Jawn's drive-under

[Jawn]

Started on some clean-up today. Removed the 12' long shelf from the corner. What a fustercluck.

This picture is from before I bought the house:

This one below is from today. So much **** I need to sort through and throw away. It's going to open up a lot of space though!

You can see where there's been some water intrusion. A downspout was dumping water on the ground right outside. I put the drainage fitting for it back together, hasn't puddled up inside since. I'll clean up that wall and drylok it before putting anything in that corner.

And now to continue the narrow shelf / pegboard like I did on the rest of that wall...

 

[Jawn]

A little more cleanup, finished the pegboard and shelf on this side...

Also moved the toolbox further down. I may acquire another workbench and put it somewhere on that wall, and move the existing one out to the middle like an island (it's finished on all sides, heavy, and stable).


I have a Grizzly G0602 lathe being delivered tomorrow, I'm thinking I might build a stand for it and mount that red top chest underneath it as this guy did:

http://gordsgarage.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/lathe-stand-mock-up.jpg

 

[metalhead140]

Looking good! Great use of the space.

 

[Jawn]

I'm slow to post pics.

Here's the lathe that showed up back in October.

The bench it's on was a freebie. Seems adequate for the task.

Also, it seems the drainage outside still needs work.

Only seems to leak in here during long hard rains. As is, the downspout feeds a corrugated black plastic pipe that disappears into the ground on that side of the house. No idea where it goes after that (if anywhere).

So basically, my plan of attack is improve drainage outside, then clean and drylok the inside of the wall.

Speaking of drainage... occasionally water seeps under the garage door. The edge of the slab that the door "seals" against has no slope or recessed area to prevent water from seeping around the door. I've seen a product that is basically a rubber threshold that gets glued to the floor and acts as a dam to keep water out. Should I go that route or is there a better way?

 

[Mpower5266]

I have the same drainage problems at my place. I think my landscaping is sloped towards the house and after long hard rains it puddles up and has to go some where.

 

[Jawn]

Looking back, I haven't followed up very well with pics. So here's a shot of the garage doors I put in almost a year ago.

Only down side is I still get water intrusion under/around the doors. I put in the weatherstripping along the sides and top, but there's a little gap at the bottom corners (doors came with a strip at the bottom). I was thinking of trying "Tsunami Seal" (http://www.auto-care.com/doorseal.html). Not sure how it seals around the ends (do I just build up a little dam of sealant?) Also not a fan of having an extra "bump" between the inside and outside. I wonder if there's a better option?

 

[wasfast]

Perhaps having a slit drain parallel to the garage wall. You could use a concrete saw to cut a slot about 6" away from the wall, install the drain and repour the transition to the garage slab so it's tilted away from the wall. Sounds like more work that it really is.

 

[Jawn]

Perhaps having a slit drain parallel to the garage wall. You could use a concrete saw to cut a slot about 6" away from the wall, install the drain and repour the transition to the garage slab so it's tilted away from the wall. Sounds like more work that it really is.

Would that be inside the door, or outside? I assume outside... I don't think that would fix it, water isn't running up the driveway and in... it's what rain lands on the slab at the base of the door, or else blows onto the door and runs down. The driveway already slopes away from the house.

Somebody suggested an awning, but I'm not a fan of that idea.

Last place I lived in had a nice little recessed area in the edge of the garage slab for the door to sit. Any water that came in around the door didn't have anywhere to go but back out.

 

[wasfast]

What I was suggesting is outside. I assumed the water was coming in from the driveway direction....incorrectly it turns out.

 

[Jawn]

What I was suggesting is outside. I assumed the water was coming in from the driveway direction....incorrectly it turns out.

It's hard to tell from the picture how the driveway slopes. I should have clarified that.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

 

[Jawn]

I've got two areas I'm unsure about.

First, under the stairs.

Originally, I had my workbench here hiding the big hole. I'd like to make use of it for storage. The thought crossed my mind of putting drawers in, but I think I'll just build some cabinet doors to cover the hole.

