The Straight 8 Garage

[Jek11688]

Hello GJ, long time reader and always thought about posting my garage but never got around to it. So now technically I’m on my fourth garage and first one I can truly call my own so I figured it was time to start documenting my projects. I’m going to start with my current one, just purchased my first house back in August.

While it’s not what I envisioned 10 years ago when I first found this site but life happens, met my lady who had kids and had a son myself need a lot more house then I expected. She knows I love to build and work on things so she understood having a big garage. I also have engrained in her that unless we have a car worthy of parking in the garage the cars stay in the driveway.

I was moving from a small 2 car garage and had some concerns about making it all fit already before all of T’s stuff. She has so much lol. But that what comes with having a bunch of kids. Speaking of we have 5 kids in the house (1,5,7,11,12) so garage time is a luxury with all the activities. I’ll spare you the shelves of stuff on the far side of garage that don’t belong in the garage. Here is where I’m at 3 months into this garage. I had no time to paint this one but I do have the intention to do so but I’ll go into that in a later post.

I made the cabinets in a few different runs. 3 have metal framed doors with stainless perforated and 3 plus the corner have wood framed doors with regular perforated steel. Cabinets themselves are HD grade cabinet plywood (which *****) and are faaaar from perfect but it was my first go and my own design.

Before someone asks about the title of the thread and my garage name, I came up with it and decided that was the final excuse for not making a thread. It’s a Felpro head gasket from a Buick Model 40. I came up with the idea reading a blog years ago and saw someone with a Honda one framed and thought I like that take on “modern art.” So, I began thinking what kind of gasket would be unique. I came up with the straight 8. I made the frame and got the picture backer from the hobby store.

Generally speaking, I spend about equal time working with metal and wood, but it does seem to go in streaks one way or another. I have no automotive project currently (I would love to change that). However, I do have a rock crawler that I’ve built that got me into garage in the first place. My father showed me how to change oil and brakes and it never stopped after that for me. He isn’t very mechanically or handyman minded but I don’t mind picking up the slack. I have the honey do list at my parents! So, with that I’ve taught myself just about everything I know by mostly reading or watching online. My grandfather on my mother’s side helped me get into wood working. My best friends father showed us how to weld and I’ve pursued everything after that mostly by myself. Since I didn’t have an upbringing at home in the garage I didn’t really venture into this world until I was about 21. I’m 31 now but it seems almost if its always been apart of me. Ill post some past projects at some point as I’d like to get some of this stuff all in the same place.


Anyway, that’s all for now, ill leave you with a few pictures of my son Elijah (22 months) helping me out.

Justin

 

[Jek11688]

Going back in time about a year and a half I had an idea to build a bed set that happened to match a safe I bought that I was using as night stand.

Here is my sketch with rough dimensions I took from a standard queen size mattress (more on that later) to get an idea of what I wanted to build. For the steel I went with hot rolled 2x2. I liked the look of the mill scale but was worried about rust in the long haul. I debated between using a Sherwin Williams industrial clear coat product I came across here on GK to just a matte clear coat spray. I could only get 1-gallon sizes from SW at about $150 which was a little steep so I decided that Rustoleum Clear would get the nod after testing some scrap steel. The wood I happened upon at Rockler, they were having a sale on “Rustic Walnut” that I thought went well with the steel so with that I was set. Ill let the pictures do the talking.

I laid steel out in all different manors and shapes trying to decide on what looked the best. I decided to try and keep the sections the same width which led me to choose the below layout.

Obligatory welding picture.

I decided to make the footboard just a large rectangle on both sides so it didn’t take away from the headboard.

I used sanding sealer for the first time on this project and had trouble laying it down in a way that you couldn’t see the wet lines after the fact. No matter how fast I worked or in what manner I could always spot the wet edge. Maybe its just me, does anyone have this experience with this stuff? I was using it essentially as my stain to get a little more pop out of the wood grain before putting 3 coats of polyurethane over the top.

A detailed look at my reinforced corners that I was loosely copying from the safe. I found these faux rivets from Ballard forge that would match perfect. https://www.ballardforge.com/product-page/medium-faux-rivet-heads-made-to-order To attach them I ended up drilling a 3/8” hole in the flat plate and plug welding them from the back.

Fitting boards in slowly, this took quite a bit of time to ensure everything was a tight fit. What I don’t have pictures of is 3” pieces of ¾” angle iron welded to the tube to both set the depth of the wood and provide a mounting point from behind. The wood was all cut to be as snug as possible and then finished and attached at the very end after clear coating the steel and 3 coats of finish on the walnut.

All done and boy was that head board heavy moving it from the garage up to the bedroom. My guess is it weights about 250lbs. Unfortunately, about half way through I realized how heavy this was going to be if I continued using .120 wall steel. However, after discussions with metal supermarkets is that 2x2 steel has a different mill scale color when .120 wall thicker vs a shiner mil scale when thinner. Since I was leaving this raw it ended up having to all be .120 wall. You can see this in third picture I posted. I ended up using the thinner stuff for the frame rails that no one see’s but me.

Final pictures with a non-matching comforter!

 

[GGB]

Very nice project, and great to see you have good “helpers”!

GGB

 

[MacTexas]

I like your head gasket art, I may have to copy it but with a Model A head gasket (my first car was a Model A).