Fred’s Big Garage

Fred is a life long mechanic, working for the city until retirement.  As someone who likes to wrench on cars, more space in the garage his projects was something he really wanted.  As this was a garage for working on cars, he wanted to make sure he had dual roll up doors, front and back, for easy access to move cars around as he works on them.  So we added on an extra 400 square feet ( the max the city would allow), and poured concrete in the back so he would have no problem fitting all his projects in one place.  We also upgraded his service panel, and added a sub-panel in the addition area, so he would have plenty of new circuits to run all his equipment.  Because of the long spans with this build, all the ceiling joists and beams are LVL engineered lumber.  Also, since the addition area was only 400 square feet and the roof was hip style, we opted to stick frame the roof by hand.  Generally trusses are preferred, but in this situation there was no advantage.

Start Digging

The first thing to do was demo some concrete and dig out a lot of dirt.  Not only did we have to dig the whole back yard down a few inches, but afterwards we had to excavate out all the dirt for our main footing and spread footings.  Not soon after we started digging, we found out the water main runs right through our footing, so we had to spend a day digging out the pipe and re-routing.

Once we got the water main taken care of, we formed up stem wall, poured the concrete and left it to cure.

After the concrete cured, we could start the walls, ceiling, roof and get all the brace wall and shear panels on.  Since the east garage wall would now be 40 feet long, we had to install some special brace panels and put hold downs into the concrete footing.

Once we got our inspections on lath, shearing and our roof nailing, it was time to close up the inside and install our roofing and stucco.  On the inside Fred wanted to insulate, so we installed R-15 insulation and then hung the drywall.  The stucco for this project was the standard three coat at 7/8 inch thick.

We had a great time working for Fred;  he is a really great guy.  Hopefully he calls us back soon to start working on that second story for the house!