Tinker, Tailor ....

[NFT5]

I can hardly believe that I've been a member here for over 7 years and amassed the grand total of 36 posts.


But that's the price you pay after a divorce, rebuilding your life and possessions, which include a garage. Finally, a few months ago we (Mark II and I) managed to buy a house. This alone was an achievement - we'd been looking for nearly 12 months but had very specific criteria, not to mention an even more specific budget. We missed a few along the way as the crazy real estate market in this country careered to ever dizzying heights, despite the writing in giant lettering on the wall. I was adamant that we wouldn't overpay and open the door to the potential of giant losses as the market corrected (as it is now doing).


I remember one of the members in Sydney making a remark in a post on how difficult it was to find a house there that ticked all the boxes in terms of having the potential to develop or build, access and affordability. It was the same here in Canberra.


The house itself is modest, but there are only the two of us, and it has been refurbed with updated kitchen, bathroom, flooring and paint. Nothing major to spend inside, which was nice. 20 solar panels on the roof (more about them later), ducted gas heating and a lovely outdoor area were definite bonuses.



So, when you buy a house, what's the first thing you do, before you even move in? Why, change the kitchen sink, of course.

What was there had more in common with a horse trough and I was under clear instructions that it had to go before she moved in. So, down to Bunnings and bought one of these:

Right, so enough of inside the house, although I may return from time to time as this journey evolves.


The block is average suburban at a shade under 700 sq m but the important things were enough space to build a decent workshop in the back yard as well as access and a place where we could set up a workshop/studio for my missus. This is where the title of this thread comes in. She's a tailor and works from home. She needs a space, separate from our living areas, around the size of a single garage, so about 20 sq m, that has easy access for her customers. Naturally, it has to be clean, dry and able to be heated/cooled. Some houses we looked at had garages under the roofline, this one didn't. What it had was this:

A single carport. But carports can be enclosed and the potential was there.


On the other side of the house was:

Ah yes! 3.6m of clear space. A driveway in waiting to get into the back yard. Ripper!



All good, but where was my shop?

Old style metal garage, 4.1m x 7.0m, complete with a floor that followed the slope of the land, a door that only kinda closes, leaks and a slab that isn't quite big enough for the garage. Oh yeah, and about 1.8m internal height.


Not exactly the shop of my dreams. But..... there's more to come in this story

 

[NFT5]

In the back yard were a couple of slightly overgrown weeds. Both right where I want to put my new shop.

No problem.

How awesome are those stump grinders. Took him less than an hour to unload the machine, do three big stumps, plus a couple of smaller ones, load it back up and hit me for the cash. Not that I was complaining - solved a big problem for me.


More (much more) to come....

 

[HOTFR8]

Great to see you posting again and please keep us updated as you progress.

 

[NFT5]

Those were more snag than tree.
Removing it has kept it from crushing someone.
Congratulations on the new start and house.

I don't think there are three real tailors in all of Arizona that do anything mainstream.
I bet some gj members wear bespoke shirts and would love to have some made by gj kith.

Please. Contribute more than you have in the past.

Decent sized gums that have a habit of dropping branches without notice. Apart from being in the way that poor old garage wouldn't stand a branch dropping on it.


Anyone need some firewood?

Yes she's a real tailor. Designs, makes patterns and sews clothes. A skill that is beyond me. I'm just the tinker part of the deal.

Great to see you posting again and please keep us updated as you progress.

Almost embarrassing, but I knew this thread would come one day.


On with the story....


Back to the old (existing) garage. It was always my plan to incorporate this into the new, bigger build, but how? As I said it's fairly old, too low, the floor isn't flat and it leaks like a sieve....and that door.

After reading some threads here I decided that raising it was a possibility. Talked to a builder about that and he suggested just lifting the roof, which would probably have been easier, but it would have to go up 400mm and he wanted hourly rate and that didn't fix the other problems.

In the meantime I started talking to steel shed manufacturers about the new shed and found that they could supply a brand new garage to replace the old one for not much more than I'd have been looking at to raise and fix it. Decision made. It's going. If the young bloke next door doesn't want it then off to the recyclers.

So what's the big plan? This:

In an ideal world a 3 bay workshop would have been my preference but you have to work with what you have and I can live with the tandem layout and what was the old garage (which won't have vehicular access anyway) repurposed to storage and a clean room. One of my pursuits is making high performance headlights and a clean environment is essential for this. In my other life I run an automotive paint repair business and the first bay of the tandem will be set up to accommodate spray jobs, when necessary.



In the last week we've had the slab poured for the "Studio".

