The Lift is in!
I ended up having to do this a little differently than planned, due to some previously unnoticed "construction issues". The beam (right side in the picture) was more centered than planned, and a poorly placed expansion joint cut in the concrete limited the other side, so the lift had to be installed in a narrow configuration. It still works fine, but makes getting in and out of cars a bit more difficult. The only alternative was to tear up the concrete, or risk a potentially unsafe installation - neither one a good option. As it is, I probably have the most highly secured car lift in Raleigh, given that I'm not using any "standard" concrete anchors, but rather heavily over-engineered and over-spec'd bolts held in place with some of the best epoxy money can buy. Of course, I then increased the strength 50%+ on top of that because, hey, if 4" of concrete embedment is good enough for the engineer, then 6+ inches must be better!

Regardless of any over-engineering - I didn't stay sitting under that truck for very long. There's a certain level of "what the heck am I doing" that does cross one's mind in these situations!

Next up - fix the air leak to the upstairs. I had originally planned to keep the access to the upstairs open, but quickly realized that all the warm air goes straight out the roof vents. I'm going to need to do some wiring movement to do it right, but I think I'll close off the stairwell to the 2nd floor. This will need to be done when we finish off this area anyway, so might as well reap the benefits now. I've got a tarp up blocking the stairwell for now, but it's still a giant heat sink.

Then on to final wiring, insulation, and HVAC!

2.5 months later... finally finished the painting! Sort of. All the siding and trim is painted at least, and all the ladder work is now done. Still have a little painting to do on the lower concrete portions of the sides and back walls, but need to figure out the landscaping first.

Though I liked the way it turned out, that 2' difference between the roof lines was sure a nightmare to get painted. Since we have 8" facia boards and about 10" of overhang, there was barely enough room to get the soffits painted, let alone actually get my head under there to get a glance at what I was actually doing. Doesn't much matter, it's nearly impossible to see it anyway, but I wanted to get it protected. I'm VERY glad we pre-primed every inch of the wood we had put up though - that job would have been a months worth of nightmares if that was unprimed.

Now on to figure out insulation (foam or fiberglass), HVAC planning (so I know where and what power I need to put in for additional heat), air lines (copper or flexible nylon), and what sort of wall finish I want to do (probably drywall)? Any guesses as to what my holiday plans encompass?

Copper Overkill

Final check has been paid - the garage is ours! Spent the last week and a half planning, getting the electrical permits, and starting the wiring. I decided to bring in an electrician to work with me on the main subpanel feed to the garage, but that may turn out to be more headache than it was worth. Had my mom visiting this last week and we have been working on getting most of the branch circuits wired in - up to where the panel should soon be installed (if I can get the electrician to show back up with my panel!). Should be just a couple more nights to get the electrical rough-in done. I think we probably went overkill with lights, switches, and outlets, but I'd rather do too many rather than too few!

I did hit an unfortunate snag, however. Evidently the county has been seeing lots of folks self-finish "unfinished storage" spaces, so they will not allow me to wire my upstairs space with anything but a single outlet and 2 ceiling lights. My intent was to use this partly as an extended workshop space, and in retrospect, I should have had that space labeled as workshop space on my original building permit, as I may need to pull a new full building permit to re-classify that space. For now, I'm just going with it until we know if/when we will do a full finish-out of the space. Of course, this is all after the building inspector made us do a full "proper", finished stairway. C'est la vie.

My father-in-law came over this weekend and finished up most of the trim painting. I've just got a small area between the roof lines left to do and that part will be done too. I think I'll wait 'till cooler weather, though!

Glad to be done with THAT ladder

I've learned something about myself. I don't mind being on ladders. I don't mind being on roofs. But I can really do without having to be on ladders that are on roofs.

Thanks to Gary, who ended up doing most of the real work while I held the ladder (I am clearly NOT a professional painter and tend to operate at something akin to a snails pace), we got the remainder of the wall above the jut-out painted today, along with the trim boards along that roofline. I need to paint the window trim on that wall yet, but can do that part without a ladder. Glad to have the worst of that behind us now.... next time I'll seriously be considering renting a boom truck/trailer.

Final Passed!

Inspector had a couple comments (didn't like my toe boards still screwed to the roof on the jut-out that I left up there when painting), but was ok otherwise and passed the garage final inspection for us. Garage door guy is coming back Monday to lower the spring on the high lift an inch and a half so we can sheetrock at some point later without having to do excessive boxing into the ceiling cavity. The good news, for the garage door guy anyway, is that we decided to keep these garage door window panels - after much deliberation (and those that know me know that I did an exhaustive comparison of my options) we think these are sorta cool looking. Gutters will be installed toward the beginning of next week as well. Just have a bit more painting to finish up this weekend, and then we can start electrical work.

