This Old Garage (Phase 2)

Phase 1

Jacking up the garage.  Not quite as complicated as I thought, plus didn't use all the jacks, so the two 48"ers go back to their respective stores and I saved myself $145 on the project.  Instead of jacking up all eight jacks, one click at a time, we jacked up one corner, braced it, then jacked up the quarter point of the wall until it was level, braced it, and worked our way down the garage.  When we were done we hit the other side.  Since we were bracing as we went, the jacks were just taken out of their spots and re-used.

Important safety tip: Don't cross the streams!

Oh wait, that's a different project.  Brace your supports.  As you can see here each support beam is screwed to the wall and the previous beam.  No wiggle room here.  The garage is also braced on the outside with angled 2x4s.

Notice the trenching.  (The garage was actually about a foot underground along this side as the city has been grading the alley for who knows how many years and every time they push more dirt onto my property. One reason for the extensive rot).

Next step, cut off the rot.  We work our way around with a Sawzall cutting off the bottom foot and a half or so.

Form and concrete.  I did a bit of digging (on the internet this time) and discovered Concrete Bonding Adhesive. Designed to create a better seal between old and new concrete.  Quikrete makes a version that does the same thing but this is the one that Home Depot carries.  You are supposed to paint a layer but we were in a hurry so I just dumped it into the bottom of the form and sloshed it around with a paint brush.  We also drilled holes and epoxied in small lengths of rebar, added rebar all the way around tied to the rebar posts, and inserted J-bolts for attaching the sill.  Things got a little hectic when the concrete guy arrived on schedule and we weren't actually close to being ready for concrete.

So no pictures of that.

And ... concrete.

And leftover concrete so I poured a retaining wall foundation.  My plan is to build a retaining wall to separate the alley (on the left) from my drainage.  I'm going to trench this and add drainpipe, then cover it with drainrock and not cover the rock with anything.  The wall will stick up high enough that I can backfill to alley level.  If they grade into my drainage next time they come through (every ten years or so) they can fix anything they damage since it will be obvious what they did.

So now we are waiting for the concrete to set so that we can lower the garage.  We will sister 2x4s to each stringer inside to replace the cut out section, add a wall sill and lower it onto a pressure treated sill.  Stay tuned for Phase 3, hopefully this weekend.