I've been talking and thinking about doing this for 3-4 years now. Two days ago we finally took the first "ground breaking" step toward making it a reality.
The garage on my house started out as a flat-roof, open-sided carport when the the house was built 40 years ago. Some previous owner put sides on it, but no garage doors. When I bought the place 15 years ago, the flat roof was leaking badly, and the front wall where the two openings are was rotted badly enough that I had to rebuild it before having garage doors installed.
While the house foundation is sound, the garage foundation has had numerous problems from cracking and movement. I've always planned to one day tear it down to the ground and start over. My original plan was to just rebuild a two-bay garage of the same size, but with a peaked roof. Eventually, I realized that by making use of the slope, a tall RV bay could be added without ending up with a roof-line taller than the rest of the house.
Discussing the project with the DW resulted in further "scope creep", such that we'll also be adding a fair amount of square footage to the living area of the house as well. My garage/RV bay/man-cave has ballooned considerably since I first started dreaming, but this is what we've settled on. The old garage is about 28' deep, and 24' wide. The new garage will be 30' deep and 60' wide. The RV bay will have one wide door, rather than the two narrow doors shown. I was planning to allow 14' of vertical clearance, but I'm not sure I really need to go that high. Twelve feet would be plenty for my camper, the garage depth and driveway approach will never accommodate an RV much longer than mine.
About 10 years ago I had an asphalt driveway paved down behind the house, and then had a Jamar RV shed constructed over it where I'm currently parking my truck and camper. It's sitting right where my new garage RV bay will be, so it'll have to be moved. That's what we've started, which doesn't sound too difficult. Except.........
My property is on the side of a hill. There's no naturally level ground anywhere, so a pad will have to be constructed. Also, about a year ago (anticipating the loss of my garage and the storage space inside it) I constructed a 12'x20' storage building right next to the house to hold all of my man-stuff while the garage is being built. Once the garage is built, the storage building will be taken apart and moved farther away from the house. So that's two level pads to construct.
I also have a ton of trees on my property, mostly white oak, some of them pretty big, and pretty close to the house. Of course, there are trees in the way of everything I want to do.
So, Wednesday morning, bright and early, the tree cutting pro's got started. The weather was gray and gloomy that day. This is where my metal RV shed will be moved. I'm going to reduce it's height a little and use it to park other equipment under.
Getting the boom truck setup for another tree.
They were having fun maneuvering that 2WD boom truck around on my slope.
This tree was hanging over my RV shed.
My storage building. They dropped a big limb on it's roof, but it doesn't appear to have suffered any damage.
My truck and camper out of harms way in the front yard.
Wish I had one of those trucks to play with.
Pulling one down close to the power lines.
I'm saving these for another project.
I'll add more as we make progress.
:):)
The garage on my house started out as a flat-roof, open-sided carport when the the house was built 40 years ago. Some previous owner put sides on it, but no garage doors. When I bought the place 15 years ago, the flat roof was leaking badly, and the front wall where the two openings are was rotted badly enough that I had to rebuild it before having garage doors installed.
While the house foundation is sound, the garage foundation has had numerous problems from cracking and movement. I've always planned to one day tear it down to the ground and start over. My original plan was to just rebuild a two-bay garage of the same size, but with a peaked roof. Eventually, I realized that by making use of the slope, a tall RV bay could be added without ending up with a roof-line taller than the rest of the house.
Discussing the project with the DW resulted in further "scope creep", such that we'll also be adding a fair amount of square footage to the living area of the house as well. My garage/RV bay/man-cave has ballooned considerably since I first started dreaming, but this is what we've settled on. The old garage is about 28' deep, and 24' wide. The new garage will be 30' deep and 60' wide. The RV bay will have one wide door, rather than the two narrow doors shown. I was planning to allow 14' of vertical clearance, but I'm not sure I really need to go that high. Twelve feet would be plenty for my camper, the garage depth and driveway approach will never accommodate an RV much longer than mine.
