Garage and other bits

[Stickystuff]

Mods of this isn’t allowed or in the wrong place let me know.

When my wife and I bought our house just over 2 years ago it came without a dark and dingy concrete prefab garage. It was your standard sized garage but the roof slopes towards the back and it got cramped very easily. At first it was a bit of a dumping ground as things do when you first move in but I never liked it and felt it was always too small so I wanted something bigger.

I had got hold of another prefab garage conveniently from my work at the time with a few panels damaged, that didn’t bother me as I had intended to only extend the current one and put a proper roof on it.

In the end I decided to get rid of both pre-fabs and build myself one instead! So I started dismantling the old one. I had to store a lot of the other bits of stored items in my shed and our daughters play house. Lucky they are there as I had no where else to put my junk.

My mate came round to give me a hand and less than 1 hour and half later it was down

I then tidied the area to make way for the new one. The original was 3metres by 5 metres. Having an A6 I wanted to be able to get the car in aswell as having a bench at the end and my toolbox along the side. Originally I wanted it to be 6.5metres long and 3.5 metres wide but as were having an extension on the back of the house, by the time I’ve moved it back and widened to accommodate the house it would have narrowed the garden too much at the bottom. So I settled with 6.2 metres long and 3.2 metres wide. That still gives me room to squeeze around the car should the weather decide to turn for the worse. Eventually I’d like a pit but the water level is actually pretty high considering how bad it was dogging the foundations for the extension.

So I set about premaking panels to aid the build as I will be putting it up pretty much by myself with the occasional help from my dad. I managed to get hold of a load of 2x3 timbers in 2.4 metre lengths for a decent price plus plenty of screws. I think I used somewhere in the region of 3000 screws and it’s still not finished. I’ve just screwed them together as I wanted the height to allow a good head height and a storage floor in the roof.

I got hold of two free windows, they were from a toilet and a bathroom so we’re frosted glass which was preferable to keep prying eyes out but still allow some natural light in. I also build a larger than normal door which will go on the side to allow decent access without having to open the main doors. I’d like to be able to get my mountain bike in with easy access if needed.

I then covered the outsides of the panel in what is basically DPC sheet for water proofing and I used proper DPC rolls on the very bottom to protect from water rotting the bases.

I then got set on building a brick base for the panels to sit on to keep them off any splashing rain water or run off etc as the base is larger than the garage.

I enlisted the help of my dad to make sure the bricks where nice and level especially as there would be a garage door sized gap at the front. I actually laid most of the bricks and we measured it to be a drop of around 5mm between the front and the back. Considering I’ve never laid bricks before I didn’t think that was too bad.

We also added a concrete slope to further reduce any water being able to splash back into the panels.

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[Orange225]

Looks good. Got a small tip if there’s room for it, for security of bikes and anything of value it’s good to build a false back so if anyone dead get in the garage they’ll just think the wall is the back of the garage. I need to pull my finger out and build my garage

 

[Sandra]

@Stickystuff your doing an amazing job.

 

[Stickystuff]

Thanks guys, good idea on the fake wall. But I’m limited on the space I can use for that. I know it’s only a wood garage but I’ll be planning on using floor anchors or something similar with chains to hold our bikes steady.

I’ll up date tomorrow with some more work done on it


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[Stickystuff]

So after getting the brick base up and left for a few days to dry I started assembling the panels. Because of how the boundary line goes with the neighbour the back end of their garage angles in slightly, however the roof is still square with the rear of the wall so it over hangs into our boundary by about 6-7 inches. So I’m building mine as close to that as possible with about an inch gap when it’s up. In order to do that and have the wall cladded properly I’ve built the entire side wall up on stands and clad it ready to push it up in one go.

After getting it all clad I realised how ****** heavy it was, I had originally thought about getting a few of my friends round to help lift it up, but my parents were round one evening and just before they left we gave it a go. So I lifted it up as high as I could at each section while my parents pushed the stands further under to get a better angle, once they were as far as we could go we then lifted up the 3 panels and used some of the timber lengths to chock it up moving up half a foot to a foot at a time. Then between us we managed to get it past it’s balance point and lift it in place. I then secured one of the back panels to steady it overnight. I knew it was a bit risky as the front of the side could wobble easily especially as it had been reasonably windy but it managed to stay up until I could add more panels.

Once I had got all the panels up and screws down to the bricks I added a layer of the 2x3s along the top of the panels with plenty of screws along to try and increase rigidity to try and stop the panels from wobbling against each other. No photos of this step though.

I got my mates around for a day to speed up the cladding and we got quite far. I needed to order some more cladding as I underestimated how much I needed but it was only a small amount so not the worst.

I then got set on securing the two half’s together and building the roof trusses.
In hind sight I should have drawn some proper plans and built the trusses separately so that they were all even and the same as I built them each individually in situ as the photos show. The roof is level along the top but the inside you can see they are not all 100% even. I enlisted the help of my dad again for this to try and speed things up.

I used 2x4s for the lower part of the truss to increase the strength as the span is 3.2 metres. The 2x3s don’t think would be strong enough.

We built the centre span to get the correct height, added the sloping edge and then added sections in between in diagonal positions to increase strength and spread the load. The intention is to tile
The roof so spreading the load and strength is key. I’ve used mostly 3 inch screws mostly as the battery on my drill is giving up. In the end we used some of the 4 inch screws I was given, I wish I’d have used these from the start as they are thicker and have a much stronger bite that the 3 inch. They still did a good stable job though.

Another reason I would build from a plan in future is because I had to make 3 panels for each side, there were two panels made from the uncut lengths which made them 2.4 metres long I think had to make a smaller panel that was 1.4 metres long this then meant that the gaps between each strut was different. As you can see towards the front of the garage the gap is smaller than one of them at the back

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[Stickystuff]

Over a period of a couple of weeks of a few evenings and weekends we got the roof trusses completed.

At the front of the garage I made some of the trusses with square strengthening so that it allows access when I board it for my storage level. You can see the difference below:

Once we finished the trusses we covered the front and rear triangles and then using the same DPC sheet as the panels we covered the complete roof in one sheet to help with water proofing.

We then added the glass to the window frames and started to add the slats for the roof tiles.

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[Charlie Farley]

looks excellent chap, did you need planning permission , some local authorities can be a tad difficult with large garages sometimes.

 

[Stickystuff]

Yes very true. It’s erred on the edge of caution..... and it’s inline with my neighbours roof pitch so doesn’t go above what is already there. I also checked with my neighbours before I put it up, luckily I’ve got good neighbours

I’ve reached my upload limit for this month so I’ll have to up date when I can add more photos.





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