Rob’s Shop and House Addition

[87jeepwrangler]

I started this addition on the 4th of July in 2013. I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking, but in short, I added approximately 1700 sq ft to my existing house, which was approximately 2000 sq ft to start. The garage is about 21’ wide x 32’ feet deep with a 10’x14’ loft above it. The addition took 4 variances for approval, and now puts me at 50% impervious surface for my lot.

I had previously opened up the floor plan downstairs in the house, essentially eliminating 2 of the 4 bedrooms(1950's built home). With thoughts of a 2nd kid, we had to either move, or add on. The housing market sucked and we stood to loose money selling our house. So we scraped all of our money together and went for it. With my experience on prior projects and connections to friends in various construction fields who I could reference, I decided to take on the entire project myself, with the exception of the additional foundation and slab work, and help from a friend and his crew to knock out a large portion(but not all) of the framing. The rest I did on nights and weekends... including the design and drawings, finishing a good bit of framing, installing the windows, flashing, capping, siding, roofing, pier footings, all electrical, plumbing, relocating the heater, all new supply plumbing to the original kitchen and baths, insulation, drywall, spackling, painting, flooring, trim, and a few other unique customizations along the way. It will never be done, but this thread is how I plan to share my adventure.


The start:

The Vision:

 

[87jeepwrangler]

before starting, I had to put a new wall in the upstairs master bedroom, as it was to become the 2nd kid bedroom and needed to be a little smaller. Also, a small portion of that room was to become a part of the future master suite.

 

[87jeepwrangler]

 

[87jeepwrangler]

miscellaneous interior pictures, this will be the laundry room, but also double as the office and some storage (holiday decoration bins, etc)

 

[87jeepwrangler]

of course it poured the morning I scheduled shingle delivery. got it done anyway.

 

[BDAZSVT]

WOW! That is quite a change.

 

[87jeepwrangler]

prepping for the new foundation

cut where the new front of the garage will be

found some cracks in the arm so I drilled and welded them up.

holes for footings. 3' deep.

 

[87jeepwrangler]

 

[87jeepwrangler]

my buddy tim, dad, and brother helping me tear down the old garage

almost there...

removing the last of the old garage floor

 

[87jeepwrangler]

the original homes had the oil burner in the kitchen I decided to move it to the garage so I could harness it's heat a lot easier, have more room to work on it, and it was still close enough that I wouldn't have wait times for hot water to reach the far parts of the house. since I was moving it, I needed a temporary hot water supply because we were living in the house during construction and still obviously needed hot water. I got the electric 30 gallon from a plumber buddy who had recently pulled it from a customers home. it still worked obviously, so I plumbed it in temporarily and wired it to the closest welder outlet I had in the garage.

I routed some pex for new water supply lines under the garage floor.

my little guy involves himself in everything

almost ready to pour

 

[87jeepwrangler]

 

[87jeepwrangler]

3 beams, 1 is the garage door header, the other 2 span the short length on the garage and support the 2nd floor, it's walls, and ceiling

round 2 on lumber delivery

and round 2 of OSB

 

[87jeepwrangler]

garage walls. yessss.

spy

working in to the night

 

[87jeepwrangler]

Almost feels like a garage with that there tarp roof

little dude helping out, as always

it was a little bit of a challenge routing the wires such that the ones staying didn't have to get disconnected and moved, and the ones moving didn't get in the way.

 

[87jeepwrangler]

final lumber delivery, #3

the future master bedroom

finishing the last roof

 

[87jeepwrangler]

this wall looked ridiculous. glad I decided to break it up with a roof line. it was quite a bit of fun getting the top course of OSB nailed up.

 

[87jeepwrangler]

my buddy scored me some free R-11 for all my inside walls for sound deadening.

 

[87jeepwrangler]

I had to strip the old roof on the back half of the house, so here is my makeshift trash chute.

I figured i'd replace the sheathing on the old roof while I was in there

 

[87jeepwrangler]

before I poured the pad, I wanted to sink an anchor point near the back of the garage. I machined a 1/4" wall piece of tubing and welded a base on it to hold a piece of chain. I dug a little footer and randomly stuck some rebar through the chain. I also machined a little water resistant lid to keep chunks and liquid out.

this was just an o-ring I had laying around. I later replaced it with one that was the correct diameter

 

[87jeepwrangler]

moving the original oil burner out of the kitchen

all of this original plumbing will eventually be abandoned, as I ran all new plumbing to all the fixtures in the rest of the house from the new heater location. until then, however, this fun little nook needs to stay.

