Joined the journal a while ago and long overdue to present my labor of love. I moved to the US almost 5 years ago and was mostly accustomed to brick and steel construction. Wooden buildings were something new for me, and after getting over the initial shock of the idea that my house can be eaten by insects, I’ve grown to like the ease, speed, and relative low cost of a stick built house/garage. I bought a fixer-upper 3 years ago, with the idea that this is my practice house and I will learn all the skills to be able to build the true dream house.
When I started on my house, I had none of the skills required. I learnt everything by thoroughly researching, and doing. At home(Belgium), prior to moving to the US I had worked weekends in steel construction, and did a bit of brick-laying on occasion, but I’m actually an aerospace engineer. While that prior experience wasn’t directly applicable, it did teach me one thing: the confidence to tackle a project like this. And that is really all you need, sometimes I’m intimidated by a project I’ve never done before, and I will postpone it and over-research it as I slowly overcome the psychological barrier to get started, but once started, it has never turned out to be difficult or impossible. And that is a key reason I do (almost) everything myself, it gives you a degree of independence and confidence that is hard to beat.
As plans go, they tend to change, and things took a little longer than initially anticipated in fixing up the house. Adding a nice garage to this house became a must as I’ll likely be here for at least a couple more years. And so it started two years ago. Lots of research, planning, sketching, and constructing later, I am now almost at the point where the tools can be moved out of the living room and into the garage! The idea was: simplicity. Since this is the biggest project I have ever tackled, I didn't want to make it any more challenging than necessary. Some of those choices are to extend the house’s roofline straight out, makes roofing & flashing a breeze. But it does result in a pretty boring, long & straight house Ah well. Can’t have it all. Whenever presented with a choice, I chose the path of least complexity. Remember, this is the practice house! The dream house will come some other day.
This is a rough layout of my lot, the house as it was, including the old carport. The carport is the bit with the flat roof, a terrible idea in New England.
Here’s the same plan, but now with a garage in place to replace the carport. Much better. The house is about 1000sqft, the garage will be about 750sqft, 27.5ft by 27.5ft interior dimension. I like to think I have my priorities right.
And here is a bit more detail on the garage structure. While it wasn’t really necessary to go into this much detail in the drawing for the garage, it did make me think about in a lot more detail, and ask questions in the planning stage, rather than in the execution phase. One more simple thing: I learnt some of the terms I would need in English! It may sound trivial, but it can be difficult to express yourself at Home Depot or with the town inspector when you don’t know what a cripple stud is
First step was to tear down the old carport. It has an open portion, and a small utility room in the back. Being a flat roof, it was partially water logged, and generally decrepit. As I found out, the construction crew also cut some corners: the hurricane clips were only nailed to the joists, but not to the house! The effectively did nothing. Want another example? None of the anchor bolts had nuts on them! Later on, when breaking up the old floor pad in the utility room, I found a little rusty bundle. Guess what? The nuts! The must have poured the concrete over them, couldn’t find them anymore a week later when putting the walls on, and let things be things. I am thoroughly amazed the whole thing didn’t blow away in any of the last 60 years worth of hurricanes (on the other hand, gives you a feel for safety margins in construction)
Here’s a view from the top. I rented a boomlift to cut some 100ft oak trees. Had to be done before starting on the garage, didn’t want one of them to come down in the next hurricane on my brand new garage. Both the craziest, and stupidest thing I ever did. The carport is to the left, with the black roof.
She served me well, but boy does it **** to work on a car in the winter in an open carport.
Maximum destruction!
And all gone…
Alright, with that out of the way, and peak destruction point achieved, it is time to start building up again. The first order of business is, much like the financials involved, to dig a hole. Got a guy to do it with his little tractor, not the greatest job but it worked. I ended up cleaning up the trenches a bit with a shovel so everything was nice straight & level for the footers.
Speaking of footers, that’s up next. Here they are. I insulated the inside of the wall with 2 inch pink board, 2ft deep. Where to insulate (inside, outside?) and how (horizontal, vertical?) was a whole research project in itself. In the end, I figured this was the easiest, and as I said before: keeping the project scope manageable was a key requirement.
I decided to cut down the old footer from the utility room so it wouldn’t have any funky effects on my to-be-poured new slab, and wouldn’t cause any cracks. That’s yours truly.
