Garagezilla

When we bought our house the garage was a “2 1/2” car with a cracked and heaved floor, and a 7’ door. It was poorly insulated and the existing drywall was mudded with bare hands and never sanded. I needed something a bit bigger for hobbies and do-it-yourself projects so I raised the existing garage structure and tore out the concrete. I found that the garage was built over black dirt and the concrete was about 3” thick on one side and 20” on the other…no wonder it was heaved. I dug the “pit” for the pad down 3’ and never did find anything other than black dirt. I ended up pouring 32 4’x12” pylons packed with rebar, then brought in 80 tons of gravel to repack the hole. The pad ended up being 6” thick in the center and 15” around the perimeter. After the concrete was poured we lowered the garage back on the pad and set to work building the 850 sq foot garage with 12 1/2’ ceilings and 9’ garage doors. The finished garage is more than adequately insulated with fiberglass insulation, Tyvek wrap and ½” polystyrene foam around the outside under ¾” wood siding. I wired in 24 recessed can lights on zone switches, surround sound stereo, satellite television, and plumbed the air lines into the walls. Rather than dry walling I covered the walls in ¾” plywood around the top 2/3 of the walls and used the leftover wood (grooved 4×8 sheet) siding for the lower 1/3, this way I could screw anything to the wall where ever I wanted. Looking back on it I would have done several things different; this was my first construction project which took 10 months of weekends and cost about $25k in supplies.

In looking for pictures I realized I have none of the finished interior.

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