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.