Ed Scherer

A few months ago, I remember participating in various threads related to various listers' new homes, garage construction or improvement projects, etc. At about that time (March), we moved into a new house, too. Garage definitely needed work: it was pretty raw, but amazingly unspoiled for an 8-year old house (luckily, little stuff to be undone).

I remember mentioning that I was starting to work on the garage. Well, yesterday, I finally got it completely done (well, except it's a bit spartan and probably needs some decorating: pictures, plants, etc.)

Since I already posted a thread about it over in Off Topic, I'll just put a 928-specific "teaser" photo (peek in the garage window!) here as a placeholder and leave it to anyone interested to pop over to OT for some more photos.

(07-Aug-2006 9:00 AM CST edit) Now have a separate Garage Improvement Project page out on the web. It's got even more photos and info about the project itself. You'll have to be patient, though: it's very image intense and I don't have that much upstream bandwidth.



And I'll tell you... I'm tired. Tired of working in the hot garage.

John Veninger

Very nice, but you forgot the beer cooler

Alan

Ed - Nice - now for the lift....

No excuses now - back to the Porsche projects!

Alan

Ed Scherer

More like the Gatorade cooler these days. Holy sh** has it been hot. As I was doing the last bit of trim yesterday, I was constantly dripping sweat. Before I'd put in a beer cooler, I'd probably blow some insulation in above the garage (there isn't any right now) and install an A/C unit.

No lift . The one drawback to this garage is that there's almost no space on the sides. I considered doing a lift, but for the little that I'd use it (assuming I could even get one to fit), I'd probably be better off using the space for something else. Now I'm thinking more along the lines of a fancy detached garage / bar / pool area sometime in the future...

And, yup, I'm planning on getting back to the Porsche projects. Next up is the 928SP twinscrew SC, when DR gets it to me!

AO

Ed,
Garage looks great. Too bad you're gonna mess it all up when you get your twin screw. I'll PM you my cell phone for future refernce for weekend support... wait a minute. What am I thinking. You should PM me your cell phone # so I can call you for support. Sorry.

slownrusty

Stunning house...WOW!

SharkSkin

Very nice! Where's the lift going?

tv

Nice house, nice shark!

Chuck Schreiber

Ed,

Nice job man

dr bob

Ed--

Nice garage, great presentation. I like the slot-wall storage.

Quick advice:

Add insulation. Lots of it. Insulate the doors too if they aren't already. Do both the roof and the floor in the attic.

Find a small heat pump to put outside, with just the coils and an mini air handler inside. Cooler in summer, a little warmer in winter.

I built a cabinet to hold the air compressor. Has 2" styro insulation inside to help manage the noise. Air is hard piped to outside of the cab. For extended compressor use like sanding/polishing/painting I'll probably need to leave a door open, but for casual projects it's very nice having the relative quiet.

I found an inexpensive home theater sound system that kicks butt on the boombox. Speaker wiring through the attic. Wife hi-jacked the system before it was out of the box, so I still have the boombox. But the wires are in and ready for when I get back to the discount stereo store.

No such thing as too much light. I have flourescents like you do, but added some task-lighting in cans at the engine end, tilted so they look under the open hood. Cheap, and an easy addition for you since you have such good attic access.

My attic space is about 5' high under the ridge. Big enough to store stuff out of site. We added underlayment and some bargain carpet, lights, and a pull-down stair/ladder for access. Rour roof angle is taller than mine so you should have even more space up there. I had to add fire sprinklers in the attic space when I put the stair/ladder access in, and upgraded the access panel to a 2hr fire rating to satisfy my friend the fire inspector.

greg928GTS

Just great! I really like the cabinets and the wall storage, it's giving me some ideas for my shop.

Giovanni

Why the shark outside and the minivan and infinity inside? Beside that, nice place.

Ed Scherer

Oh yeah? Well, we'll see about that. It'll be messed up ... temporarily. One weekend, at the most. Right? And thanks for PMing me your cell phone number (actually, maybe I ought to wait until I call it; it might wind up being a $$$ **** line or something)

Thanks, slownrusty! The thing we're most excited about is that it's almost all treed (the yard, that is, not the house!) and really private.

Thanks, Dave, to the "Very nice!" Arrrrggggghhhhhh!!! to the "Where's the lift going?", though. I think I'm going to have to PhotoShop one in, just to keep everyone happy! (Actually, I just don't think one will fit, and it's probably actually not practical, given that I really don't do wrenching all that often).

Thanks, tv! I'm happy!

Mucho appreciado, Chuck (a little Spanish lingo there).

Dr Bob, I'm going to reply to this separately in my next posting, as you've raised a lot of issues worth further discussion.

