Long term garage thread

In about 2018 we started meeting with builders and designing the house; for my purposes I wanted a 3 car attached garage so my wife would have a bay for her chariot and I could have two bays to tinker with whatever in. I knew we would build a shop or further garage later on. But this was for now.



















Broke ground December 19th 2019 which is great in NW Ohio, luckily winter stayed away until the house was enclosed. They got into building and finally the garage floor was poured.

So started boxing and moving stuff over, I buy and sell cars and parts as a hobby and side job just basically for fun so there was a lot of junk to move around












My brother owns this old warehouse so about this time he got a nasty letter from the city telling him to clean up the loading docks or face fines. We use the building to store cars so we don’t use the docks; had some truckloads of dirt delivered and filled them in.





















Took some time to get that all good and get the electric on.

So since then I’ve parted out some junk, fixed my junk, started the restification on two cars (finishing one) and had some general fun.

























Bought some Chinese tire machines added some other tools. Swapped ten sets of tires so far and love having that ability right here.

The ware house is very cool, it was a factory for water curved wood in the early 1900’s. The main output was the rockers for childrens toys like play ponys (r0cking horse) and cribs. Pretty cool history, they used water and pressure to bend the wood rather than cutting it into curves. They went out of business in the 50’s like lots of other niche businesses overrun by larger competitors and the building became an ice manufacturer. That’s what it was til they went out of business and my brother was the only person at the auction interested in the building. Not throwing out numbers but 17,000 sq ft for far less than a new BMW sport utility. There are three basic building together, two of which he rents to a company for storage, and the larger main hall we use.

I’ve noticed what you mean with concrete as well in threads on here, we called it “broom finished” and “trowel finish”, broom finish has the small grooves while trowel is pretty well perfectly smooth.

Edit: it appears that the forum changes “r0cking horse” to “poor quality wobbly children's play pony”

Quotes came in for the concrete floor in the barn and sills and gutters which are the first things I want to do. Yikes, I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. I’m hesitant to wreck the character of the building by re-siding it but not sure spending this quantity of money for a building that won’t be weather tight is a good idea?

Decisions decisions

Also, thought I’d throw a couple old photos of the barn in here, it was built late 1800’s as a tool shed for a large cattle and grain farm.

This first picture is from 1983 and would have been just after the big barn was pulled down.


This picture is dated 1973 and shows the big barn. The small structure to the right is my current barn and it’s 30’x60’ so that is a BIG BARN!


These two are cool, someone dropped them in my mail box without a return address. The current barn is to the left from across the road and the cars say this is 1940 or so. This farm was attached to the house across the road in the above photo


The boy in this photo lives in the house across the street now, we bought the property when his father passed away and they split the farm yard and acreage apart. Our barn is still to the left although obscured by trees.

Love all the big build stuff, house looks spot on.

As an aside one of the Dad’s at my youngest school a few years back had the reg N1GELon his Diablo. He was Ginger.

P.

That will make 2 of us then Nigel!

P.

Great thread. Always staggered and envious in equal measure of how much space you guys have over there and how affordable it is!

The farm land around us was 8,000,000 dollars. We bought just the farmyard which was two acres and two acres of field that the farmer who bought the rest is leasing from us. Not especially cheap but my wife knew them (was babysat by them when she was little) and they gave us a deal. My in laws run the farm that bought the rest of the land so there won’t be a subdivision around us anytime in the future.