The Garage Gets New Windows

We replaced the windows on the garage. There. The preservationist said it. We replaced windows. This is certainly something we don't advocate if you've got old wood windows, because they'll last far longer than most replacements you can buy. We've been rebuilding all of the old wood windows on our 1913 house, adding storm windows, and insulating and caulking around them to make them just as energy efficient as replacement windows.

The garage, however, had 1960s single-paned aluminum windows and one huge single-paned 4-panel picture window. The glass was broken on a few of the windows and most of them wouldn't open anymore. Most of the glass was frosted, which is great for the doctor's office it was, but not so good if you want to know who is in the yard. We decided to replace.

The replacement windows are actually a good example of why we don't advocate replacing windows. We chose sliding windows rather than the double hung windows that were there, mostly for cost because the existing openings were quite wide. That means that the windows went from being a horizontal element to a vertical element. Vinyl windows also have much larger trim pieces than most old windows do, making the openings appear smaller. The new windows completely change the look of the building. Maybe okay for the garage, but not okay for a historic building. It's a garage though. So it's okay. Or so I keep telling myself.

The Wall Comes Down!

You may have noticed that we lovingly refer to our latest project as "the garage", but it has no garage doors? Well, we have remedied that situation. One empty-ish wall with just a single pedestrian door in one of the gable ends now sports 2 garage doors!

This was a well-planned project. We cut out the outline for the doors with a concrete saw so we have didn't have to worry about bricks coming out that we didn't want to come out. And knowing that it would take a bit to install the garage doors and that we had some tools inside that we didn't want to move or risk having stolen while the wall was open, we installed the garage doors on the inside of the wall before we knocked it down. As soon as the walls came down, so could the garage doors - voila! Instant security!

Want to see how we got from the first photo to the second? Check out the video!

Remember the Garage?

Remember the building we bought to turn into a garage? And the never-ending roofing project of last summer? Well, we've finally gotten back to it. And made quite a bit of progress!

The building was a doctor's office, so it had a waiting area, 2 bathrooms, a utility room, and a number of examining rooms. This view is from the waiting area.

We tore down walls, walls, and more walls to clear out the area that will become the garage and workshop.

And ended up with a nice empty space. This is only one section of the building. It is really an L-shaped open space. Trusses provide the structure for the building so we were able to remove all of the interior walls without worry that it would fall down!

We rented a floor scraper to remove the tile floor from the concrete. Not asbestos. We had to have it tested so we could throw it in the dumpster.

We've started to put things back now. We've added the framing for the walls between the garage and studio and storage room. We've replaced the electrical panel and meter box and gotten an electrical rough-in inspection so we could have the electricity turned on. The HVAC was installed last week. Next up is installing the garage doors and framing and plumbing inspections!

It. Is. Done. (The Roof That Is)

We actually finished the roof over a week ago, I just haven't gotten to updating the blog. My husband asked what I wanted for my birthday? I said, "to finish this stupid roof." Stupid roof finished. In a drizzly rain. On my birthday. But, it is done. Woo hoo!

Before we can get rid of the dumpster, we need to complete the interior demolition. Since this building had been a doctor's office, it is cut up into a bunch of little examining rooms off of the main hallway. This photo may not look like much, but it represents the brute labor of removing 2 of the walls to turn 3 rooms into 1. There's more sheetrock pulling and 2x4 smashing to come before all the walls are down, but it's looking more like a garage already!

The Weather is Wonderful!

The weather is wonderful! Or so says the fortune cookie we got recently. Maybe in China! We started work on the garage roof almost 2 months ago. As we may have mentioned, it keeps raining. And raining. In case you don't believe us, here are some hard facts from the National Weather Service in Blacksburg for June 1st through today. At least 27 of the last 42 days have had measurable rain. Measurable to the tune of 13.26 inches! And that doesn't include the rain we fought in May. We just have the ridge and chimney flashing to finish, but guess what, it's raining again!

Roofing the Garage: Days 5-6

Finally! We were home for a DRY weekend! We finished the front of the house to about 2 rows below the ridge on Saturday and the back to just below the chimney on Sunday. Woo hoo! The end is near!

Just as exciting, we got the person who is salvaging metal from the building to clear the overgrowth (and poison ivy!) from the alley between our house and the garage. Since the alley is owned by the town, we asked them if they would chip the brush and haul it away for free if we cleaned up the mess. They agreed and the work was completed this weekend too.

Now we can see the garage from our house - much better for security. We're just hoping Tommy didn't get a killer case of poison ivy from his hard work!

Roofing the Garage: Days 1-4

The rain. It's amazing how much rain we've gotten this spring. And always when we are able to work on the roof! We did finally get some shingles up last week, but not until after some drama and...rain.

Due to equipment failure and...rain...it took 2 days to replace the few pieces of decking that were rotted. We haven't turned the electricity on to the garage yet, so we're using a generator. The generator had been sitting idle for a few months and, of course, it didn't want to work to power a saw and the air nailer. Plan B: use the new cordless saw. Wouldn't you know the new cordless saw's battery charger didn't work? Plan C: back to the generator. We finally got it running, but only had an hour left that day to work. Despite the setbacks (and rain) we did get the decking repaired and shingling finally started last week!

