Between 705 & 1200 SQ/FT The ****** (38x24 Detached Garage)

[Austin.Teter]

Home Stretch! Garage doors went in at the end of last week, and the electrician finished up what he had left to do. Today, the railings were finished, the door openers installed, and the place cleaned up. The only things left are painting the man door and installing hardware, installing the exterior lights, landscaping and cleanup. I am still trying to figure out what flood lights I want for the alley side. I had anticipated doing the google floodlights with attached camera, but they are only sold in white, so I will have to figure out a different solution.









The lights I bought for the exterior match our home porch and these have motion and dusk to dawn sensors which I hope will be great so I don’t have to go back and forth to turn lights on or off.



What are some thoughts that you all have on finishing the floor? I had epoxy in my original garage back in Tucson and I liked it, did it myself and did not do it properly, but it never chipped and looked half way decent. But that was in a finished attached 2 car and I was young with my first garage and had no real plans back then. I am thinking of doing a clear seal on the natural concrete, but not sold on anything at the moment. Just hoping to get whatever solution figured out by the 27th (before the next round of storage invoices need to be paid)

 

[Austin.Teter]

The punch list is finished, and the building inspected the day before Independence Day. We are officially “done” with the build portion of the garage and have moved to DIY and filling the space.

I spent the weekend of the 12th prepping the floor to be sealed, chipping up dripped stucco, grinding any stucco at the bottom of the wall that sat proud to the floor, vacuuming and leaf blowing for hours. On Sunday however I realized that I did not order enough sealant, so the wait for the shipment to come in and additional prep work happened this last weekend. Wet dust mopped all 912 sf about 15 times until the water came out clear.



Then Saturday morning was the day! I started early and mixed the product I would be using to a proper mixture for a primer coat. I did hours of research on what sealer to buy and ended up going with Concrete Sealers USA and their TS210 polyurethane sealer. Once I got past the anxiety of hopefully not screwing it up, it was an easy product to work with. Saturday morning was a primer coat and about 4 hours of waiting, followed by the first non diluted full coat of 2 part product.



I then let the first coat dry overnight before applying the second coat on Sunday. One gallon of product got me a primer coat, and a full coat over all 912 sf so I had to open the second gallon kit that I had bought to make sure I had enough for the recommended 2nd coat. In hindsight, I would have been fine with 1 gallon kit and two 1 quart kits because I only used about half of the second gallon to apply a full second coat to both bays.

After the second coated dried late last night, I can say this sealer is exactly the aesthetic and feel I was going for. I am looking forward to seeing how it performs once I start utilizing the garage, but so far it passes the “looks super nice” test.





Additionally I used a fish tape to run the fiber optic line through the underground conduit for internet and tested it with some new unify ubiquiti network switches to make sure my limited knowledge of home networking mixed with many nights of research worked, and it does, so now I need to get the holes drilled at the house and garage to run a fully connected line from the home gateway to the garage.

The plan is for Thursday to move the Buick from its storage unit to its new home, and hopefully I can get the boat moved the same day of all things go smooth with the Buick relocation, and if not I can move it the next week. I’m really looking forward to actually getting some vehicles inside a long awaited space!

 

[Austin.Teter]

Well as most of these threads go, as soon as the poster starts doing the fun stuff, the posts seem to dwindle.

Got the Buick moved over and the storage unit closed up. End of an era lugging **** to the tiny 20x10 only to inevitably forget something and then getting discouraged and wasting an evening of trying to be productive on the car.

As it seems to go, as soon as I pulled the car in, the space got smaller quick! As I have stated in previous posts, I wish the city would have allowed me to do the dimensions I wanted to get enough depth, but it is what it is. Having the car parked in the lower section up against the stairwell felt tighter than I would like, but it is enough room to walk around comfortably.

 

[MikeGA]

Looks great.
The floor sealer, is it slick when wet? did you put any kinda of anti slip in the coating?
Thanks and Congrats

 

[Austin.Teter]

Looks great.
The floor sealer, is it slick when wet? did you put any kinda of anti slip in the coating?
Thanks and Congrats

Thanks!

It is only slick in my ridiculously worn out 15 year old crocs when they are wet. The sealant is slip resistant in nature as outlined in All Garage Floors Review, I took the excerpt below from that review. I did not add any anti slip and find it to be quite slip resistant in normal use.

https://allgaragefloors.com/ts210-concrete-sealer-review/

High slip resistance rating!​

One of the big surprises with TS210 is the good slip resistance rating. Testing revealed a .65 Wet DCOF under the new ANSI/NSFI B101.3 rating requirements. A rating of .42 or greater is considered desirable. This is a good rating for a coating and the only one we are aware of that even offers slip resistance information.

