Oh man! Doors are an awesome thing to see!

 

Made some decent progress this weekend, all 5 doors are installed and ready for springs (whenever the correct shafts come in). Not great to have 5 practically unusable doors, but at least the springs should be a quick drop in when they arrive. I definitely miss the cross breeze.

I will say it feels really cool to finally have a fully enclosed structure. Tonight is the first night ever I was able to lock the man door and have a fully secured shop.

Lighting inside isnt as bad as Id expected. The required gaps between the roof decking lets in just enough light to still be able to see inside during the day time.

On the roofing front, I spent Friday tracking down a local place that carried roof polyiso insulation. Found several places online, but truck freight shipping that stuff is seriously expensive. That's supposed to be coming Wednesday.

All that's left for the roof project to start are:
-foam screws and washers (I was holding off buying until I knew which roof foam thickness Id go with)
-termination bar (to secure the edge mechanically around the parapet wall)
​​​​-3x3 drip edge (had some 2x2, but the foam is 2" by itself)

 

Looking more and more like a true shop! Awesome stuff! Making terrific progress. If I don't move myself faster, you will have electricity in your garage before me lol.

 

Lol, I wish!

Im really pushing hard to beat monsoon season at this point. They're saying we'll be wetter than usual this go around (last couple years have been nearly nothing). If we get a legitimate monsoon, this thing could start getting soaked almost every day as the heavy winds will certainly rip off my temporary roofing. Hoping it holds off long enough for me to get that wrapped up...

 

Been a very long few weeks.

On the good news front, the correct length garage door spring shafts arrived.

Downside is 2 springs were unusable. While I kept most of the garage door parts in the house, I left the tracks and springs outside as I figured they were just metal. As long as I kept them dry, they'd be OK. Turns out there's some kind of plastic spacer inside torsion springs. Its got a hole that exactly fits on the shaft and some supports to keep it centered in the spring. Due to the heat / sun, the two most in the sun ended up with warped plastic cores. I couldn't get the shaft into one spring at all. It went into the other (with almost an hour of fighting it on), but jammed up when I started adding tension (got about half of the winds into the spring and the door started opening while winding because the spring was crushing the plastic which was twisting the shaft open).

Ordered 2 new springs and finished the install. Now Ive finally got 5 usable doors.


The roofing front went even worse the following weekend.


I had all of the supplies prepped to start roofing. Got the first few rows of foam laid down and opened the first roll of epdm roofing - light gray. Ugh... checked the other 4 rolls - all white as they should be. This one got mis-packaged somehow - the sticker on the bag and tag on the roll core both show white.

The problem is, there's no good way to try to return it. I have to rent a material handler / duct jack (like a manual forklift) to get them on the roof as theyre nearly 300 lbs each, and a small Penske to transport across town (as the roofing itself is 10 foot, plus about a foot extra on each end of excess core).

So I finally decided just to install it anyways. When I did the TPO on the covered patio, I was using much smaller pieces - about 8x25 of .045" thick material. I got them in place, folded them in half, then added glue and walked them into the glue.

These rolls are 10x50 of .060" thick, so half of the roll was nearly 150# (of floppy rubber) no way my old technique would work. So I got it into position again and folded it in half along the length. So I was only gluing about 5 feet wide for 50 feet long. Started off working just fine.

Spread the glue from one end to the other (which was a bit too much in this heat - the first end was getting tacky already by the time I finished rolling to the other end). Its ok to do wet lay in or tacked off first, but once it gets tacky you can't reposition it easily.

Went back to the center of the material and started laying the roofing down in a V shape. I got it to fall exactly on the target line Id marked. Started working across one way making my V larger- laying in more and more. Until suddenly about 15 feet of roofing flapped over into the tacky glue. Not good. Hurried down and pulled it out, but now was struggling to lay it properly. I couldn't lay from the center anymore because it wanted to flop back flat again. Given this side was already very sticky, I put a can on it to hold the rest of the flap off the glue and switched to the wetter side.

Tried to continue the V shape unroll but standing a bit further down. Kept running into issues getting bumps where it wasnt laying down evenly. Kept jumping back and forth trying to lay more and work the bumps flat, but with the 100+ degree heat, even this side had turned tacky. It was at that point I knew this wasnt a 1 man job.

Did my best to lay the rest of the roll, but both ends ended up several inches off the target line. This was due to probably a dozen ripples / humps in the material, some up to 1" high. It looked terrible...

