Another Garage thread?!

General General Lotus Talk
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Been beavering away the last month or so on a house move, which of course comes with a nice new garage project!

Anyone who has read my 2-Eleven thread will know I spent a bit of time on my old garage earlier this year putting a bigger central door in, and centralising the ramp position. In hindsight this was just part of our campaign of flapping around trying to convince us that the house was our forever home…

I even added a hump to the ceiling for the future addition of a four post ramp.

Fast forward and inevitability struck, and we’ve moved. We love the new house, gone a bit more rural/remote but managed to snag a much bigger garage and enough secure driveway for trailer storage.

It’s an old barn originally, half of it believed to be dated to the 1700s and half of it a bit more recent around 1930. The whole house has been renovated for sale, as it was an unoccupied farmhouse for about 40 years prior to us buying it. Under the renovations came a new roof for the garage, new floor and first fix of electrics, lighting and plumbing.

Internally it’s been carved in two, approx 2/3 along it’s length. There’s a breezeblock dividing wall that’s been added to make a dedicated garage, and then a space prepared for a future granny flat type arrangement.

Obviously I need to undo that and turn it back into one big garage.

It’s approx the size of 3x double garages all sat side by side. So roughly 15m long and 6m deep. It only has the one door right at one end.

I’ve not decided on a plan yet, but the 2-Eleven is currently off with Dave and John at Seriouslylotus so if I’m going to make a mess… I should do so now!

The two high level options are:

  1. Keep dividing wall in place, and add a second garage door to the other half of the garage. Would give me two segregated garages, one approx double garage sized and a other quad garage sized.

  2. Knock dividing wall down, and drive the car in on a 90deg angle and park it “long ways” down the longer end of the garage. I could get 2x project cars in lengthways and then a third daily driver parked “traditionally” where the garage door currently is… And have ample room to work on all three.

In the name of time, I’m going to go option two for now. An additional door can always be added later to give me more layout options.


The yellow cars in this diagram are Lotus “111” sized, and the red car is “daily driver saloon” sized just as a reference.

2-Eleven splitter for scale

I love the contrast of the new floor/roof, and old walls. Would like to retain that aesthetic so won’t be boarding it out or anything… but maybe something to preserve the walls/seal in the dust. The walls are very thick, no idea how it’s going to stand up to moisture/condensation yet so will play that one by ear over Winter. I’ve never found the wanting for a heated garage that’s totally airtight to be honest, favour a “well breathed” environment and a coat if needed.

The longer section of the garage is roughly divided into three via the roof truss things. Two of them have a central joist connecting the trusses together which house some new striplights, but the third section closest the end wall has no central beam. This gives great ceiling clearance for ramp fitment, but is currently lacking lighting.

Open to suggestions here, either two more strip lights mounted on 45deg angles on the two beams that go into the end wall… or maybe a larger panel(s) light that drops down from the apex. @johnfishcurtis you’re into the lighting game, no?

Aside from lighting, there’s a spur ready to go for some sockets, and the wiring all coiled up in a corner for it so have plenty of freedom of where to have a workbench etc.

The wall knock-through is not without complications. The floors are on different levels, the existing garage level being lower by about 100mm than the larger section of the barn which has been raised up with a damp course, so I’ll need a gradient or raise the floor in the garage section. Gradient/ramp probably path of least resistance for now. The 90degrees turn into the garage is probably going to be a bit tight too as the door is not that wide. It’s more like a 1.5x door rather than a true double. A Lotus should squeak round, but anything bigger would struggle. Thomas the Tank Engine turntable?!

Going back to Option 1, that’s not without complication either if I wanted to retain two individual garages. Because of the higher floor level, I’ll need a rather long (or steep) ramp buried beneath the gravel driveway, but there’s some sewage/plumbing access in the way - so manhole cover would need to be part of the ramp, etc.

Posting this thread at this point to both get opinions/ideas, but also share the project. It’s not had much attention yet due to other moving obligations, but I need to get a move on both to prepare it for arrival of the 2-Eleven, and maybe another project.

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What an incredible space that is! You are going to have a proper workshop sized space there!

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That does look like a nice place to mess with your cars/play 5 a side.
Although the picture with the 2-11 splitter on the floor reminds me of the first part of one of those weekly magazines, that does a model car/boat/building, that is complete in just 6,456,443 editions!
In terms of what we learned, paint the floor - don’t use the stuff we used - it will cut down on dust and spills just wipe up, rather than soak in, making the floor even more difficult to paint later on, paint the walls white, it makes any lights much more effective, and add many sockets and lights. Lots of lights. Then when you think you have too many, add some more for good measure - we still have darker areas that can be frustrating. Get some good quality, versatile storage set up. We used Rapid Racking in the workshop and parts dept, it’s really good kit, comes in all sorts of sizes/weight ratings and they’re great to deal with.

