Ok, the short version is we have a garage now. I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this and not just looking at the photos, that you want the play-by-play. Once again, I’ve done a poor job of keeping up with blogging, but I’m trying again.
With Sarah and I temporarily moving the neighbor’s fence back a couple of feet the length of the garage, we had a few conversations with them about why that was happening, but they were concerned about the garage being up to the property line. Their contractor had told them that was against code. I showed them our plan and permit and explained that applied to frame garages, and the reason we were building a masonry garage was so that we could build up to the line.
Work went quickly at first. The spread footings were poured two days after my last post. Forms and rebar were in two days later, and the footings were poured the day after that. The forms came off the next day, gravel was spread and block was delivered. If you’re not keeping track, this is July 15th. By the 18th, the walls were up to ceiling height, steel was installed over the garage door opening, and the roof framing was in. The contractor had told us they estimated six weeks, which seemed incredibly optimistic, but so far, so good.
At this point, Sarah and I went on a trip for our fifteenth anniversary. While we were enjoying a tropical paradise, I got a voicemail from the contractor that the city had stopped work because the permit was bad and slapped a big ‘ol orange sign on the front of our house. When we got back a couple of days later, I found that the 311 complaint number wasn’t valid and the phone number of the inspector was disconnected. However, the email address of their supervisor was correct so I contacted him. He responded that the permit actually was valid and we could resume work and take down the sign, which I did. He said he’d pull back the violation so it didn’t go to a hearing. With that settled, and strong indications of who had complained, work started back up again.
Within a week, now the end of July, the parapet wall was done and a few days after that the exterior was painted. Several days later, the roof went on. About here, things started happening less quickly. The roof and flashing were done by the 22nd of August, and the pad was poured the following day. At this point we figured we needed doors, windows, and some cleanup and we could call it done. Emailing with the contractor, we found he hadn’t ordered the side doors yet. His price was much higher than quoted, so we decided to shop for ourselves, which prompted me to go double check the measurements.
To fix this, obviously weren’t going to take out the whole slab, so instead they came back with a telehandler, cut out a course of cinder blocks, lifted the whole steel beam up, and made all of the door openings taller. I was impressed how they pulled this off and in the finished product you’d never know. Masonry was definitely their specialty and they did that part really well.
That’s when we discovered there was an issue. When they put the footings in, they didn’t leave a notch for the rear access door. We pointed that out and they left the door opening and said they would come back and notch the door, which they never did. The slab was poured by a sub that assumed the height was where it was supposed to be and sloped accordingly. As a result, all of the door openings were too short. Our 8′ garage door was less than 91″ and our 80″ access doors (which need an 82.5″ rough opening) were under 80″. I let the contractor know, and the next day his overhead garage door installer showed up and let him know the same thing.
With things dragging, I was anxious to get the neighbors to the North their sidewalk back. The contractors had left a piece of rebar embedded in concrete where their pavers had been and ignored all of requests to fix it. I finally broke the concrete out myself and cut down the pavers to fill back in. With a hose, a little polymeric sand, and a broom, I got it looking like it did before and I reinstalled the gate, which required way more reconstruction than I hoped, but I got it done in the end. Getting out of the other neighbor’s yard required us to build a new fence, which I’ll leave for another post.
Sarah and I picked up the access doors ourselves and dropped them off. They got them installed along with the windows, but left the Great Stuff sticking out everywhere. We had agreed to paint them, but the overhead door went in with bare 2x6s and no flashing. They left the flashing in the back of the garage, so clearly they intended to install it. I wound up painting that too and Sarah and I got a sheet of Hardie trim to clad the 2x6s, but they wound up coming back and putting aluminum flashing on it after all.
Finally, on September 20th, the slab had been curing long enough and the overhead door was installed so we were able to park in the garage. This coincided with street cleaning day, which was convenient. The garage door installer also installed the opener I told them I didn’t want. I wanted a wall-mounted unit, plus at this point there wasn’t power in the garage, since the contractor quoted us way too much to put in an electric charging circuit.
It’s been a dramatic lifestyle improvement to be able to park in the garage. Street parking while it was under construction was a hassle, and before that manually opening and closing the gate to the yard as we came and went was a chore. I’ll go into some details on the electrical, garage door opener, and other details in a future post.