The end is near!

Heights

Only when you climb a ladder just to get you high enough to get on another ladder, does the height really come into picture.














And here's what she looks like (admittedly less picture perfect with the overspray on the trimwork, but that will be remedied soon). These actually weren't the windows we were "supposed" to get - but I sort of like the look. Need to decide whether to have them swap the panels out with a "standard" 4-window option which was what we were going for.

Caulking finished up this morning, a few pavers out the back door to make the step down more within code, and all the locks have been installed. I think we're ready for the final inspection!

The list is getting shorter

The list of stuff left to do is getting shorter. Much shorter.

The crew came back and (as promised) finished up the boxing and siding work in a day. Except for garage doors, we are now officially dried in! Garage doors arrive late next week, so now it's just a few "punch-list" type items to take care of in the next week and we're mostly done. With the contractor's part at least.

I've been able to finish the exterior priming over the last couple nights, so we no longer have any exposed wood surfaces. Need to get the caulking done before we can get a C/O, but not a whole lot left to do for that.

Now to figure out the details for electrical....

Waitin' on wood

The big downside of using a not-so-popular-anymore siding profile is that when the lumber yard runs out, they quite literally need to go cut more trees down. So, short something like 30 boards, we are a week and a half into a 2-3 week holding pattern. Looks like we may get the remainder next Weds, though, and then I get to do more priming. Hopefully the heat will break before then!

I've got a bunch of caulking and a bit of trim painting to do in the meantime, but the end of this phase is in sight! Then the fun stuff - wiring, lift install, etc....

Decisions, Decisions.

Wow, garage doors are expensive! Plan B - basic doors.... Whatcha think?

Almost....

So we're getting there. Right side, back wall, and 3/4 of the front wall siding was finished today. Unfortunately, we're starting to run short on wood. The bad news is that this means we need to buy more, and the worse news is that this means we have a bunch more priming to do. 2 Gallons worth, at least.


The builder did find a few more bundles of our shingles so they can fix the roof. He mentioned that there are 3 bundles left after these. Total. Hope we don't need many more!





We're trying to figure out garage doors now.... I think we're going to at least get these ones priced - note that this is a hacked image so we could play with garage door styles - it's NOT a real photo!

Progress

The job manager brought in a crew today to get things rolling, after he and another guy spent the better part of the last few days working out the details for installation of this siding, fixing the boxing and trimming out the windows so they work with the siding profile.

Made some good progress today, though, and the crew is coming back tomorrow to keep it rolling.

The roofer comes back Monday to pull the outer course of shingles off all three outer roof lines to get the overlap fixed - he just didn't leave enough to work with, even if we left the drip edge off. Hopefully the builder was able to source more shingles - as they've been discontinued and we barely got the ones we have here. Starting to come together, though!

Slow Dancing

Well, we're definitely at the slow part. The guys who actually have to make the stuff all the other crews did look good. They're starting the boxing and siding now, and it hasn't been without it's challenges.

First, the framers put full size rafter tails all the way out to the eves. That would have been fine, if we weren't trying to match the eves on the house. So, now the carpenters have to cut back each rafter tail and all the fly rafters, the hard way.

Then, we realized that the roofers, who were also the framers, didn't leave enough shingle overlap on the sides to accommodate the trim boards and drip edging. Oops. Short of some major changes that might do more hard than good, not a lot we can do on this one. Not a huge deal as drip edging basically isn't used on the sides here anyway, but it's on the house and that's what it was supposed to match. They're going to fab up some custom "L" shaped drip edging without the T-profile so it doesn't require any extra shingle overlap, but will have a mostly similar look.

And then there's that Dustin guy with his nit-picky requests.... Since we're using a moderately expensive solid wood siding, I'm having the guys seal the cut board ends that will be exposed to weather, bevel cut any joints to shed water, and space the siding boards a bit to allow moisture expansion (all of this is per installation specs, by the way, but probably wouldn't have been done had I not kept on them). But the less than perfectly straight boards are posing some unexpected challenges, and after a little over 2 days we almost have one side of the garage done.

I don't want to be too hard on the guys though - they really do want to do it in a way I'll be happy with it, and that's one of the things I knew I could rely on this builder to do for me. And, the reality is that it's starting to look pretty good. This part of the project is easily going to push into next week, but there's really not much more to do after that point.