That, in itself, was an interesting exercise. Trying to get tradesmen seems to be an exercise in futility. They promise and don't turn up or they do turn up and quote telephone numbers or they turn up unannounced and then get a case of the willies because no-one was home. Eventually a friend recommended a site called Hipages where you can list your job and interested tradies call you. It worked a treat - highly recommended.


The concretor arrived on time at 7.30am and poured the slab, finished the surface and then it rained. The poor ****** was still there at 8pm trying to save it. Bloke deserves a medal.


So, today we ordered and paid for the shed kit. It will be due mid -January due to Christmas shutdowns but that gives me time to pull down the old carport and extend the slab by 500mm to accommodate the standard length shed. SWMBO's happy - she gets another half metre. Who said size isn't important?

 

[johnnyrep]

Interesting,was I the only one thinking the title was something to do with John le Carré and you where building a mini MI5 building?

 

[NFT5]

So.....I haven't abandoned this thread.


@johnnyrep - No nothing to do with John le Carre, but a mini MI5 building? Who knows what I might create in there.



Progress. We changed our minds on the size of the studio in order to fit a standard size made by the shed manufacturer. A little bigger, but offered some savings, so made sense.


However, our slab was now too small. Solution? Extend it. Added another 500mm to the length, over the full 3.2m width. At 100mm depth that's 0.16m3 or a lot of bags of premix in a wheelbarrow.

Then the kit arrived

Contacted the "recommended" installers and they told me there was no way they could do the installation in less than 4 months time. Chased up a series of others, locally, who do similar work and not one of them bothered to reply. Work must be easy to come by in the garage installation world.


So, we've been looking for others and may have found one who can do it in a couple of weeks.


Meanwhile, took the opportunity to remove a couple more problem trees. Two on the nature strip in the way of where I want to put the second driveway or just generally in the way and this tallish one that constantly drops **** on the roof over the deck.

Scheduled next weekend to remove the old carport and hopefully start the new building the week after.


Edit: Sorry about the sideways photo. If you right click and "View Image" it comes up the right way. Must be something in the site.

 

[NFT5]

Progress continues, albeit slowly.


Over the course of a couple of half Sundays the old carport is now dismantled and we're ready to start construction of the new "studio"

Most of that carport was held together with screws, 50mm with square drive heads and 125mm with a hex drive head. Absolutely the best tools I've bought in a long time were the Hitachi 18v drill and impact driver set that I picked up a few months ago. Absolutely made short work of hundreds of screws in the frame and roof.



We were trying to find a tradie to do all this but gave up. Absolutely no-one interested in making a bit of extra cash.


Anyway, I have a helper....she was supposed to be doing something on the roof for me but saw that the gutters needed cleaning. I did the roof thing myself, and lost the ladder.

Construction starts tomorrow and the plan is to at least get the frame up. We'll see how that goes.

 

[HOTFR8]

Great progress. Pity about not finding a tradie and that has often been the same issue for me. Great to see the gutters got a clean and think of it this way you did not have to do it.

 

[NFT5]

Ha! bet you all thought I'd dropped off the face of the planet.


Not quite, but a combination of staffing issues in the shop and some health problems, combined with negotiations with ACT Planning meant that nothing happened for quite a while.


Anyway......finally some progress.


Got the basic frame up over the weekend.

Have also revised plan for the main workshop, now with 2 bays, side by side rather than tandem. It's a much more practical layout, even if we lose a fair proportion of the back yard to driveway I can actually park 4 cars and get in and out of each bay without having to shuffle the car behind.



Not approved yet (we have to submit a Development Application and then get the Building Approval) but they have had a look and see no major issues.

Meanwhile progress should continue on Stage 1 and hope to have the roof on next weekend.

 

[HOTFR8]

Some times progress can be delayed. Great to see you back.

 

[NFT5]

It's a saga longer than War and Peace, but the roof is on!


It's an interesting exercise, building on to an existing building when there is a boundary nearby. The original carport was aligned to the fenceline but the house isn't exactly straight. So working out how to align the new building caused a whole pile of little issues, given that the slab was originally poured to the original carport. Then I changed it and now it sits square to the house. Better idea and probably what I should have done in the first place but needed some adjustments including re-cutting the rebate around the edge of the slab. Happy with it now although there's a 3mm difference in the diagonals. Think I can live with that.


Putting a roof on single handed was interesting, too. Especially when the sarking had to go on first. It is clear from the pictures that a little tightening up is required but I haven't put all the roofing screws in yet to allow this to be done.

This week I'll be off to Bunnings to get a door frame and some extra framing to do the windows....