Long term garage 'modification' - Recent update...

[Mr S]

Just over a year ago, me and the family moved into a great house, big, plenty of rooms, plenty of garden, but only one 'little' problem.... A single garage! Given that my Mrs knows how I need my space, the plan was simple - move into the house, do any repairs that were absolutely necessary and decorate my little girls' bedroom, then when that was all done (and I stopped spending money...), I could get on and build my dream garage.

Currently this single garage (with attached coal store, it's an original 1927 garage!!) stands at the end of my drive:





Although it looks a reasonable size, the attached coal house makes it barely big enough to get a mongdeo sized car in, let alone my Merc or truck!

The plans have been drawn up, building regulations have been approved, no planning consent is needed (the rules for where I am are that it must be less than 3.5m tall, more than 5m from the house and less than 50% of the garden!).

What I'm building is a 12.5m long, 5m wide garage/workshop. I'm going to build so that it looks similar to the old one on the outside in that it will be brick (hopefully re-using the old bricks) up to the waistline, then rendered above as it is now (matches the house). The top half will be built from block and it will be a single skin wall with pillars as oppposed to the current double skinned wall, so if my calculations are right, I should have enough bricks for my plan to work.

Building control at the council have specified it's got to have a suspended floor on top of (at the back end) 2.5m deep foundations! This is apparently due to the clay soil and close proximity of trees It's gonna take 25 or so cubic metres of concrete for the strip foundations alone! Still, there's apparently no way of wriggling out of it (unless I halve the size of the garage so I don't need building regs, sub 30m2 outbuildings don't need them - and that ain't gonna happen!), so I've just got to get on with it!

Now, I've never actually built anything before in my life, but with the help of a mate or two, the hire of a 3-ton digger for a weekend, a 'bricky' tool and a lot of hard work I'm hoping to get it built this year, for under £5k! It's only like grown up building blocks, surely Only joking, I know it's going to be difficult and a steep learning curve, but I'm pretty handy (and modest too ), so I reckon I'll be ok.

The work has begun today (in-between spraying my Mrs' motorbike panels in the house!) by knocking the render off the outside walls, so I can see if the bricks are good enough to be re-used or if I'll have to try and match some new ones up



Progress will be slow, as I work full time, so can only really dedicate weekends/evenings when it gets lighter to it, but I'll keep it updated here as a 'build diary'. Hopefully it's sort of on-topic as it will be housing retro cars/bikes when done!

Cheers, Martin

[LowStandards]

Oh, ME ME ME with the sledgehammer please!

Can I have a go with the Digger?

[stealthstylz]

Looks good. Are you gonna put a pit in while you're at it?

Matt

[guz]

bricks will be commons behind the dash coat so won't match the
facings you have below but will be similar size.

i'd buy a load of 4" concrete blocks for the rendered area,
it'll go up much, much faster, use less mortar and be a nicer
surface for rendering (i'd pay someone to do that job at least)

i'm a bricky by trade, i'm not voluteering my labour cos
there aint enough hours in the week for me atm but can
pop over and have a look if you need to know owt.

(i'm in nottingham)

[Mr S]

Pit - maybe! Unfortunately due to it needing a suspended floor, it would mean more foundations to put a pit in (the suspended floor would have to be supported around a pit 'hole'). I'll probably not bother and find a way of raising cars a couple of foot once they're in!

Guz, many thanks for the offer of advice, I've no doubt I'll need plenty as time progresses, and the kettle's always on standby! I had indeed planned to use blocks behind the render, and pay someone to do that bit too - preferably so it will come close to matching the house finish.

And Gimpy, yes, you can have a go in the digger....

Cheers, Martin

[guz]

save everything too !

reclaimed building materials sell and what aint
of any use is handy for hardcore.

[rysz]

SWMBO best mates fella is a plasterer and does excellent work - is based in Nottingham. Let me know if you want the number when it comes to the rendering!

[Oldbus]

Garage build/rebuild - love it. Nearly as good as building cars.....

keep us up to date with plenty of pics...we are interested! ;D

[dollywobbler]

Is it just me or are garages never big enough? We moved in June and I got my hands on my first garage ever! It's a double but with a single door. It's already full of junk and two cars (Dyane and the Renner) and now I have nowhere covered to work on my other cars! Can I have a quadruple garage please?!

[bazzateer]

Those of you with barns and workshops are sooooo lucky. You just are!

[LowStandards]

bladerunner30 said:

and the kettle's always on standby!

