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My soon-to-be new garage.

115K views 189 replies 77 participants last post by  Storry 
#1 · (Edited)
After a looong year and a half of trying to sell this house and find another in mid or south Wales, I have finally sold (only in the last fortnight) and bought another house and I move in about 5-6 weeks! (bit scary that, given how much stuff I've yet to pack).

As those who know me well, will not be surprised that the huge garage building (which you can see in the background here and looks like another house) swung this for me lol!

So we'll get the less important stuff out of the way first I guess, so this is the house (4 bed, 2 bath, Edwardian, (built in 1901) with a large extension on the rear done about 15 years ago, pretty much doubling the size of the property): Fully modernised inside, but retaining a few subtle original features like the coving and ceiling roses, some welsh dragon stained glass on the front door, that sort of thing. Large driveway (about 90ft) and double width.



But enough about that, onto the important stuff.............the garage building! :D

The building at the rear was built at the same time as the house extension - cavity insulated construction with water supply and provisions in place for a gas supply too (to which I'll be having a basic central heating system fitted at some point). It measures 28ft long by 18ft wide and has a ground floor ceiling height of about 11ft. giving a cubic area of well over 5,000 cubic feet! All the windows are double-glazed, there's a toilet/washroom on the ground floor, which I'll likely also fit a shower if there's room).

In all the photos, you'll have to imagine it with all the current owner's stuff gone (he's a builder and has a lot of 'stuff' to clear out before I get there).



In the plan shot you can see it's almost as big as the house lol!



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Last week I went down to arrange a few things with the current owner and thought I'd snap a few shots of what will become my 'dream garage':

Left (north facing) side on which I will be building a 24ft x 14ft car port / washbay (image mock up of that at the end of the post):





The aforementioned toilet/washroom in the right rear corner:



The whole ground floor looking from the door inwards. This and the next image were stitched together from 2 photos, so please excuse the awkard angles).
2-tier staircase in the left rear. That timber storage racking on the right will be gone before I move in). 6 lights on the ceiling and one on each wall too - will be good for the detailing he-he!

Again, you'll have to imagine it with all that stuff cleared out.



The main door side (electric roller shutter):



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Behind the main building is a large shed which I will putting power and lights in to use as my workshop. This building is 16ft x 8ft (so over 3 times the size of my current shed/workshop!):



And inside there is height that I can board out an upper floor on those cross timbers to create a mezzanine storage area and still be able to walk underneath. I'll be spraying the whole inside in white with my Wagner sprayer:



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Now, back in the main building upstairs is where all the work needs doing, but it's all stuff I can do myself bar the plaster skim. It measures the full 28ft long by 10 ft wide, which I will be dividing into 2 rooms with a partition wall and door just on this side of that velux window. This will create an office area as you reach the top of the stairs of about 10ft x 8ft, and a leisure/games/living area of 20ft x 10ft beyond that. All the electrics and lights are in, I just need to insulate and plasterboard it then decorate. Again, you'll have to imagine it empty.



Here some rough (although to scale) plans of both floors (Found a BMW drawing, but couldn't source an XR2, so I had to go with something the same size):





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This is a quick photoshop of how it will look when I've built the carport / washbay (minus that car of course :hehe:):



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First thing to do in probably the first week there will be the flooring (black 500mm square interlocking tiles at 12mm thick), new garage cabinets, installation of all my existing garage kit from this house, etc. I don't think much will happen now until I'm in there at the beginning of May though, but I'll update as and when anything happens and I move in and begin work.

Cheers for looking
Viper :)
 
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#151 · (Edited)
Been adding more wall art since yesterday's post. And I wasn't keen on that Schumacher print's frame so I've taken that down for a re-think.

Anyway, I guess I'd better make this the first picture :lol::





And over on the opposite wall:











Then a little bit of, shall we call it 'installation art', rather than just 'wall art'? I created the grid by painting the render with a dark-grey paint for the 'tarmac' after masking the grid positions off first, then painted the sides and checks, finally adding some tyre skid marks for that little bit of added authenticity. I'm rather pleased with how it came out.











