New Garage

As many of you know our garage was suffering from some serious weathering, which was contributed to the age of the garage and the lack of "attention" from the current and previous owners. In 2003 we decided to install piers on one side of the garage because it was leaning and the pier contractor consulted agreed. Needless to say not more than a year later it started leaning to the other side, which makes sense since it is a floating slab. We had a structural engineer out to examine our garage for 1) the foundation; and 2) to answer the question was the structure (meaning the frame work) sound. Praise the Lord! The engineer said that all was good and suggested putting piers around the remaining portion of the garage. We submitted the report to the City along with our permit and an outline of our improvements/repairs. We had to be careful not to call it a demolition, due to the fact that if we completely demolished the garage we would have had to comply with the new codes associated with the City (and let me say that would have been probably close to approximately half our homes value, which was just not worth it!). We waited patiently yet anxiously as the City reviewed our permit application, it was a very long 5 days, but they approved it!!! YEAH!!! Here are some photos of what the garage looked like before (please imagine two natural skylights in the roof, I think you can see one of them). We had the piers installed immediately.






The reason I took a picture of the deck is because in order to drive a vehicle back into the garage we had to cut the deck and remove some of the deck on the driveway side. We additionally will have to cut the concrete steps (but I will talk about that later). We also made a decision to remove the fence along that side of our property, which has really opened up our backyard. On March 12, 2011 we hired a couple of helpers and we started removing the roof and siding. We placed the roofing material in these green 3 cubic yard bags that you can purchase at Loews or Home Depot. The boys thoroughly enjoyed watching Waste Management pick up the green bags for disposal.






In addition to removing portions of the deck we also had to cut the concrete steps. So we attempted to use a hand concrete saw, but that didn't work as well as we thought. We hired a concrete cutting company to come and cut the steps. Don't worry Charlie is making some wood ones to walk down in the opposite direction of the deck (they are not built yet, but I will post picture once complete). Our nephew-in-law came down the weekend of March 19th, 2011 to help us "straighten" the structure, reinforce those beams that needed some "help" or strengthening, put the decking and plywood up in preparation for the roof and siding. They worked very hard and long hours to get everything ready for the next weekend. A special thanks to Jake!





The following week the garage door was framed and installed. The new roof was put on March 26, 2011 and the siding was installed on the week of March 28, 2011. Zachery helped Charlie put the weather paper on before the siding went on, I thought it was a very sweet picture! We still have some electrical to do, some finishing touches on the deck, and of course organizers have to be installed in the garage and shed. But the project is approximately 95% complete!! I am super excited about having a garage because we didn't have a garage growing up but a carport. Charlie was very sweet and let me open the garage door for the very first time. It was so quiet and smooth.