My garage.

[Teggers]

When we moved house, my sole stipulation was "I want a decent sized garage".

One advantage to a horsey girlfriend is we needed somewhere with a bit of land for her dobbins. This often involves somewhere that has some outbuildings. So, our new place has some outbuildings!

There is a double garage with adjoining single but its about 8" too short to fit the Nissan in!! Never mind - thats now the hay store and tractor shed. There is a 40m derelict barn thats being re-built as stables and tack-room, a tumbled down 20m barn and...

My bit! It's a rather nice 20m by 5m barn with a concrete base! The concrete base extends out the front as well. I calculate I could fit 6 S14a's in there (3x2 format) Although this would mean there is little space for anything else... The plan is to have my 14a in there, a chill-out area, my outdoor "toys" (bikes, kayak, kite, bow etc) maybe another toy car when I have some money to get one - I have a few thoughts in that direction! And the fromt 10 feet or so for my daily.

Disadvantages:
1-it was full of junk.
2-no doors.
3-its held up with akro's.
4-one wall is starting to fall down.
5-part of one wall is rotten.
6-the roof is covered with ivy.
7-some muppet nailed fibreglass insulation in then lined the roof with MDF This has absorbed a lot of water and is sagging badly.
8-there's quite a steep slope down from the road.
9-tree stumps outside where the doors would be.

All the above need sorting out before I can use it as a garage.

To date:
1-emptied it of the junk.
2-found a couple of swing-doors. Not mounted yet though.
3-Um. Still held up with akro's! But got some strong wood to re-build the A-frames and strengthen the walls.
4-^
5-^
6-Ivy mostly removed not. Cut the main stalks/trunks and the rest is slowly dying. Soon I'll be able to pull the rest off.
7-stripped the mdf off and insulation. Now need to cut out the wood that the insulation was nailed to as its not serving any useful purpose. Its sole purpose was to support the insulation and mdf lining.
8-Been dumping hardcore and gravel to make the slope shallower. Eventually I'll do a proper concrete slope.
9-stumps cut down a lot but need removing really.

Sorry, no pics as yet but I'll get some shortly as it is now. Trust me though when I say its been a lot of back-breaking work (especially for someone who has never really done manual labour!!)

Eventually I will knock this one down and build a better one. But we've invested all the money we had into buying the house so there are a few things that need to be done first. So the "eventually" is probably a few years away!

Before anyone thinks I'm rich or anything, we were very lucky here - my partner's mum offered to give us half the cost of the property if we found somewhere that had a self-contained annexe for her to live in. Then we made a cheeky offer on this property and were surprised when it was accepted - they were keen to move asap. So all-in-all we did quite well!

Pics to follow later. (sorry for the wall of text - congrats if you've made it this far!!)

[Ross S14]

Sounds an awesome site to build on, Terry. Lots of ground space to play with and a nice bit of outdoors for Etienne to run in when he's older.

[Teggers]

Yup! He runs around it already! Chases the dogs around (can't keep up with them but bless him, he tries! And giggles a lot), runs around randomly, has closely supervised rides on the horses, runs around some more, "helps" with the work we're doing and did I mention he runs around a bit?! Seems like he's forgotten how to walk! I have to jog to keep up with him now!

Some nice big mature eucalyptus trees too. Planning on a mini Go-Ape style thing for him! Rope bridges, zip lines etc

It is for him.

Honest!!

Not for me at all

[andyfield]

If you want some good ideas this place is full of inspiration > http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=7

Good luck with your tidy up, I really need to sort mine out and get it rewired professionally as it needs lots of lighting put in, shelving + levelling the floor, paint walls etc etc....

[Teggers]

Done some more work today. Removed a load of the un-needed rafters and pulled the nails and fibreglass tufts off the remaining (i.e. load-bearing) ones.

Actually took some pics too!!

Looking in the back door:


Looking in the front doors (easier to see what I've done today - the left side compared to the right):


The worst of the outside:


Its well on its way to being tidied up. We have a digger coming later in the month to clear the side (access to the stables, next building back) Te bits left in there are my bumpers, kayak and tools and the few bits that were left in there by the previous owners that were actually worth keeping.

When I started, the floor was not even visible due to the amount of crap he'd left in there!!! All the soggy mdf lining is gone, as is the glass-fibre insulation - you can see all the white tufts of it where I've been pulling nails out that held everything up.

Its not as bad as I though and I should be able to fix most, if not all of it myself.

[Teggers]

Bit more done today. Removed the rest of the rafters and gone along the remaining ones with a claw hammer removing nails every few centimeters that held the soggy mdf up and the tacks that held the glass-fibre insulation in place.

Need to rebuild the A frames next and sort the rotten corner out. Then the doors can be hung and its ready to go bar the damn stumps outside!!!

[Cloudy]

That does look like alot of work

[Fake Ben Taylor]

that! looks awesome

[Teggers]

That does look like alot of work

Its not that bad, just overgrown a bit. The bits of wood leaning up are just that - leaning. They are there while I was measuring for some other bits.

Most of it is solid and there's a good concrete base. TBH though, this is temporary till I re-build it my way: telegraph pole uprights, RSJ roof beams, single aspect roof, box-section steel walls and box section translucent plastic roof and ply-lined.

I've calculated that should cost me around £4000 if I'm careful selecting the parts. Cheaper if I sacrifice some of the length. But 20m by 5m is a nice size

Planning on a chill-out area, spray booth and a few other bits. Maybe one day a 2-post lift too.

[longshanksS14]

That looks an amazing project!
Good luck with it

[Ross S14]

Big project, big plans Terry! It's nice that you've got the space to start with anyway and there's no time pressures as such. Good luck, I'll watch this thread.

[Will@666Custom]

Great space, Looks like a fun project.

Good luck with it !

[Teggers]

Slight change of plan. We have spent the last couple of days tearing down the 40m dilapidated barn to make way for stables for her ladyships horses. A lot of the blocks making up the rooms and external walls of the barn we managed to retain intact.

So, instead of "making do" with fixing the half rotten 20m barn for me, I'll build a proper garage out of the blocks! There are more than enough and all I need is the cement to hold it together and some new beams to change it from a apex roof to a single aspect - more space inside without making it higher then needing planning permission and some translucent sheets for roofing.

I was planning on eventually re-building with old telegraph poles as a frame then box-section steel walls. Blocks would be even better - more secure, warmer in winter, cooler in summer! So things are coming together better now

A thought was to build it up with blocks inside the wooden one I'd only lose a little space (not as if its small anyway!) so it still looks a bit run-down and less attractive to thieves. It WILL be alarmed and have various other security features (bolts, beams on the door, recessed posts in the floor etc - not that I'm paranoid!!)

Got plenty of time to think and plan so any other thoughts/suggestions would be welcome!

[M.D.]

so will you be building the new garage on the concrete floor thats already there??

[Teggers]

Yes. The base is pretty solid and has no cracks or damage. Just needs some small trenches filled in that had water pipes running through then. These have been disconnected due to a leak and aren't needed. I'll have water at one end with a take-off from the stables. That will be sufficient for what I'll need.

[Lightning - jimbeam]

Looks like an awesome base for an epic garage build. Which area did you move to in the end?

[Teggers]

We're now in Lincolnshire What can I say? Its flat and full of farms...

[Guy]

Hmm seemed to have missed this when you first put it up!

Looking forward to seeing this progress

[Teggers]

Its going to be a while now before any more progress is made. Reasons in the members area thread I'm going to start shortly...

[Daz]

Nice one Terry. Give me a shout if you need any advice about the building of the new garage. I'll be designing a Garage for work later this week under permitted development .

.