My swedish two car/motorcycle garage.

[Jim The Swede]

Hello pards!
I am a new to this forum, I have lurked around for some time and I think it´s time to show of my garage build.
You have to excuse my old rusty schoolenglish......
My interests is to build motorcycles, renovating old motorcycles and I am specialy fond of sidecars, everyting old with an engine is interesting to me
I even likes old cars and helps my friends with small problems.
I have rented small garages and have my bikes in the motorcycle club workshop for about 30 years and finaly when my kids have grown up and moved away from home i got the economy to build my self a garage just beside my old house.
Just think of the possibility to just go out from the house, walk 5 meters end enter the man cave instead of get in the car and drive 25km to the rented garage just to find out that you have forgot the tool you needed at home....
Right now at this whrighting time I am in the end of the build and have only painting the walls and floor and some other things left to do.

The beggining:
I searched the net for garage kits just because I dont want to build it from scratch, got a couple of offerts and finaly decide to by this garage below.
The pic is from the advertisements and I think the old Volvo Duett stationwagon got me...

So one garage ordered. The garage floor is 14.4x7.2 meters inclusive the carport, the usable area for the garage itself is 9.8x7.0 meters.

 

[Jim The Swede]

I have to do a lot of ground work, digging dirt and all that goes with a garagebuild. I am now a teacher on a highschool for trucks and heavy machinery mechanincs, before I was a truckmechanic myself and have lots of contacts with people who owned diggers and trucks.
I asked lots of them if the wanted to do the digging work for me and that was no problem they said, "I now you well so I can fixit" was heard many times but no one could give me a price for it, just "no problemos will fixit".
But I have a tight budget to hold on to and when it comes to the end and it´s paytime it´not shure that we agree with the costs.
So i did not get anyone to do the job for me, ofcorse i could pick up the phone and ordered the job the "white way" but I was not interested to pay to much money.
I have a friend whos interests is old tractors and he told me to by my own backhoe and do the digging myself, I told him that it should be very expensive.
But to my surprise old backhoes/diggers was not that expencive, so I looked at the ads and found me an old JCB 3C Mk2 -67, rusty but working.
Bougth it for 2400 dollars inclusive transportation and this old tractor has done a ton of work for me in many ways and still working, time to sell it and get the money back so all work has been cheap.

 

[Jim The Swede]

Here is my first stumbeling tryes to digg with the tractor, the garage build starts...

 

[Andx0r]

I really like the illuminated carport on that design. Good place for the daily drivers while the more valuable toys sit inside!

 

[Bogdan M.]

Great idea!

 

[GaryB1]

I really love your style! Beautiful work space. Also, I love the Volvo. I haven't driven one like that since I was a teenager. I bought it as a project and then found out it was a lot more project than a kid could handle. Traded it for a sailboat.

 

[Bib Overalls]

Nice looking project. That model Volvo looks a lot like a scaled down 46-48 Ford. At one time swapping in a Chevy V8 was popular here. Guess the cars could not handle the torque and came apart over time. Eventually went for scrap. I can't recall seeing one in a long time.

 

[A_Pmech]

Jim,

It's always nice to see garages from other countries. I find it fascinating how something as simple as a garage can vary so much from place to place.

Really nice looking building. It looks like you got your money out of that old JCB several times over!

 

[Jim The Swede]

Howdy pards!
Thanks for your replies!

Here is all earth been moved, draining pipes in place and gravel (or what you call it) is filling upp. I was good to have the old JCB

 

[Jim The Swede]

Now it was time to make the concrete floor, it was made of concrete beams that was leveled in place by concrete plates and tied together.
Again very handy to have my own backhoe as all this work is a one man job...

 

[Jim The Swede]

Now its time for the rebar, it was an ugly transportation...


The gravel filled up to give me a floor of 12cm thickness, the rebar in place, just wait for the concrete to be poured.

 

[Jim The Swede]

Now its time to make the concretfloor, I had to use a pump truck because an ordenary concretetruck could not come close enough.
When making concreetfloors there is one thing you dont want to happen, thats right, you dont want rain..... When the trucks arrive, the same did the rain...
No time to regret it, just try to do the best of it, so start pouring!


I used a kind of concrete that dont needed vibration, much less work for a rookie and it was nearly self leveling


Keep pumping....


Here is the finished floor..

 

[Jim The Swede]

Here is the Leca blocks cemented to the concret for the walls to stand on, it will increase the roofheight by 20cm

 

[nonhog]

Nice going.

 

[Jim The Swede]

Here comes the garage kit


The walls was prefabricated in large sections, here they are layed out for to be raised.



First section up and next to go..


First corner ready!

 

[Jim The Swede]

More and more wall sections coming up.

