Surprise - Another Project Creates Another Project!

Well you've seen me post about the 55 Bel Air. While it was at the body/paint shop for past 2 yrs now, I took the opportunity to finish the garage. Well there was one other car on my bucket list and one I never thought I would get. But then earlier this summer something followed me home....

It's a clean barn fresh 1940 Ford convertible. It was one of those deals where you just grab it and figure out the rest later! So the garage will only hold one project and there is no way this thing can sit out in the weather, so I came up with a quick design for a side car port. I already have the concrete there on the side, so it would work out pretty well and keep the weather off till "someday" comes. It basically would be 16 ft long and 10 ft wide. I would tie in the first peak change of the roof giving me just enough slope to drain and still span the  drive while keeping the height practical. The key was making it blend in and not ruin the look of the garage.

Setting the posts and rafter support.

 

Setting the rafters.

 

 

Fascia and sheathing installed.

 

The old Ford in it's new home... it stays amazingly dry underneath.

 

New Garage Siding

It was a few years since I had shingled the house but I guess it's like riding a bike too. I used up the last of the leftovers to finish the front. The soffit is all a thin tongue & groove fit pvc trim. The fascia is also pvc.

 

Starting the shakes

 

Shakes, fascia and soffit done

 

Paint finished

 

 

For the back I have to say I cheated a bit. Well, actually I ran out of shakes and didn't feel like ordering more. Plus the back only has 3 feet of space between the garage and fence so scaffold was not an option. Working off a ladder doing all that shake work for a wall no one can see... nah, I've wisened up a bit in the past few years! So I went white vinyl... and it looks just fine from the next street over.

 



Here you can see the new vinyl and the finished glass block windows.

Garage Glass Block

After finishing the door I continued on with the other windows which fortunately were in much better shape as far as the mortar condition. For these I just removed the old wood, built a new pressure treated frame that would hold the window and fit in the stone opening, then install and mortar everything up.

 

Old window and framing - back wall

 

All cleaned out and ready for new framing

 

 

New framing, window, and trim installed

 

Adding chicken wire to hold mortar

 

Filling in with mortar

 



I forgot to take more pics of the finished product. Well I was dodging the neighbors dog on the left side (fence like goes to front garage corner) so I get a pass on that! I think you can see them in later photos when I do the siding. Overall they came out ok considering what I had to work with and now I have extra sunlight in the garage but added security and no more boarded up broken rotted windows.

 



Restoration Burnout

It happened to me and it'll probably happen to you too.... restoration burnout!

I was good till year 5. Around 6 it started to get old and by 7 I found any excuse not to work on the place! I still wanted to get my hands dirty, but I wanted to play with other projects... hobbies I haven't had time for in years and just having more fun on weekends. Then work (at least I have it these days) started to take more time away after the company was sold to new owners and they quickly cut numbers and relied more heavily on the remaining workers. There was the divorce... no comment! And now the new relationship who has the house disease as bad as I do with her own project that I help out on when I can (the posts about "Case de Jessica"). I've also started a bit of a side gig buying antiques at local auctions and reselling online. That became a nice way of paying for the car restoration and other items I like to collect, but again another time consumer.

Needless to say work has come to almost a screeching halt and the blog basically abandoned. Then again how many posts can you do about drywall hanging and sanding???! Basically that's about all I have done on the main house since my last post... in the same bedroom I've been picking at for over 2 years now.

But... the garage is finished (for the moment) and it came out pretty good for what I started with. When I left off the basic roof was completed. Well all of 2012 I didn't touch it. This year however with the 55 hopefully coming soon, it was time to finish things up. Here's a quick synopsis of what I did.

 

I started to replace all the windows with glass block. I picked standard sizes so I had to reframe and fill the walls to fit. Well the first one was all rotted out. And worse was the mortar washed out underneath. So the stone was removed till I reached a solid base to rebuild for a solid foundation to installed my window framing.

 

 

Well here's what I ended up with! I had to take it to the ground and start over. So then the mind starts thinking.... hey, I always wanted a side door so I didn't have to always use the garage door to get in. Well I'm almost there now! So that was the direction I took it in.

 

Making room for the new door up top

Pouring a pad for the entrance

 

 

New frame for doorway (once this was in the rest of the top stone was removed)

 

New door 

 

 Learning to be a stone mason...

