What's Going On

When I moved in with Kathy, she had a 1-car tuckunder garage. This leaves no room for me to park car or motorcycle. I also have no place for building my airplane and doing other shop-like activities. Finally, storage space has been over-consumed.

So the plan is simple: we're building a new detached garage. It's huge -- 24 feet wide by 40 feet deep. For reference, a standard 2-car garage door is 16-feet wide, so we have 4 feet to either side of the door. The longest car we could find during an internet search was just over 21 feet -- and this is significantly longer than either of our existing cars. So in effect we're building a 2 by 2 car garage. The back half of the garage will be my workshop and provide room for storage.

What about all that dirt

The building site slopes away from the driveway. When we eyeballed it, it looked like it sloped down about 18 inches by the back of the garage. Unfortunately, it was somewhat more than that. There's nearly 3 feet of dirt built up at the back of the structure. Yikes!

Notes: Monday, May 3

Okay, so I haven't posted anything for a while. The garage exterior is finally almost done. I'm putting the siding up. Then it's just paint and the exterior is done!

The interior -- I need to finish the electrial, which is about half done. I haven't run power from the house yet.

And I need to find a heating and air place to do a furnace.

Then it's insulation and drywall! After that, storage, workbenches, and get my air compressor plumbed more professionally.

Notes: Thursday October 18

On Monday, the excavator came and brought in all that dirt. Wednesday, the concrete guys came and set the forms around. Bright and early this morning, the city inspector signed off, and the concrete arrived in to big cement trucks. By 10:00, the concrete was poured, and now the cement contractor simply had to wait for it to set up enough to trowel it. They laid several of the concrete blocks on top of the drying cement and vowed to finish laying block tomorrow.

I can walk on the new concrete by Saturday. Home Depot will deliver a pile of wood on Tuesday and I'll be able to start framing. With any luck, we'll get the guys to help raise the walls when they're all here for dinner on Saturday. Then we have to wait for the rafters to arrive.