I Need A New Garage

[Cory Wolfe]

As I've been tearing down the Golf this past week, I've found that my garage is quite inefficient for the work I'm doing.

With winter temperatures, it's difficult to heat up. That entirely ancient iron wood furnace is slow to start. Just as much smoke will pour out around the door as the chimney. The first hour is spent tending to the fire as you keep the garage doors open to prevent the smoke from smothering you. Once its going strong, you close the doors, revealing a slight crack at the top of each. Another hour later, the garage will finally begin to heat up a few degrees above freezing. Without insulation and those cracked doors, that's basically all you can manage. If you're doing work on the side opposite of the furnace, you're frozen. A trip to stand by the furnace for a few moments will be made fairly often to warm up. Don't forget to throw a log on when you warm up to keep the fire going.

For work that involves getting low, the dirt floor is just fantastic. You'll want to avoid any parts you want don't want covered in filth, afterwords. Interior work requires being attentive to what you touch and where you've been. Watch out, not only will fallen nuts and screws bury themselves seemingly as soon as they hit the ground, you'll find them when you get on the ground and feel them, the unexpected and sometimes painful way. You won't be able to see them, either. The few ceiling lights provide very little light, just enough for general work. Any detail work will have you getting out a flashlight or a portable corded light. As you scurry around the car trying to make the best of your time, you'll trip over that metal rod that blended in with the dirt. "Where the hell did that come from? F**cking junk" you'll exclaim, while wiping the dirt off your face. Err... is that a screw stuck in my forehead?!

I need a new garage.

[Drew Dowdell]

it sounds like you need a stove pipe cleaning and a new door seal.

[caddycruiser]

I just need one period...funny, I had a garage at my APARTMENT of all things while at Villanova, but moving back home then, there's lots of cars, and lots of nice ones at that, but still just a white gravel & mud driveway. Well, unless you count the 60's Mopar which got it's own storage shed built, of sorts, even with electricity now, while everything else continues exposed.

Garage...my first requirement if I ever buy/build/etc. a house myself some century. Heated, cooled, storage galore, lighting, space, and so on. I'm a big fan of some of the monster 3-car+ garages we offer on a few models with the home builder I work for...grr...they're just incredible.

I wouldn't even need much of a place to live in, just how about a nice bonus room over the garage, and I'd be set for life It's so hard to do anything outside, car or otherwise, without.

[daves87rs]

it sounds like you need a stove pipe cleaning and a new door seal.

+1

[balthazar]

I've yet to encounter a modern garage, even on the big$ houses, deeper than 20', and that's just not enough to get a bench, some equipment & elbow room in, plus the car.

A client wants to build a shop this year, wants 30x60'... we'll see if/ what & when gets done.

-- -- -- -- --

BV, I assume dollars are an issue, so a concrete floor is likely out. But if you dropped the level about 4" and put 3/8" blend in (stone + stone dust), raked & tamped, then some heavy mil plastic and pressure-treated plywood, at least you'd have an affordable, solid surface to work off of.

Can't see the stove in the pic (whadya do to it; posterize ?), but some sheetmetal behind it should reflect more heat to the rest of the garage. I think Home Depot has flat sections for ductwork that are reasonable.

[caddycruiser]

I've yet to encounter a modern garage, even on the big$ houses, deeper than 20', and that's just not enough to get a bench, some equipment & elbow room in, plus the car.

A client wants to build a shop this year, wants 30x60'... we'll see if/ what & when gets done.

Being someone who's "in charge" of this type of stuff, I know, I know. We can tell how much so from the sheer number of "can I get 3x that one optional extension?" or someone who literally just got an 18ft extension on a 20ft garage. A lot of times, if a production builder, it's just so things fit, otherwise it's one of those "standard" sizing things. But you're right about how tight it is in so many.

