The Brick and Tile Garage

[Flange]

Hello folks, I figured that it was about time I posted about my own garage.

Bear with me, I want to jot a few thoughts down first and then I will post some pictures of some progress I have made so far.

I am calling it a Brick & Tile Garage because that is the generic description used here in the Uk for this type of construction. Much like Pole Barn or Stick Built are standard descriptions for quite a lot of US construction. Here in the UK until quite recently Brick & Tile (brick walls and a tile roof) was the most common type of construction although in more recent times timber frame has become more common as we try to control house prices and also to achieve better insulation. The jury is out on how long timber frame lasts. Us brits expect a house to last hundreds of years at least.

When I say Brick & Tile Garage (singular) I am not being strictly correct because I have 2 garages.

The first one is (internal dimensions) 5.73m wide x 5.814m long. Or if you prefer 18' 10" wide x 19' 1" long. I shall call this Garage 1.

Here are some pictures from before I did anything with it and also showing the bad floor.

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The second one is (internal dimensions) 5.77 wide x 5.035 long. Or if you prefer 18' 11" wide x 16' 6" long. I shall call this Garage 2.

Here are some pictures of this garage before I did anything with this one.

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There are lots of things wrong with both of these buildings. Some things I can either fix or do enough to live with and some things I cant do anything about. Some of the things I dont like about them are:

They are too small.
They have been built to an unbelievably poor standard. Ok a general statement but in particular the floors are as bad as I have ever seen. The walls are OK but the roof on one garage is not good at all (more on that later).
Furthermore the walls are built on the slab with no seperate foundation so replacing the floor, whilst not imposible, is not a practical option.
They are cold and draughty.

I do both metal and wood work so having 2 garages at least means that I can plan to keep these 2 things apart.

The ideal thing to do would be to demolish them both and start again but I dont have the luxury of the cash to do this so, in the words of someone else on the board, I have to work with what I have.

I happily work in either imperial or metric units so I will stick to metric as the primary units but provide translations here and there.

 

[colt zantop]

Nothing better than brick buildings like that! I want one!

 

[Flange]

Lets start with Garage 1.

I need more space. This garage is used to store tons of ****. Some I can get rid of but some has to be kept. As it happens this garage also has a problem with the roof which cant be ignored so my plan involves fixing the roof and at the same time going the extra mile to add some useful storage space. I will also say that before I did this I had to "win" a negotiation with SWMBO who had designs on turning this space into living space. The outcome of that was I had to build an extension on the house in order to not lose any garage space so the garage plans went back a year to get the house extension done first.

I started off inside.


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I did most things myself alone however I did have help with the steel beam and the concrete lintel just because they were a bit too heavy for me on my own.

At some point around about here I had some stuff delivered.

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You will notice in front of the timber there is a concrete lintel. This is replace one of the 2 existing ones over the front doors which are not matched, one is deeper despite them carrying identical loads.

The ***** who built this garage lined up the top of the lintels and then set the 2 doors up to the lintels. They then must have wondered why one door had a 25mm (1 inch) gap under it. Like I said they have been built to a very poor standard. Anyway I had already moved the door on the right of these pics down.

Then I dropped the lintels to give me a bit more clearance between lintels and roof.

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I did not take any pics of dropping the other lintel but I am sure you get the idea.

 

[Flange]

Next some scaffolding, luckily I am able to borrow this from a friend.


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Scaffolding up I can now show you why this roof is so bad. It does not look so bad from afar but close up and you can see that there are some issues.

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Time to take off the tiles.

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I had a bit of "help" from a stakeholder in the project.

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You can see here that the laths are rotten. You can see a bodge repair I did the previous autumn to keep the tiles on over winter in one of the pics.

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The reasons the laths are so bad are 2 fold. First they are not treated timber. Second the tiles are not watertight. The reason that they are not watertight is because an idiot did this roof. I assume the same idiot who did the lintels and doors. They have used a whole load of different tile sizes and types. They are all pantiles but I counted up more than 30 different sizes and types of pantile. All with varying lenghts, widths and curvetures. To get them to fit they knocked corners off with a hammer which then meant that there were loads of holes upen to the weather where water could literally pour in. Fortunatly the underfelt kept the garage dry.

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[OJ Bartley]

The reason that they are not watertight is because an idiot did this roof.

This has been a fun read so far. I also love brick buildings, and think yours look great. With a little help from someone who knows what he's doing, I bet they'll be in great shape before long.

 

[minimowog]

2 double garages, nice

even though it looks like you got a bit of work to do, it'll be worth it in the end

 

[PugetDude]

Subscribed- this thread is going to be interesting.

