New Garage/Workshop build

[matt205gti]

I'm a bit of a lurker on here but thought I'd post up my progress of my new garage/workshop I'm building.

I had a largish shed previously which i built a carport onto the front of, but after a while i got the itch for something bigger and better so i pulled it all down and have started to build a new single garage/workshop from scratch. It will be approximately 10m long and 3m wide and it will be wood construction and waney edge clad to give it a rustic feel in keeping with our old house ad that of the area.

I'm doing all the work myself to keep costs down and having to fit the work in around my normal 9-5 job. I'll be roping in a few mates when i can though.

Before i start the building construction I'm pouring a concrete base which will make working on my collection of 205's a lot easier than the carpet over gravel setup i had previously

but to make things slightly more complex i need to build a retaining wall at the back of the building for the new base to sit on and also I've bought a car lift off ebay so I'm having a recess in the floor for it to sit in

Here some pics of my progress so far and I'll keep things updated as i go

The original shed


Run out of room!


The carport


Decanting all the stuff into a gazebo before dismantling and reassembling shed at bottom of the garden


more stuff that needed shifting


Shed removed


New wider and longer garage footing being dug


Thick ass footpath in the way!!!


Not for long!!


Clearing some space/removing gravel






Removing stones along wall edge so block paving and concrete pour can come up flush to the wall



Carport coming down!!




My new car lift!



Groundwork and marking out read for the concrete base







and that's about it for now, if you have any questions of comments feel free to ask

cheers

Matt

[valman]

awesome first post! looks good, nice lift that - handy for the smaller garages thats for sure!
welcome to the forum

[Colin]

Great progress so far Matt, will follow this closely as i scored a 20 x 8 sectional garage on freecycle.

[luckygti]

That looks great mate, just about finished my garage (Well, someone else did!!) Looks like it'll be perfect. Love that little lift as well, what is it called?

[matt205gti]

not a very exceitng update...

but i picked up a few more materials. I've got 2 pallets worth of hollow concrete blocks which will be used to build a retaining wall on the footing pictured above. Absolutely knackered me moving all them by hand the other night



I've also got some rebar, the longer lengths will be used in the hollow blocks to tie the footing, wall and concrete floor all together. The shorter smooth sections are to tie the 3 sections of the concrete floor together and the black plastic sleeve are to allow the dowels to move slightly as the concrete pad expands/contracts.


I also finished rebuilding the end of the drystone wall i had to dismantle


Hopefully i should make some good progress tomorrow if the weather holds

[296moon]

don't put too much of that bar in, you may have to make it bigger later on,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[matt205gti]

well the weather held so i managed to make some some good progress today, i managed to pour the car lift base. Fingers crossed none of the 47 curse word neigbourhood cats get in it!!! i've already had my cat run through it once :angry:

[matt205gti]

managed some more this weekend

The first job was to repair some of the large wall capping flagstones on the right hand wall that had been loosened when the roof of the carport came crashing down. When it came down the uprights which were bolted to several of the flagstones pulled the flagstones loose. So i had to chip away the old bonding cement/mortar and re-mortar the flags to the wall.

Once that was done it was then onto building the single course of bricks on top of the wall. The wooden frame of the workshop will then sit on this.

Anyway it took me most of the afternoon to lay the bricks as I've never done it before but i took my time and it seemed to all work out OK. After about 10 or so bricks i got into a little rhythm which helped.

Here's a few pics of the progress

[matt205gti]

over the weekend i managed to finish digging the hollow block wall footings to the correct depth and last night i mixed and poured the concrete

[nuttynil]

Great your working hard its all going to be worth it in the end .

[matt205gti]

Right well i spent today building the hollow block wall, i'm completely knackered!!! but its slowly taking shape

[luckygti]

Looking good. Wish I'd had the time to do mine, reckon there'll be a massive dollop of self satisfaction when it's done

[matt205gti]

cheers for the kind words chaps

yeah i'll be satisfied but probably a physically broken man incapble of working on my cars any more

[chamba]

Love this thread; I'm learning lots from your pictures.... although I'm probably going to go the wooden garage route myself. Great work, keep it up.

[matt205gti]

right well i've made a start on the drainage section behind the wall to help dissipate any groundwater. I made a big U with the geotextile sheet and started filling the middle with 10mm pea gravel. I also drilled some drain holes through the hollow blocks which will have some plastic waste pipe poked through so that the water can escape

hopefully it should be finished tomorrow night

[matt205gti]

I managed to finish the drainage section today and then started to top up and compact the base to the level of the top of the hollow blocks.

I also shifted the 2 large bulk bags of rubble/soil and the 18 paving slabs out of the way onto my drive and again just for a change i'm completely knackered

[matt205gti]

Today i managed to finish the base, so i'm almost ready to have the concrete poured!! woohoo!!



once the base had been compacted i infilled the hollow blocks with concrete to tie the wall together and into the footing



then once that was done i coud start to rollout the rest of the visqueen sheeting





so the next job is to fix the shuttering onto the side of the hollow block wall as this will be the edge of the concrete base, and then concrete should be a go go!!

[matt205gti]

very minor update

managed to clear most of the rocks/rubble soil etc into a 8 tonne skip over the weekend. Not the best job for last Saturday by hand when it was about 27 degrees!!. I was starting to hallucinate by the end of it!

[burkey]

Nice lift how much did that set you back? Were did you pick it up from? Could do with one of those myself.

[matt205gti]

Jun 11, 2010 22:14:28 GMT burkey said:

Nice lift how much did that set you back? Were did you pick it up from? Could do with one of those myself.

It cost £670, i got it off ebay 2nd hand. It needs a bit of a clean up though. Its called a Autolift

============================

been a bit busy recently so progress has slowed but hopefully the base should be finished in the next week. I've just been putting together the last bit of shuttering.