Garage build - Lots of pics

[PaulTGarrett]

OK, here is my new Man Cave in living color! The story behind it is that it was simply less expensive to build it than to keep paying rent on a commercial warehouse of roughly the same size. Over the past couple of years they just kept jacking their rates up and up to the point of being stupid. Shame, since they are only 5 blocks away (walking distance) and having other automotive, machine, and welding shops literally next door was pretty sweet. Oh well, they are still withing walking distance. So, we took out an equity line of credit, found a metal building company, and got the permits. Paying back the line of credit will actually save me around $500 compared to what I was paying for the warehouse.

The building is 35' wide by 30' deep with 12' walls. There are two 10x10' garage doors and two 3' entry doors. There currently is no electric or water, those are coming next. I'll be dropping in 150 amp 120/240 single phase to the building. Water will just be for a kitchen sink and a shower, draining into a French drain. No toilet, house is close enough and don't want to waste the floor space.

My wife is disabled and we very rarely used the back yard, excuse the overgrown nature preserve look in the starting photos. LOL The building is as far back in the rear left of the property as codes and easements allowed.

So here come the pics:

Welcome to the jungle -


This clump of scrub oaks will be removed so I can access the back yard. My tree service guy said the limbs were diseased and in danger of falling on our house or the neighbor's house so we didn't need a landscaping permit to remove them. <wink><wink>

 

[PaulTGarrett]

First job was to remove the jungle. If you are in the Tampa Bay, Florida area and need a damn good tree service, drop me a PM and I'll let you know who I used. I highly recommend them!



All cleaned up! Took the tree service every bit of two full days. I discovered there were houses behind ours! Who knew?! LOL

 

[PaulTGarrett]

Next comes the property surveys... The city vacated the alley that used to run behind our house and deeded the alley to us. So we got a full property survey to make sure where the true corners were. They the survey crew then surveyed out where the building was to be located and marked it for the first permitting inspection. Then they came out and staked out the corners of the slab. During the survey we found that our back yard was almost a foot lower than the front yard. I'll explain why this was important in a bit.

 

[PaulTGarrett]

OK, now it's time for things to get real... Let's bust up some ground! When Hurricane Charley blew through back in 2004, that was the most water we had ever seen in the yard. Remember how I said the back yard was a foot lower than the front? Well the back yard was completely covered with water. As in COVERED with water. The water came up to the house and was up half-way under the garage side door threshold. So even though it meant a 24" footer instead of a 12", I had the concrete contractor plan on the surface of the shop being equal to the surface of the garage. That way I could be confident that the shop wouldn't flood even in a extreme weather event. If I had just built the slab on grade... Well, who knows... I'd rather spend a few bucks up front to not have to worry about the shop.



End of Concrete Day 1


Finishing up the dirt work. To get the desired floor height, we brought in 80 yards of fill. I had originally thought I'd just get a load in the back of the truck, bring it in and spread it. Save a few bucks doing it myself. I brought in two three-yard loads in my 2500 before finding out it was going to take a bit more than that... So left it to the contractor. I'd probably still be bringing in dirt! LOL


End of Concrete Day 2


End of Concrete Day 3, waiting on the Building Inspector

 

[PaulTGarrett]

The footer inspection passed. The Inspector suggested that if I was going to pull an electrical permit at a later date, I should add the grounding wire to the footer. I didn't know the grounding wire goes to the footer now instead of driving a ground rod in under the electrical service entrance. He was awesome for letting me know that! He also came back later in the afternoon to check the grounding wire, finishing up all the inspections needed!

So let's pour some concrete!






Concrete drying in the Florida sun! End of Concrete Day 5


And the final result, one big honkin' slab of Portland's best! Note the finished height above ground. I will be getting a sloped apron poured from side to side as soon as the loan is paid down a bit. Having the extra concrete, steel, and a butt load of dirt ate up the budget for now.