We meet with the Garage Door Guy tomorrow - I have no idea what sort of doors we're going to put on this thing!

Oh, and we've decided to change colors up too. Since we went with a Vinyl window in a Taupe-ish Clay-e, Biscuit-like sort of color, we think we're going to do a Medium to Darkish Grey-Green color over the garage and house (twice as dark as the primer tints on the siding and trim on the second picture - those are intentionally lighter). We'll then paint the existing trimwork to match these new windows, as well. We think. Maybe. We've got a week or four to figure that part out, since we only have to have primer on for the final inspections.

9 Gallons. Wishful thinking. We ended up using over 17 gallons to seal this rough-sawn wood. Had I known that going in I probably would have punted and just planned to surface spray the whole thing, but at least the top coat should go on easier now. And of course, I opted for high quality Benjamin Moore primer (and we quite literally nearly bought the Triangle area out of the stuff), so we now added a significant line item to the budget list.

Big Kudos to Malia and her dad for helping me out with this all weekend. We put in 8ish hours Saturday (though that should have taken us 3 - we were trying to brush everything in and it was taking us forever), 6ish hours Sunday, and something closer to 13 hours today. Ready to go back to work so I can rest a little! :-)

Paint Party

The framers finished up yesterday, and the siding/boxing/trimout crew comes in on Monday to finish the weather sealing. My "particular" side (AR, as Malia would say) came out when it became clear the framers weren't concerned with installing the Tyvek and flashing to manufacturer specs. Joseph agreed with me completely, and the finish guys are now lined up to take care of it.

We picked up 9 gallons of primer today - we have somewhere around 3000-4000 square feet of cedar and cypress siding surface to prime. We're about 6-7 hours, and 2 gallons, in now. What are YOUR plans for the holiday weekend?!

The Devil's in the Details....

Hey, look, it's not quite so bus-terminal-ish! They got most of the remaining OSB installed today, and window openings were framed -- a few of them twice. Got to looking out the door and noticed that my wider-than-tall window opening was framed out taller-than-wide. Turns out they missed that these are slider windows, not double-hungs. OOPS. At least we caught it early. Lost an hour or so on that one.

Shingles are going up too, and I'm happy that the ones on the front seem to match the house better - on the back they just look a tad darker - probably just a combination of them being wet, needing a few good rains and hot days to get washed off, etc...

Here's a shot of the inside. It'll shrink a little when the platform going out the back door is built and stairs are done (which go up from the back left corner toward the front).







And finally, one of the upstairs (taken from ~2' off the ground so not a good angle). Those knee walls are somewhere close to 5' I think. I think code will require I add some sort of rail to that 2' step up once I do finish that area out, but I'd still keep it an open plan. The storage areas outside the knee walls are pleasantly sizable, as well - not huge, mind you, but big enough to stack rubbermaids full of car stuff :-)

The Man Upstairs

The man upstairs....... is me! Well, not really, as technically there are no stairs yet - but I do own a ladder! Any reservations I had about the height of this building are gone now. It's certainly not any shorter, but I care much less after visiting the 2nd floor tonight.

I realized I hadn't seen that side of the floor boards yet - so obviously I couldn't just go to bed without climbing up there. Of course, I did all the calcs before hand, but 2 adjacent (almost) 12'x18' rooms ends up being a nice big space. Knee walls and ceiling joists may make it a bit smaller looking tomorrow --- I'll take some pics then.

Welcome to Bus Terminal C

The crew had the right side gable up by 9 this morning, with the rafters up shortly after. Most the sheeting was up by noon. One of the rear roof sections is already roofed, too!






This thing looks like a bus terminal still, though, since they haven't finished the wall areas over where the garage doors will be.








Pretty happy with how the right side came out though - the scale is pretty well in check and the nook does a decent job bringing the scale of that wall down - at least that's what I'm telling myself!




They expect to be mostly finished up tomorrow - and that probably includes installing the windows and doors that came late today. Can't wait to see it tomorrow!

Sky High

The framers finished up the decking on the 2nd floor today, and got the left gable end raised. Note that the garage doors aren't really as tall as they look in this picture - they just haven't framed down from the beam, which they kept at the top of the wall. In reality, the top of the garage doors will be just below where the horizontal bracing is going across the door area.

We had one slight misunderstanding to work through today, as the framers weren't going to add any decking outside the knee walls of the upstairs area. I had assumed, but evidently not communicated the point, that the whole thing should be decked continuously. That will be prime storage area and would be much harder to access once the ceiling and knee walls are in place. All is good now, though, and we got 1/2" OSB in place there, which will be just fine for storage (and at ~1/4 of the cost of the 3/4 decking, makes good sense anyway).