Thanks, Greg. The storeWALL stuff is especially cool; I really had never noticed that stuff before (and note that there are other varieties of similar stuff out there, too).

Actually, they were all outside at the time... with the shark leading the pack. I had lined them up on the driveway so I could take some inside photos without cars in the garage. Then I noticed that the shark actually looked rather photogenic out there...

Ed Scherer

Thanks. I just updated the project web page, too, BTW. Just a few more items and a little better intro.

Yup. Insulation above the ceiling is definitely on the list. Insulate the doors? How? You mean just perimeter (weather stripping) or something else?

Also, since you mentioned the attic, I think we've got venting issues to deal with up there. It's an absolute furnace. When I was up there installing the exaust fan, I just about melted. I need to put a remote thermometer up there just for kicks. The metal tools I was using actually got impressively hot. And it was probably only a 95 degree day. I'd really like to improve the venting up there, possibly adding some active venting to the existing passive venting.

Are you talking about what are known as "mini split ductless" heat pumps? I was already looking into those; they look pretty appropriate. I've never actually seen one in operation. Any favorite brands? I'm seeing at least half a dozen brand choices (might just be rebranded stuff from the same manufacturer), including both well-known names and a few names I haven't heard of before.

My compressor is actually pretty darn quiet as is. And I don't use it all that much anyway. I don't ordinarily do stuff that cycles it that much (mostly impact wrench, air ratchets, and the occasional blow nozzle or tire fill). No paint spraying or grinding (yet!). I'm just damn glad I opted for a quiet oil lubed compressor rather than a noisy oil-free one. I think my neighbor's oil-free compressor is more annoying to me (from a couple of hundred feet away) than my own when I'm in the garage!

Yeah, I might just do some audio system work in there. I'll have to think about it. We actually have a few spare receivers and speakers, so I might just put them to use. It's a little lower priority than the main part of the house, though. I have yet to re-install the two surround sound systems from our old house. And I still have to move the satellite dish from its current location (about 150 ft. from the house) to the roof (long story), and ..., and... lots of other audio/video work to do at the new house!

Noted. I was actually thinking about adding three or four wall sconces (kind of a style thing) in a few strategic places.

Yeah... there's a huge amount of space in the attic. I was already thinking about adding a pull-down ladder (especially since the tire rack is located right below the current access hole!) and maybe adding just a little storage space up there. But I don't want to fall into the trap we did at our old house: way too much stuff in the attic; it became a little bit too much of a junk room (wasn't fun dealing with that at moving time).

Damn it, dr bob, I said I was done! And now you've got me thinking about more work!

dr bob

Hey, what are friends for?

I think my garage is a longer-term continuous work-in-progress. At least it seems that way. Miz Karen is swampimg out her office, so more 'stuff' has appeared in my garage the last few days. If she can't find a place to store 'her' stuff, it becomes 'our' stuff on the way to becoming 'my' stuff.

The garage attic is used to store client records for the most part, Karen's tax business and my little consulting practice. My relatively-paperless business model means that there are about fifteen years worth of projects stored in three flip-lid plastic storage bins. The rest of the two-car attic is tax paperwork storage. A LOT of paper.

That attic has a little solar-powered turbine vent. Sun's out, fan runs. Knowing what I know now, I'd probably put a real vent fan under the dome, with a thermostat on it. Power it, mean motor, move a lot of air. Insulation helped with attic temps immensely, BTW. A good 20+ degrees cooler with just the R-19 kraft-face insulation. The attic vent causes air to draw up from the garage below, so its effect is really reliant on conditions below.

Mutsubishi is pushing their ductless heat pump system locally. I worry that if I make it too comfortable out there, I'll spend too much time there instead of in the house 'working' like I am right now... Delicate balance, don't want to upset it.

The garage door insulation issue is either an insulated door or add-on insulation blankets. The doors come double-walled with rigid foam in the middle. If you have a single-panel door, you can buy a low-density poly foam in a roll with a foil face. The stuff cuts with scissors, and it gets taped to the door with an aluminized 2" tape. It worked pretty well at Karen's old house. I had to put wood doors in at the new place thanks to the high wind loading, so no insulation on them (yet...). There's a lot of heat transferred even through the wood doors; I just can't bring myself to hide the nice hand-rubbed finish I put on the door panels. By the time I'm extra-crispy I'll sing a new tune though.

Local Lowes offers some 3" mini-halogen cans, non-IC, spots or floods, for about $13 each. The little halogen bulb swivels so it's pretty easy to aim for use as a work or as an accent light. 50W each. I put in regular full-size cans, then used flourescent floods in them for mine. The flourescents only eat 23W each, but they take a few mins to warm up even in the heat of summer.