The Box

 

So here’s the deal with the garage.  Its 80 years old.  It’s dark and scary on the inside.  Full of spiders, rodents and other creeping things that make you hesitate at the door before entering.  It smells of oil, automotive fumes and rat poop.  The interior walls are covered with 80 years of dust and soot and globs of old spider webs that create such a state of anxious flicking as you try to get them off you.  The roof is covered in layers of moss that has eaten through a hole.  The main issue is the foundation.  There really isn’t one.   Like an archeologist trying to uncover and understand the building techniques of the ancient Egyptians or the Mayans I unearthed the foundation of the garage.  What I found was not surprising in its bold attempt to be a foundation, but rather that the garage was still standing on it.  My understanding of what the original builder put down as a foundation was this; six large concrete blocks  or stones with a beam that was notched and placed over these blocks and stones .  From there, he built the rest of the garage on top of it and then buried it.  Under 12” of dirt in some places.  So after sitting under the dirt for 80 years, the beam was pretty much gone.  It was easy to understand why the garage doesn’t have a plum or level surface to it. 

My parents are pretty much the same age as my garage.  I find it humorous when I ask my dad how he's doing and he’ll list off a number of usual ailments of an 80 year old.  “Difficult to hear, can’t see, my knees hurt, my back is sore, I can’t pee… but other than that, I’m doing great.”   Same with my garage.  Other than that, it’s in great shape.  It still has strong bones made of real 2” x 4” tight grain old growth fir held together by cast iron 16 penny nails that can destroy a sawzaw blade in seconds.  It’s covered inside and out by a wonderful layer of tongue and groove beadboard cedar siding.  It would be a shame to abandon it to the wood pile at the transfer station only to have it ground up for who knows what. 

I spent many moments looking at this garage trying to come up with a game plan on how to save this structure.  I knew it needed a new foundation.  I knew in order to give it the new foundation I had to get the old girl off her feet.  But how was the question.  Then it came to me.  Like millions of aging Americans looking for that second chance at youth, she needed a lift!

I came up with a game plan.  I needed to build a box inside the garage to shore it up and stabilize her.  Once that was done I needed to dig a trench around her and expose old foundation.  With the weight of the structure on the internal box I can then cut the bottom 6” to 8” of the existing framing and pull out the old foundation.  I could then put in a proper concrete footing and stem wall and lower her back down onto her new concrete foundation and she’d be as good as new!  I stood there in the garage marveling at the ingenuity of my plan, then look over my surroundings and though, “this is gonna take me a while.”  But I had a plan that I was enthusiastic about and I knew could work.  Now I just needed to find some material.

My first find was a number of old pallets.  Under the office where I work is a metal fabrication shop.  They get shipments of steel plates on these huge pallets made out of 4x4s and 2x4’s.  They had a stack of them sitting outside their garage door.  When I ask them what they were going to do with them, they said they were destine for the dump!  Another chance to save something from an unnecessary demise.  Hammer and pry bar at the ready, I had those babies broken down and in the back of my truck in an hour’s time. (Not to mention the sweat I broke.  No need for the gym that day).

Scary Foundation!!

Next it was some old fashion dumpster diving.  The company I work for was doing a kitchen remodel on the house that belonged to the parents of a famous Seattle software entrepreneur.  I dug out a number of 2x4's out of the dumpster that were unceremoniously tossed away.  So now I have boards holding up my garage that were once in the walls of the house that one of the richest man in the world grew up in!  Given his and his wife’s commitment to green technology, I’m sure they’re good with it.

Ready with plenty of wood and a box of 3” screws that I had to buy ($12.35) I was ready to go.  But my excitement crashed when I thought, ”Oh shit!  The garage was still full of all my crap!”

I put plenty of thought into how I was going to tear this garage apart and put it together again.   However, many a good projects came crumbling down when logistics were not thought through.  Forethought on site organization, tool and hardware storage and proper staging of building materials so that it is not only accessible but out of the way.  A messy and disorganized construction site can not only slow progress but add huge costs to a project.  I was thinking this golden rule of construction management as I looked in utter discouragement at the mess that faced me.  Like most Americans, my garage is the place where everything one doesn’t want  to deal with at the moment but knows it has to stay dry goes to live.  I put down my box of screws and said to myself, “One step at a time.”  The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, right!   Then thought how I wished my buddy Keith was living nearby.  This step would be easier with another set of willing hands by my side.  But I have made this my own personal crusade.  So alone,  it was onto Craig’s list.

I found a free carport tent in no time.  I actually found 2 damaged carport tents and made one good one out of them. ( I have some extra poles if you need some.)  I thought my organization and storage skills to be quite superior, and I continue to think that.  It took me three solid days, one with my father-in law’s help, but I emptied that garage and packed everything into that carport tent.   I now call it the garage tent.  My old chicken coop now a garden storage shed, left me plenty a room in the garage tent.  (Larry, my father-in law, did an amazing job of assigning all my tools a place and hanging them into the outlined shape of each!)   I modified the tent so I could hang bikes and ladders, made a floor of old pallets to place in shelves with a small workbench between them and then struggled my boat into the tent. (I failed on plotting a wide enough path for the boat trailer to turn into the garage tent).  It was all contained into a neat storage area with easy access to many of my materials.  Now, I could turn my attention to “the box”.

The box is exactly that.  A wood framed box I had to create inside the garage in order to hold it up. I started with hoisting up two 4x4 beams and tying them off into position up against the joists.  I wedged in 4x4’s and 2x4’s in between them and a 2x4 on the slab, plumed and leveled it and VOILA! My box completed.

I could now sleep better knowing my garage has now been stabilized.   I could now cut the garage away from its rotting foundation.   My desire was to have this garage floating free over the foundation.  However, I was concerned by the amount of weight that sat on that roof.  A layer of wood shingles and a couple of layers of asphalt shingle made things heavy enough, but add a couple of square feet of moss and moister from various leaks and you can imagine my concerns.  The roof needed to come down… and come to think of it, so did my deck.  Unfortunately it was time to spend some money.

Time for that to go!