A Bigger Toybox - Part 2
The garage is turning into a BIG project. However, strides are being made, mostly in the right direction! We’ve had some setbacks, and learned a lot from our mistakes.
First and foremost, this project would still be a hole in the ground (and my wallet) without the help of my family. My dad flew out for 10 days to help with the framing. My brother and father-in-law have both given up a number of Saturdays and Sundays to help. I owe most of this garage to them, thank you!
Because of all the help I’ve had, we’ve been pushing along at a quick pace, which often leaves me little time to document things. So, all my pics with this project are from my lowly iPhone. Also, it’s freaking December, which means we get about 7 hours of daylight this time of year. I usually have about an hour of light every day after work…so a lot of this garage has been built by headlamp… making photos more difficult. I apologize for the lack of quality and detail with this thread, consider it more of a “broad strokes” documentation. If you have questions, please ask away, and I’ll do my best to answer with my limited residential construction experience.
With my sparkly new permit burnin’ a hole in my pocket, it was time to officially start this garage! Before I could build walls, I needed a foundation. Before I could build a foundation, I needed a hole in the ground.
A call to the local tool rental shop in town had this arrive the next day.
I’ve never driven a tractor before, I’ve never operated an excavator before, so what better time to learn than now?
After some practice, my father-in-law and I started scraping the grass up and getting the footing dug around the perimeter. Plans called for a 12” wide, 18” deep footing around the outside of the new garage, and a 4” slab for the floor. This is known as a “monolithic” foundation. The nice part, is you can pour all the cement in one go. Meaning: cheap.
Running the tractor wasn’t too different from a forklift, which I’ve operated in the past. The backhoe part… let’s just say I didn’t kill my father–in-law.
Digging the footing trench.
By lunch, we had made a pretty decent mess of my yard. The good news however, dirt was being moved in the right direction.
Finishing the footing trench.
We were under a time crunch with the dirt work. The only part of this entire project I hired out was the concrete pour and finishing. I’m all for learning new skills, but if you screw up concrete, it’s VERY difficult to fix. So, I was OK getting a contractor to come in and build the forms, pour, and finish the concrete.
Back to the time crunch… the next day they were coming over to build the forms and lay the rebar. So we had to be ready.
When I got home the next day, voila! Starting to look like a floor.
Being a side job for my contractor, the pour had to be the following weekend. Over the week I tidied the rebar work up by adding rebar chairs (they elevate the rebar off the dirt), cleaning up the footing, and most importantly, getting it inspected.
The good news was I passed the inspection; the bad news was there was a few corrections to be made prior to pouring. Mostly simple things, like…
Epoxying the rebar into the old slab to tie it to the new slab. Not sure it was a code requirement, but it was in my plans so they called it out.
I also spent the week prepping my old existing garage for the new concrete. I powerwashed 38 years worth of crap off the old slab.
The next Saturday finally came (with sunny days in November in the PNW, I was VERY LUCKY), and with it a cement truck showed up.
The guys started with pouring the old garage slab cap first. Goodbye aggregate crap floor!
Then, onto the main event.
The concrete guys stayed until after 9 pm finishing the floor by hand. Overall, I’m happy with their work. The next morning I was able to walk on my new garage floor.
Timing was about perfect. They poured and finished on a Saturday, the cement cured on Sunday when my dad arrived to help and on Monday while I was at work, he started on framing.
Over Thanksgiving week we worked late into the evenings (after my regular workday) on the framing of the main walls.
Back wall up with my fancy window in.
On a rainy Thanksgiving day, we got most of the walls up! This was good news, since the roofing trusses had been delivered earlier that week and were ready for install next.
Our framing methods were basic stick construction. The framing nail gun was a HUGE help in making things go quick. Sometimes too quick and you have to pull the wall apart to fix something. We built the front garage door opening three times before it was finally “done.” The crowbar got as much use as our tape measures for awhile. Insider Tip: Follow your plans, refer to them as much as possible.
Once you’re ready for trusses, most sane people will have a crane of sorts to help place them on the walls. It makes life much easier. Since us here at Apex Attack like to do everything the hard way, it meant muscling these f*ckers in place the good ol fashioned way, with our backs.
So, the weekend after thanksgiving we started, in the rain.
After the first day, we had a few up in place! These required a lot of planning ahead, and thinking on the fly while heavy things were being held up by grunting old men. We did get a system going by the end of the first day.
Using the rope, we would tie off the top of the truss being installed. Then, we would pick up each truss, get it on the walls upsidedown, and flip it into place with the rope. It was tricky… we did drop one! Luckily no one got hurt.
You’ll also notice the huge opening in my trusses. We’re adding an attic! With a roof sloping 12:12 (that’s literally 45 degrees), you have a TON of space in the truss system, so you should really make use of it. The truss company designed my attic space to be 10’ wide, 14’ long, and 7’ tall. This’ll give my wife and I all the storage space we could ever want. It’s also designed to hold 40 pounds per square foot, that's 4800 pounds! I could hide another MR2 and a half up there! Unfortunately my wife would probably notice while getting the Christmas decorations down.