As I said in my other "tease" post, the rear fence is going to be moved back 10' to the actual property line, there is 8' from the right side of the building to the fence that is out of camera view so no problem getting back there. It's the fence company's problem, anyway! LOL

Before the rear fence gets replaced, the property survey found that the dead pine tree, half dead scrub oak, and a clump of bamboo (out of sight to the right) are all actually on our property. Guess I'll be getting the tree service back out for round 2. The neighbor to the right rear is going to pay for half of the bamboo removal.

The wooden fence to the left actually belongs to the neighbor. It is in truly sad shape and he says he plans on replacing it with a vinyl fence. When is to be seen...

 

[PaulTGarrett]

So now after a couple of months, the metal building company has finally gotten me on the construction list. Seems the wet Florida summer messed with their schedule a bit so it took some time to catch up. The building was supposed to have been completed before December 31. Not a real big deal, since it was their problem they "gave" me an extension. I checked with the Building Department and my permit was still open so no problem there.

Bright and early last Tuesday morning this shows up in my front yard. LOL


Ya gotta love a pre-fab building. It was just one big-boy sized Erector set! Or Lego set for you kids too young to remember Erector sets! LOL

 

[PaulTGarrett]

Some random pics...

 

[PaulTGarrett]

More random pics....







End of Building Day 1. These guys do NOT waste any time! All of the framing is complete, both side walls are complete, and they are starting on some of the trim.

 

[PaulTGarrett]

Building Day 2 started too frickin' early in the morning!! Ugh! I am NOT a morning person! The crew arrived at 7am, this pic was taken around 8am after a nice hot cup of coffee. The pics following are random shots taken every so often through the day.

 

[PaulTGarrett]

More of Building Day 2

 

[Aussie-John]

Wow! Looking good mate.

 

[PaulTGarrett]

And so here we end up. The end of Building Day 2. Yard's been cleaned up, crew is packed and gone, wife has come out and said "WTF?! You didn't say it was going to be that big!" LOL Now to move out of the ridiculously overpriced warehouse by the end of February... Plumbing will probably be next since I can just get some PVC pipe and run it from the house pretty inexpensively. Electrical will take too big of a bite out of the wallet right now so will get it done over the next few months.

From this...



To this....



That's pretty much it, start to finish... Total investment so far $25,600 and change... I'm budgeting another $2500 or so for electrical, a thousand or so for plumbing, and a few thousand for the sloped concrete apron.

Time to get out the BBQ and a beer (or two)!

 

[Aussie-John]

Way cool!

 

[TruckTime19]

Congrats! that is awesome!

 

[kiloRAM]

That is awesome. Jealous...

 

[S0CAL]

Nice job, @PaulTGarrett. You going with MC or rigid for electrical?

 

[PaulTGarrett]

Nice job, @PaulTGarrett. You going with MC or rigid for electrical?

Rigid conduit... It looks "cleaner" to me. No droopy looking cable in my nice clean building! LOL

 

[S0CAL]

LOL I hear ya. I am gonna cheat and roll with MC, but I plan to hide it all behind T&G 3/4" ply.

 

[bigred74]

Awesome man!! Turned out really good! Love the lofted ceiling in the building

 

[PaulTGarrett]

Awesome man!! Turned out really good! Love the lofted ceiling in the building

I liked it on this building design, too. I -may- install a 2-post lift on the left side of the building at a later date. Still a bit uncertain due to cost vs how much it will really get used. The open framing gives me lots of room for the lift.

As the building is now, it is front to back with a lot of crap. I had to move out of my old shop so as to not pay an additional month's rent so it was just shovel it in, sort it out later. And shovel it in is what it looks like right now. The right rear of the building I framed in and built a 15x12x8' (wdh) office. Then put 2x8x7' metal shelves in front of the office. The left side of the building has shelves, tool cabinets, air compressor, etc lining the wall. As soon as I get everything sorted, sold, trashed, and otherwise cleared out my '75 Bronco will move in and the restoration will commence!