Making progress

More garage cleaning, more stuff on craigslist for free.  Just so it is gone.

Interesting that there seem to be an increasing number of people who just collect free stuff.  I posted up a motorcycle wheel chock, a Harley front spoked wheel, and four trailer wheels.  All taken by people who appeared to have no interest in motorcycles, Harleys, or trailers.  Sounds like they will then try to resell or scrap the parts.  Works for me since I would have to pay to take them to the dump and/or the metal recyclers and not sure I would have made back the cost of gas for going to the recycle place.

Meanwhile, reorganized the garage today so that the bikes are accessible.  The middle one is now running (woohoo).  Need to pick up some screws to hold the air cleaner in place, then I am going to take it for a ride and make sure it keeps running (hopefully not dying far from my house).  It is going up for sale but not until I ...

Use the carburetor bank to see if I can get my other CBR running.  I had sent out the carbs to Wired George in Texas and when they came back there were issues.  Thing one, the bike didn't run and was overflowing gas.  When I took the carb bank apart I discovered that one of the needle jets wasn't in place so that bowl wasn't shutting off.  Pretty sloppy.  Thing two, when I fixed that and put it all back together, it still didn't run.  Thinking now that since the parts bike (pictured) is running I'll swap out the carbs and see if the keeper bike (not pictured but in much nicer condition) then runs.  That will tell me something.  Delays the sale but more important to have all my keeper bikes running so that I don't have projects other than maintenance sitting around waiting for me to have some free time (insert insane laughter track here).

Next, decide which of the two little motorcycle trailers is a keeper and which can go away.  After suitable work and upgrade, of course.

This old garage: Drainage day finished

Day one can be found here.

The south side of the garage is (basically) done.  Connected the new pipe (I used the corrugated pipe that comes wrapped in a filter sock already) to the east and west existing ends and to the main drain line running towards the house.  Three loads of 1-1/4 clean crush and it is almost full.  I'll have to add one more load of gravel once I finish putting new gutters on the garage and connecting the downspout to the drain line but that has to wait for the garage to be painted.

Aside: a bit of frustration on the painting.  Person I asked to do that said he would wait until we had some consecutive days of nice weather so it would be good and dry.  We've now had two months of consecutive hot and dry weather and the garage isn't painted.  The last couple days have been cool with sprinkles and today is heavily clouded.  I hope it is going to be done as I don't want it to sit through another winter with exposed wood after the money and effort I put into renovating it correctly.

I'm not thrilled with where the concrete blocks meet the sidewalk because the sidewalk runs at an angle so I'll need to see if I can get a block cut somehow to fill in the join but it isn't bad and now I don't have to slog through wet grass and mud to get to my garage door.

Next, the north side.  Should actually be easier because it's a straight shot with no electrical or joins. 

When I say "easier" remember that's relative.  I'm still out there with a mattock and a shovel digging a twenty foot trench, not the type of work that I would choose as a career.

Looks like I might have to re-trench out into my yard (past the picture above).  There is a drain pipe at that end that I connected to, but the yard doesn't drain.  It didn't use to flood but now it does quite badly.  I suspect that they collapsed the old drain when they ran the natural gas piping to the house.  I will, at some point, carefully trench in that direction following the existing pipe until I find that break.  Maybe I can dig under the gas line and just have a bit of a low spot in the drainage.  Shouldn't keep it from draining as there can be a LOT of water back there in the rainy season (ie most of the year up here).

This old garage: Drainage day one

Garage needs drainage and it has cooled off a bit here so decided to tackle the south side of the garage.

Back breaking work when you aren't used to it but good news all around.

Set a string line 48" from the garage as I am laying a row of concrete bricks to separate the gravel from the grass, then dug out along the string line.  Matock and shovel work to trench out where the corrugated drain piping will go.

 While trenching discovered that there is a line headed towards the house just to the left of the garage door which, when hose was inserted and turned on, drains.  A T-junction will allow connection of all garage drains to this line.