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Cheers John.

Painting the floor definitely on the cards once I sort the threshold out between levels.

I have rubberised floor tiles in the old garage, probably won’t tile the entire place (can’t afford that :rofl:) but I’ll certainly have it around the work areas. Makes dropping tools a little more forgiving, not to mention it’s slightly warmer/more pleasant to roll around on.

Still fancy a four poster, probably one for the future. For now I’ll stick my scissors lift in the back where the ceiling clearance is highest (god knows how I’m going to move that from old house btw).

As the floor has been raised/damp coursed it’s also very flat rather than having the typical drainage gradient a garage can have. Makes it a bit more convenient for DIY geos.

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Had a big push on the house move this weekend, trailer hammered in some mileage and I’m hitting that sweet spot of over confidence when reversing it around on the driveway now.

Means I’ll be reversing it into the house any day now…

I decided to get the “small half” of the garage completely cleared out, and ordered some concrete floor sealant.

The Sealant apparently can be used either as a primer for paint, or as a final protection for light foot traffic.

If I can get this side of the garage all sealed, and get my rubber floor tiles down then at least I have a fallback workshop for if the wall can’t come down any time soon for whatever reason.

If the wall does come down, it will almost certainly damage part of my floor - so worst case scenario I’ve wasted a couple of litres of sealer and don’t have to worry about matching up a paint job later.

If I do get the wall down in a timely fashion, then even better - and I can get the whole lot sealed and hopefully painted before my new project arrives…

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Tease!

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Best way to paint a garage floor….paint roller tray and a soft broom, done in a flash, no bending needed.

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I was going to Mr Bean it

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That works as well!

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Bit of an update yesterday.

I got talking to a builder who did a lot of the renovation work on the house and garage, and he offered to quote for bringing the wall down for me and disposing of the rubble.

Then, as the weather for yesterday was forecast as torrential and he had another job rained off - he made the surprise offer to get it done that day!

The terrible weather didn’t stick to the plan… though.

I took a quick photo as he was setting up, serve as a reference.

Progress was rapid. Minimal power tools, just a chisel and a hammer made sure the blocks came off largely in clean individual pieces but also mess was kept to a minimum.

Eventually though, the dust generators came out as he trimmed the edges to match the inner lining of the small end of the garage.

Then suddenly… it was gone!

He was barely here half a day. Skip filled, rubble swept up. Gone.

This is the step that next needs dealing with:

The rise of the first lip is 80mm, then approx another 40mm to get up onto the concrete. My trailer ramps are conveniently 80mm tall so gives me a reference as to what gradient/length rampage I’ll need.

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Looking even better than before. :+1:

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Something that I’m a little nervous of is the screed surface above the membrane on the “upper” half of the workshop.

It’s hard to tell how thick it is, but it very much looks and feels like a finishing surface rather than anything structural. Wondering how it would fare with the scissor lift :thinking:

Not a problem I have to worry about for a while, 2-Eleven will be parked up over winter soon so could just leave it sat on the lift, raised about an inch off the floor. If it survives till Spring, we’re good :rofl:

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It’s 4.5" or so. There’s a square in the corner where some utilities come into the garage and it’s bare down to the membrane here so you can see the cross section of the screed/concrete or whatever it is. Better than I thought but I’ll still run it by the lift vendor.

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Am liking your parking barn extension over the road a lot!

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It’s great isn’t it! My next door neighbour is the chap who developed this whole hamlet, and that barn is the last job on his list. He’s had a couple of planning niggles on it I think, but eventually that’ll be one more house that he plans to move into with his parents.

Small amount of progress this weekend, got a coat of concrete sealer down in the “small” end of the garage.

I only bought 5litres, not expecting it to do anywhere near the full garage but more of a gauge so I knew how much more to order. This barely did 1 coat of 1/3rd of the garage, so ordered another 20litres to carry on.

Plan is to get the lower/smaller double garage sized bit all sealed and then get some PVC tiles down. Then move everything into that bit.