About 10 years ago I had an asphalt driveway paved down behind the house, and then had a Jamar RV shed constructed over it where I'm currently parking my truck and camper. It's sitting right where my new garage RV bay will be, so it'll have to be moved. That's what we've started, which doesn't sound too difficult. Except.........
My property is on the side of a hill. There's no naturally level ground anywhere, so a pad will have to be constructed. Also, about a year ago (anticipating the loss of my garage and the storage space inside it) I constructed a 12'x20' storage building right next to the house to hold all of my man-stuff while the garage is being built. Once the garage is built, the storage building will be taken apart and moved farther away from the house. So that's two level pads to construct.
I also have a ton of trees on my property, mostly white oak, some of them pretty big, and pretty close to the house. Of course, there are trees in the way of everything I want to do.
So, Wednesday morning, bright and early, the tree cutting pro's got started. The weather was gray and gloomy that day. This is where my metal RV shed will be moved. I'm going to reduce it's height a little and use it to park other equipment under.
Getting the boom truck setup for another tree.
They were having fun maneuvering that 2WD boom truck around on my slope.
This tree was hanging over my RV shed.
My storage building. They dropped a big limb on it's roof, but it doesn't appear to have suffered any damage.
My truck and camper out of harms way in the front yard.
Wish I had one of those trucks to play with.
Pulling one down close to the power lines.
I'm saving these for another project.
I'll add more as we make progress.
:):)
bka0721 wrote:NRALIFR wrote:Buzzcut and I were on the same page, but approached it differently. The grit in the finish will last a lot longer, not roll up and peel off, or look weird as it gets worn out. You can add more or less grit to the finish material and it is available in most paint departments, especially the Lowes and Home Depot. I used it in my Motorcycle trailer, that I am pulling behind my Truck Camper. Have used the substance for years on deck steps when I built decks. As it wears thin, as do finishes, brush in some more as you put a new finish on.Buzzcut1 wrote:
The one thing I would do is apply grip tape to the stairs. Wet boots, mud, and wood can be slick as hell. I speak from experience on slip and fall on wood stairs not so funny slapstick routine.
Very good point. I haven't done it yet, but I hope to start putting a clear finish on the steps soon. bka0721 made the suggestion of adding some grit to the final coat on the stair treads to add some traction. I'll do one or the other, as I'm finding out lately that I'm not quite as indestructible as I used to be.
:):)
As for the Hand rails, you have actually two issues for code. The baby head rule (Vertical Balusters to prevent children from falling through hand rails) which UBC typically requires when a surface is more then 30" off the ground and the Finger Hold (Whish is usually a concave cut into the railing or a 2X2 attached to the railing to allow small and elderly people to grip the railing), I didn't mention this before as there are a number of things that are not to code in the construction of your project, which is not that unusual in some areas, so I suspected that. I agree with you, police your area yourself.
As for the children doing unexpected things. In 1989, I responded to a report of a child injured in a fall in a Coal Creek Canyon mountain Sub division (Colorado). When I arrived, I saw a U=Haul truck in the driveway, in front of the garage, that was a two story portion of the house. The Master bedroom was over the garage, with a fairly large deck cantilevered out over the driveway. A young couple, with two children, (4 & 7) were moving into this home. While the parents were getting something out of the moving truck, to move into the house, their youngest had come out on the deck and in the excitement, fell through the railing onto the concrete apron driveway below. He didn't survive the fall. The railing on the deck, was the same single horizontal style rail as yours. So the previous poster, on this thread, does make a good point, as you do too.
I typically choose not to interject scenarios unless it is under discussion by others. For me, you are doing a great job and it is a wonderful project that has excited and inspired others to contemplate doing something for themselves.
b
when I rebuilt the deck on my old house I had to put vertical 2"x 2"s spaced with less than 4" gaps deck to handrail once I exceeded 18" above ground.
I got some proper lights installed on the outside of the garage since my last update. Those temporary lights were starting to look normal to me, so I knew I better get the right ones put up there soon.
