New-Old Garage renovation

[danum1aaron]

Hi everyone. I am in the planning stages of finishing a 1950's unfinished 2 car detached garage and am looking for some wisdom. I’ve read through a ton of posts and gotten a lot of good ideas and thoughts, but I’d like some input. Garage is location in sunny Southern California.

Garage Stats:
20’x18’, 2x4 roof rafters (24” oc), hip roof, no insulation, limited electrical (2x 15 amp circuits), no plumbing

Use(s):
No parked cars, just two motorcycles (rarely used). Used as a hobby garage, working on cars/bikes, occasional woodworking, possible computer desk/cad system eventually, and storage (lots of it).

Current plans:
Electrical: Install 100amp subpanel
Walls: Insulate and hang ½” drywall
Ceiling: (Hard part) With my roof rafters only being 2x4’s, I only have about 3” between the top plate and roof to stick a ceiling joist. With an 18’ span, I know that will not work.

Option A: Create a 2x8 ledger board, notching the top for the roof rafters to gain a little more ceiling. Install 2x10x18’ ceiling joists at 16” oc on face hangers. This would be an 8’ ceiling.​

Option B: Raise the rafter ties/ceiling joists a maximum of 1/3 the way up the roof (15”) and hang the ceiling from the 2x8 or 2x10 @24” oc (attaching the ceiling joists to roof rafters). This option gives me a lot more head space in the garage and makes the area above the ceiling unusable (which is fine). This would be a roughly 10’ ceiling.​

Option C: Leave the ceiling open/unfinished.​

Any advice you all can give me would be appreciated.

What would you do if this was your garage?

Thank you!

 

[shortykorte]

Not sure how much roof insulation is needed. If me, 2” rigid foam between rafters and run light gauge corrugated tin perpendicularly to rafters so ceiling is vaulted. A friend’s house has a vaulted hip ceiling using the tin. Looks good. They did knock the shine off the tin before installing.

Another possibility is to attached 2x6 or 2x8 to existing 2x rafters for added strength.

 

[sublime68charger]

Pic of your ceiling area would help out,

Are you mainly looking to keep it cool during hot summer months to work on things?

Will you need heat for winter as well?

 

[danum1aaron]

Thanks for the replies.

I'll upload a few pictures tomorrow, it's a bit too dark at the moment.

I like the tin idea, it's light weight enough I could imagine vaulting.

Keeping it cool through the summer would be one of my bigger concerns. The winters are mild and very rarely below 50.

 

[drivesitfar]

Aaron: post up a few pictures if you are able to. i use the paperclip that downloads thumb pics so the viewer can see them and click on twice if they want a full size version. that way you don't have to deal with another online picture hosting site like Photobucket that can raise their prices to the moon or just shut down their website and you lose you pics.

I'm living in a home that was originally a 1 or 2 bedroom home built in 1955 that was expanded to 2400 square feet on one floor in the early 70's that i've almost completely gone thru in the early 1990's and it's about time to remodel almost everything again so watching what you are doing and maybe i'll have a few ideas.

good luck and hoping you and your friends avoided the fires this year.

 

[danum1aaron]

Hey, "Tomorrow" turned into 4 months!

Here's a few pictures of the before, hard to get a great shot at night with stuff all around the garage:

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View media item 91139

 

[danum1aaron]

What I decided to do because I wanted more ceiling space was to raise the ceiling by about 15 inches. The ceiling will now be about 10 feet tall (walls are on a 6" stem foundation.

I read through a lot of different forums posts and articles and all were pretty much in agreement that you can raise the "rafter ties" 1/3 the distance between the top plate and your roof peak. That distance for me was about 54", so I raised the rafter ties (now ceiling joists) approximately 15".

Raising the rafter ties was great in theory, but my roof rafters are just 2x4's 24" OC. I didn't trust the roof rafters to hold all the additional weight of insulation, drywall, whatever else I decide to hang from the ceiling. I sistered each roof rafter, then put up the new 2x10 ceiling joists.

For those wondering, the width of the garage is 17' and the new ceiling joists are roughly 14' from what I can remember.

View media item 91147
View media item 91146

 

[danum1aaron]

After I got the joists situated, I wanted to redo the old overhead storage and raise it up a bit. The bottom of old storage was about 5'10", and I had to consistently duck when going underneath. The storage was also about 4' deep, which was far too deep for me, I couldn't reach anything in the back if needed.

I took everything out of the garage with my dog Campbell supervising:

View media item 91137
Ripped out the old storage:

View media item 91149
Built the new storage which is about 6'6" tall, 2 feet deep, and laid down 3/4" melamine plywood. The supports are 2x12s spanning the 17 feet:

View media item 91136
View media item 91151
View media item 91150
Looking back on the last picture, I don't know why I spanned that middle piece of lumber. I probably should have just created a false ceiling of sorts off the 16" OC wall studs and met that front 2x12. I'll upload a picture of this later if it's not clear.

 

[danum1aaron]

Also done, but not pictured:

1. I've already begun wiring the garage with outlets every 48" both high and low. I don't have a deadset plan on exactly what I want the garage to be, so I'm going the route of putting in more outlets than I'll ever need.

2. I trenched about 40 feet through my backyard at 18" deep and buried a 1" schedule 80 pvc conduit. Eventually, hopefully soon, I'll pull the 50 or so feet of wire from my main to the sub-panel and get that bad boy all wired up.

3. I've started putting drywall up on the back (storage) wall and was instantly reminded why I absolutely hate mudding/taping. I am seriously considering just throwing up all the drywall and hiring out the mudding and taping out.

Looking forward:

1. I am really trying to convince the wife we need plumbing in the garage. Currently, our washer/dryer our out on our patio (see picture above somewhere) and I think it's a bad look. Not to mention our year old dryer is squeaking like crazy. It's only about a 15 foot run from the edge of the garage to our hot water heater, which is very close to the main drain. We would have to bust up the concrete to run the water, gas, and drain line, and I honestly don't know if it'll be worth it.

2. Subpanel should be going in soon.

3. The rest of the drywall should be up "soon" as well.

Stay tuned!

 

[sublime68charger]

For your drywall could you just put 1x4 over the seems and skip the tape and mud part?

Just a thought off the hip for you?

 

[sublime68charger]

Nice work on what you have done so far!

 

[danum1aaron]

I’ve never heard of the 1x4 idea, not a bad look. Thanks, look forward to updating

 

[gearbox]

Decent work you've done there.