Garage- A Horrible Building That Stole My Money

 January 2013








This is back in 2011 the blue doors are our garage, the white ones are the neighbors

 I'm jumping back in time to cover some unexciting work that took place back in early 2013. When we first purchased our home we couldn't help but notice that our garage was less then conventional. We have what can only be called a garage duplex. Our neighbor next door owns a 1909 traditional Portland craftsman, in 1923 the family that owned the house (The Mensinger's) decided to divide their lot and build a house for their children (our house). Because this lot was never 'sold,' the boundary is 'squidgy.' We share a driveway and somewhere inside of it lies our property line. At the end of the driveway is an adhoc structure that includes two garage bays for my neighbor and one for us. The building appears to have grown overtime in a motley unorganized way. This led to a goofy saw tooth roof line which left two large valleys.

2011 we are still painting, if only we had picked a brighter blue we could have matched the tarp!

In 2011, our neighbor informed us that the roof in her garage was leaking. She asked if we wanted to reroof the structure. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of our costly exterior remodel and the thought of any additional funds going anywhere was just too much. At the time our garage was ugly, but still water tight. She agreed to wait and had a contractor replace some structural rot on her side and install a tarp to the roof. By 2012, our roof was leaking and we agreed something needed to be done. We all realized that the design of the roof led to the leaks. Even if we replaced the shingles we would still have issues with leaf build up and poor drainage. In a frustrating no win situation we realized we had to restructure the roof. This was not cheap. Honestly, I still cringe thinking about the cost we spent, on a garage.

It rained everyday that they worked on the garage.  Worst job ever.

Just to harp on the subject more, this is barely even a garage, probably more of a large shed. It's too small for our car (probably any car), has no power, no plumbing, barely any light. It is the place that things we don't know what to do with go to die. But, it does hold our bikes, and our lawn mower, and thus it has a purpose and is a selling feature of the home. So, in order to keep our asset and not let it fall down on our watch. We hired a contractor to come out and replace the roof. We designed one large hip roof to cover all three garages. This require reframing, resheathing and shingling.





Don't get me wrong it looks a million times better. However, I think about all the things I would have liked to spend that money on and get sad. As a cost comparison, our back porch addition was cheaper and we use it far more. Anyway... GET OVER IT. The good news was it rained throughout the winter and not a drop of water entered our garages. Also, we can now take a picture of the front of our house without photoshopping out the bright blue tarp. Win.

Battening Down the Porch

October 2012

You have probably seen most of this post in the earlier photos but here is some more back story.  Once we had finished the beds and laying out our paths we still need to install them.  The concrete pieces were all different heights and so we needed to use mortar to set them level and flush to one another. 

This is a backbreaking process which we did in the rain.  Which is most likely why we did not photograph any of it.  First we had to dig out some areas as well as raise some other areas to get the stones to line up.  If we had actually used pavers this would not have been a problem.  With nice normal stones we could have laid a nice level bed of sand and simply tapped them into level.  But that would be easy and where is the fun in that.  Instead, our reused concrete bits required a fair bit of wrestling.  To say we got them all level would be a complete lie, this no ADA accessible pathway.  But for all intensive purposes it is perfect, it's a pathway of stones that you can walk on. 

Once the pieces were level we used mortar to set them.  This required roughly 12 bags bought at Lowes and simply mixed with water.  We chose to mix one to two bags at a time in our wheelbarrow with shovels and trowels. It was a bit of an inexact science, some mixes being more of a slurry and some being closer to sludge but in the end it didn't make a big difference.  If you are thinking of doing something similar I suggest more of the sludge consistency.  This helped us level some of the stones.  We spent the entire morning on our hands and knees shoveling and eventually grabbing handfuls of the mortar and placing it under each individual stone.

Once we had set all the stones we reused some existing pea gravel we had on site to fill in the gaps and create a level surface between the stones. We waited about 24 hours before fully walking on the surface and sweeping the excess pea gravel off.  When we were done I have to say it looked pretty darn good.  When you consider the concrete was free and the bags of mortar are about 6-8 dollars it was pretty cheap. We used some existing pea gravel, but if we had to buy it I would say it was about a yard which is about $80 plus delivery.