The new models just on the windowsill for now until I get my shelving unit:



Should have closed the blind for this one as the Sun was right in the window :eek:



I'm planning on some more wall art above those horizontal wall lights like 'Gulf Racing', 'Martini Racing', 'Rothmans Porsche' stuff like that. I'll be creating these myself.

More to come and thanks for the comments - much appreciated :thumb:

Viper :)
 
#153 · (Edited)
Firstly, a happy new year to one and all on here in case I don't post up again before Monday :).

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Now, a question regarding roller shutter doors if I may: Has anyone successfully insulated theirs?

I've seen a few of the same type as mine where there's some sort of foil-based insulation sheet stuck to the inside, but I'm just concerned about it getting tangled up or coming loose when the roller winds it up, and it's electrically operated so not always easy to stop it immediately if anything's getting wedged etc.

This is my door (albeit an old photo from not long after I moved in, but it's the only one I have to hand): I'd be looking at an area of about 2.5m wide by about 3.2m high.



Anyone any tips or anything from experience?

Cheers :)
 
#160 · (Edited)
I'd not really thought along those line and it's something I could possibly look at as an option. I have a temporary solution at present which is some Antinox 2mm protection sheets that are hung from supports with insulation on the side touching the door and that does work in a similar way to your suggestion. But if I can I still think I'd prefer something that was stuck to the door and became part of it so it's less of a job whenever I need to open the door. I reckon there's space to accommodate something when it's all rolled up as it'll only be a few mm thick after all, it's really just what to bond it to the door with. I'm thinking contact adhesive, but with it being a fairly large area, there's only so much 'working time' before you need to get the two halves together. More thinking time needed on this one.

Very nice set up . How did you mount those F1 car models ?
Thanks bud :) Just a pan head screw into the wall then a corresponding hole and slot on the underside of the cars - a bit like what's on the back of a wall clock or the reverse of a multi-plug mains extension cable, so it's push on and pull down to lock the screw head behind the slot so it can't ever drop off.

Looks Great mate, love the carport/washbay

Jealous of your space

Keep the updates coming
Thanks matey :) Will do. I picked a couple of cheap white bookcases to put the models and my concours trophies in the other day but not assembled them yet. Also a cantilever toolbox to keep a few essentials in on my mobile 'maintenance trolley' I keep at the front beside the door - just in case I need to work on a car outside, I'm not constantly back and forth fetching stuff from the workshop, I can just wheel that out and I've got pretty much everything I need.

One of the next jobs is wiring in the twin outside sockets (bargain I thought at 9 quid odd from Screwfix) in the car port so I can then make (or buy) a cabinet to keep the pressure washer in and a few other bits 'n' bobs and some sort of LED light in there.
 
#161 · (Edited)
There is so much win in this thread I can't even describe it! Never mind what you put on the walls, that garage is a work of art in its own right!

EDIT:

The moment I posted this I thought to myself, "why does calling that a garage feel almost like an insult? It's a workshop, or a car salon or something, not a garage."
 
#163 · (Edited)
Not a great deal happening right now, but thought I'd just pop a few pics up anyway.

Got my bookshelf up inside the former window space (under that F1 grid wall art) so I've somewhere to put the few models and trophies I have. Hopefully more to add there in the future.





And that mobile tool trolley I mentioned, which has pretty much everything needed for basic maintenance if I need to work on a car outside or in the adjacent car port. Only thing I need to add to this are some larger rubber casters (at least 75mm ones) as the current ones are too small and hard plastic wheels.







And although this is a garage thread, I found time to fit the RamAir induction kit to the BMW recently, so a few pics of that and the XR2's bay and underside. Loads to do to that car before I show again - in fact the eagle-eyed will spot its fuel tank in the corner there lol.













Cheers for looking,
Viper :)
 
#168 ·
Thanks for this: a thoroughly enjoyable read from start to finish.

Mega impressive work fella.