Next, the corner the compressor is in.

I'd thought about moving the compressor to the other end of the basement (not in the garage), and put the mill or the toolbox in that space. The toolbox is a nice fit, but the mill is odd shaped and may work well in the corner like that.

What do you think?

 

[Greeny]

Only down side is I still get water intrusion under/around the doors. ...... I wonder if there's a better option?

Great looking place, enjoy seeing the progress pics. Your garage doors turned out fantastic! Congratulations.
For the water intrusion in the corner, my in-laws had a similar problem. They ended up digging out the fill around the foundation on that corner, and waterproofing the foundation on the outside, improved their drainage away from the house and backfilled. Eliminated the wet basement.
For the water intrusion at the garage door, seems the best solution is to build on to that side of the house, extending the current garage out towards the end of your parking space.

 

[Jawn]

Great looking place, enjoy seeing the progress pics. Your garage doors turned out fantastic! Congratulations.

Thanks!

For the water intrusion in the corner, my in-laws had a similar problem. They ended up digging out the fill around the foundation on that corner, and waterproofing the foundation on the outside, improved their drainage away from the house and backfilled. Eliminated the wet basement.

I was afraid digging it out would be the answer. That seems like a crapton of work.

For the water intrusion at the garage door, seems the best solution is to build on to that side of the house, extending the current garage out towards the end of your parking space.

Hah, if only. As is, there's not enough driveway to turn around on, by the time a second vehicle is parked there.

 

[Jawn]

Another Rapidair outlet finished up!

 

[Jawn]

Gettin' on with some organization. Opposite side of the garage as the pegboard in previous pics.

Screw-in hooks above window/door height for storing long stuff (has a bunch of quarter-round on it right now).

Two-level shelf brackets below the window with a 1x12 on it, has hooks underneath for storing more wood/pipe/etc.

Hooks on the wall for storing the B&D workbench and a place for the fan.

I'm thinking of putting up either a segment of pegboard and/or Rubbermaid FastTrack on the remaining empty space on this wall.

Also in the corner by the door is a little metal cabinet that fits that space just perfectly.

 

[Jawn]

Did some more on organizing the rear side wall. This side of the garage is for projects with more wood in them than metal.

 

[NateX]

Nice work Jawn! I too have a GA drive under that presents a lot of the same challenges. Not sure yet what I am going to do with the ceiling, but it is fairly high at 8' 10" - problem is, all the dang flex duct hanging around, and no where to really move it to.

You have a nice collection of toys, I mean tools there. Giving me a few ideas.

 

[propav8r]

Nice work Jawn! I too have a GA drive under that presents a lot of the same challenges. Not sure yet what I am going to do with the ceiling, but it is fairly high at 8' 10" - problem is, all the dang flex duct hanging around, and no where to really move it to.

You have a nice collection of toys, I mean tools there. Giving me a few ideas.

I also have flex duct hanging around. Unfortunately, my ceiling (well, the bottom of the joists) is about 7'6", so I don't even have as much room to play with.

Like Jawn, as much as I would like to finish my ceiling, I just don't see it being worth the effort. There's so much stuff in the way.

 

[Jawn]

This idea is more for y'all with flex duct in your garage... I wonder if some kind of soffit/box could be built around the flex duct? It'd neaten it up and keep it out of the way.

 

[propav8r]

This idea is more for y'all with flex duct in your garage... I wonder if some kind of soffit/box could be built around the flex duct? It'd neaten it up and keep it out of the way.

I see no reason not to. For me, the optimal solution would be insulated rigid ductwork, but i don't know if I'll ever actually bite the bullet on that or not.

 

[Kevin54]

I have a crawlspace and have flex duct. I absolutely hate the ****. I have a main trunk line, but the flex runs off of it. I'm seriously thinking of having a plenum made where the flex runs under a main beam, then goes back up, then run metal duct work from that transition.

