Ivans garage/mancave build

Roll on 3 months and having redecorated half the house, I have been finally allowed some time to work on the garage.

It has a pitched roof so I've put a ladder up and put loft boards down on one side. The plan is to put up there all the interior parts, glass, and anything else that's in the way like a TV, beer fridge, bean bags etc

Having loft boarded up to the wall, I could start taking it down. I did have a builder come in to confirm it's not structural. The rafters all run along the garage so the wall plays no part in supporting them. I will leave a column of brick at either end as belt and braces.

I started off with a hammer and chisel. It was very slow progress and was knackering my wrists so I went and bought an sds drill.
This one is actually the second one. I got lazy and was using the chisel bit to lever with and snapped it. The drill is on offer at homebase at the moment for £26 down from 90odd. A replacement set of chisel bits was £20 with the same 5 bits that come with the drill anyway so just bought another. They're a bargain at that price!




One of the best tools I've ever bought. Taking down the bricks from upstairs was a pain. The wall went all the way up to the roof so needed bringing down to ceiling height first. Soon enough however we were down to the ground floor level

I should probably I introduce all my projects incase any of you have missed their threads. Some of these haven't been touched for years now

First off my long suffering mini. I bought this when I was around 12/13 as a complete car for £60. I learnt to spanner and weld on it before buying my first driving car, another mini at 16. Its not seen the road in my ownership and was last on the road in 1992. Its followed me all round the country and its high time it got its restoration


In the other garage is my Gt6. I bought this around 2010 and drove it on and off for 6 years. Another full resto



Right. This one's not even my fault. Me and SWMBO were out one night around 3 years ago at a pub near a camp site we were saying at in Wales.
It was pi**ing it down so we'd abandoned our tent for the evening. Camped next to us at the site was a vw t3 bus and we got looking at them on a certain auction site.
Had a few drinks, and then a few more and happened to see one listed cheap in the parts section. It had no doors and only a couple of windows. Was on at about 100 quid I think.
Had a few more drinks and went to bed. Next day, congratulations! You have won!
Sh*t
300 quid
I blame her


Oh and I seem to have acquired some lawnmowers. Long story. There's a thread



Now, her indoors wants the camper done next so we can get a few holidays out of it with the dog. Her list so far is snowdonia, the lake district, the Scottish 500, Northern Norway, the black forest... The list goes on. You sort of tone it out after a bit though don't you.

So apparently that needs doing first. It has a high top on it so that'll need to go to get in the garage. Depending on how much can go upstairs, one of the cars might have to live outside for a bit

That's not as bad as it sounds. I plan on widening the driveway quite soon, at the same time, erecting (ahem) a carport and replacing a good car length and a bit of that gravel with brick. So anything that ends up outside should be pretty well covered.

And this picture brings me up to date.

I reckon about 85% of the wall is now down. I need to cement over the the pillars I'm leaving once the wall is completely down. I also want to tie the roof joists together in the middle. They were tied into the brickwork in 5 places.
I will also board out the rest of the loft.

The next big job will be to sort the electrics. I've got my dad coming up in Feb with some bigger shielded cable so we can run a better power supply. That will need a trench digging from the house.

Once that is done we can run plenty of sockets and led baton lighting upstairs and down.

All the walls will be painted white to aid lighting. There is already 3 tins of workshop floor paint left by the previous owner. So the floor will be painted grey.

That should be a good starting point for me. Hopefully I will get that far by mid-summer

More soon

If you intend to run a compressor you might want to think about putting that upstairs too 👍

Ah well the plan at the moment for the compressor is to make a little shed for it behind the garage and then plumb it in. That way I don't have to listen to it.

Yeah hopefully. I really need to get the bus done first and not get sidetracked by the other two

Well the last two weeks have been an absolute bl**dy disaster.

In short, the boilers f****d. It turns out that the previous owner had basically hotwired it to run, bypassing any safety feature and control. Half the wiring board was wired backwards. Just to give the appearance of a working boiler to anyone coming to view the house or the surveyor. What actually happens is you get about 10 min of heating before it goes nuclear and trips out. Or 5 min of hot water followed steam as it goes nuclear and trips out

There's a new boiler coming tomorrow. Goodbye any money that was supposed to be spent on the workshop.

I've looked into whether we can recoup anything from previous owner and our solicitor says unlikely and will cost more than its worth going through the small claims courts.

So. With the best part of 5 grand down the toilet let's see what we can get on with


I've found some 20 year old floor paint. This could mostly be bought back to life.
Looks like the floor will be grey


I have also found some 20 year old white masonry paint in the garage. Most of it had gone off but I managed to coax enough life out of the rest to paint a corner of breeze block.

So with a corner painted I was able to clear some shelving and finally sort some stuff into some sort of order.




This left enough room to give this area a clean ready for some paint


Now normally you'd paint the walls first so that you can paint over any spills when you do the floor.
Looking about, I only found a quarter of a tub of CROWN magnolia.
I guess it'll be good enough as a base layer to soak into the breeze blocks. I'll get some white next month and go over the top.

And soon enough I'd painted my way out of the garage. The magnolia didn't go very far





The other thing I've been getting on with is securing the roof where the wall was. It was tied into the wall in places but with the wall removed I've tied it into the other half of the roof. Very time consuming and not a lot to show for it.

I've also been laying down more flooring upstairs. All I have left are some second hand loft boards that have been cut short. However where the wall was, the joist were closer together than standard anyway so I'd have to shorten any new board I bought.
I've decided therefore to use the short boards and then just fill the gap left.
Oh and I made some shelving up there too. I would show you but ive cut myself off from the ladder with wet paint. So here's an underside view


I'm a little concerned about the joists. There's a fair bit of weight up there now and they probably aren't specced to carry much. I'll be adding some extra reinforcement as soon as funds allow.

Now, you may have noticed its a bit dark in there. The existing power supply isn't man enough for my requirements so I need to dig a trench to the house for some new cable.

Also I want to widen the driveway a bit and reduce the area of grass available to the dog as he's intent on turning the area outside the kitchen into the somme.

First steps taken today before it went dark


The idea for the moment is to run a fence from the edge of the garage wall to just past the kitchen door. This will keep the dog from the front garden and cars. Hopefully this should stop him chasing cats onto the cars as that is really getting on my nerves.

Eventually I'd like to block pave the area in front of the garage at least a cars length and build a nice looking carport over the top.

I will also be extending the patio area up to the driveway fence.

This should protect the cars from the cats and the rain and get rid of all the mud in front of the house. The postman will be happy too

Looking good. Same position myself at the moment. Juggling things round to make space and get things organised but the house keeps stopping progress. Definitely needs doing the first half of the year so I can start my gt6+2.
Keep up the good work.

I restored a mk2 with my dad a few years ago ( got a feature in practical classics with it)





While doing it we bought a few more that had come up cheap for parts.
One was way past doing anything so I raced it.




I kept all the running gear of it afterwards tho for spares.
The other car was a mk2 but someone had started to cut the roof off. That’s the one I’m starting to restore but more towards the period race car. Also as I have no interior parts left stripped out my be easier on the wallet.