 

[Jon In Tucson]

That looks good! The prefab panels make things look easy. Tell me, what were you using for concrete floats? They look like large foam noodles similar to what kids use to float around in a swimming pool. God bless.
Jon In Tucson

 

[Jim The Swede]

Hello Jon!
If you is asking about the blocks that the walls stand on, (sorry for my English...)
They are LECA blocks, ( Lightweight expanded clay aggregate)
//Jim

 

[Jim The Swede]

Here is a sideview of the garage:

 

[Jim The Swede]

Here is the first roof truss on its way up, I am very pleased that i bought this old JCB backhoe, it maked the job mounting the trusses to a one man job
Of coarse, it was a lot of climbing on the ladders but it was good exercise for a beerbelly man....

 

[jigee]

Jim!
He asks about the" skrapor, avstrykare" that you use for levelling the concrete.

 

[ambenz]

Not a big fan of slab garages...without a foundation under the walls, it is only a matter of time until the slab cracks and the whole thing starts rotating....but not in your or my lifetime.
Sorry to be a downer, what do I know anyway!
I am sure garage will keep you happy and look nice for a long time!
Doing it yourself is half the fun anyway!
Good luck and enjoy!

 

[shade]

Pictures of the bikes or thread gets deleted

 

[Jim The Swede]

Sorry for the missunderstanding...
They are made of 110mm PVC pipes and a woodhandle , very simple, cheap and good working

 

[Jim The Swede]

Thanks for your replies

Shade, here is my latest build: Kawasaki VN800 Drifter Trike.

 

[Jon In Tucson]

Sorry for the missunderstanding...
They are made of 110mm PVC pipes and a woodhandle , very simple, cheap and good working

Thanks Jim. That is what I thought they were. Very ingenious. God bless.
Jon In Tucson.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[Jim The Swede]

Here is the trusses coming up...

 

[Jim The Swede]

And the roof coming in to place

 

[Jon In Tucson]

Great progress! God bless.
Jon In Tucson

 

[Jim The Swede]

The walls is up, the roof is up and I must see how much space I got
It´s a lot of space in the beggining but it shrinks catastrophically when all machinery, lifts and toys are moving in......

 

[Jim The Swede]

Here it is how the walls stands on the Leca blocks to raisen them from the floor and giving me more height in the garage. The blocks is covered with sheet metal that goes under and up a little bit behind inside the drywall just to protect from sparks that could start a fire.


Here is the insulation coming in place and so is the electrics, now you can see the sheet metal in the Leca blocks and as you can see the drywalls is standing on it.


Here is a little bit of the electrics.


And here is the first drywall up.

 

[Jim The Swede]

Here is more drywalls up


And more, Its a bad thing to have stuff in the garage when building but I hade no choice because the building I was renting for garage have to be teared down .....


More and more drywalls

 

[1949 caddyman]

Nice shop, what is the car in there? Looks like a rear engine, a VW? If so I have never seen this model.

 

[Jim The Swede]

Nice shop, what is the car in there? Looks like a rear engine, a VW? If so I have never seen this model.

Thanks Caddyman!
The car is a Renault Floride S 1963 cabriolet with a steel hardtop, and yes the engine is in the rear
From 1964- I think they were named "Caravelle"

Regards
Jim

 

[Jim The Swede]

Here is the first drywalls for the ceiling, I did make a special tool for an hydraulic gearbox lift just for to lift the drywalls,It did work very well


Here is the work in progress and the electrics gets more and more complete as the ceiling get more and more complete.


I mounted an electric wirewinch on the trusses before I completed the ceiling, worth every penny!! I comes down in a little hatch in the ceiling and Its capable of lifting 400kg.


Here is the ceiling with the electrics completed
And you can see the hatch för the wirewinch in the ceiling just above the sidecar

 

[Bib Overalls]

I like your overhead winch/lift instillation. Out of the way until you need it. Bravo!

 

[Dennx]

Cool build and it's interesting to see different building methods than those used in the States.

 

[Jim The Swede]

I like your overhead winch/lift instillation. Out of the way until you need it. Bravo!

Thanks

Yes Its has been very useful for lifting lots of things, I have been mounting a recessed infloor hydraulic lifting table almost in the same place for my motorcycles but still got the use of the winch from time to time

 

[Jim The Swede]

Cool build and it's interesting to see different building methods than those used in the States.

Hello Dennx!

Yes, I find it very interesting too, but the opposite way
I have looked att many building methods from all over the world in this forum and you can spend hours and hours on and on and get amazed how to build garages and what problems to go through in all parts of the world, like to build strong in Australia to avoid the cyclones etc, etc, ;-)

 

[Jim The Swede]

Now its time to build the garage doors, I did it myself because I have special measure for the height and to get them fabricated kost a fortune.....
I have an old Mercedes RV that I can get in if I shoehorn it in, and I did not want any doorframe to stick down in the way.

Here is all material for the doors and doorframes:


Here is the first door coming together:


I used the first door as a jigg to make the other three:


Here is three doors completed: