Every thing has a place and every place has a thing.........

OK I'm going to fill in a little background on my garage life

When we bought the house I really didn't care much about the house but it had to have a garage and enough parking for two cars



It's a typical estate house - they call it a link detatched because the house is joined to a shared brick built double garage (split down the middle) and that's joined to the next house so I had a single garage

There was a 1m wide covered walkway between garage and house that was open when we bought it so I put a gate up - I used to keep my motorcycle in there.

I had a surveyor look at the construction and after inspection he determined that the garage wall in the alleyway wasn't structural. Now I couldn't put a car in the garage as I like larger Opels and Vauxhalls and it just wasn't long enough with a work bench at the end. now if I could remove the covered walkway and make it wider the workbench could go at the side and I could get a large car in there

So I put a door at the other end and pulled down the wall



Now I could get a car in there so I had a 1 car garage and a 2 car driveway with only two cars - In a nutshell I had space for another car

So I bought another Senator



Then I bought another car and that went in the garage and I was parking one on the road - This is one of Mrs BC's golden rules "if you are parking on the road you have too many cars!"

Well I think everyone knows the solution to that.............

TBC

If you are going to put in planning permission for a garage you might as well do the house too

There was a nasty cheap single glazed conservator on the back of the house



We had brick weave left over from the driveway - I may have over estimated what was needed

Anyway the conservatory unusable in summer or winter for obvious reasons - now if we replaced that with a brick built extension we weren't loosing any garden we didn't already have and I was already building engines and working in the conservatory in spring and autumn

If you are going to build an extension where the conservatory is you might as well go two storey

And the garage extension wouldn't be losing much space in the garden as the shed was already taking space away

There were some objections from one neighbour who compalined that I was running a garage business from home - I have car friends....... But eventually with some conditions - no pit allowed fundamentally I got the green light.

So I moved the shed to the only place it could go - in front of the patio doors D



Mrs BC and I discussed it a lot.... It clearly wasn't ideal but it was agreed garage ext first - then move shed back to corner of the garden and then house extension

So better get on and dig some trenches

So footings in start brickwork and then get some hogging in



Then the floor could go in but I don't have any pictures of that

We had to barrow that all in as the driver remembered his past experience

Soon we had walls - Now I wanted the door to hide the join and the intention was to reclaim the bricks from the back wall to block in the existing front door and the back door so that they didn't look like new bricks



And the start of a roof

Now to do the roof we had to cut into the existing one and in the driest region of the UK it rained constantly for ever

My temporary solution meant that the existing garage got very wet too - so I kicked out the car that was in there - this probably aligned with peak driveway!!!!



Eventually when it stopped we got a roof on



Then we knocked thro and I had a double length garage which was semi weather tight - I say semi because the apperture for the window was to allow me to re-use the upstairs window which didn't meet the building requirements for the house extension (it was one 6 inches short of the height needed)

So I stuck in a sheet of polycarbonate as a temp measure

So to finish the garage I needed to finish the house

Yeah but I had a Monza to convert to 24V so I got on with that..... It was bloody cold that winter!!!

Yup as Grizz says it's interesting to see the evolution you've gone through (seemingly repeatedly pushing boundaries - and obviously negotiation skills have been polished along the way too ).

We've hit the limit on where we are and so have recently gone the other way entirely (I've really lost it this time!)... all of which will soon become clear and is why I've been very quiet of late... Which reminds me that I need to pick your brains about roller doors and a few other things - will drop you a pm.

Weigh-in is now our next job



Enjoying the story