Here's the story of my garage / workshop / mancave build that's now, at long last, practically complete
When I bought my house 10 years ago, it came complete with this resplendent 1950's ruin constructed out of asbestos and twigs. It was collapsing to the left and was only held up by a piece of wire lassoed around an adjacent tree truck. Each week the garage was leaning more, the wire became tighter and I was expecting to hear a high e at any time as the wire pinged and the whole sorry wreck collapsed. The only redeeming feature was a pit.
As this set-up was clearly an unstable health hazard, I rebuilt it out of 2x2 and 19mm ply which was then covered in matchboard. I extended it 4ft out the back and made the whole thing 2ft wider, added plenty of power and lighting and used it like that for 5 years. It looked half respectable when first done....
but it soon started to weather...
We live in quite an exposed spot and the weather played havoc with it....
to the extent that it soon looked like this......
Add in the fact that half the local field mouse population holidayed in it every winter, plus I'd shot 2 rats behind it and it was time for it to go.
I'd been planning on building a brick garage with a tiled roof ever since I bought the house and that time had come. I planned on doing all the work myself and building it out of facing brick, concrete blocks with a cavity wall construction and a tiled pitch roof.
I began to empty out my old garage prior to demolishing it. I went and chatted up the farmer from next door and rented part of one of his barns for a tenner a week.... double cheap and very handy as my gear was only a 3 minute walk from my house if I needed it. It took me a good couple of weeks to empty the garage and my poor old RX7 got dumped outside at the back of my house.
So, once emptied, I started to pull the old garage down...
With the old garage gone, it was time to plan the new one........I worked out that I could build one 4.2m wide and 8.2 long, 2.4m to the eaves and 4m to the apex of the roof.
Although the old garage had a deep pit in it, I hate working in pits, uncomfortable, damp, dangerous places to work in so for the new garage, I decided to go with one of these, a decision which was to impact on everything that followed...
I needed sufficient roof height, plus floor area to accomodate the lift and to still fit in the other stuff into the garage such as workbench, cupboards, storage, tools etc, etc...
The garage also had to comply with the rules of permitted development which meant that I could only go 2.4m to the eves and 4m to the apex of the roof from the highest point of the finished ground level adjacent to the building..... but the lift posts were 2.8m high and then I had to allow for the lift of the car on it...
The solution was to do a reduced level dig and sink the new garage down into the garden by a metre..... the impact that was to have on the build was immense.
When I bought my house 10 years ago, it came complete with this resplendent 1950's ruin constructed out of asbestos and twigs. It was collapsing to the left and was only held up by a piece of wire lassoed around an adjacent tree truck. Each week the garage was leaning more, the wire became tighter and I was expecting to hear a high e at any time as the wire pinged and the whole sorry wreck collapsed. The only redeeming feature was a pit.
As this set-up was clearly an unstable health hazard, I rebuilt it out of 2x2 and 19mm ply which was then covered in matchboard. I extended it 4ft out the back and made the whole thing 2ft wider, added plenty of power and lighting and used it like that for 5 years. It looked half respectable when first done....
but it soon started to weather...
We live in quite an exposed spot and the weather played havoc with it....
to the extent that it soon looked like this......
Add in the fact that half the local field mouse population holidayed in it every winter, plus I'd shot 2 rats behind it and it was time for it to go.
I'd been planning on building a brick garage with a tiled roof ever since I bought the house and that time had come. I planned on doing all the work myself and building it out of facing brick, concrete blocks with a cavity wall construction and a tiled pitch roof.
I began to empty out my old garage prior to demolishing it. I went and chatted up the farmer from next door and rented part of one of his barns for a tenner a week.... double cheap and very handy as my gear was only a 3 minute walk from my house if I needed it. It took me a good couple of weeks to empty the garage and my poor old RX7 got dumped outside at the back of my house.
So, once emptied, I started to pull the old garage down...
With the old garage gone, it was time to plan the new one........I worked out that I could build one 4.2m wide and 8.2 long, 2.4m to the eaves and 4m to the apex of the roof.
Although the old garage had a deep pit in it, I hate working in pits, uncomfortable, damp, dangerous places to work in so for the new garage, I decided to go with one of these, a decision which was to impact on everything that followed...
I needed sufficient roof height, plus floor area to accomodate the lift and to still fit in the other stuff into the garage such as workbench, cupboards, storage, tools etc, etc...
The garage also had to comply with the rules of permitted development which meant that I could only go 2.4m to the eves and 4m to the apex of the roof from the highest point of the finished ground level adjacent to the building..... but the lift posts were 2.8m high and then I had to allow for the lift of the car on it...
The solution was to do a reduced level dig and sink the new garage down into the garden by a metre..... the impact that was to have on the build was immense.
... I can attest that it's a truly amazing thing. The photos really don't tell the whole story of just how steep and uncooperative the garden is and how much sheer donkey work went into it. I know I'd never have stuck to it, I'd have ended up with a massive hole in the back garden and that'd have been that. Just to finish the thing is a Herculean achievement, let alone finish it to the Dream GArage state it's in. Awesome thing! 
Properly jealous!