Ha! if there's the slightest chance there's any tea in the house, you'll still have to bring your own milk!

bladerunner30 said:

And Gimpy, yes, you can have a go in the digger....

Damn straight i can, i bet 10p for longest 'bucket down' wheelie up the road!

[Mr S]

Just to brag, I do still have this garage as well, but it's 7 miles away and it's full of bikes, bits of bikes and Merc 190!



As soon as my new garage is done, it will be transformed into a 'pool hall' by my sister!

Dollywobbler, no matter how big your garage is, it ain't big enough! I want an aircraft hanger already

Rysz42, cheers, I'll bare it in mind for when I get to that stage!

[bazzateer]

bladerunner30 said:

Just to brag, I do still have this garage as well,

You spawney Get!!! ;D

[grizz]

Cool one Martin.

I bought my last house in South Africa, because I could see that in spite of having a single garage, there was space along and in front of it for a 7 car harage, a carport and concrete hardstanding for another 7 cars at least.

Love garages, and building process.

Keep us up dated.

[bigrod]

dollywobbler said:

Is it just me or are garages never big enough? We moved in June and I got my hands on my first garage ever! It's a double but with a single door. It's already full of junk and two cars (Dyane and the Renner) and now I have nowhere covered to work on my other cars! Can I have a quadruple garage please?!

I have to disagree. My last garage was big enough. I actually had four cars parked inside with the door shut once! (OK, two of them were very small!) It was the main reason I bought the house.

Sadly, (or not!), due to the expansion of our fami9ly, we needed extra square footage so I had to sacrifice my garage for extra bedrooms.

I did have another garage built in the process using the old garage door but it's tiny in comparrison. I'd struggle to get two cars in it with nothing else at all, and with my benches, tools and tat, I can just get the Monza in there with a little space to work on it.

I miss my old garage! But at least the new one kind'a imposes on me to be tidier!

Before.......


After........

[spottedlaurel]

I shall watch this with interest as I'm also 'in the trade' (spent the last 21+ years doing drawings for Planning and Building Reg's, currently working on a 20,000t grain store in Tyneside that'd be a great garage, and the most insane 'barn' conversion for some wealthy clients).

Glad you're keeping your proposal in keeping even though you don't strictly have to - it looks a nice old garage as it is and you have to wonder at what cars have lived in there over the years. Does it have the old garage smell? I love the aroma in my Grandad's old garage - he's been dead 12 years and it's little used by my Grandma but that smell still lingers.

I thought I'd done well with my current house, in that it had a big single garage with what seemed like plenty of space for parts storage plus a large car. Trouble is it's accessed by a shared driveway and the gap in front of it would often be taken by a dead car so it was never used as much as it should have been and gradually filled up with tat.

So, all being well we're shortly moving to this place...



Other than the nicely remote cottage, that's a big double garage with store/workshop space in front of it, plus a 35x14' insulated workshop/outbuilding on the LH side. As anyone who knows me will testify, it's unlikely I'll be doing major work on cars in the garage but it's nice and accessible so the Laurels can hide away in there. It's the other building that will be of use, turn it into some big old magazine/brochure library, model-building space with my old stereo in there - gonna be great!

[froggy]

I'm half way through building my garage which is 15 x5 you will need an expansion joint half way along and as you are going single skin you will need structural calcs to prove it wont blow over in strong wind . if you are going for a small tile roof to match your house i would get the calcs anyway as a plain tiled roof is a lot heavier than pan tiles .pan tiles are 10 per sq metre plains are 60 . i have incorporated some steel work at the expansion joint in my garage which also help carry the weight of the upper floor i am building. i can tell you that i helped a friend build a 6 x5 garage in single skin with no labour costs and that came out at just over 5k. if you stick with single skin then at least put a good layer of polystyrene under the floor slab it makes a big difference.

[goosegog]

spottedlaurel said:

So, all being well we're shortly moving to this place...

That looks amazing, Nigel!! What a great location! Good luck with it
Ferg

[bazzateer]

froggy said:

I'm half way through building my garage which is 15 x5

"Blimey! " I thought, "That's tiny" Then I realised you're probably talking 'non-retro' and referring to that 'modern' foreign metric cobblers ;D so if you mean 15m x 5m (and not 15' x 5') then all that's left to say is, "You jammy beggar!"

[cooper1999]

Loving this thread so thought I'd make my first post! Done something myself on another website, getting ideas for what can be done with my limited garage space!
Hope this works:

So I'll be keeping an eye on this thread - make sure you keep updating the pics!