I was sitting at my desk one day and knew I had to do something. I thought it might be time to tear it down and build a new one but once I found out it could be around $25,000, it was time to think of a different route. When I looked closer you could see at one point that the garage had an addition done to it and I must say not a very good one. It appeared to me that 2 of the walls had to be replaced along with the roof and to seal the wall up for the car door. I started thinking that I might be able to do this myself. I would rebuild the 2 new walls on the inside where they were originally (2 feet shorter) and I could re-do the rafters from the inside as the pitch was going to be lower. The one drawback was the garage was jam-packed with 33 years worth of collecting and I would constantly have to move everything back and forth. Well after some pondering I thought, I’m retired and love a challenge and knew I could do it so let’s go! Oh and by the way, I could do it at my own pace.

To start, I had to move everything away from the 2 walls I would be working on and moved it to the center of the garage as leaving it outside even covered was not an option. This to me was going to be the biggest pain in the you know what. My plan was once I completed a new wall, I was going to put up some shelving and move stuff off the floor so it would make more room. This was going to help when I was ready to put in the new rafters. That plan worked pretty good. Seeing how the new walls were going  to be built where they originally stood, I decided to add a 4″ high footing so the new wall would not sit at grade level.

Once the 2 walls were built I decided to do the other 2 as well and then I could start on the new rafters. The plan on this one was to build them in-between the old ones. As the new roof pitch was going to be lower, I could build them on the inside. When they were finished, the plan was to cut the old rafters from front to back and have the old roof rest on the new rafters and of course to be really careful. Throughout the whole project, I made sure to think everything out before I did it and if I wasn’t sure I stopped and thought about it first. It’s amazing how answers come to you just by taking the time to think about it. There is also youtube if you get stuck. Below are some pictures and videos of this adventure.

It’s time to work on the walkway so here we go again, more dirt to get rid of. I decided to take the dirt to the front yard and fill some flower beds and other areas. The paving stones were going to be reused. Well… it turned out to be 16 wheelbarrow loads. A few too many for the front so I decided to use some of it to put into raised planter beds. As I was digging up the walkway I ran into a few too many rocks so I wound up sifting about 7 of the loads.

Stay tuned…more to come!