Unfortunately the long holiday weekend was a nearly total loss on garage progress. My plan was to have this ready for concrete before I went back to work as I finally had a stretch of several days with no commitments to any activities.

But as happens with kids, my daughter brought home some kind of plague just a day or two before break started that wiped me out most of the weekend. To be fair, it was probably just a common cold - but between the heavy congestion and lack of energy, hard manual labor activities fell straight to the bottom of my list.

I did put in probably 4 or 5 hours spread over a couple days - I took a bunch of measurements off my string level grid to get my target level for the top of the gravel. I did also start working on finish leveling to that target, but only got through maybe 15% of the total slab before I gave it up. Hopefully next weekend is more productive...

 

Made some good progress last weekend. Put the level string grid back up and went through with a long board and shovel to get it flat. I do wish I would've at least attempted a few more hours with the skid steer as moving all of that gravel by hand is brutal. Luckily I finished the rest up in about a day and a half.

Rented the plate compactor again and did 3 full passes over the whole thing. Practically glass smooth by the time I was done and firmed up very nicely.

Yesterday I did the slab termite treatment. Soaked the gravel through at the max dosage. The house has had a lot of termite issues, so I'm hoping to keep this new place free of them (especially since its a wood build). Saved the last 2 bottles of the stuff for the perimeter treatment once the slab is poured and we're on to grading.

Threw the vapor barriers roughly back in place (to keep UV off the termite treatment and keep any water out if it does rain) and just dropped a few chunks of rebar on it to keep the wind from getting under it.



Ready to pivot back to finishing the footing dig out. Then onto rebar install and lastly forms.

 

I just noticed, is that a brick privacy fence/wall you have?

 

Yes, it's a concrete block wall around the entire backyard. We've got a touch under an acre enclosed with it.

It's somewhat rare to find houses out here without one (especially anything 1990+) as it's used so often. Virtually all of the new build subdivisions have block wall fences built per HOA requirements before initial sale of the house (so the whole subdivision has matching block wall style throughout).

This place is older and didn't have them originally, but probably 90%+ of the houses have since added one (which is partly why the walls in our yard are a different style depending which wall you're looking at).


Coming from the midwest I found it very odd at first. The area I came from was pretty rural so fences were somewhat uncommon. Back there, even the typical subdivision neighborhoods didn't come with fences on day 1. Certainly a lot of people have chosen to add them, but now that looks odd to me as there's 15 different types of fences in a given subdivision back home (some chain link, some vinyl plank, some bare wood, some painted wood, etc etc).

I will admit the PHX style is a bit anti-social. As the house almost always bisects the front wall line, it's entirely possible to never have to engage with your neighbors. You pull into the garage, shut the door behind you, and never go out in the front yard (even easier if its a rock front yard that doesn't require mowing/maintenance). Add to that community mailbox centers (in the modern subdivisions) that could be a block or two away, and a person may not set foot in front of their house for literally weeks on end.

 

That sounds way different from my part of the world lol. In some aspects it might be nice to have that privacy.

 

As a pretty introverted person, I love it.

I will say it's not as private as it may seem at first, especially in the newer subdivisions. As we run out of available land to build on in the main metro area, the land prices have started to really take off. Where a standard subdivision used to be 1/5 to 1/4 of an acre lots back in the 2000s, they've been steadily shrinking ever since. The 2010s house we rented when buying our current place was under a 5000 SF lot, and I've seen some new builds getting down closer to 3k while still being separate/detached houses.

As people still want a 2-3 car garage and 2k++ SF of house, that's making 2 stories the norm and 3 stories not uncommon. Even at that decade old rental house there were probably a dozen 3 stories in that subdivision. So while you do have privacy from people at ground level, there's still probably at least 10 houses that can clearly see into your yard.

The one upside with our current /older place is its all single stories, so we luckily don't have that issue.

 

Making more progress finally. Busy end of the year with travel and its been so wet lately that its been hard to get much done. But managed to sneak in some work the last few weekends on the dry days.

Got the tops of the concrete forms totally done:



It's motivating to finally start visualizing what it'll look like. The slab has a 4" curb cast in, so the dips in the forms are for the doors (man door being closest to the camera, garage doors on the front and back walls).

Been working to get some key materials on order too. Had a really hard time getting quotes for the trusses for some reason. The place I'd used for my initial estimate ($13k during the height of covid lumber craziness) absolutely tanked in ratings over the last year or two and is now sub 2 stars on Google. Not taking a chance there.

Spent a couple weeks reaching out to other places and finally got a good quote back- $10k and 7 week lead time from a place with good reviews, so I've got those on order.

Struggling a bit with garage doors. Lead time seems similar to trusses, but had some issues with ordering Clopays thru Home Depot, so I'm pivoting to another brand now (Amarr most likely). Need to make a decision fairly soon.

Next steps:
-Fill in bottom of form board gaps (adding a secondary 2x board below the existing one to plug the gaping hole to ground level), add remainder of form bracing
-Finish digging footing hole. 95% done, but haven't been able to make progress with how wet its been. Getting the form boards in place makes it much more obvious what needs removed still.
-Compact footings
-Install rest of vapor barrier thru footings
-Install rebar
-Add curb forms
-Install anchor bolt holders
-City inspection

 

This is exciting! I am waiting on one more quote to build my garage. Two of the prices I got are within the amount that I am willing to "write the check" vs me hiring all the trades myself. I am excited to get someone hired and move forward!

 

Lucky you're getting quotes back!

Id bet I reached out to almost 10 places on trusses alone. Only got 2 quotes back out of it and 1 was unusable (lead time was blank and they priced up the wrong qty of trusses: several too few on the middle ones and 1 too many on the ends - never could get in touch to clarify). I'll admit that I was about ready to reach back out the original place that now had crappy reviews just to get something back. So I'm glad this new place finally came through / had near term availability on their production line.


I get it though, they'd certainly rather copy and paste building the same truss a million times for these enormous new subdivisions. Unfortunately it drives the price up for everyone else.

 

Been making some good progress lately. Got the remainder of the form boards up last weekend (still needs more bracing for concrete - especially across the front, but its dimensionally correct/ good enough for city inspection):



Spent Fri + Sat getting the footings 100% dug out for minimum width and depth. I hindsight I wish I'd have attempted the footers with a bucket digger. Ive run them before and wasn't super comfortable digging a straight and consistent depth footer so I went with the trencher instead (about half of the necessary width), but it made a huge amount of added manual work. Summing the hours worked, I'd bet I've got 3-4 full 12 hour days into hand finishing the footers - I could've screwed around a bunch more with a bucket and still come out hours ahead.

Regardless they're done and very straight/ flat consistent.

Rented a jumping jack compactor Sunday to compress the bottoms of the footers. Its mostly untouched soil, so its not super loose - but still nice to get it as compressed as it can be with a bit of added moisture to help pack things better.






Next weekend I'll finish installing the vapor barrier in the footers (need them to dry out first from the added water during compacting) and start into rebar.