the garage project
Well, it has been a long time coming, but the we have finally begun the project of adding a garage. Heather and I bought our house in July of 2004, and fell in love with it the moment we saw it. It had great curb appeal, location, space, and design. BUT, it had no garage. This was going to be a major problem for me and I set about getting permits and plans for the garage as soon as we moved in. Thanks to the help of some very great friends (Carlos Amaro for the architectural plans, Jenna Endres for helping me navigate the complex maze of county planning, and Mike Lomonaco for the construction) my dream is becoming a reality.
I have learned a tremendous amount during this process and expect to learn even more during the building process. I have worked my way through the entire planning process for our county. Turns out my house was built with some liberties taken on the "codes" and "setbacks". Minor details in the grand scheme until I wanted to add the garage. All of a sudden a giant spotlight was turned on my house and everyone came to take a look and give their approval or disapproval. The short list included, roads and public works, zoning, special problems division, Mission Canyon Homeowners Association, Santa Barbara County board of Architects, Fire District and many, many others. Some wanted to see plans, some wanted to see surveys, some wanted me to sign documents, some just wanted me to remove things on my property. One by one I tackled the problems and slowly but surely made progress. It was a truly overwhelming experience and I haven't even begun building the garage yet!
Anyway, back to the garage. It was designed by our close friend Carlos Amaro at AM Design and as soon as I have some scans of the plans, I will get the pictures up. Mike Lomonaco from Lomanaco construction is doing the construction with me as I wouldn't have a chance on my own. First things first though, we needed to get up a retaining wall to stop the slide of our neighbors yard into ours. They are slowly erroding into our driveway and with the rains comes their mud. We needed to build a retaining wall and put in a french drain to handle their run off. Here are some before and afters. Please consider this a work in progress as I will be hopefully updating this page on a semi regular basis. Enough for now, here are some pictures.
First here are some drafts of what it is hopefully going to look like.
This is the driveway as it stood when we moved in. You can see the trees on the left by the carport that we had to take down. They were holding the dirt back somewhat but taking up a lot of space.
Before we could do much, the trees along the carport had to come down. They didn't put up much resistance to the chainsaw, but cutting out the trunks took some time.
Once the trees were down, the dirt had to be removed and the base laid for the wall. We used a product called Keystone which enabled us to stack and build the wall in just a day and not dig too deep of a footing.
Laying down the french drain and starting on the wall.
Here is the finished wall and french drain collection point. We still need to mount the cedar planking back above the wall but that should be done soon. We are hoping to tie the downspouts of the house into the collection point and that will be run directly out to the street. I have a lot of digging ahead of me!
Progress! The wall had to be partially rebuilt as we had some unexpected rains last week and they erroded the sand base. We have since rebuilt and I poured a concrete plug at the entrance of the french drain to the catch basin. We got the fencing up and are happy with how it is coming out. We have reclaimed a lot of lost space. You can also see here the preliminary driveway grading I did before the concrete guys showed up. I removed all the brick and demo'ed the brick outside the kitchen door.
Now the concrete guys started. If I thought I had done a lot of digging before it was just a warmup. We removed close to 20 tons by hand. The first dumpster that was delivered we completely filled and the truck was unable to move it when it came to pick it up. We had to empty half of it into another dumpster. Here are some more pictures of the progress and a wheelie the truck pulled getting the second dump out.
We finally got all the forms up and all the inspections passed. Got the footings poured last week. Here are some before and after shots. The laundry room had all the plumbing (water, electric, gas and drain) ran from under the house.
The slab and concrete work was completed about two weeks ago and I have been busy since then repairing the driveway and installing a drainage system. The driveway had been heavily damaged by all the traffic on it and heavy machinery. The remaining driveway has some pronounced waves to it and it pretty much all had to come up. I wanted to be able to move water quickly off the drive and patio area and out onto the street, and so needed to put about 80 feet of drainpipe under the drive and out to the curb. I didn't take too many pictures of that process as I was working on it and covered in mud most of the time. With the driveway as damaged as it was it made it easy to pull up the bricks. The digging took the most time and then putting the driveway back together and compacting it so it wouldn't hopefully sink over time was the trick. I borrowed a tile saw from Mike Lomanaco and learned how to use it through trial and error. It is a good job that I have a lot of extra bricks! Here are some finished pictures of the new slab and driveway. I hope to start framing soon.
Well, it has been a hectic month. Since I last updated this page, my daughter Chloe has joined us and brought a new joy into my life. I have also completed all the framing and hung the trusses. We are beginning to look like a garage. I have a ton of great friends who have come over and helped with the project rain or shine. Anyways, here are the pictures. You will see an extra set of trusses in some of the pictures, they were manufactured incorrectly and so we couldn't use them.
Installing the center beam took all of use. The fact that it had sat in the rain for a few weeks didn't help things
Here is the drain box I had dug all the trenches for. It was good to finally close up this hole in the ground. The other picture is looking back towards the garage
Well, it has been a long time since I updated the progress, but we have been hard at work and today we got our framing inspection! This is how the garage will look, we obviously need to fix a few more things, but it is really starting to take shape. I am hoping to get the roof on in the next few days so we can be water tight!
Well it has been a while since I updated but I have made progress. The doors and windows for the most part are on, the garage doors are in and painted and finished and the drywall is up. It has been a lot of work, way more than I expected and I am still learning a lot but it feels like a usable garage now.
Our garage doors have finally arrived and I spent the evenings painting and adding the accents. It feels nice to finally have closing doors on the front. We should be able to start moving things out of storage and into the garage soon. Should be nice!
Work has been on the inside for the most part recently. Got all the drywall up and mudded and taped over the past few weeks. Came very close to having someone complete the mudding and taping but really wanted to finish what I started. Scored some maple cabinetry from a soon to be demo'ed apartment building that really finish things off nicely.
got my bikes moved back in the garage which feels like real progess. Actually started riding again, which feels great! The popout that Carlos had designed into the original plans didn't hold all my bikes, but both full suspension and my dirt bike is pretty impressive.
here is the cabinetry. I still have to get counter tops and mount the compressor, but things are coming together.
the laundry is coming out great. I just have to tile and move the washer and dryer in here. The corner cabinet is about as good as it gets for free!
Here are some updated pictures. The tile is in and the washer and dryer fit. Close fit, but they fit!
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The garage interior for the most part is finished. I still have some little details here and there to finish but this is where I stand right now
I even have room for all my helmets and my sector 9!
One thing I wanted with the construction was to hide as many wires etc in the walls. I think it lends to a cleaner more professional look, so at every opportunity I woud run things through the ceiling, walls etc. Kept everything looking cleaner. Here is my compressor reel for my air, and the electrical extension. The compressor is located above it in the attic. I also ran power as close the door opener as I could get to keep wires to a minimum. One of the coolest widgets I put it has to be the parking laser. It is wired into the door opener and when you enter the garage you trigger it to shoot a laser at a predetermined spot. Line the laser up on a predetermined spot on your car and you park perfect! Works every time, my wife can get her car within 1/2 an inch of the closed garage doors every time. Created a lot more usable space. I highly recommend it!
Last but not least, my bike posters are starting to make their way into the garage. I will have to dig through my collection and see what else I have, but here is what I have so far!
Finally. This has been a long, long, long time coming and ton of work. In fact much more work than I initally thought, but it has also turned out better than I could have hoped. It is done! Little things to do here and there, but I am calling it finished. Thanks once again to my awesome friends, I know it wouldn't be here without them.
