Above 1200 Sq/FT The No Name Garage

[BeerM3]

There are 2 unavoidable truths that come with having an ambitious DIY personality: 1) wanting to learn & do it all and 2) learning how to fix what you failed to learn the first time. A few years ago after never having a legitimate garage space to call my own in 27ish years of renting & owning, my wife and I pulled the trigger. It's been a challenging and rewarding experience. I'm posting this in hopes of inspiring anyone discouraged, encouraging anyone inspired, and showing lessons learned along the way while learning to recognize your limits.

Our house had a couple failing carriage sheds that I had littered with my years of acquired tools, random **** and a few things I have no idea where they came from. One had a sill plate rotted off a flimsy CMU foundation, the other was a building twice added-on stone building probably built in the 1880's with the house. I really wanted to save it but the location and $10k price tag to re-point just the exterior didn't add up. The goal was to take them down, salvage what I can to offset the materials. That turned out to be a prudent decision given we started in Nov of 2020 and the price hikes were only getting started. My oldest enthusiastically volunteered for the demo. The rest, not so much.

 

[Jon69RagTop]

Cool, looking forward to the story

 

[BeerM3]

I'd be reticent to mention before starting any of this, I spent untold hours on this forum and the web researching what exactly I wanted, what pitfalls to watch for, what design style I wanted to work with and the costs involved. This website was influential in a lot of the decisions, and thank you to the posters that helped shed light along the way. Like everything I've ever done, it took twice as long and cost twice (well, not really but at least 20% more) than originally estimated. And to be fair, I do construction estimates on the design side all the time in my profession. Hats off to the real contractors that have to do it every day and find a way to be profitable.

A long time ago I settled on "farmhouse studio" to keep with the aesthetic of our 120 year old house. This web find was the original spark, although the final is different in a lot of respects.



But with a more material cost friendly Kansas farm meets New England aesthetic. I really liked the simplicity in the architecture of this

 

[BeerM3]

The north shed that was falling off the foundation was stripped of the shiplap boxing and lap siding. It was made of 2x4 studs @24 and didn't put up much of a fight when tugged with a rope so we could salvage the tin roof from the ground. Hell, a stiff breeze probably would've done it. The older shed...well....they don't make em like they used to?

 

[BeerM3]

I love the peanut gallery commentary in that video . Good times! Yes, the framing was cut where the stone roof met the new. Yes, the studs that weren't already rotted at the base were notched Yes, the nails in the tin were pulled. Yes, the hitch survived just fine but it was not budging. Barely a crack. Today's lumber would've probably collapsed before I started the truck.

A bucket list goal was/is to have a garage big enough where I could restore and/or work on old vehicles. The old FJ40 is the current project. After some more whittling the little '76 didn't break much of a sweat compared to the 3.5L '01... go figure.

 

[BeerM3]

Lumber, siding and tin salvaged. The rest hauled off. It was time to recognize a few hundred bucks for someone that knows what they're doing with a mini excavator should dig the foundation, so I made some calls. Because the plans are for a cathedral ceiling on the 2nd floor instead of trusses, that means a structural foundation. A monolithic pour with a turndown trenched edge would've been sooooo much easier, and probably $2k cheaper in concrete and i-don't-want-to-know in roof framing, but the frost line here is 30"..maybe 36 I forget. Regardless it was dug to meet code.

Tarped in the distance are foam sheets salvaged from a chicken farm in SE Kansas, 2x12's and I joists salvaged by a guy in Lincoln NE. I did luck into some craigslist finds during the downtime. All in all I saved an estimated 10-15k with salvaged material. Every bit helped in 2021.

 

[BeerM3]

My neighbor just happened to have their inlaws plate compactor sitting around for a paver project she was doing, and was nice enough to let me borrow it for multiple trips around the subgrade. Footing forming going in. I ran conduit for a CAT6 run from the Internet Box on the house because it's just a little too detached from the house for strong WiFi.

 

[BeerM3]

Got the footer poured with just a chute, a lot of shoveling, and some help from friends that surprisingly still talk to me. Like with any big project, Murphy's Law comes into play somewhere. This time it was a collapsing sewer main from the house. The plan was always to have plumbing to the garage, so we opted for the buy once, cry once fix to do both. One upside is around here you can have electrical conduit in the same trench, so we also roughed in 2" conduit from the pole to the house to the garage. The overhead service will eventually get replaced. The inspector allowed the new gas line in the same trench spaced apart from the electrical. 3 birds, one trench, or something.

 

[BeerM3]

The tall piece of rebar is the UFER for the subpanel. Ironically (unironically?) we had multiple lightning strikes in a huge electrical storm last summer that our main tripped to protect the house panel, but the low voltage wires for irrigation and the internet fried everything they were connected to. That was an expensive lesson. The garage electrical wasn't in yet, so hopefully I never have to find out how the UFER fares in that scenario. I stepped up my surge protection game after that. Some power strips have cat5/6 built in, but mine didn't.
https://www.amazon.com/Ethernet-Surge-Protector-Gigabit-1000Mbs/dp/B07GBLFFNK/?tag=atomicindus08-20

 

[BeerM3]

I suppose should back up and actually talk about what I'm actually trying to build? I've worked in the design industry for years and originally worked up some plan and elevation ideas in AutoCAD and Sketchup, but eventually decided to dive in head first and teach myself Revit, which is BIM software used by architects. Revit is somewhat of a complicated hybrid between the 2d capabilities of cad and 3d modeling of sketchup (and others) with tools specific to construction and detailing of everything related to building construction. Here are a few snapshots of that (months long) effort.