The scale of this thing is really starting to come together... I'm almost a little scared to see what the thing will look like tomorrow when the right side gable goes up - as that's that tall side of the structure. Keeping my fingers crossed that the "entry area" is tall enough to bring down the visual impact of that wall.... at least that's the theory.


The left side doesn't look too bad, though, given it's 2' shorter and recessed ~1.5' into the ground.










This shot was actually from yesterday, but for some reason seems to truly represent the (overbuilt) intent of this garage. This picture is a closeup of the steel beam from the front wall of the garage. See the 13 solid 2x4's with some 3/4" decking added in for good measure, carrying my 18" tall (40plf) steel beam - yup, that there's my kind of structure. :-)

Oh, and we even got some shingles up today on the back side of the entry area. The non-standard shingles (equipped with a flap that has to be folded up during install) had the guy confused for a few minutes, but we got it worked out.


And finally, if you put in 5-6 hours of manual labor before lunch, in 95+ degree heat, and had another 4-5 hours to go in even more brutal heat, what would you do during your lunch hour?

Play soccer of course! These guys work hard and like a well oiled machine, and they like to have fun in their off time - which is every minute of their 60 minute lunch hour not taken up by wolfing down their food, and even after quitting time. These guys enjoy working and playing together and it shows. Really is a good crew.

I suspect we'll have the roof completely up tomorrow!

Steel by noon

As promised, the framers showed up at 8am today. They got busy right away, and by 9:10am they were hoisting the first wall up!






At ~1:30, the crane showed up from the steel company and made quick work of dropping the 18" steel beam onto the framed up walls. The guys then spent the rest of the afternoon working details. Impressive progress for 1 day of framing!

Pics added below!

Finally got some pictures up and added to yesterday's post. Thanks to my wife for taking one of me hosing off the freshly poured slab in my bare feet. Hey, my shoes were dirty!

We got slab!

The concrete crew showed up at 7:30 this morning to get the dirt leveled inside the foundation walls and lay down a rock bed for the slab. Hit a soft spot in the soil - probably where a root was - that took a little extra digging and backfill to get solid ground. Had rebar laid in at 2' on center to keep things as solid as possible. Sort of glad I was there as they were short 3 sections of bar, and had no intentions of adding those pieces in. It's overkill and I wouldn't have ever noticed I'm sure, but I feel better knowing it's done right.

Also had two 4'x4'x12" thick (total) pads installed where the 2-post lift bases will be mounted - again, it's overkill, but at least I won't question whether it'll hold. You can sort of see them in this pic - right about where the yellow handled tool is sitting on the right side (and the other to the left of that).

The concrete ended up going down a bit soupier than I had hoped on the first 5-yard load, but the 2nd and third trucks were a little better. In retrospect I should have reiterated the fact that I wanted it poured as dry as reasonably possible again (like I did with the footings), but I backed off since the footing guys poured it a bit too dry when I made that request and weren't able to work it very well in the heat.

I think Thomas Concrete (Thanks Brian!) also added some retarder additives to slow down the curing in the high heat, as the workers waited for a good while for that stuff to set up (nothing like the footers which set up too quick), despite the 95 degree heat today. Luckily, the freak rain storms held off JUST long enough, and in fact added water to the slab at just about the right time.

Here's a shot right after the rains.... of course the surface isn't absolutely perfect (nor would anybody expect it to be) but the water at this stage of evaporation REALLY shows the irregularities.










While most people water their lawns in this heat, we're watering our concrete for the next few days. Of course, the intent here is to keep the curing as slow as possible, with the intent to maximize strength. Unfortunately, we've already got a handfull of hairline cracks visible, which doesn't thrill me at all, but it's pretty much going to happen regardless, especially when pouring in the summer. That's why we added the rebar though - control the cracking where it happens. We'll keep our fingers crossed that these won't get any worse and take it from there.

Drained

Foundation waterproofing tar was applied yesterday and drainage pipe installed. They came back this morning to finish up the backfilling. After some back and forth, I had them cut the elevation down on the left side of the garage a bit to ease parking of my truck and trailer on that side.

Also got them to fill a low spot off the steps of the deck, and create a couple berms to help with drainage from the neighbor's property. It's not much to look at right now (after all, it's just dirt), but it's coming together.

Slab work starts Monday!