One thing I found out years ago, and this was on my parents house. They had a basement, but the furnace was at one end of the house, and the bedrooms at the opposite end. The house was built in the mid 50's but never had insulation. My dad insulated when they were really pushing Vermiculite. It helped a little, but really wasn't worth the cost. He had a local furnace place come in, look things over and said they were going to change half of the ductwork going to the bedrooms and instead of running 6" duct, they were going to reduce it to 4" halfway down the run. My dad insisted that he didn't want smaller, but he wanted bigger to get more heat. Now my dad knew about air pressure and how it equalizes from working on the railroad (something you HAD to know in a test) but the furnace guy explained it to my dad as the duct would be like a garden hose........you stick your thumb over the end of the hose, and you can make the water squirt farther. To me it made sense, but at the same time, it didn't make sense because they were talking water vs. air. He told my dad that if it didn't work, he would take it out and put back the old. Damned if it didn't work, and for the first time in years, they had warm bedrooms without running you out of the rest of the house due to too much heat in the other areas.

This doesn't solve putting a ceiling in a garage with flex duct, but putting a plenum, then possibly reducing the pipe diameter may force the heat thru the duct, plus gain some extra access room.

Also with a metal duct, you have less restrictions than you do with a flex duct. The metal is smooth, and the flex is nothing but ripples inside. Good luck, and I'll be keeping an eye on the thread to see what, if anything gets done and how it was remedied.

 

[Jawn]

Moved the air compressor a while back (no pics of that right now, sorry).

Then moved the mill/drill into the corner where the compressor was. That freed up some space. Probably move the lathe (on bench at left) further into the corner (where the ladder is).

 

[Jawn]

Got my "machinist's corner" a little more together. Probably will mount some wire shelving I have to the wall above the lathe tailstock (next to the speed limit sign).

Been working on a 5C collet chuck for the lathe, turning the nut for it out of a solid piece of 3" diameter 1144 steel.

Not perfect, but pretty good and hopefully good enough.

Also, for the exorbitant price of free, I scored this metal cabinet from my fiancee's junk removal business... not heavy gauge metal and has a few dents/dings, but should help with storage/organization if I can find room for it in this messy garage.

 

[Jawn]

I've been helping to fix up and clean out my fiancee's house in preparation for selling it, and there was this gigantic ugly green table in her basement. So now it's in my basement (garage). It's framed up with 2x6 or some such and has a double layer of 3/4" ply for the top (one layer has a few inches of overhang on the long sides, but comes up short for the length of the table).

Is there such a thing as too much bench space? I don't know. I did put my old toolbox (42" International top chest only) and set it on one end of this bench after taking the pic... may use that to store machine tool accessories.

I have this Craftsman bench vise I bought, cleaned up and painted, and never used because I was given a beefier Rock Island right afterwards. So now the Craftsman has a home... temporarily lagscrewed onto the bench. I'll probably make a more solid mount for it out of scrap wood (something to elevate it to a better working height).

Downside is now I can't fit two vehicles inside if need be.

 

[Jawn]

The void under the stairs...

Before:

Work in progress:

After:

I was at Hobby Lobby with my other half, they had these decorative car door style cabinet handles that resembled the ones on my first car ('67 Caprice). Figured oh what the heck, I'll throw one of them on here.

 

[pepi]

Good to read you bought a place and have officially joined the ranks as a home owner, happy for ya.

Looks like you're well on the way to a nicely outfitted work space. The style of home has a nice deep garage a neighbor has the same floor plan.

Cheers,
Greg

 

[Jawn]

Good to read you bought a place and have officially joined the ranks as a home owner, happy for ya.

Looks like you're well on the way to a nicely outfitted work space. The style of home has a nice deep garage a neighbor has the same floor plan.

Cheers,
Greg

I wonder if you're in my neighborhood. Mine appears to be a stock plan that is the same as about 10-20% of the houses near me.

 

[pepi]

I wonder if you're in my neighborhood. Mine appears to be a stock plan that is the same as about 10-20% of the houses near me.

