Rebuilding the Garage

When we bought this house the garage was nearly unusable. It leaked through the roof so badly that pretty much anything we kept inside would become damaged. In addition, it was dark creepy and full of spiders. It was time to rebuild this thing. There will be a lot of pictures for this project.

First step was to remove the siding to see what I would be looking at. The siding was rotten in so many places that I determined it was not salvageable.

Once I got it down to the studs, I realized that I needed to replace the footer all the way around the building. It was completely rotted. In other areas I needed to just rebuild the frame altogether.

Not only was the footer rotted but because of the poor drainage around the building the brick foundation was bowing and slowly falling over. I could try and rebuild the foundation or repair it. After some research I discovered some good remedial actions I could take to salvage the foundation.

I decided to buy 36" anchors with a carriage bolt and then bury them in cement to have a method to gently draw in the foundation.

I then drilled a hole through the brick wall and put a through bolt in the wall with a steel plate that I drilled and used as a backer plate.

With all my anchors in place I could bring in the wall by using my wrench to slowly turn each anchor one rotation and then move to the next anchor to move the whole wall in concert. And it worked! I was able to draw the wall in by two inches! Afterwards I skim coated the inside with mortar to give the brick more rigidity.

Afterwards I selected a laminated panel that was rated for 25 years to side the outside of the shed.

Admittedly, the garage still looks pretty rough but hang in there. I knew for the front I wanted to install stone so I used plywood to give the frame rigidity and cement board as a substrate for the stone.

I had reached the point where I thought it would be a good time to put a new roof on. After removing the old shingles, I had to replace areas of the roof where the wood had rotted. I chose a pretty architectural shingle and used a synthetic paper to make sure it stayed waterproof for a long time.

With a little paint and new roof the building started to look like it was coming together.

After finishing the trim and waterproofing the cement board with a paintable membrane. It was time to start hanging the airstone.

Now it was time to put in a new floor. When deciding what to use I decided to go with something that was removable since the ground had been unstable in the past and I had problems with the foundation. I figured if I put a concrete slab in the building it could be in danger of cracking and I would never be able to access the anchors and carriage bolts supporting the foundation. With all this in consideration I decided to use pavers to make my floor. With the same method that I used to build my patio, I brought in a load of screenings to give the pavers a solid base lay on.

Now that I am so close to the finish I needed to construct my doors. Unfortunately, I must of not grabbed any pictures of creating the doors. Basically, I bought bead board from the hardware store and used a router to put a groove in a 2 x 6 square frame to set the bead board. Honestly, I am quite proud of the doors. Before, the previous owner put the garage doors on hinges and they would just sag horribly. Instead, I bought a beautiful stainless steel sliding door system to hang my doors. This prevented sag and allowed me to open the doors with out taking up 6 feet in front of my garage. I couldn't tell you how annoying it was to realize I parked too close to the garage to open the garage door. In addition, I had to redo the corners joints of the door frames. Originally, I built the frame with a butt-joint but it was not strong enough to keep the shape of the frame and the 2 x 6s as they tend to warp and just pulled the joints apart. I rebuilt the joints using a half-lap joint with the router and now they are indestructible.

As you can see I put in a linear drain in the front of the garage to whisk away the water to prevent further foundation issues. With a few more pieces of hardware and some electrical work I now have a proper garage/workshop!

Here is the full before and after.