Unroofing the Garage: Days 9 & 10

"That's the same photo as in the last post," you say. Well, you're right. Things look pretty much the same so I didn't take a new picture. What you can't see is that we've removed all of the nails from the roof. The nails that held in the tar paper, the 2 layers of shingles, and the roll roofing that was put on top of the shingles. So, yes, lots and lots of nails. We were able to pull nails for the few hours last week when it wasn't raining. On Wednesday morning, the only place that it was raining in the entire area was over our house. Go figure.

We also had a bit of excitement on one of those rainy days. See that tiny pile of lumber in front of the dumpster? Someone thought it was free for the taking, pulled his pickup in and took a few pieces. Not all of it, mind you, just a few pieces. Like he was trying to finish a project and was too lazy to drive the 2 miles to 84 Lumber. Since we live next door, we saw him leaving the yard, but didn't get the license plate number. It was less than $50 worth of supplies, but it was the principle of the thing. That and the loss of peace of mind - we've lived here 10 years and haven't had any problems with theft in the past. We're storing our lumber on the roof from now on.

We're finally officially done unroofing now and on to roofing!

Unroofing the Garage: Days 7 & 8

We had a bit of a hiatus between Days 5 & 6 and Days 7 & 8 of unroofing the garage because of this:

Who's to say no to a trip to the beach? The garage roof has been leaking for years, what's another week? We had plans to finish removing the last strip of roof on Sunday when we returned, but...it rained. All day. So it was Monday before the final unroofing was completed. That took more time than expected because one of our crew of 2 (me) came down with a cold and felt a little too wobbly to be on the roof.

Roofing supplies arrived on Monday also. The delivery truck didn't have equipment to place them on the roof, so that was up to us. We rented a ladder hoist. Which was fine, but it didn't come with instructions for putting it together, or using it, so it took a couple of trips into the house to check the internet to get it right and then we only figured out that it would dump the load at the top of the roof by accident. The hoist also had a partially stripped belt so it would only lift 2 shingles packages rather than the 400lbs it was rated for. The other problem is that one of us (me) isn't strong enough to be hefting squares of shingles. So that left it all to the man on the roof. Load the hoist, send 'em up, climb the ladder, place them on the roof, repeat.

It took all day Tuesday to get all of the shingles and roofing felt up on the roof and placed, but he did it. Direct quote, "Don't ever let me replace an entire roof again." Duly noted.

Unroofing the Garage: Days 5 & 6

We had the dumpster pulled from the front of the garage and a new one placed in the back on Thursday. Our end-of-week plans changed so we ended up with the gift of two extra days to work on the roof.

After waiting for the roof to dry out after torrential rains on Wednesday night, we got to the roof Thursday afternoon. Friday was downright chilly with a stiff wind, but actually good weather for roof work - no worries about overheating.

 
Just one more day of unroofing and pulling nails and the roof will go back on!

Unroofing the Garage: Days 3 & 4

This whole unroofing thing would be going much faster if we had more stamina, fewer other commitments, and control over the weather! We got the rest of the front portion of the roof off in Days 3 & 4. 

This led us to the conclusion that...we had to get the dumpster moved. There was just not going to be any good way to get the shingles from the backside of the roof to the dumpster on the front side. We tried throwing them and missed about half. We tried putting a tarp on the ground and dragging the tarp full of shingles to the dumpster, but overfilled it and spent more time emptying the tarp than we did taking down shingles. That just wasn't going to be sustainable. 

Since we'd also been working on removing plasterboard and insulation from the interior, the dumpster was already over half full, so we decided to pay the extra fee and have it pulled so we could get  a new one placed on the back side of the garage this morning. We scrapped the #1 copper that was in the valleys of the garage yesterday and that paid for cost of the extra dumpster pull. Win-win! 

Now we're just waiting for the roof to dry out after yesterday's rain. Before it rains again this afternoon.

Unroofing the Garage: Days 1 & 2

When we last blogged, we were thrilled to have bought another house. Then life intervened. Until early April. So here we are, in May, finally working on turning that house into a garage. We have puddles inside when it rains, so the first order of business is a new roof. 

We had great plans to get that done in a week. Turns out our local landfill now requires certification that what you're putting in your dumpster is asbestos-free. So, to get the dumpster, we had to take samples of the things we would be putting into it to a lab to have it tested. Which they had to send out. And there was a weekend in there before we got the results back. Last Thursday, we got the dumpster. 

We had a productive day and a half of removing the old roof, then it rained. And it rained. And it continued to rain. Now we have even bigger puddles in the garage and are wondering if we'll EVER get the roof off, but we're on our way!

We Bought Another House!

For most of the time we've lived in our present house, the house next door has been empty. It's a 1950s brick ranch house that had been turned into a doctor's office at some point so it's more office than home at this point. We've dreamed about buying the house for years and turning it into a garage and workshop. We have an old Jeep that's been under a car cover since we moved here and our basement is far less than ideal for a wood shop.

Today, the house next door, and several other properties, were up for auction. We watched the number of people checking it out last week at the preview. We tried to judge what people might be thinking about the place and how much it they might think it was worth. It certainly wasn't worth the appraisal they had on it. It's a nice lot, but the building would be a lot of work to turn back into a house. We were afraid someone would buy it, tear it down, and put something next door that wouldn't be a good neighbor to us.

We listened to the auction for the properties before ours and they went for below, way below, the appraised prices. There was hope! Our auction started and the price was low, real low. It was us against one other guy. He blinked. We stayed in the game. We bought the house! We need to wait 120 days for the IRS to decide if the price meets their lien before we start working on it, but after that we'll be on our way to having a 1500 square foot garage!