed, where the garage now sits.) Don't worry, we kept it, just relocated to another side of the yard.

And as it sat at the end of summer 2016.

This is the back of the house in 2013.

And as it progressed in the summer 2016.

The old front porch...

And the new front porch....Fall 2016

I have photo documented all of the stages of this project thus far, and plan to catch everyone up in due time. Plan on regular updates, as I get all of my photos organized and uploaded. Feel free to follow along and ask questions if you have them. I am no expert, and this is my first major undertaking in construction. If you haven't noticed yet, I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew. Hence, the timeline on this one.

 

[MauleMinded]

Saving for future posts....

 

[MauleMinded]

Saving for future posts 2...

 

[J-man67]

Great progress! That garage looks amazing!

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

 

[kyle@hcb]

In for more pics

 

[spudley]

Nice. I like the tie in with the house reno. Good luck.

 

[driftpin]

The pics don't show-up for me as pictured thumbnails or as pics imbedded for viewing, but if I click and then open, I can see the individual pics. Looks like great progress has happened. Hopefully you will be able to get stuff completed this spring/summer/fall.

 

[Deezler]

Beautiful transformation on the house! And I love the architectural elements on the garage. Any interior pics?

What is up with your metal roofing going all rusty so fast? Is it supposed to do that?!?

They have apartment buildings in small towns in Montana? lol.

 

[MauleMinded]

In the beginning...long time ago...

After moving the shed, we began dirt work and trenching utilities....circa May 2014

Utilities included, future planning to remove the overhead electrical service to the house and bury it. So, we planned our new meter base on the alley side of the new detached garage, then ran conduit with proper sized wire under the slab and back to the house. We also stubbed in for water/sewer, as well as natural gas, and some extra empty conduit back to the house for future proofing.

Notice the electrical on the far alley side. The large pvc on the right is sewer. The white PEX is for water (2 lines were run, just in case...) The gray riser with the yellow trace wire is natural gas, and the gray conduit is empty, running back to the house.

Neighbors to the South are a church and preschool. It makes our garage size fit in, without looking too big.

After excavating out a little deeper than we needed, we brought in 3/4 material and started packing in small 4 inch lifts.

This photo you can see where we relocated the shed.

Formwork began...

And we chose to insulate underneath the entire slab. 2" XPS rigid foam recycled out of an old airplane hanger. Cost was simply the time of removal.

Then we installed the poly, tied rebar in the footing, and used welded wire mesh for the field of the slab. It got put up on chairs before the pour.

Then we ran 1/2" PEX throughout on 12 inch centers, 6" spacing on edges.

4 loops all within 5% of 220 feet in length.

The manifold location will end up underneath a stairway. Tied them together and precharged the system with air, left overnight and through the pour to ensure no leaks.

If it isn't overkill enough yet, I wanted floor drains inside the main doors of the shop. The floors are poured perfectly level, but I thought the ability to squeegee/broom water into a drain if necessary would be worth it. Mainly for snowmelt, rinsing off, etc. It is not tied to the sewer, and it has it's own clean-out before going to a french drain.

The point of no return! Mud comin'!

We used screed pipes to get level, and plastic rebar chairs to keep the wire mesh/pex up while pouring.

21 yards of concrete total. 5.5 inches thick in the slab. 12"x"18" perimeter footing. Concrete costs were right at $100/yd, no delivery fee since it was in town. So, I paid $2100 for the mud, and I threw my main contractor buddy a couple hundred bucks for the 6 hours he spent with me finishing the slab and teaching me how to run the power trowel. I am very fortunate to have friends that know these trades and have all the tools. Some debts incurred, some favors called in!

In this photo you can see the outside 6 inches we intentionally roughed up, to provide better adhesion of the block stem-wall to come. Everything else got a nice smooth finish with the power trowel.

 

[MauleMinded]

Beautiful transformation on the house! And I love the architectural elements on the garage. Any interior pics?

What is up with your metal roofing going all rusty so fast? Is it supposed to do that?!?

They have apartment buildings in small towns in Montana? lol.

Thank you for the kind words. Interior pics will come in time. I am planning to release batches of photos in chronological order until I get caught up to where the project sits today. Currently we are working on exterior finish work, including barnwood siding, cedar shakes, and more rusty metal.

<<Metal Roofing>> Yes, it is intentional. It is bare steel, and designed to rust. I suppose it is the "look" that drives folks to want a rusty roof. The climate we are in is quite dry and a roof like this will not rust through in my lifetime. It is made up of 22 gauge panels which are a bit thicker than typical painted metal panels. The "weathering" steel, as they call it, does wear, but unless you live near salt water, it is a 50+ year product. Many folks will apply a rusting agent (salt water, vinegar, acid) to the product prior to installation to achieve a more uniform look. I just didn't care that much...after a year or two it has all evened out anyway. Initially the machine oil they use to form the panels keeps it nice and shiny, but once you get a little rain and/or snow it starts to get the patina going on its own.

<<Apartment>> Yeah, mother-in-law apt., granny flat, home office. I just like efficiently using space. The additional cost of stick framing the roof with a ridge beam vs. using trusses, and the amount of space gained made it worth it for us.

 

[MauleMinded]

The pics don't show-up for me as pictured thumbnails or as pics imbedded for viewing, but if I click and then open, I can see the individual pics. Looks like great progress has happened. Hopefully you will be able to get stuff completed this spring/summer/fall.

Thanks for the motivation on completion. I hope so too!

<<Photos>> I just modified the coding. Hopefully that helps. Let me know if you're still not seeing them.

 

[Pluribus]

Nice job on the garage, but I love what you did with the house! Did you mill and do the joinery for the timbers on the front porch yourself?

 

[MauleMinded]

Nice job on the garage, but I love what you did with the house! Did you mill and do the joinery for the timbers on the front porch yourself?

Thank you much!

<<Timbers>> Yes, we did. I am fortunate enough to work in an area where we had some dead standing old growth White Bark Pine. It has been dying off all over the West, and it needed to come out for safety reasons. So, I fell the trees, skidded them out on snow, and convinced a friend with a Wood-Mizer LT15 to let us borrow it for a summer. We got a bunch of logs milled up into 6"x8"'s and 8"x8"'s, some as long as 23'6", which is the max bed length on the mill. Then of course, I went down the rabbit hole of timber-framing. If there is a more pure and traditional (harder) way of doing things, that is usually where I end up. All jointed by us using mostly hand tools (we did borrow a beam saw). Took almost 2 weeks for the timber-frame part of that small project. I have a lot of respect for folks that build whole houses and barns that way. I simply needed to scratch that itch to fulfill my immediate timberframing urges. Some day, plans for a timber frame house may develop.

I will dedicate a picture post to the timberframing once we get caught up to that point in the storytelling.

 

[PugetDude]

Subscribed, looks like a great build!