 

 

All filled in... not perfect but ok for my rookie stone job.



Shingled For The Winter

I managed to get the shingles done over the holidays. Having the air nailer made quick work and I had the roof done over two afternoons. Now there's no worries about the weather and I'll pick at cleaning up inside and getting everything put away.

Another important job was insulating the bedrooms. Over the past week I installed R-19 in all the walls and foamed around the windows. What a difference some insulation makes!

Now It's A Carriage House!

Friday night I picked up a nice copper weathervane for the garage which features a horse and surrey. The garage was originally built to house Model T's..... but now it qualifies to be called a " Carriage House"!

It will eventually be mounted on top of a cupola when I find time to build one....

Roof Raising

It's been a busy few weeks... too busy to even post, but I'll try and get ya blogged up to date.

After the ridge beams were set I installed the top section of rafters. That was easy enough. These are all 2x6s on 24 inch centers.

The "new" framing nailer made quick work of getting all the rafters in. I picked up a used one on ebay and wish I 5 years ago when I started restoring the Hall House!

Next step, install the lower rafters. I carried these down to the sill without any rafter tails extending past the wall on the eave. There will be a pitch change later that will form the eaves.

To form the front and back eaves, I notched the 2x10s passing through the gable walls. The eaves are built with 2x4s which will later be finished with 1x6s. I will also be enclosing the eaves with beadboard at a later date.

The eaves take shape and the 3/4 plywood sheathing is installed on the upper sections.

One more addition for the loft, the side sections are added. These will help support any long items stored, plus hold side lighting underneath, and finally to attach tracks for the garage door.

The final stage of framing involved the side eaves. I wanted to do "bracketed eaves" which is when on a gambrel style roof, the eaves change pitch near the bottom. Usually they aren't very wide, but because my pitch was shallow to begin with, they ended up being wider than usual. The jury is still out if I like them or not, but they are there now! The other eason I went with this design was if I extended the rafter tails down and then enclosed... the beadboard enclosing the eaves would be against the stone... making for an ugly cut trying to get the bead board tight against the stone. This design will have it installed against the sill. The bracketed eaves  are made from 2x4s sistered to the main rafters.

The eaves are complete and ready for sheathing.

And finally.... roll out the tar paper!







Bigger and Better Ridge Beams

Out with those ratty and rotted sad excuse for ridge beams.... delivered from Tague Lumber were 3 2x10x24 foot Hemp Fir boards. My idea for installing these was to build a cradle at each point on the walls to drop these in. The cradle consists of a 2x4 which would be the same width as the new boards and two recycled 2x4's from the old structure. The new board between the two is 9 1/2 inches shorter, creating a U shape to support the new 2x10's. As you can see they work pretty good. When installing the new beams I left 12 inches extend past the back wall to build an overhang... and on the front I'll cut any extra off when I build the front overhang.

And now my rant on just how bad things were out of whack to try and start a new roof!!

I started with building the center cradles and then the one's on each side. On the front wall I built the right side first and then the left. When I measured for the left, it was 4 inches higher than the right side??! Some investigation with the tape measure shed some lighton why the angles of the roof didn't look the same on each side.... none of the measurements matched. The height of the left and right was 4 inches different... and the distance from the center were a few inches different too?! Then comparing to the back, none of those meaurements matched the back either. Yikes! Now what?? So I figured I had to get my center ridge in first and build from there. The back wall was the closest to being symetrical, so I would build from that. So I dropped in the ridge beam into the back center saddle and then leveled it. This also revealed that the front was lower than the back so I had to shim the front saddle to make the top ridge level. Here's a pic with the first beam in...

If you look at the front right angle change, you can see where I have lifted the rafter over 4 inches to match the left angle...

Next step was measuring the back right ridge from the center ridge and making the front saddle match that distance. Then dropped the new beam in place and again leveled it. This one was so far off I had to dismantle the right section of the front wall so I can rebuild it to match the back.

The left side was not as bad but still had to move the front over a few inches...

Well after alot of figuring and adjusting I now have 3 ridge beams that are level and parallel to each other! So in theory I should be able to make one rafter template and have it fit all the way around.... we'll soon see.