Then discovered that there is a line coming out on the SW corner of the garage that is clear to the NW corner of the garage, which means that I can trench out the north side, connect to the NW corner, and connect the SW corner to the line I am laying now.  Much easier than I thought, since I was expecting to trench all the way to the edge of the yard by the street.

Off to the local hardware store for connectors where I picked up two Ts, a 90 degree connector, and a downspout connector.  Turns out you can connect the gutter downspout right to the drain line.  Who knew?  (Everyone except me probably but I grew up in one of those "plumbers have to make a living too" homes where I didn't learn how to fix much of anything.)

Hooray.  A giant sense of accomplishment plus I stopped early enough that I hopefully won't be in agony tomorrow (being in shape for martial arts, weightlifting, and paddle-boarding does not, as it turns out, mean that one is in shape to dig drainage ditches).

Tomorrow a truck full (Toyota so a small full) of 1-1/4" crushed clean gravel and I'm going to try to get the pipe laid (minds out of the gutter boys), the gravel back filled, and the rest of the blocks laid.  Then all I'll have to do is the north side which should be easier since it has only one connection.

PS 1-1/4" crushed clean because I was told that it packs down nicely, whereas drain rock doesn't so is hard to walk on.

This Old Garage, financial report

In case you were thinking about building a new garage, here is what I spent and a few thoughts.

First of all, I was going to build a brand new garage.  Two cars, walk up overhead storage, it was going to be beautiful.  By the time I bought plans, had them reviewed to ensure that they met local and state building codes, had an asbestos survey done to see if I could legally throw away the insulation that I bought from Home Depot and put in myself fifteen years ago, and put a down payment on a building permit, I had spent $833.95.  I had not finished paying for the building permit and the permit, although it included local building inspections, did not include electrical inspections.

 Wasted garage project $833.95

After getting an excavation/concrete/building materials estimate which did not include roofing I was up to about $18k without talking about labor costs.  Now over budget I decided to do the renovation.  Best estimate that I can figure, a new garage would probably have cost me something over $30,000, well over my budget.

Renovation here we go.

Actual cost of renovations including excavation, concrete, lumber, siding, some roofing (will re-roof the old portion next summer and do it myself), supplies, and labor

$16,544.11

What jacked up my costs?  Well, we decided to build on a proper shed end to the garage.  Extended the roofline and framed and sided it as though it were a part of the garage.  Looks much better than a lean-to and leaves the possibility of tearing out the end garage wall and enclosing the shed opening for a bigger garage in the future.

Tongue and groove drop siding to match the old siding, $2.88 a linear foot.  That means that one 16' piece of siding costs about $50.  A piece of siding covers 5 inches vertically.

Note: Millwork Supply, a great place to do business, suggested cedar drop siding which was cheaper than the stuff I had bought first time around.  Cheaper because it is primed for paint and so they use wood that isn't quite as fancy.  The stuff I originally bought is designed more for staining and so is very fine wood.  Resist.  I should have spent the extra money.  The cheaper stuff splits when you are trying to nail it up and it isn't tongue and groove, it is overlap siding.  We had to groove the first piece of each run to get it to fit into the old T&G.

Even taking into account the cheaper stuff, however, I bought this much siding.  $1932.05

The alternative, buying Hardee plank would not have been cheaper because I would have had to strip the whole garage and re-side.  More labor and more siding.

Concrete, two separate pours cost me extra money.  We poured a stem wall and then I decided to do a new floor.  Not sure if that could have been done in one pour or not, probably not.  Concrete cost me $1,128.94.   Plus I owe my concrete buddy some motorcycle work for coming over to do the pour.

About $1,000 to haul away all the junk and for the storage unit to store my stuff while building.  Got rid of a fair amount but not as much as I had hoped.  I might do another run through in the spring and see if more could go away.

Bought a really nice garage door.  I could have gone to Sears and got a cheapy, but I wanted this to look nice to go with the house so I went fancy.  Strap hinging, molded to look like carriage doors, etc.  It looks great but it cost about $2400 installed, a thousand more than the cheap one.  Should last decades, however, and since it looks great, I'm OK with it.  Only problem now is that you can look right into the garage through the windows.  I hadn't really given that much advance thought but could see it being a problem now.  I have to look into some sort of one way sticky material to put on the inside I guess.  It's depressing that one should have to but it is what it is I guess.

