In the foot of the L there would be a door connecting the two parts of the garage (see right)
| Earlier, I described the conversion of the top of our garage to an apartment, in the early 1990's. Then Steve Wales and Erika Slaugh renovated the apartment in May-June, 2006 (reference to follow?) In the meantime, Erika and Mercia urged me to build a "basement-room" below, occupuing about 1/2 of our garage. Once before, I had built three temporary walls to prepare a central room, but now two of these walls, including the "hanging one" suspended by clamps from the central metal I beam, had to come down and were recycled. |
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The idea was to come up with an insulated L-formed space separated from the rest of the garage - (yellow color on the sketch)
which is not heated or air-conditioned. In the foot of the L there would be a door connecting the two parts of the garage (see right) |
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The first part of the conversion was "forced" on us by accepting Aspen's quote to install new windows (blue) in the back and side of the 25ft x 40 ft garage building.
This was the most expensive part of the project. Other "outside" help included the installation of 3 vents (red lozenges) in the existing ducts originally installed by Rohrer. Leakway was asked to remove their existing hand-operated 10 ft sliding garage door, which one man (John) managed to do in less than a half an hour! Greg Slaugh happened by and wanted to take the dismantled door and tracks. |
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 The "in-house" help was provided by Erika and Paul Slaugh and his friend Matt. |  |
 My old companion construction worker Harry Ashley, |
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 helped with hanging the inside door and the windows in the wall replacing the sliding door. |
| Plenty of distractions were provided when Paul and his friends discovered that they could dig through the piles of junk (?) in the other part of the garage and establish a fortress there, much to the delight also of Parker and Lexa who in addition learned to use some tools. Some random photographs of these events follow below: |
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| July 18, 2006: digital camera seems 'off', but here is my first new wall showing the colorfull insulation pads recycled from an older wall. We also found an alternative use for Weis paper shopping bags... |
| July 21, 2006: the back wall showed some interesting structural geology cracks and crevasses, which we patched with expanding foam. On the left, you can see the 2x4 rack in the "other part" of the garage, which we snatched and turned 90 degrees so it could help serve as a wall.... |
 | This is referred to as "Paul's frame", because I had him design the whole structure and then build it, together with Matt, of course! We will dispense with critique re perpendicularity, flawless measurements in the awkward Britisch system fo inches, eights, thirty-seconds, etc. (poor kids...) Rather have a look through the newly installed window at the colorful backyard! Also note the use of tar-paper or asphalt-paper as it is now renamed (?) attached to the back of the 2x4 frame by roofnails. |
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Here "Paul's frame - once erected and sledgehammered into place - is filled with insulation material - a sticky racket - and attached using the stapler we borrowed kindly from Steve. When we ran out of the Kraft backing we used Weis' shopping bags: "WE DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU" Note at the right an existing set of shelves into which or upto which I pushed Paul's frame. to do so, I had to remove anything on the other side of those shelves. To make a long story even shorter, I had to ask Harry to bring his wrecking bar later to help pry loose the shelves so I could replace them with the neatly insulated "BLO-frame" wall shown below. |
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 July 22 turning existing 2x4 rack 90 degrees |
 July 23 installing boards to form back of new 2x4 frame wall |
 July 27 fitting insulation and drywall to the corner of "Paul's frame" |
 July 30 I spent Sunday morning building this door frame |
 August 4 Harry and I hung the metal door on Aug.1, and I did the drywalling |
 August 18 |
The "BLO-frame" for the rear wall This was a simple 8ft x 8ft frame requiring 9 2x4 studs. I laid it out on the floor on the front side and had a heck of a time erecting it all by my now 74 yr old self, On the left it abutts Paul's frame on the right the bathroom wall. Note the obstructory vents! |
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 August 21 |
The front wall This shows some details of hiding the light switches between the front door and the new window. I will stop here and may add more later, d.v. Why do not I work faster? Because there is no great rush and because of other projects: mowing, WWW site, and a nasty open sore on my ankle which requires rest and hospital visits. |
 BLO fecit 20060821/2 stories |