The new high-gloss TS210 finish option has a .45 Wet DCOF. Though not as high as the matte finish, it’s still a desirable rating and much better than a standard coating.

Other coatings would require the addition of a slip-resistant additive to achieve ratings higher than this. Our unscientific testing for wet slip resistance confirmed to us that this is the least slippery coating we have ever encountered.

 

[Jacko264]

Wonderful build love it
can I suggest where the man door is it looks like it needs a porch to finish it of
Graham

 

[Austin.Teter]

Wonderful build love it
can I suggest where the man door is it looks like it needs a porch to finish it of
Graham

Thanks! It definitely needs something. I think we are going to get a landscaper out and take a look at vegetation options. My wife os excited for window boxes next spring which will add a much needed element too. We have a sizable deck off of the house, but if we did a porch into a sitting area off the garage, that could be a great hang out spot.

Now that the garage is down and in its final resting spot, we can start planning the backyard.

 

[Austin.Teter]

Up next, getting the Glastron nestled into the ******. I was nearing the end of the month and would need to pay another month of storage for the boat if I didn’t have it moved out by the first. Lucky for me, two of my best friends traveled from Massachusetts and Florida the last weekend of July to hang out and check out the garage. This was helpful to have a couple extra set of eyes while maneuvering the boat into place.







I managed to slip it in on the second try with little to no drama. It is a tight squeeze though through the alley and I think I will be investing in one of those motorized trailer dolly’s in the future.

 

[Austin.Teter]

While the boys were in town, we had a whirlwind of a weekend. We used the most of our time. Drank as many beers as we could stand, took care of some routine maintenance on the 226k mile cobalt to include new headlight buckets and a new cooling fan, tackled the starter for the Buick, installing a bump steer kit, big brake kit (blazer two pot calipers bolt in) all the steering linkage, positive and negative battery cable replacement. In between all that we had some delicious fried sauerkraut balls that my buddy brought, and sang some creed in the Glastron (it makes for a comfy garage couch)














My daughter and wife came out to hang out as well at one point. It was fun to have friends and family enjoying the space all together. It really brought the whole vision full circle!

 

[Austin.Teter]

As the boys weekend came to a close, most of the projects that were started were not finished… starter didn’t get finished because fusible links were discovered to be fire hazards, so I took out the new positive cable setup and ordered a fusible link relocation kit and bus bar expansion to get the links off of the exhaust manifold which GM felt like was a good place to basically mount them back in the day. Then, the bump steer kit I ordered was actually for an old A-Body rather than a G-Body, so I had to reorder the correct studs. Tried to finish the install on the retro sound radio and head unit, and found that the dash was cut to bits to fit the old pioneer unit that came with the car when I bought it back in 2012.







On a lighter note, the neighbors had hired a goatscapping company to come clear out their over grown yard, so that provided several nights of entertainment for all the neighborhood kids and their parents!

 

[zanyad]

 

[Austin.Teter]

Ended up taking a couple weeks off from the garage and cars all together. We drove up to Michigan for our Nephews 2nd birthday. We enjoyed spending time with family, introducing our daughter to lake swimming (she has been taking swimming lessons for most of her life but has not had the skill to swim in a lake until this year), drinking good beer and celebrating the birthday boy!

Unfortunately on our drive home we got word that my wife’s uncle had passed away the morning we left (he had been struggling to recover from a stroke) this meant it was going to be a quick turnaround to head back to Michigan for the funeral.

Even with the bummer news, we had a good road trip home, even got a glimpse of this beautiful XJR on the WV turnpike.



We were only home for 4 days before we headed back to Michigan, this time by air. Spent the couple of days spending time with extended family, and celebrating Uncle John. Even found some literature on his days in the garage.



After a major delay for our flight departing, we left late morning for the airport and passed by GM’s Milford Proving grounds. This was the highlight for the day with delay after delay to getting home.

 

[Austin.Teter]

Spent some more time in the garage and in the backyard. I decided to add a helper to the garage as the Roomba was not being utilized in the house, I rather like my robotic companion.



We have an awesome neighborhood of families that we actually get along with, which is worth more than I can explain. This ability to enjoy our neighbors company allows for all the kids to form core memories in my opinion, enter neighborhood movie nights and having our backyard as a gathering spot and hosting area for other birthdays. It takes a village and we have fun with ours!