 

[87jeepwrangler]

the heater will be moved to the garage, and by code, needs to be 18" above ground level. Instead of wasting the space under the heater by building a block base, I decided to weld up a table to support the heater. the legs are regular steel, but the top is 1/4" thick stainless scrap I had.

the original heater that was in the kitchen got scrapped. a friend had a Weil Mclane gold oil burner they recently pulled from a customer house that was only a few years old. the customer switched over to natural gas when it became available in their area, so the heater was free for the taking. It got rebuilt along the way with all new goodies.

 

[87jeepwrangler]

im very **** about certain things, and for no reason at all, I was hell bent on having a stainless flu in the garage because I want it to look nice when finished. the original chimney was a traditional 3 wall flue with the inner most liner being a 6" stainless pipe in still perfect condition. I used those pieces to construct the single wall flue that would be visible in the garage. I hand made the pieces for the tee to make the damper

 

[87jeepwrangler]

new to me heater getting all plumbed in. I spend a lot of time trying to get all the plumbing as neat and tidy as possible, hopefully it shows a little

I scored a few of these heaters, so i'll plumb one in when I get around to it to heat the shop. if one doesn't cut it, I have 3, so i'll keep adding them until it works

 

[J-man67]

Beautiful work. That is quite the task! Roof looks great and won't have touch it for a while now.

 

[87jeepwrangler]

 

[87jeepwrangler]

The original entry way was awkward, you can see the idea from this picture. the stairs were off to the right when you first walked in the door, and there was a low ceiling above

I left the original ceiling in for a little while to act like a catwalk to make it easier to work on the now 20' ceiling

 

[87jeepwrangler]

I wanted the chandelier to be able to be lowered, but even the cheapest kits were way over priced, so i made my own.

i used a worm gear style boat winch because they are self locking, and routed a few pulleys in the attic with steel cable to hang the chandelier. if anyone wants specifics, or more details, i can post them, but basically it is mounted in such a way that i can open the filter housing on my return air duct at the top of the stairs which gives access to an opening that you can put a drill hex drive in, and raise and lower the chandelier.

 

[87jeepwrangler]

 

[TEXINTEG]

Awesome work. I am impressed. I wish I had your drive.

 

[87jeepwrangler]

some pier footers for the front porch

 

[87jeepwrangler]

this is the north side of the house, and was not a load bearing wall prior to the addition. the 2nd floor ceiling and roof load over the laundry room is now transferred to this wall. i knew there was some water damage to the bottom plate on this wall prior to starting the addition, but had never gotten around to fixing it. now that it was load bearing, i had to fix it before re-siding over it. i jacked the wall and was able to cut a little rot off the bottom of the studs and bang some new pressure treated bottom plates in.

 

[87jeepwrangler]

miscellaneous insulation and electric shots

 

[87jeepwrangler]

Here's how the house weather'd the first winter. i didn't get to siding before winter hit, and there was still plenty to do inside.

 

[87jeepwrangler]

 

[87jeepwrangler]

I've had an idea to make a programmable lit house number for a while, but no real time to even consider it. i teach Tech. Ed & Pre-Engineering to middle school students, and had a 7th grader who i thought would be up to the challenge of doing some extracurricular circuit design and programming for me. so, we worked on this project together; he picked out the components, i bought and physically built everything, and he did the programming. i think it came out pretty cool.

first, i used a scrap of azek to cut out the house number

next, i made a sacrificial jig to hold the LED's in place as i soldered them. each hole represents the location of one of the RGB LEDs

here's the LEDs all soldered and wired together in the jig

test fitting the wired assembly in the recess in the back of the number

i used brass threaded rod to act as the standoffs, and double as the electrical conductors for the LEDs

everything test fitted. notice three of the 4 brass standoffs have wires connected to them, and they are sleeved with some black delrin

 

[87jeepwrangler]

i'll let the next 3 pictures be self explanatory

my 7th grader picked out the 5v Trinket from Adafruit. its a sub $10 microcontroller.

first test fire of the number

it was October when we finished it, so the first program he wrote was an orange and green haloween script which cycled the number through those two colors. he wrote scripts for each holiday, but the house number will spend most of its time just backlit with a dim white light.

 

[87jeepwrangler]

Drywall time. i don't remember how many sheets it was total, close to 150 i believe. the house rock is all 1/2", and the garage and garage loft were required to be 5/8" type x, single layer. there was a mixture of 8', 9', 10', and 12' pieces

 

[1/2 Cup]

Absolutely fantastic work, many thanks for posting.

 

[87jeepwrangler]

this room will also be the office and some holiday storage, hence the reason for its size

 

[bonecrrusher]

Thats a moster rebuild - and a ton of work...

Looks awesome!