It was starting to get cold and rainy in Portland and we had run out of good working days to keep going.  I took advantage of some falls sales and grabbed some hydrangeas at 30% off.  I planted three white lamb hydrangeas along the beds and purchased a large Limelight for the corner under the kitchen window.  Honestly, I cannot wait to see them bloom, because buying twiggy dormant plants took some imaging. A few plants that were not successful in other parts of the yard also found their way over to the corner to provide a little bit of evergreen color. 

The last step before we could call it good for the year was to install some doors on either side of the porch.  The doors to the driveway were a definite need as this was the last step to enclosing the backyard and allowing Gus to use his dog door again.  Our friend Gordon, a la dishwasher, staircase beadboard fame, made us some doors and we put them in late October. They look a bit silly since they have their screening and nothing else does.  But it made the project feel more finished! As the rains kept coming we battened down the hatches on the back porch with promises of more work next spring.

Raising A Wet Garden... Weekend 1

 March 2011

Josh and I waited and waited for the rain to stop so we could start building our garden, then we remembered... we live in Oregon.  We really need to toughen up, so we went out in a light mist and started digging.  Since the rain is never ending we worked slowly. While it was easy to get our shovel in the ground (something in VA I was not used to) the soil was wet and heavy. Saturday amounted to about 8 hours of manual shoveling and the creation of a large mud pile in our parking strip. The soil was so wet we had to tarp the ground and place a tarp over the pile to keep it from running off... yay.  Also, I learned that good tarps are expensive like $60 a pop.

 

 

About half way through the day I began to realize how quickly you can get blisters and sore muscles.  I am clearly a big wuss.  Ditch digging is not for sissies and the repetitive motion is pretty mind numbing.   However, by the end of the day I had a pretty impressive mud hole to show for it. Cough.

 

On Sunday, with a whole new level of sore added to the equation I kept digging.  Josh started building the first two boxes.  The wood that we bought was fresh sawn so it was wet and heavy.  Most of the pieces were over 12' long so even getting them out of the garage to his impromtu back porch woodshop was difficult.  Honestly, there is not much to share on my end, I kept digging singing my own 'just keep digging, just keep digging' song in the rain to myself as neighbors passed by shaking their heads.

 

Josh had designed the beds to be self supporting he knotched each side so that the pieces interlocked and could stand together with only a few nails.  This was important because we didn't want to have to put posts in the corners.  While he worked away I leveled the ground with some sand and installed pavers at the four corners of each box to give us a level foundation. By 2:00pm he had built the first level of both boxes and we put them in place.  I then wrapped the interior of the boxes in plastic to protect the wood from moisture and slow down the rotting process. 

 

Josh came out and helped me in the next task, putting all the dirt we moved... back into the place it was before!  Lovely!  It was a long weekend without much to show for it.  However, the most important part was that we started the task. The week called for heavy rain (surprise) so we tarped everything we could, the ground, the boxes, the mud piles and packed it in for 5 days of rest.

Raising a Garden Day 1

April 2010

We took another month off in house land, our near death event of the almost falling chandelier made us decide to hold off.  We also were trying to save some much needed money for our exterior remodel which we wanted to take on in the spring.  So, I took the time to lust over some seed catalogs and make big plans to have a large organic garden come summer. 

Since our backyard doesn't get much sunlight the most logical place to put our garden was in our front yard.  While this may seem to weird to people not from Portlandia, this is actually pretty common in our town.  In order to make it appear more pleasing we decided to building some raised beds.  This would help for multiple reasons.  First, we have a small hill on the corner of our yard that already needed a retaining wall.  Second, prior to moving in our sewer line was replaced and they had destroyed all the grass and plantings in this area.  Last, I am lazy and do not like to bend.

Josh went about creating some plans for the beds, when you're an underemployed architect it's amazing the time and energy your willing to commit to plans and elevations of small household projects.  But, it was good for us to brush off the dust on our autocad and make it happen.  After we both felt they looked good and provided enough space for our garden, we went ahead and ordered the wood from a friend.  These were beautiful pieces of cedar, since it was rough cut they were true dimensions and weighed about 100 lbs each.  He delivered them on a rainy day and filled our garage to the brim.

Now all we needed was a few days of no rain to get start....