As the glue hadn't set yet, I decided to scrap that roll / pull it out of the adhesive. Let the adhesive dry and chopped it up / threw it off the edge. Super disappointed. Not only did it mean the roof would be exposed longer and that I'd be off schedule, but it also meant almost $2k worth of mistake all said and done.

Spent the next couple weeks getting more glue and another roll of material ordered/ picking it up / getting it hoisted onto the roof while I considered my options.

I was tempted to cut it into smaller sheets - a size I knew I could work with from the covered patio job. The downside is this wouldve created a lot more seams. The whole reason the garage is the width it is is to allow exact coverage of a full length roll of roofing without seams. So I really hated to go down this path.

Finally decided to bite the bullet and hire my materials installed. Sure proved tough to do - lots of places dont do singly ply residential anymore - theyre switching to these exterior spray foam roofs. Unfortunately I can't do that as A) I have north of $5k in material already and B) thats both a drawing and a permit change. Finally found a place that did both single ply roofing an would use my materials.

The install just wrapped up today, and the garage is now waterproof.



It's very strange inside now. Absolutely pitch black as the plywood roof spacers are covered. Significantly quieter (2" polyiso foam on the roof, 1" xps foam behind the stucco, 2" poly filled doors) inside too. And has a new chemical smell from the offgassing glue, lol.


Only things left on this permit at this point are:
-Re-grading the dirt (coupled with the perimeter termite treatment)
-Trim finishing - caulking, painting, etc. All around all 5 garage doors, the man door, and the rear side fascia board under the drip edge.

 

This wasn't the path you had hoped for, but you have to be happy to have it OVER!!! Progress is progress

 

I am very happy it's over. We've been absurdly lucky this monsoon season - at my house, we've only had 2 light rain storms all season (and very little wind) and we're already about 2/3 of the way through. The metro tends to get more than half of its total annual rainfall in monsoon season, sometimes with day after day after day storms, and often accompanied by high winds and dust.

I did have temporary plastic sheet roofing on, but I was already on my 3rd full temporary roof and even it had 2 sections need replaced from the UV and wind exposure. The plywood deck was definitely starting to show some weathering, especially in areas where the temp roof had failed or come loose multiple times. I was also getting occasional water damage on the stuff I had stored inside from it leaking in various spots.

 

And the first overnight guest...



Nice not to have to screw with a car cover anymore, at least until she gets kicked out for floor epoxy.

 

That is a GREAT feeling! Huge milestone to actually have a car parked in there.
I will be curious how your epoxy floor coating will go and how it lasts. I know mine was multiple days of work.

 

Im SUPER pumped for that step. Ive been binge watching ever how to / prep work / tips & tricks video there is on Youtube - Im so ready for it.

I think that'll be a huge relief to get done as Ill actually be able to use it. I can clean out all of the boxes crammed into the current garage (80% I cant even get in to / haven't seen inside in years), I can get all of the boxes out of the house (easily as much as Ive got stored in the garage), and most importantly - get the vette home. It's still in storage and is an absolute pain to get out.

I got extremely lucky on roof timing - we had a really bad monsoon Monday night. 3000 ft tall wall of sand, up to 70 mph wind gusts (launched the neighbor's trampoline over their house and into the street, took out numerous trees), and 1" of rain in the course of about an hour. I camped out in the garage for most of it and it held up very well. Absolutely zero roof leaks and absolutely zero damage anywhere.

Unfortunately it still got pretty soaked inside on the floors. The driveway in front sits about 1/4" higher than the garage slab (I think most of that is cure edge curling - just needs the lip ground down as the driveway is sloped to code), so all water running down the face pools right in front of the doors. Then my side fascia boards are sitting about 3/8" off the ground (to keep them from water contact) and I haven't caulked them closed yet, so the water landing in front of the doors had a straight shot inside. Oh well, not unexpected and I broomed 90% out when it stopped. The upside is the buidling is on a 3.5" cast in concrete curb, so nothing can get hurt by water intrusion on the floor.


I think Ive got a plan to wrap things up:
-This weekend is finishing all trim and caulking (including those side fascia board bottoms)
-Tuesday Ive got someone coming with a skid steer to set the garage grade to code (Id wanted to rent one and redo the whole yard, but Im down to the wire on permit timing and just need it done)
-If that goes well, final inspection Friday?


Once that's all done, I'll start ordering materials for epoxy. Im not in a massive rush to do epoxy at the moment, it's brutal outside for manaul labor. We're still running almost 90 degree overnight lows, daytimes in the low 100s, and very high humidity (for us) with all of the rain lately. Id be happy to be epoxying by October as we'll at least get a break on overnight lows.