 

[sean Buick 76]

very cool thanks for sharing!

 

[Cris B]

Bad luck on the roof, that is some bodge job. What was the deal with the steel I-beam? Were the roof timbers insufficient for the weight of a tile roof?

 

[Flange]

What was the deal with the steel I-beam??

All will be revealed later in this thread. There is a clue in my second post above though.

 

[Cris B]

Roof space conversion I reckon

 

[sean Buick 76]

Very interesting project! I love seeing how people all over the world build things!

 

[Flange]

Time to get the felt off.

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Found evidence of lodgers in the eaves.

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Trusses off next.

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Remember this pile of stuff?

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Well before I took the roof off I did a bit of preparation.

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This meant that once the roof was off and I had sorted out the wall plates I could then get straight on with reassembly.

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[Tyberius]

Very exciting!

Can't wait to see more!

 

[1dwn5up]

You're not finished yet?! j/k, this project is going to come out great!

So just to confirm you have two separate garage buildings? What/How do you plan on using them? Also, does it rain a lot where you live? How do you plan to complete your roof?

 

[Tyberius]

You're not finished yet?! j/k, this project is going to come out great!

So just to confirm you have two separate garage buildings? What/How do you plan on using them? Also, does it rain a lot where you live? How do you plan to complete your roof?

Yeah, the two garages confused me at first as well. But you can see both buildings in a few of the shots.

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[Flange]

So just to confirm you have two separate garage buildings? What/How do you plan on using them? Also, does it rain a lot where you live? How do you plan to complete your roof?

Yes I do have 2 seperate garages.

I do automotive stuff in one, mainly motorcycles. The other is for some storage and eventually will also be a wood shop.

Does it rain a lot? I live in England, yes it rains a lot. The garage was empty except for junk that eventually went in a skip when the roof was being done. I stored good stuff in the other garage which effectivly meant that both were out of action.

How do I plan to complete the roof? I will post more on that tomorrow.

 

[Flange]

On with the floor Joists/rafter ties


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Then set up to put the rafters on. You will see a sag in the ridge board where it is sagging below the string line that you can just see in the pic below and then a prop under the ridge board in the next pic.

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Eaves tray on along with the fascia board and now ready for some covering.

The plan had been to reuse as many old tiles as possible but I had no more than 20 of any one type and so I had to order these.

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The budget took a bit of a hit but there is no point in going this far and then spoiling it by not doing it properly.

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You can see that the verges are bedded but not yet pointed. If you look really closly you may be able to see some cracks in the brickwork above the side door where the soldier course has sagged, perhaps you could hazard a guess why these have sagged?

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Scaffolding down and time to have a bit of a tidy up outside.

 

[Lippyp]

Looking good.I need to do exactly the same on mine although it has more of an excuse it being over a hundred years old, all the timbers are shot and also too small and the back has a mixture of perished clay tiles, cement tiles and slate! If you don't mind me asking how much did the timber cost you roughly?

 

[Cris B]

Sagging soldier course = no lintel

 

[Flange]

If you don't mind me asking how much did the timber cost you roughly?

Not at all. I cant remember exactly but I found a couple of emailed quotes which put the cost of timber only (no hardware or fixings) at about £525 plus tax.

For our american colleagues, in the UK we have Value Added Tax which works in a similar way to your state taxes. In the UK our VAT is 20%

Sagging soldier course = no lintel

Go to the top of the class that man.

 

[Flange]

I remembered that I had quotes for trusses also so we can compare material costs.

Standard trusses untreated = £865 plus vat
Standard trusses pressure treated = £951 plus vat
Attic trusses untreated = £1,240 plus vat
Attic trusses pressure treated = £1,363 plus vat.

Pressure treated timber for a cut roof plus hardware = £600 plus vat
Steel beam = ???. I cant find the quote.

So the cut roof is £760 minus the steel cost less than the cost of attic trusses.

Obviously my labour is free to me.

I dont know the spec for the floor loading of the attic trusses but they were spaced at 600mm (2 feet) so I suspect the floor loading for these is less than the cut roof. The attic that I have built is specified for a floor loading not to exceed 200 kg's per m2. (369 pounds per square yard).

I got a local Structural Engineer to do calcs for building control for a bargain price of £75.

So overall, because I wanted more storage for a reasonable cost, I decided to go for a cut roof. It probabally cost about £1,000 plus vat (excluding tiles) plus lots of sweat. I am happy with the result.

 

[Flange]

Next I need to address the problem with the missing lintel above the side door and also sort out a storage problem that I have.

2 small lintels were procured

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Then a bit of woodwork.

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Can you see where this is going?