So there it is.  Pics in the spring once it's painted.  Total cost, about $17k including the wasted money on new construction planning.  Leaves me about $3k leftover but since I will be buying roofing and paint in the spring that will probably get eaten up.

Take-aways:

1) Do it right, even if it costs more.  This rebuild should last fifty years anyway, on top of a ninety year old garage.  That will outlast me I would guess.

2) It's going to cost more than you think.  I'd originally thought $20k to build, not even close.  Then I thought $10k to rebuild.  Not even close.  If I had to guess my new estimate on a new build would be over $40,000.

This Old Garage (Phase 3 and 4)

Appears that I didn't post anything between Phase 2 (concrete is poured) and now.  This should reallyb be Phase 4 (Almost done) but I'll squeeze some Phase 3a in before the Phase 3b and put them all here.

Phase 3 (rebuilding)

Step one, install sill plate and wall plate, reinforce side walls and set onto stem wall.  We just sistered 2x4 pieces onto the good garage all the way around, leveling as we went, didn't really even have to lower it down other than for leveling purposes.  Once we were done sistering and attaching the new joist pieces to the wall plate we took out the jacks.  It's beautifully leveled all the way around and looks great just standing there.

Step two, pour concrete.


I was back at work so didn't have much to do with this one.  I showed up and shoved a bullnose something or other back and forth for a while.  It didn't seem to be working properly so the guy that knew what he was doing did it instead.  Turns out you have to shove it back and forth for about half an hour, not the minute and a half that I did.  How boring a job would that be?

However, with the concrete poured I have a gloriously uncracked and smooth floor

plus space for a proper shed.

The next part was mostly not me.  I was back at work (as previously mentioned) and by the time I got home each day they were just about ready to wrap up.  Mostly it was building shed (as my neighbor pointed out, this shed will probably outlast the house and the rest of the garage)

Install siding

Siding is expensive.  Well this stuff is.  It is tongue and groove drop siding which has a little bevel cut out of the top of the board.  If you get the good stuff (wooden bits on the upright at the left end) it is almost $3 a linear foot.  Not residing the whole garage but turns out just the stuff I am doing is about 750 lf.  So after the first batch switched to cedar, which comes primed and is under $2/lf.  Not happy as the boards broke easily and were not actually tongue and groove which meant that they didn't fit into the old siding.  Had to mill off a strip on the back of the first row to side the bottom of the garage.   At that point, however, we have it all and might as well finish the project.

Garage door company finally shows up and does their bit.  Wow.  Worth the wait.

Were you fooled?  No, I didn't put carriage doors on my garage.  That is an honest to god roll up electric door, molded to look like carriage doors with fake actual hinges and handles.  I love it.  Will look that much better once the garage is painted and doesn't look like a shack.


Phase 4 (3A): Finish

Most of my stuff is back in the garage (other than motorcycles which are still at my shop as I'm waiting for a decent day).  Still a few things to sort out so that I can return the storage box and stop paying $3 a day rent (that number is so small that it is hard to be overly concerned).

All that's left to do is paint (spring), re-roof the old part to match the new part which matches the house (summer), and trench out for drainage (later). 


I do have to put up the man door, but that took a left turn today when I finished the three coats of polyurethane on the back side, flipped it over, and discovered that poly drips had stuck to the cardboard, leaving cardboard bits stuck to the door.  Sanding those off took off the stain in various places, stain requires eight hours to dry before coating, done until tomorrow.  I'll post up pictures of the door once it's installed.

One more nail in the coffin of I'll-never-leave-here-no-matter-how-good-the-reason-because-I-have-too-much-emotional-blood-sweat-and-tears-invested-in-fixing-it-up.  I do get attached to stuff and have more reason than ever to be attached to this one.

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.