At some point after this, the slab was poured. Concrete by the way is the ONLY thing I didn’t do myself. I was in a time crunch to get started in the summer, so I would have the roof over it by winter. And I didn’t want 30 yards of concrete in the wrong place, it tends to be hard to move later on. I ended up with an 8 inch slab, which is definitely overkill, but I like overkill. It also meant I didn’t need to call a guy to bring in gravel to bring everything to grade, it was logistically simpler to just have the concrete cowboys pour an extra 4 inches. And now I can rest easy that this thing won’t budge.
Next up were the walls. I will take any excuse to buy a tool, so I got a framing nailer and a very nice compound miter. It was the right thing to do, I told myself. The walls are 2x6’, for maximum insulation later on.
Walls went up in a few weekends, I made the 27ft sections out of one piece, so it took some manpower to lift them in place. Luckily I have great friends & neighbors, and the cavalry was happy to assist. My friends particularly were fantastic throughout the whole project, I got lots of helping hands. And I taught them everything I learnt, fair trade. They’ll be ready to build their own garages, and I will go and return the favor.
View from the inside. I really got a feel for the space for the first time.
I only have 8-8.5ft ceilings, which is undesirably low, but a result of sticking with the house’s roofline for simplicity. I toyed with the idea of scissor trusses to gain some height, but the simplicity argument ruled in favor of pre-manufactured standard trusses. Sacrifices must me made, said the Aztecs, as they carved out the heart. I wasn’t sure at all how easy it would be to put the trusses in place, but me and 1 friend got all 13 of them up in 5 hours, with no prior clue on how to get that done. It turned out to be easy, the metal truss spacers definitely assisted in making it even easier. You can absolutely do without, but for the money, it makes it a lot quicker. Don’t even need to break out the measuring tape, these guys hold them at the right distance, and yes, I did keep an eye on any cumulative errors. All remained within tolerances on its own by using the spacers.
Here’s everything up, and a start on the sheathing.
At this point, it was time to verify my measurements.
I really wanted to get the roofing on before winter, but temperatures were getting low by now and I didn’t like the idea of suboptimal temps, the shingles won’t bind properly. I’m sure I would have still been ok, but it was one of those cases where my OCD kicked in and I wanted to wait for warmer weather. So tarps were installed, and neighbors were jokingly told they better like the color blue for a winter. They did, but I think they were being kind.
When I started on my house, I had none of the skills required. I learnt everything by thoroughly researching, and doing. At home(Belgium), prior to moving to the US I had worked weekends in steel construction, and did a bit of brick-laying on occasion, but I’m actually an aerospace engineer. While that prior experience wasn’t directly applicable, it did teach me one thing: the confidence to tackle a project like this. And that is really all you need, sometimes I’m intimidated by a project I’ve never done before, and I will postpone it and over-research it as I slowly overcome the psychological barrier to get started, but once started, it has never turned out to be difficult or impossible. And that is a key reason I do (almost) everything myself, it gives you a degree of independence and confidence that is hard to beat.
As plans go, they tend to change, and things took a little longer than initially anticipated in fixing up the house. Adding a nice garage to this house became a must as I’ll likely be here for at least a couple more years. And so it started two years ago. Lots of research, planning, sketching, and constructing later, I am now almost at the point where the tools can be moved out of the living room and into the garage! The idea was: simplicity. Since this is the biggest project I have ever tackled, I didn't want to make it any more challenging than necessary. Some of those choices are to extend the house’s roofline straight out, makes roofing & flashing a breeze. But it does result in a pretty boring, long & straight house Ah well. Can’t have it all. Whenever presented with a choice, I chose the path of least complexity. Remember, this is the practice house! The dream house will come some other day.
This is a rough layout of my lot, the house as it was, including the old carport. The carport is the bit with the flat roof, a terrible idea in New England.
Here’s the same plan, but now with a garage in place to replace the carport. Much better. The house is about 1000sqft, the garage will be about 750sqft, 27.5ft by 27.5ft interior dimension. I like to think I have my priorities right.