That's better than those bare bulbs that were hanging there.
And............drum-roll please........I finally built some stairs going down to the lower bay. No more ladder climbing, yea!
I'd never built stairs before, so I had to think about it for a while to get the design figured out. There are stair calculators available on the web that help you laying out the stringers, but the overall design was what I had to get straight in my head before I could get started. Also, building stairs up against concrete is a little different than against a wooden structure so I had to get that figured out as well.
I needed to get the concrete and cinder block walls primed and sealed in that corner before I could build against them, so that was the first step. Since there were no headroom or run length limitations, I only had to supply the stair calculator with the total rise and tread thickness dimensions to get the stringer layout. It was raining the day I cut the stringers so I was working inside, using the truck bed as a workbench. That's my laptop sitting on the 2x12 I'm consulting.
I got three stringers layed out and cut. I didn't plan on having a riser board, but after mounting the stringers I decided they needed some blocking between them to reduce their ability to twist, especially the outside stringer that will have two 4x4's attached to it to support the hand-rail. And, I needed the handrail on the cinder-block wall side to stand away from the wall to allow clearance for sheet-rock (or whatever) in the future. The 4x4's against the concrete and cinder blocks are anchored to the walls with Tapcon bolts and construction adhesive. These stairs are going to be sturdy!
I cut some blocking out of 2x12 and mounted them between the stringers, every other step. Had to use my pipe clamps to hold things together while I screwed them.
This is how they turned out. There are 12 rises of 7". The treads are all 10-1/2" including the 1/2" of nosing.
The edges of all the step and handrail boards have been eased to a soft curve with a router and sander.
The width of the stair opening from the upper bay had been set months ago, so I used the whole width available. If I had made the stairs narrower, there would have been a large gap between the stair handrail and the steel pipe rail on top of the concrete wall. Not good for small children.
So, what kind of clear finish do I put on the white wood? Polyurethane? The 4x4's are too wet to put anything on right now.
And, what do I use that area under the stairs for?
:):)
That's better than those bare bulbs that were hanging there.
And............drum-roll please........I finally built some stairs going down to the lower bay. No more ladder climbing, yea!
I'd never built stairs before, so I had to think about it for a while to get the design figured out. There are stair calculators available on the web that help you laying out the stringers, but the overall design was what I had to get straight in my head before I could get started. Also, building stairs up against concrete is a little different than against a wooden structure so I had to get that figured out as well.
I needed to get the concrete and cinder block walls primed and sealed in that corner before I could build against them, so that was the first step. Since there were no headroom or run length limitations, I only had to supply the stair calculator with the total rise and tread thickness dimensions to get the stringer layout. It was raining the day I cut the stringers so I was working inside, using the truck bed as a workbench. That's my laptop sitting on the 2x12 I'm consulting.
I got three stringers layed out and cut. I didn't plan on having a riser board, but after mounting the stringers I decided they needed some blocking between them to reduce their ability to twist, especially the outside stringer that will have two 4x4's attached to it to support the hand-rail. And, I needed the handrail on the cinder-block wall side to stand away from the wall to allow clearance for sheet-rock (or whatever) in the future. The 4x4's against the concrete and cinder blocks are anchored to the walls with Tapcon bolts and construction adhesive. These stairs are going to be sturdy!
I cut some blocking out of 2x12 and mounted them between the stringers, every other step. Had to use my pipe clamps to hold things together while I screwed them.
This is how they turned out. There are 12 rises of 7". The treads are all 10-1/2" including the 1/2" of nosing.
The edges of all the step and handrail boards have been eased to a soft curve with a router and sander.
The width of the stair opening from the upper bay had been set months ago, so I used the whole width available. If I had made the stairs narrower, there would have been a large gap between the stair handrail and the steel pipe rail on top of the concrete wall. Not good for small children.
So, what kind of clear finish do I put on the white wood? Polyurethane? The 4x4's are too wet to put anything on right now.
And, what do I use that area under the stairs for?
:):)
