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| Our little garage at night. |
Looking back over the last 6 months of constant building seems like an impossible dream. I'm really not sure how we managed to finish the interior our garage ourselves for the exception of hiring an electrician and spray foam insulator. Basically I've had to shut out the world during this extreme build phase, receiving more than one phone call from Mom asking if we're alive. Bad, bad daughter! On the rare occasion when friends or family came to visit, I put them to work! Not one person passes through the front door without hauling furniture or boxes into the garage!
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| Sheds Unlimited builders putting up garage. |
This construction effort began in order to
Make room for Mom. In October of last year we purchased a prefab 2-story garage from
Sheds Unlimited to house an office and warehouse upstairs for my
online vintage shop. I designed the garage wall space just wide enough to place furniture and storage racks along the perimeter to hold my shipping boxes, glassware and moms excess when she moves in. We do intend to park a car in the garage so have to keep it reasonably clear.
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| Installing batt insulation to the upstairs walls. |
It's been about a month since my husband and I finished the space by hanging gutters, insulating, running electrical wires, hooking up fixtures, hanging sheetrock, finishing walls, installing trim and flooring, painting, installing a mini-split, and installing a garage door opener. Not to mention adding barn boards from my family's farm (which are very special to me) to the exterior and interior. The final detail is to add barn board shutters to the garage and house to tie them together.
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| I forgot about painting, thought it would never end! |
I am a lucky, lucky girl to have married a man that has extensive building experience. Ladies, if you're single, do not marry a man that can't throw a hammer down in a BIG WAY. Anthony is awesome. I did get pretty excited about electrical work and spent most evenings watching youtube videos so as to not burn the garage down from my tinkering. Anthony has a full-time job so while he was at work I was running electrical wires and installing outlets.
Based on the advice of my father-in-law, we did hire an electrician to hook up a huge wire (that Anthony and I ran) from our main box to the garage. Talk about a beast this was a challenge due to the size and weight of the wire. Somehow we got it done and it passed code! The electrical work was the most tedious part of the project. Anthony knew enough to keep me in line but this was not his field of expertise.
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| Rigged up scaffold with wood extenders to ceiling. |
Anthony's smartest purchase was a scaffold and he rigged it up so we could
lift heavy sheetrock together up to the ceiling without having to hire out this job. It worked amazingly well. I now use the scaffold in the garage to hold all my shipping boxes for my online business.
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| Wonderful handcrafted barn board window ledges. |
Anthony is an expert at hanging and finishing sheetrock and he did such a good job that we could not find any stud seams when it came time to install shelves and brackets for my office / shop. Anthony did a beautiful job creating a barn board bookcase and window ledges. I also love the exterior barn board over the garage door that he installed. I found a 1930's Gas Station green light fixture on Etsy and he also installed this on the front of the garage.
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| Spray foam ceiling R30. |
I did decide to hire spray foam insulators to shoot around the garage perimeter ceiling and coat the entire upstairs ceiling. It would have been a crazy insulation install if we hung batts. Too complicated to even explain. The foam guys were done in about 3 hours. A relief to have some part of it DONE FAST.
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| Oak / barn board look flooring. |
We love the
oak laminate flooring which is holding up really well. Not one scratch yet and we've moved a lot of items around on it! Very pleased. It was easy to install and Anthony rigged it up as trim around the stairwell and on the stair landing. Another interesting install was our
DIY Mr. Cool Mini Split system. At one point I yelled to Mr Cool, "you ain't cool Mr. Cool" - it was not easy but it is effective and one of the few systems you can buy without having to hire a heat and air guy to install it. We have not even noticed a change in our utility bill - very efficient. Love it!
If I was to do one thing differently it would be to make the garage ceiling 2" higher. Anthony did have to engineer the garage door by sawing the metal runners down an inch to allow for the garage door opener to fit and work. The ceiling height upstairs is perfect as is high enough for me to have storage racks toward the ceiling. I have a rack over my shipping station which holds bubble wrap, packing paper, and a few boxes.
Over the next 3 months we'll be trying to hammer out the basement apartment where mom will live. Anthony is going to have to do the majority of the work as my body is wearing out. Warning to visitors -- you will be put to WORK if you step a toe on the premises!
~Rebecca