Not sure I am off Trickum and Arnold Mill RD, about the same ratio of that style of home for the sub I live in....

I like the floor plan of those.....

 

[Jawn]

Not the same neighborhood, but I'm just a few miles north of there... seems like most of this area was built up around the same time, so a lot of builders could have used the same plans. Or it could even have been the same builders.

The place is a freaking mess right now. Been stupid busy lately... wedding, honeymoon, trying to get caught up with other **** around here, etc... plus too many projects. Got a new old truck ('87 Chev half ton - pics) in need of a few odds and ends, shed's still only half built, got a couple tons of gravel outside yet to be shoveled around, got a paver patio to finish, and plenty of other honey-do things from the wife.

Itching to get the garage straightened up and get the truck inside so I'm not out in the heat to work on it. Also have some machining projects to finish (a big model locomotive). Not enough hours in the day, or money in my wallet.

 

[pepi]

A house will do that, become a mess, happens here, garage fills up fast.. What's with the big model locomotive, steam, electric? Could not see your 87 no permission, is it a fleet side. What's the build theme, straight restore of modified?

 

[Jawn]

The loco is will be an electric 7.5" gauge model of a small diesel. I'd love to build a steamer, but I want to build my skills first with something simpler.

For the pics of the '87, try logging into http://garagejournal.com/forum as well as http://www.garagejournal.com/forum

For some reason the session info isn't shared between the www subdomain and domain for this site.

Truck's a longbed fleetside, plans are to use it as a truck as needed, keeping it mostly stock. Clean low mile truck with newer paint so it has already drawn compliments while out and about.

 

[Jawn]

Long time no updates, I've had a very busy past few months, and have been of limited capability for the past few weeks... first, I had a surgery to remove a large cyst from my scalp... which meant no vigorous activity, no bending over, etc. Then, I broke my ankle and was pretty much useless for a week with my leg in a splint until I got an appointment with a podiatrist... in the meantime, the dishwasher swap I was doing before I broke the ankle resulted in a slow but considerable leak through the kitchen cabinet into the basement, destroying a big chunk of my model railroad and some of my books. Was a PITA to try to do damage control / cleanup while on crutches. After finally getting to the podiatrist, I have one of those big walking boots now and it seems to work pretty dang well. I've been playing catch-up here at home (dishwasher's in, finally) for the past couple days, and I'm back to work tomorrow.

Garage is still a mess. I just got a black friday-ish deal on a Delta table saw from HD... I have an old radial arm saw, but it scares me to use it and it takes up way too much space for what use I get out of it. So I bought the table saw and applied for the $100 recall on the radial arm saw. Hopefully in the early part of the new year I can declutter (a lot!). Pics will follow post-declutter.

Also got a new-to-me welder... Lincoln IdealArc 250/250, picked it up for $150. Cheapest AC/DC stick I've seen for sale locally (though I did spend another ~$150 on 50' 2ga cables). Not sure how well this monster will work on a regular 50A welder circuit, but I guess I'll give it a try. I've read about others being satisfied with it on 50A input. It's not like I'll be burning 1/4" sticks...

As to the truck... we got a small camper, so I added a transmission cooler, +3qt deeper finned transmission pan, and a transmission temperature gauge. We dragged the camper up to the NC mountains during leaf season and had a grand old time. Truck did pretty well... definitely shows the weak side of the 305 though. If it fails, I'll stick a beefier SBC in there. But I'd rather not kill its 700r4.

Oh, and one more thing... I am going to be a daddy in February! She's going to be my garage helper when she's old enough!

 

[Jawn]

Pictures to back up the previous post...

The beast-welder:

Assembled a set of cables to go with it:

Still need to power the beast up though.

Also, here's the table saw I got... should do what I need, and fold out of the way when not needed.

That rolls into the next post...

 

[Jawn]

I moved the big ugly green table to the other side of the garage in an effort to turn one side back into vehicle workspace (my old Nissan is still not back together... would be easier to get it going a little at a time if it was inside). Still a ton of **** to sort out, but there's progress.