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In the short term I just used a piece of ply screwed in place to keep the weather out but I need to make a door to go in the hole in the medium term.

If I had wanted to get the brickwork a bit better I would have had to have removed more of the existing to get the bonds looking better. I decided that this would do, I dont think anyone will notice except me.

You will also notice that the verges are now pointed up and the guttering back on.

The other lintel went in here after jacking the brickwork back up.

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[Lippyp]

Thanks for that, my Brother-in-law owns a builders merchants and he's costed the materials out for me and including new slate he reckons materials are on the up side of £5K that does include two steel beams to replace the current timber purlins so we can take an internal wall out and have a clear span and putting a dormer over the garage doors which are currently too low for me to get either my truck or my Blazer in. Aim is to have an 8' high opening whereas currently I can bang my head on the frame and I'm 6'3". I've decided though to keep mine full height as I have other outbuildings for storage.

 

[Basher]

Good project & great work you're doing there - Keep it up

in the UK that is a LOT of garage space you have!



Subscribed to this one

 

[GBsnoopy]

Looking good your really progressing with the work.

 

[PipeLayaz]

Looks great! Weird not seeing OSB on the roof like you typically do here in the states. That 20% tax is a killer, seems like that would dissuade people from upgrading their homes.

 

[Flange]

in the UK that is a LOT of garage space you have!

In total I have roughly 58m2 (625 sq feet). I do know that this is more than average for the UK but even so, for me at least, it is not enough. I guess we are never satified with what we have. As a minimum I could do with about double this amount although 3 or 4 times this amount would be good.

However I am also a realist and unless I either spend more cash than I currently have or I move house then I do realise that I have to work with what I have which is what I said at the top of this thread.

That 20% tax is a killer, seems like that would dissuade people from upgrading their homes.

The tax applies to anything not considered an "essential". In other words most things. To an outsider it would seem like a killer but I guess it depends on personal perspective. Businesses dont necessarily pay it. They pay the difference between what they have paid tax on for, say, raw materials and the amount of tax on goods supplied.

Private individuals mostly dont look at cost plus tax, they just look at total cost.

 

[Flange]

Ceiling, nothing special. In the UK we call this plasterboard which I believe is the same as sheetrock in the US. There have been loads of posts on ceilings like this so here are a couple of pictures.

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Next the storage. This area gives me at leas 25m2 of storage (270 sq ft). There is minimal headroom but that is not a big issue. It just gets junk that would otherwise clutter up the garage ouit of the way

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On the left you can see the reason why I put the hatch in the gable. Ladders. There have been lots of posts on how to store ladders out of the way, this is my solution.

 

[DynoDave]

What a great looking place!

...I counted up more than 30 different sizes and types of pantile. All with varying lenghts, widths and curvetures. To get them to fit they knocked corners off with a hammer which then meant that there were loads of holes upen to the weather where water could literally pour in.

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That's just madness!

 

[Flange]

That's just madness!

Its insane.

Here are a couple of pics. One shows some of the variation in curvature the other an example of an intact tile next to one that is bigger so it has had the top right corner knocked off. The bottom of these two tiles are level but you can see the right one is much longer.

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[Flange]

And finally I can have a big clear up and move clutter from the garage and into the new loft storage space so I can look at the floor.

Unfortunatly, once I had looked at it I was reminded just how bad it is. Did I mention that this garage was built by a *****?


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Bad concrete is one of my bete noirs. Before I became a desk jockey I spent many years at the sharp end of civil engneering and I have done my fair share of concrete work from large to small, from large civil enginering to industrial and domestic.


Concrete like this drives me insane.


There is no need for it.


The extra effort needed to go from the abortion that I have been left with to something that is actually quite good is minimal at the time of casting the concrete. It is certainly a fraction of the effort that is then needed to sort it out once it has set.

Not only is the finish bad but it is 3 inches higher in the middle than at the edges. The edges are not level either.

I also suspect that the person who laid it asked the driver to "wet it up", i.e. add water at site to make it flow. The trouble with doing this is it makes it much weaker. Why not just get the concrete plant to add plasticiser for a small extra cost?

Basically it is a lesson in how not to do concrete work.

In an ideal world it needs to be replaced. I did consider underpinning the garage walls so I could then do the job right and replace the floor but time is against me so I looked for an alternative.

I decided on this:


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Not ideal by any stretch of the imagination.

There is an English expression that is "you can't polish a turd". Putting this down makes me feel that I am actually trying to polish one.

However, it gives me a smooth and dust free finish that is durable enough (for now, time will tell how it lasts). Obviously the floor still has a lump in the middle and is not level. I filled the large craters with an epoxy repair product and then used the thin screed.


