Our Garage under construction
11/5/97
Author/[email protected]
11/6/97
11/15/97
11/22/97
Walls going up!
Ok, so here's where the project hits a MAJOR snag! Those trusses on
the ground
are 6/12 pitch (9' high peak). The plans I spec'd specified 4-12
pitch, for a 5'4"
peak external and a 2'6" peak internal.
Who cares? New Castle County specifies maximum height of the building
at 17'!
With the trusses at 6-12 we had a height of 19'8", violating county
code!
I noticed this when 1/2 of the roof was on, the day before Thanksgiving.
Shorty, who
had ordered the trusses, was NOT happy. He stopped work, sent
the workmen home,
and said he'd "Deal with it".
He called back later that day (11/25/97) to say he had reordered the
trusses. They told
him about 10 days to 2 weeks! That put us at December 10th before
the roof arrives.
On December 1st I came home at lunch to see the following:
He had the trusses fabricated over Thanksgiving weekend! The photos
below show
the new roof line (lower) next to the PROBLEM roof line, in the process
of
being removed.
As I write this he is setting the remainder of the trusses and we should
be "under roof"
by tomorrow (Tuesday 12/2/97).
December 2, Roof is on and garage is sheathed! Tomorrow we get
shingles, Tyvec
and siding.
12/9/97:
12/14 97, siding is in place. All going well. Need a
floor, some siding and
some door.
Ok, so it's December 18. We have a floor but it's gravel.
By the end of tomorrow
we are to have 6000 p.s.i. concrete, and entry door, and the reminder
of the siding.
All the grading should be completed, and everything will be cleaned
up.
We'll see!
.....OK - so now we get to call the contractor for the next 3 weeks!
On January 5th, after I called the concrete company to make arrangements
the concrete finally shows up! Here's a picture from the next
morning, still no
garage doors though. When he had filled the garage with stone
I warned him
repeatedly that he needed more fill. He knew MUCH better, which
explains
why he got to pay for 35 yards of 6000 PSI concrete instead of the 23
as he had
calculated....so we have a 9" thick floor ... no problem!
A few days later (January 8) the contractor showed back up to get paid
and
clean up. As an added bonus for only $1400 I got a gravel driveway
(what a bargain) Oh well.
January 11, During the next week we got the Garage doors hung ..and
I was
so excited I took some pictures of the garage at night!
The contractor, having been mostly paid, became pretty scarce at this
time.
He had hung the entry door with four nails through the molding and an
eclectic
mixture of drywall screws through the frame with then passed through
an inch
of air before hitting anything solid. As such we had the extreme
pleasure of
rehanging and shimming up the edoor. Now it works! You can tell
just how
happy I am about this!
Next step in the process was to fill the garage 1/3 with cars! Click
HERE
for more.
And then install a lift. ..which Lydia gave me for Christmas...
Now immediately put it in use...
Hmmnn... Mighty dark in there.. .I guess the solution would
be 24 shoplights... oh... about
100,000 lumens with the energy efficient bulbs.... only 1200 watts
though... not bad!
So that's where we are on January 30, 1998. Last night I finally
got a
chance to work on one of MY cars... which as luck would have it was
sold last week.
So many porsches... so little time!