Not my car this time… lol
Warning; as with most of my project posts, this is long with a few pics. Read at your own risk.
I decided that I finally want to 100% get my garage cleaned out this weekend since it has been a collect all for everything. Of course, what started off as a easy project turned into a much much bigger project than I originally planned.
The biggest problem was that I had a ton of car parts between the Subaru, the bike, the Dodge Ram I parted out a while ago, and the Jetta. All of the parts were stacked wherever I could put them in the back area and it was becoming way too cluttered so I decided I would pull down the foam insulation panels on the ceiling, throw a couple pieces of plywood up there, and gain some extra storage space… no big deal right??? Wrong. Once I got the insulation panels down I noticed that the ceiling joists were only 2"x6" boards on a 17’ span with only 3 nails tying the ceiling joists into the roof joists so simply pulling on the joists caused about 1"-2" of flex in the boards… nothing that was going to hold any bit of weight.
So it was back to the drawing boards. I went out and picked up a few 2x4s and built a ‘knee wall’ on either side about 3’ in from each end. This created 2 more supports on each board and brought the center span down to just over 10’. That allowed me to get up there, move around, jump up and down, and there was no flex what-so-ever. I left it at that on Friday night (around 2am actually). Saturday I got up there and put all of the OSB board up.
Created a little trap door to try to take up as little space as possible. I may change it out to s drop down door in the future, but this plus a ladder works fine for now.
With all of the ‘flooring’ done, it was quite dark up there and the work light I had just wasn’t cutting it. So I picked up and wired up a 4’ fluorescent light which matches a full contractors box of bulbs.
First test… put 3 full sets of wheels and tires up there, and even with the wheels and myself walking around, there is no flex in the boards… I think I have plenty of support.
Getting all of the car parts out of the back ‘workshop’ space of the garage allowed me to actually make it use-able workshop space.
Finished the storage space construction and got the back room cleared out by Saturday night (around 1am). But since I hadn’t gotten the chance to put all of the car parts up in new storage space yet, I was left with this for Sunday morning.
Ended up over-sleeping Sunday morning and didn’t get back to working on the garage til 11 or so, so I wasn’t able to get as far as I wanted. There is still quite a bit to be done, but the end is in sight! The pile in the front right corner of the picture is all crap to go to the dump… which my brother will hopefully be making a dump run for me Tuesday.
On a side note, a completely moronic move that I can’t believe I made almost ended in no longer having a garage. When I first opened up the insulation panels, I was surprised to see very few signs of animals or other ‘intruders’ in the attic space. The only thing I did find was a large next of carpenter ants. Well I didn’t have any bug spray so I said what the hell and grabbed a can of starting fluid. Emptied about 1/2 of a can and killed about 90% of them. I didn’t have anything else to spray them with so I decided I would give the starting fluid plenty of time to evaporate and I would go in with the torch and burn the last remaining parts of the nest. I gave it about 20-30minutes and decided that should be plenty of time for the starting fluid to evaporate. Unfortunately, what I stupidly did not factor in was that although the starting fluid evaporated, without any ventilation in the attic space, the fumes had absolutely no-where to go. So as soon as I lit the torch (not even sure if it light or just the sparked ignited), it filled about 1/2 of the attic space with a giant fireball. Blew me backwards off the ladder and straight onto my ass. After a second of catching my bearings, I ran for one of the 6 or so extinguishers that the previous owner had scattered throughout the garage. Ripped the pin out, and emptied 1/2 of the extinguisher into the attic space (without getting back on the ladder and putting myself in danger, I could not physically see the ‘base’ of the flames). Luckily I was able to put it out without any real damage being cause… other than a few melted insulation panels and a really damaged ego… and a sore ass from falling off the ladder, and from literally kicking myself for not thinking.
So yea, that was my wonderful weekend. Now tomorrow after work I’ll hopefully get everything 100% finished up.