As a teenager I was completely in love with the XR3i and XR2 (a love that eventually led to my mk3 Focus RS): any chance we can see more of that gorgeous XR2?
Thanks very much :) (and to others' comments, too :thumb:

I have to make a confession at this point (and this is probably not helped by a chunk of the photos at the start not appearing due to 'the photobucket fiasco' of a few months ago). All I've done here is fit out the inside of the place. Reading through some of the other threads on here, I am humbled by those of you who are actually building your garages from the ground up. I'm awed by a lot of what I see on here. Okay I built the car port on the side, but as for actually constructing the main building, well, let's just say I'm glad I'm not tackling that from scratch!

The XR2? yeah, I'll take some more shots and post up, but as I said, it's not where I want it to be yet and very much a 'work in progress'. The wheels it's sat on are only temporary (purely serving to keep it up off the ground really lol), the brakes, again, are a temporary set up being the pretty feeble stock size and a much larger 4-pot set up will be going on it. Engine wise I want to replace all the cooling system with new Samco 'classic' matt black silicone hoses and an Airtec polished alloy rad, then a pair of Weber DCNF 40 carbs will be feeding it. Those who admire all things OEM might not like what I've done here, and my concours wins at Ford Fair etc. in the past have been in the modified classes, but the whole ethos here is a bit like what Singer do with their 911 'reimaginations' (if you're not up to speed with those, do yourself a wee favour and check out their gallery of 911s). Basically; improve what needs improving but don't go too far and always keep the core of the original car at the forefront.....and put it all together with the precision of a Swiss watch. I probably ought to have a separate thread for the cars though, so as not to go too far OT with this thread.

:)
 
#171 ·
Firstly I'd like to make an apology to anyone who's tried to contact me over the past 6 or so months - either via pm on here or email. I haven't logged on since the Spring and I do tend to inadvertently miss quite a lot of emails due to the combination of a poor internet service generally down here in South Wales and the rubbish webmail service I get from TalkTalk. In short, I haven't blanked anyone on purpose, but apologies all the same :eek:.

The reason I haven't been about is that in the early Summer we had a death of a very close family member and what followed for me (and others in my family) was a prolonged period of depression and unexpected emotional 'fall-out' from everything that's gone on in the past few years. I'd stop short of saying I'd had a 'breakdown', but I've just not been a good place mentally for the past few months. Anyway, I think I'm past that now and looking forward to 2019 which I hope will be a better year.

Such is the periodic turnaround of membership on forums, many reading this might be thinking something along the lines of "So what, I don't really know who this guy is, apart from this garage thread?" Which is fair enough :lol: There was, however, a time when everyone on the site knew me - members, traders, pro detailers etc. As for several years I was a senior Admin and overall Site Manager on here, but if you've only been here since 2012 you'll not know that.

So, I'd like to end by wishing everyone on DW - whether I know you or not - a very Merry Christmas and all the best wishes for the New Year. I'll be back contributing in 2019.

Cheers
Viper :thumb:
 
#174 ·
Very sorry to hear that and I do know what that's like too having lost my dad in 2012.

Thanks buddy and all the best :)

Welcome back Viper

Bereavement is never an easy time but it's more important to take care of yourself and those around you

Looking forward to more of your posts in the future and all the best for 2019
Many thanks kev - I appreciate the post, cheers :)

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Sadly I think I'm about to loose another Uncle in the next day or so. We weren't that close but it's still a sad time.

But upwards and onwards for 2019. :thumb:
 
#175 · (Edited)
Not being doing much in the garage or to the cars lately (but that will change big time in the coming new year ;)).

Still, I did buy some new wheels for the restomod XR2 a couple of months ago and although I haven't decided on the brand or exact size for the tyres I want yet, as I've gone a fair bit wider than stock, especially at the rear with 8x15s, I couldn't resist getting it up on the axle stands for a little trial fit :D







And also finally got around to insulating the roller shutter door which has made a noticable difference now we're in Winter.



Cheers
Viper :)
 
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