The second day of truss erection, we really got a lot accomplished.
Most of my day was spent in the attic as we hoisted each truss into place. My family did most of the heavy lifting while I tried not to fall and tacked the trusses in place.
The skeleton is ready for some skin.
After a very long day, we had sheathed the front half of the roof.
“Mike, that sheathing is crooked as shit!”
I know. Unfortunately, I didn't do a good job laying out the initial slab and let’s say things are a bit out of square with the garage. Instead of a rectangle, it’s more of a parallelogram. It’s not the end of the world, but to keep the trusses lining up properly and sheathing seams correct, the sheathing had to run a bit downhill. We will trim the roofline to square and it’ll be our little secret.
That night I couldn't resist. My poor car had been sitting out in the rain for almost 2 weeks, I wanted to see if it’d fit in its new home. I didn’t even run over a nail!
With your typical Seattle winter rain coming, we kept working the following few nights my dad was in town and got quite a bit of the walls sheathed in the dark.
Thanks a bunch pops!
After he left that week, I kept chipping away at the sheathing through some pretty crappy weather.
Eventually, all the easy stuff was sheathed, so I moved onto the back roof.
Hauling 4x8 pieces of OSB up a ladder can be sketchy at best. I did make one evasive maneuver (read: jump/fall) when a wind gust caught me wrong.
The following weekend, my father-in-law made it out again to help finish the sheathing.
Once the back was tied in, onto the gable end!
Before sealing the top of the gable end up, I luckily thumbed through the truss paperwork and noticed I needed a 2x4 brace on the upper attic. I was able to toss that in while I still had room to get it in.
Once again, opposite to my most manly urges, reading the instructions helped!
Later that day, we had the gable end closed in.
Holy crap, that’s actually looking like a garage!
To celebrate the sheathing completion, the car got it’s permanent spot. The roof still had a big vent cut in along the top ridge, so it wasn’t waterproof by any means.
My sheathing used was OSB, or Oriented Strand Board. OSB is an engineered wood made from wood chips glued together. It’s not as good as real plywood, but easily half the cost. The big downfall of it is not being waterproof…like at all. So I needed to keep at it and get the roof on the following weekend.
During that week, I prepped for shingling. The crooked roof sheathing needed to be trimmed square, fascia trim boards installed, driprail and felt paper put on.
Fascia on the gable end. Way back when I was trying to figure the cost of the garage I thought “fascia board… $80 oughta cover some 1x4 wood.” Nope. It’s more than you’d think it should be. $200 later I had enough in the right size.
After a couple of windy and rainy nights with a sketchy ladder and stapler, I had the felt paper on and we were ready for shingling with my in laws.
I thought we would knock out most of the roofing in a day or two. What I didn’t account for was tying into my existing roof. Why not re-roof everything? Because we just had the old garage roof done last year and I was dumb and naïve about keeping it in place. Hindsight is 20:20 and I probably should’ve paid for metal roofing like the rest of my house.
Anyway, tying into the old roof took quite a bit of time. The ridge needed to be cut on the back, the rental roofing gun broke half way through the day. All these setbacks meant we only finished the back of the roof in one long day of up and down a shaky ladder on a steep roof.
Being the “foreman” of this operation also meant I was the guy doing the mostly sketchy stuff. This was my view most of the day as my brother and father in law ran material and cut shingles where they could. Again, I can't thank them enough! Cody also got into some “unique” situations on the ladder on his tippy toes with a nailgun. Luckily OSHA wasn’t around. (and no one fell off the roof!)
Just a plain ol’ roof to most, but to me, a bunch of hard work and accomplishment.
After renting a nail gun didn’t go too smoothly, I knew I was going to be chipping away at the front roof myself on weeknights. Renting a gun at $30/day wasn’t going to work well, so harbor freight to the rescue! $100 out the door, I now own a roofing gun that’s good for…roofing!
Fighting more rain and a big ass tarp, I made progress. Eventually I was at the tipping point and the tarp was yanked and I made a big push to finish.
On a Sunday after some early season skiing, I found myself with the roof literally a pain in my ass, putting the top vent and ridge cap on!
A roof! Holy crap! We’re like 90% dried in!
My next big inspection is framing. Naming it “framing inspection” is a little misleading. The structure should be dried in, roof on, rough in electrical, windows and doors on, etc. Next we needed to install the back window!
First, the housewrap. Then cut your window hole, apply a fancy (and expensive) waterproof tape, and hope your window fits the rough opening still!
Wow, that was pretty easy! Once in, a lot of caulking helped seal everything up.
We are making big strides now. The garage door is on order and arrives soon, but since it is no longer raining inside the garage, we can start rough in electrical.
With the interior work starting, the fun part begins, setting up my shop!