Blocking the Way

6/15/2010: Hard to believe that 3 guys finished blocking the entire wall in 1 day. They started ~9am, and packed up ~8:30 pm. In that time, they laid more than 5 courses of block (the back right corner and much of the back wall was actually too low, so they cut blocks down to make spacers to get everything back up to level). I didn't make it easy on them either, having spec'd rebar in the footings on average every 32" with corresponding filled block cavities all the way up, which meant they went through a LOT of mortar! I also had them install ladder reinforcement wire in the horizontal grout lines on the back and left side walls that will be below grade - just because it sounded like it couldn't hurt and was cheap insurance. Finally, I had them put 2x 2" conduits in the wall that I will use to run power and data lines between the garage and house. Note that they also texture-finished the entire outer surface - basically a parge coat - to match the house. The grout lines are still wet in this shot so still "show through".

Next steps: waterproofing, drainage, and backfill, and then comes the slab....

Diggin In

6/9/2010: Footings trenched in, ready for concrete! I was pleasantly surprised to find out that we'd end up with a 24" wide footing vs the code minimum 16" - due largely in part to the fact that the backhoe's bucket is 24" wide!

Heavy Equipment

6/7/2010: They brought out the big boy tools to get the stumps out. I'm glad I didn't try to do this myself - sure I could have done it, but not with the efficiency the pros work at. Mr. Young himself loaded up 2 full dump-truck loads worth of stumps and made a sizable pile of dirt in the process - all in less than a day!

Shingles First?

June 3, 2010: The Shingles are the first materials on site. No, this isn't poor planning - these special type shingles we put on our house just 4+ years ago have been discontinued due to GAF buying out ELK, and the GAF-branded replacements are also being discontinued now as well. Better buy them while we can!

Enough of this planning stuff... time to see this thing take shape!

Permits in hand without issues!

June 1, 2010: Let's get this thing started!

Contract Signed!

May 28, 2010: Now we're REALLY going to build this garage!

In the beginning...

Fall 2009: Visit the Home Show, and collect some business cards of builders

Christmas 2009: after trying to get this done all through November and December, I finally make some progress on putting together the "perfect" design.

January 2010: With an initial design in hand I start making calls to builders. Still not sure if I'm going to contract the whole thing out, or try to manage it myself.

February 2010: Quotes starting to roll in. Becomes apparent pretty quick that I need to rethink what I'm really trying to accomplish with this garage, regardless of who does the work. Spending significantly more than we paid for our first house just doesn't seem right! Ok, so the plan did have an unfinished 800 Sq. Foot "Apartment" above a sizable garage, but still....

Early March 2010: Basically got it narrowed down to just a couple potential builders. Delays in getting to this point have me more or less convinced that I really need somebody else to manage this project. Also have a simplified set of plans together - we've detached it from the house, simplified the upstairs area into a 1/2 story bonus room/workshop area, and cut the size down a bit to 24x32. We're keeping our fingers crossed that we get this into our $$ comfort zone. At the recommendation from a friend who just had a screen-porch put on by this guy, we also added one last contractor into the final pool of candidates.

March 3, 2010: stump-henge is born. The neighbors were having a large number of trees removed and we approached their tree crew and negotiated a (low) price to take down ~15 trees where the garage will be located. The expanse of 5' high stumps left (to facilitate removal of the entire root systems later when the foundation is dug) becomes known as "stump-henge" in the neighborhood.

Late March 2010: 2nd round of quotes coming back. YAY - the changes cut ~40% off the cost, though it'll probably be more like 25-30% once we get done with the concrete driveway work and electrical that I'm now planning to manage myself.

April 2010: Got it widdled down to 2 contractors. ~10% lower quote, willingness to let me work some parts of the project myself, and glowing reviews from all his references, including the afore-mentioned friend who just had work done, seals the deal. We're FINALLY gonna build a garage!

May 2, 2010: After some final "details" discussions, we opt to add a "bump-out" entry area about 4'x14' to the right side of the garage (bottom side of this picture). While also accommodating the "man" door, this extra width will allow me ability to properly position a 2-post lift in the garage while keeping both bays usable AND being able to walk around both sides of the lift posts.

Final drawings completed and sent to the Joseph (aka Joseph Grantham of Joseph Grantham Custom Homes, the builder we're using), to be sent to the engineer.


May 3, 2010: DOH. I'm a day late - the engineer's office is closed down for a long weekend, so we'll wait for ~a week.

Mid May, 2010: Plans back from the engineer. Joseph working on pricing out in detail. Unfortunately, lumber prices have skyrocketed in the last month or so as we've been working through these details, so the pricing has gone up a little.