Come to Delaware, and the typical setup...people have a garage, but they never park a car in it. Instead, you'll see a car in the driveway, the garage door open & nothing but STUFF packed from wall to wall. Part a side effect of not having basements in a lot of cases, part a side effect of people moving to the beach from their old PA/NJ/etc. monster homes and used to having closets as big as their current garage

[vonVeezelsnider]

I'm with ya on that Caddy, I'd want at least townhouse/condo with a 2 Car Garage and Driveway for round 300k (Common house config here but usually priced higher). Failing that I think I could just buy some land outside the city and have a builder build a house to my specs (3-Car Garage but maybe smaller on the livable sq. footage)

[Cory Wolfe]

it sounds like you need a stove pipe cleaning and a new door seal.

Or completely new of each. We're talking about wooden swing style barn doors that have been warped by weather and ripped off their hinges a few times and a chimney that my Dad admits was too small in diameter in the first place.

BV, I assume dollars are an issue, so a concrete floor is likely out. But if you dropped the level about 4" and put 3/8" blend in (stone + stone dust), raked & tamped, then some heavy mil plastic and pressure-treated plywood, at least you'd have an affordable, solid surface to work off of.

Can't see the stove in the pic (whadya do to it; posterize ?), but some sheetmetal behind it should reflect more heat to the rest of the garage. I think Home Depot has flat sections for ductwork that are reasonable.

I was playing around in photoshop with it.

Edited January 19, 2010 by blackviper8891

[SAmadei]

How about a few hunderd dollars of fiberglass insulation and Great Stuff ™? I see _way_ too much daylight in there...

I was playing around in photoshop with it.

[Drew Dowdell]

Oh, I thought you meant there were leaks around the stove door... my bad.

[Cory Wolfe]

Well, that, too.

It would have to be a high temperature seal. Touching that door without gloves isn't something you do unless you want to be branded.

[Drew Dowdell]

There are seals specifically for stove doors.

[Blake Noble]

It's better than a gravel driveway. A lot better. I'd take your garage any day.

Edited January 19, 2010 by whiteknight

[caddycruiser]

It's better than a gravel driveway. A lot better. I'd take your garage any day.

I was just thinking the same thing. Will again when I step in a combination of sloshy white gravel & mud tomorrow, getting in 'ole G8...

Little things...insulation, etc., maybe. The floor is a big matter, but aside from gravel or some kind of pavers, I don't know how you could change it without a bigger expense/time change.

Edited January 19, 2010 by caddycruiser

[Cory Wolfe]

I think an upgrade to this is in store:

More realistically....

[balthazar]

Light and neatness go a LONG way toward making 'working in the garage' pleasurable.

[SAmadei]

Light and neatness go a LONG way toward making 'working in the garage' pleasurable.

Agreed... my little garage was REALLY dismal... so I bought 4 of those HUGE CFL spiral bulbs and three screw in splitters... so I have 400 watts of brightness in one socket (only using about 120W). Its really bright... once it warms up, you really can't look at the cluster.

At the house at the shore, I really would love to demo the garage, as it sticks out in the front... then I would raise the house and move it forward to the setback... then use the space under the house as a basement/garage with break away walls, just in case the ocean ever visits. Since I would not want to lose my tools, I thought I could get a small container and keep all my tools in there... like a gigantic tool box, that I could close up and pull onto a rollback at a moment's notice. ;-)

[Camino LS6]

Gravel,dirt, disappearing hardware, cold, lack of light...

Yup.

Been there.

Not fun.

I love my barn, but it still needs more light and heat...

[2005 EquinoxLS]

My 3 car is laid out that 2 of the 3 stalls are 24' deep and the other 1 is 22' deep. Most newer ones here in Wisconsin are that way. As for light I have 3 CFLs 200 watt equivilants(Thats how many sockets the builder put in) and 3 4' shoplights 2 over the workbenches and 1 between the single and double stalls. It has a garage furnace but I dont cool it in the summer. If Dad was living it would be cooled but I dont care as much about that.

Edited January 21, 2010 by 2005 EquinoxLS