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[Cris B]

Were you tempted to try and get the high spot in the middle ground down? Sounds like it might restrict future flooring (tile) options?

 

[PugetDude]

Floor looks a lot better, and is certainly usable now. It looks a lot flatter and looks level relative to the bottom course of the wall brickwork.

How much of the hump were you able to reduce with the self leveling compound?

 

[Flange]

Were you tempted to try and get the high spot in the middle ground down? Sounds like it might restrict future flooring (tile) options?

No. I did not try to reduce the hump because I did not want to compromise the integrity of the slab. It is such a poor finish and given that I dont know whats underneath it. It has been there for 25 years and is stable so I decided to leave it alone. If I were going to touch it then I would want to take it all out.

I know it is not great but I will have to live with it for now. Its not flooring options that I am woried about it is the annoyance of tryinmg to get machines to sit level. My chop saw rocks on 3 legs in some places when I get it out.

How much of the hump were you able to reduce with the self leveling compound?

Probabally about 18 to 20mm (3/4") better. The spec on the screed stated minimum thicknesds 5 mm and maximum 15 mm (say 1/4" to 5/8").

 

[GBsnoopy]

Did you look into grinding the floor level rather than add screed? I know its too late now but wondered if you looked into this as an option?

 

[Flange]

Did you look into grinding the floor level rather than add screed? I know its too late now but wondered if you looked into this as an option?

I did consider all options but I will explain why I went the way I did.

My house and the one next door are barn conversions done in the late 1980's when houses were being thrown up as fast as possible and the economy was booming. The guy who "built" these 2 houses did so as cheaply as possible and I have spent the last 10 years changing out poor quality workmanship and materials.

My next door neighbour has less space at the side of his house than me and had a single detached garage and a few years ago decided to build an extension which meant knocking his garage down and building an integral one.

When this garage was demolished I noticed that the concrete in the floor was thinner in the middle, probabally no more than 75mm (3 inches) and that the concrete was quite a weak mix.

If my garage has a floor that is also thinner in the middle to the same extent then if I remove 50 mm (2 inches) I could be left with only 25mm (1 inch) of floor thickness.

The floor is stable and has not moved, cracked etc in the time I have lived here so I am happy that it is all under a compression loading and so should be OK for at least a few more years. Therefore, for me, it boiled down to whether I wanted to take the lot out which had its own set of problems as mentioned above or polish the turd. Time and budget dictated that at this point in time I have to try to polish the turd.

 

[Ajustable]

Good reno thread, working alone you accomplished allot, great to see your progress.I like brick garages, might be cause my dad was a bricklayer, he learned the trade back in europe before we moved to Canada. Keep the post coming.

Chris

 

[Flange]

At this point I need to explain about what I called Garage 2 at the top of his thread.

This is my main space for metal/automotive/bike work so I have certain requirements here. The roof is not too bad, the floor is not great although slightly less bad than Garage 1 so the floor needs attention. I am also fed up with freezing my nuts off in winter so I need to insulation. I had decided to change the door layout (I have only really ever used 1 door so it seemed like a good time to modify the front of the building) and create a better workshop.

First job is to empty the space.

From this

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To this.

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Then outside and off with the doors

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I do not want an ugly joint where the new brickwork that I am going to install joins the old so I need to cut the bonds out.

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This almost always happens when you are cutting new brickwork into old.

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But it is easily fixed.

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Other side

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The internal skin wont be seen so I am using these inside.

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Also, the lintels will need slight modification.

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Time to get building. I dont think it really matters but I scraped off the old flor paint where the new brickwork will sit before I put the DPC down. It came off easily enough by hand scraping the surface with a scutch chisel.

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I dont seem to have taken any pictures of the right hand side being built. In this next picture the right side is up to 1 course below lintel height. The left side has been started and I have started knocking down the centre pillar.

I stopped brickwork at this point because I needed a second pair of hands to adjust the concrete lintels. That second pair of hands came in the form of a bricklayer friend so I asked him to finish off the brickwork at the same time because he is 4 times quicker than I am at brickwork.

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Here are the lintels supported by, to give them their generic name, screw jacks. However most people call then Acrow Props although this is actually a brand name which has become so market dominant that everyone just asks for "Acrows" irrespective of what brand they actually get.


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One lintel shortened (the one on the right of this picture) and the other now needs to be moved over a bit.

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Brickwork almost done on the left side.

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I evicted the lodgers that I found under the old soffit.


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But they did give me a leaving present

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Here is a picture of the brickwork all done so you can see the amended layout. The props were left in place for a few days until the mortar had gained some strength.


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[Cris B]

That's going to be a useful space.