And here is a bit more detail on the garage structure. While it wasn’t really necessary to go into this much detail in the drawing for the garage, it did make me think about in a lot more detail, and ask questions in the planning stage, rather than in the execution phase. One more simple thing: I learnt some of the terms I would need in English! It may sound trivial, but it can be difficult to express yourself at Home Depot or with the town inspector when you don’t know what a cripple stud is
First step was to tear down the old carport. It has an open portion, and a small utility room in the back. Being a flat roof, it was partially water logged, and generally decrepit. As I found out, the construction crew also cut some corners: the hurricane clips were only nailed to the joists, but not to the house! The effectively did nothing. Want another example? None of the anchor bolts had nuts on them! Later on, when breaking up the old floor pad in the utility room, I found a little rusty bundle. Guess what? The nuts! The must have poured the concrete over them, couldn’t find them anymore a week later when putting the walls on, and let things be things. I am thoroughly amazed the whole thing didn’t blow away in any of the last 60 years worth of hurricanes (on the other hand, gives you a feel for safety margins in construction)
Here’s a view from the top. I rented a boomlift to cut some 100ft oak trees. Had to be done before starting on the garage, didn’t want one of them to come down in the next hurricane on my brand new garage. Both the craziest, and stupidest thing I ever did. The carport is to the left, with the black roof.
She served me well, but boy does it **** to work on a car in the winter in an open carport.
Maximum destruction!
And all gone…
Alright, with that out of the way, and peak destruction point achieved, it is time to start building up again. The first order of business is, much like the financials involved, to dig a hole. Got a guy to do it with his little tractor, not the greatest job but it worked. I ended up cleaning up the trenches a bit with a shovel so everything was nice straight & level for the footers.
Speaking of footers, that’s up next. Here they are. I insulated the inside of the wall with 2 inch pink board, 2ft deep. Where to insulate (inside, outside?) and how (horizontal, vertical?) was a whole research project in itself. In the end, I figured this was the easiest, and as I said before: keeping the project scope manageable was a key requirement.
I decided to cut down the old footer from the utility room so it wouldn’t have any funky effects on my to-be-poured new slab, and wouldn’t cause any cracks. That’s yours truly.
At some point after this, the slab was poured. Concrete by the way is the ONLY thing I didn’t do myself. I was in a time crunch to get started in the summer, so I would have the roof over it by winter. And I didn’t want 30 yards of concrete in the wrong place, it tends to be hard to move later on. I ended up with an 8 inch slab, which is definitely overkill, but I like overkill. It also meant I didn’t need to call a guy to bring in gravel to bring everything to grade, it was logistically simpler to just have the concrete cowboys pour an extra 4 inches. And now I can rest easy that this thing won’t budge.
Next up were the walls. I will take any excuse to buy a tool, so I got a framing nailer and a very nice compound miter. It was the right thing to do, I told myself. The walls are 2x6’, for maximum insulation later on.
Walls went up in a few weekends, I made the 27ft sections out of one piece, so it took some manpower to lift them in place. Luckily I have great friends & neighbors, and the cavalry was happy to assist. My friends particularly were fantastic throughout the whole project, I got lots of helping hands. And I taught them everything I learnt, fair trade. They’ll be ready to build their own garages, and I will go and return the favor.
View from the inside. I really got a feel for the space for the first time.
I only have 8-8.5ft ceilings, which is undesirably low, but a result of sticking with the house’s roofline for simplicity. I toyed with the idea of scissor trusses to gain some height, but the simplicity argument ruled in favor of pre-manufactured standard trusses. Sacrifices must me made, said the Aztecs, as they carved out the heart. I wasn’t sure at all how easy it would be to put the trusses in place, but me and 1 friend got all 13 of them up in 5 hours, with no prior clue on how to get that done. It turned out to be easy, the metal truss spacers definitely assisted in making it even easier. You can absolutely do without, but for the money, it makes it a lot quicker. Don’t even need to break out the measuring tape, these guys hold them at the right distance, and yes, I did keep an eye on any cumulative errors. All remained within tolerances on its own by using the spacers.
Here’s everything up, and a start on the sheathing.
At this point, it was time to verify my measurements.
I really wanted to get the roofing on before winter, but temperatures were getting low by now and I didn’t like the idea of suboptimal temps, the shingles won’t bind properly. I’m sure I would have still been ok, but it was one of those cases where my OCD kicked in and I wanted to wait for warmer weather. So tarps were installed, and neighbors were jokingly told they better like the color blue for a winter. They did, but I think they were being kind.