I decided to use threadserts in the table surface to mount things like my belt/disc sander and miter saw to it, while leaving it easy to remove them in case I need more space (such as for outfeed from the table saw or other large projects, etc).

I ended up pulling the threadserts back out and moving them (measure twice, cut once) since I decided to put the sander on a different corner of the table, but above is how it looks with the tools removed.

I found the perfect hardware at Home Depot for the job, 1/4"-20 threads to fit the threadserts and a larger shoulder to fit the mounting holes for the equipment (maybe 3/8"?).

Also, I moved the benches around some... my homemade bench (black, maple top) was turned around and I put the drill press bench behind it. Added a cord cover so maybe I won't bust my *** (or ankle) on that.

Also, I added another compressed air outlet near the machine tools... may build a mist cooler / chip evacuater that runs on compressed air.

 

[Jawn]

I have been looking at metal carports with the idea of getting the camper, truck, and possibly more out of the driveway. I then looked at the ones that have one enclosed bay with the idea of it being a workspace for things too messy/sparky/fumy to want to do in/near the house (paint, sandblast, weld, etc). But this means I'm splitting my "workshop" to two areas 100 feet apart.

So why not build my "dream workshop" down the hill and relegate the basement garage to household storage / parking? I mentioned the idea to my wife, instead of shooting it down she's encouraging the idea. Not decided yet that this is the game plan, but I have put a feeler out to the power company to see if they would allow a second feed on the same lot, or if I'd have to upgrade the house's service and run the outbuilding as a subpanel. Based on what I've read on the local authority's website, zoning/codes would allow me to build something not exceeding the footprint or height of the house, so around 1200-1500 square feet. Not sure the budget will stretch that far anyway, but we'll see. I would like room to tackle some major automotive projects along with hobby machinist stuff and whatever else comes along.

This isn't definitely a "I'm building a new shop", I'll start a new thread about it if I do... but it's an idea. There's definitely some things to be considered... heated/cooled vs not, insulated vs fire resistance of a bare metal building, preventing corrosion on machine tools, etc.

 

[Jawn]

No updates for a while... been raising a new baby, keeping the wifey happy, and generally staying busy. I've been downstairs some, added another bench and a little organization. Doing a little machine work in my tiny bit of spare time. Need to get rid of the big ugly 4x8 green table. Just not very useful. Going to build a welding table once the green POS is out of the way.

As to the detached workshop idea... we've got some big expenses in the early part of this year, but once that's out of the way we're going to take a serious look at it this spring. The camper needs to be out of harm's way... it leaked, we spent $2500 to fix it and replace water damaged components, then right after bringing it home a tree branch fell on it which was another $7k repair, most of which was picked up by the insurance company.

I want someplace I can fire up an angle grinder in the middle of the night without waking the baby (or wifey), open the parts washer without the whole house stinking like it, etc.

Power company gave me a non-answer on two meters on one lot, but it sounds like they'd likely do it if a builder/electrician was behind at least the initial install. That would likely be my way of doing it anyway... have someone else do everything upstream of the main breaker, and me do the rest.

I also got some clarification on how big of a shop would be allowed per county ordinances... for my lot with my house, a bit over 1600sf would be ok. Been looking at designs and trying to come up with what's important in a design.

 

[Jawn]

Looks like a detached shop will finally happen.

Right now, the plan is a 30x40 Morton, but the new camper will have to be stored inside it. That still leaves a lot of room for other things. I bush hogged most of the back of my lot so I can walk around and finalize location for the building. I am eyeballing two potential locations. One's closer to power but will need more fill. The other won't need as much fill (and leaves more room in front of the building) but will require a transformer to be set somewhere on my lot as it's too far from the existing utilities. The builder and his grading guy are going to take a look at the site soon and we'll weigh the options.

Either way, I really don't want overhead wires so there will be the extra expense of underground power feed.