 

[BeerM3]

Early on my wife said "Oh! What if we add a 2nd floor game room type thing?". To be honest, in the back of my mind I'd originally contemplated the idea of doing a garage apartment and renting it out to help offset costs. In the end, even though zoning in our particular block didn't allow that for a "detached" garage, I decided for now I really didn't want a renter essentially living in our house, or 50' from it. So bonus room it is.

 

[BeerM3]

Being the beginning of the pandemic shutdown and material prices starting to skyrocket, like $40+ for a 4x8 sheet of OSB skyrocket, so I started to scavenge. I found a pair new Overhead Door brand garage doors that weren't quite what I had originally considered, but could absolutely work and for $400 I'd be dumb not too. So I designed around it. I found a salvaged lumber place to get some discount lumber, another guy that re-sold sheathing, and so on. Maybe the most useful find was a guy in Lincoln NE that had salvaged some like-new I-Joists from a red iron loft build that never had flooring nailed to them. With some span-table scrutinizing and just a little push and pull of the dimensions I was able to make them work for 90% of the floor area. I guess what I'm saying is, if you're patient enough and flexible in your plans, marketplace and craigslist can help!

 

[BeerM3]

Back to it! After getting what felt like some astronomical quotes for the foundation, a local friend that ran a salvage yard mentioned that he had several old forms. They weren't pretty, and I picked up the cost of the additional pins and wedges needed, but they worked. I was only setting the sill height 6" above grade so it's not like much was going to be exposed anyway. After having done this, I can confidently say my lower back would've preferred aluminum over steel forms.

 

[BeerM3]

Family & friends showed up at 6am for the big day. It went mostly without a hitch. Even after triple checking, there was one %#$@ pin that I missed that caused a form to bulge, but it held! The bulge is still there but it's obscured so...live and learn. That'll be my first and last attempt at pouring a foundation.






Me and my dad enjoying the best beer ever.

 

[BeerM3]

Walls poured, sewer stubbed, forms stripped and hauled back out of the pit, advil ingested. I started the backfill and compaction process after adding 1-1/2" foam insulation to the wall interior. I decided early on to go with radiant floor heat and creating the thermal break is a critical step. I lucked into a farm in southeast Kansas selling salvaged Dow polystyrene from chicken houses. They didn't smell great but the worms don't care.

 

[BeerM3]

After backfilling, leveling, and leveling again with a compacted 5-6" gravel layer, I had a base ready to start insulating for the slab heat. Laid in the (nasty) chicken foam, taped the seams and rolled out a layer of poly over that. Then it was time to start the rebar layout. The bars were set 18" o.c. and the pex was zip tied 12" in 5 ~280' circuits, 2 for the shop side and 3 for the garage. I figured if I ever wanted to separate the heat levels with 2 thermostats I can, but I doubt that ever happens.

 

[BeerM3]

Dad my fingers hurt.



Granted I was probably already pushing my construction abilities with the foundation walls, but I know for a fact I have no business pouring a slab bigger than 3' square! I hired pros for the next phase. Man, they made it look easy, and really good. We sloped the garage side for positive drainage to the doors since I won't have floor drains, but the shop side was poured level.

 

[BeerM3]

Now it's starting to look like something. I should just tell everyone this will be a carport and save a whole lot of time!

 

[BeerM3]

Time to start getting vertical with this thing. It's early October of '21 and I have a couple months to get walls up before it has to go on hold until spring. I recruited helpers when I could, but I think they caught on eventually and went to airplane mode on the weekends!

 

[BeerM3]

You guys got this? I'm gonna go grab a beer.

 

[BeerM3]

Sure, yeah, we should be done by 3 or 4 I think.

 

[BeerM3]

As part of my Craigslist and Marketplace scavenging to help keep costs in check, since it's now 2021 and lumber is stupid expensive due to a supply/demand problem in the housing sector, I found I-joists salvaged out of a red iron building that had only been used to span a closed in area. No decking had ever been applied AND the same guy in Lincoln Neb had a huge stack of #1 2x12's that were within the lengths I needed for the cathedral framing for the upstairs. I believe it was around a 50% savings which saved a couple thousand.



Because I needed a load bearing demising wall between the shop & garage, to keep dust contained to one side or the other, I opted to bump up the joist spacing to 16" on the shop side. Ultimately the old pool table will be moved up there. The blocking at the top of the wall reminds me of the lack of foresight to purchase 9' sheets for the bottom level instead of 8'. D'oh!

 

[BeerM3]

I skipped a step! Because the garage width is 28' pushing the limits for what a 11-7/8 I-Joist can handle as a floor, I opted to stiffen everything up with a center beam. Because it's a 3-ply LVL, it wasn't hard for 2 of us to lift each one into place and then screw it all together with the structural pattern required.



Salvaged Doug Fir timber with matching Simpson saddle installed and doweled into the slab

 

[BeerM3]

With no forklift on hand, I had to figure out a clever way to get the 3/4" flooring sheets up to the next level. Youtube to the rescue! There were several variations of a hinged lift scattered around out there. I made one with leftovers and scrap laying around.