I’ll then vacuum/prep and seal the “upper level”. I won’t PVC tile all of that because:
a) Cost
b) I want some flat concrete for doing alignments on anyway

So will likely have PVC tiles right at the back third surrounding my ramp, just to make tool dropping more forgiving etc. Then have the middle third as exposed/sealed concrete (might paint it depending on how the sealer performs) and then the final third near the door will be tiled too.

Perhaps more substantial in the way of progress was a long discussion I had with my builder and friend from Yorkshire Kitchen Designs who I first worked with a few years ago when he did my kitchen knockthrough at the old house.

Showed Will what I had to work with, and we discussed a few plans. As ever, every approach is compromised so it will be picking the compromises I can most easily live with. They’re all very good problems to have, mind!

In short, the long term planning comes down to either:

Raise the lower floor to match the upper
Destroy the raised floor to match the lower

The implications of each get a bit complicated, but in short:

Destroying the raised floor to match the lower would be throwing away a nice insulated floor, and would be a shame to lose that. By raising the lower section up, we can add insulation there and make the garage a slightly nicer place to be.

It would however give us the opportunity to put in a fresh slab of proper structural concrete to give no real concerns around future ramp installation.

That said…

Ramp installation over and above my current scissor seems very unlikely due to the positioning and spacing of the beams. Any ramp position would be highly compromised. My demand/requirement for a four post ramp is much reduced now, because I’m not short on storage/parking.

If we raise the lower floor, we can add insulation - expand on the existing ramp buried under the gravel on the driveway and still have a gradient that’s just about manageable in a 2-Eleven.

Onto doors…

If I’m going to raise the lower floor, then the sectional door needs to be swapped out. It would be stupid to do that, without also extending the span of the door from it’s current 2.5metres to a 4.5metre proper double door. This will make the 90degrees turn much more forgiving, and also give me the chance to have two “not worked on” cars parked side by side in the end of the garage, with two further projects parked lined astern in the ‘workshop’ bit.

Any replacement door will need to be sectional, because the beams won’t allow the roller mechanism to sit somewhere. The door opening of a roller would be so low, I’d have to duck under it (particularly with a 130mm raised floor). Sectional doors are fine, but they do block out ceiling space due to the mechanism, so no lift could go near a door.

(Yes there are more niche doors which open side to side, but all just compromised in different areas).

If I’m going to go sectional, then I might as well board out the ceiling directly above it - so that’s where my “loft” will go. It’ll be more like a mezzanine.

Adding additional doors further down the garage is unfortunately just not looking viable. Aforementioned issues with beams mean being force sectional door, so then lose head height for ramps etc. Also the proximity to the house starts to get a bit tight, combined with the turning circle on the drive and drains/sewage - any entry into a different door would probably end up more awkward than just swinging 90degrees into the existing (wider) door.

So if you’ve got this far through the rumblings, the preliminary plan is:

  1. Get through this winter as-is. Floors will be sealed, with some PVC tiles on and gives me a functional workshop to get a project done ready for next spring.

  2. Once my time pressures are off, we’ll (likely) put everything up onto the upper level, sheet it all off and then get to work raising the floor in the double garage bit. Smashing the door out, putting a new 4.5m door in and then working on some new beams/joists and loftspace above.

  3. There will then be a tarting up phase. Probably boarding and/or painting the double garage bit, getting some nice lighting in and then putting some sort of removable barrier in place. Patio door type thing, bifolds, etc. The workshop won’t be tarted up quite as much, but getting the brickwork sealed and lighting organised at the very least.

At that point, the only real compromise will be that I’ll need to shuffle a couple of cars about when getting one of the projects in/out of the workshop. They’re likely to only move 6-8 times a year, so no real headache. And no different to 99% of people who have to shuffle cars around their driveway anyway when retrieving a car from the garage.

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You are giving me some ideas here!

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Bit of progress, hampered by a frustrating 20litres of floor sealant that went AWOL in a courier depot.

I finally got the second coat of sealant down in the “smaller” end of the garage, but it didn’t fully have the effect I was hoping for. The concrete still very much feels “matte” to touch, and I was expecting a bit of a satin sheen by now. The dust generated was notably less, so considering I was sticking PVC tiles down here I skipped on any further coats and just got the flooring down.

Got the bulk of it down in about 12 minutes, then a further 30-40 trimming the edge pieces and minimising wastage.

I did have a quick test to see if these would be interchangeable with the different brand tiles I bought years ago. The answer is yes, so this might come in handy later.

All done.

With that, it was time to press on with some progress moving all the junk out of the “bigger half”.

Pretty back breaking day, but starting to look good.

With the floored bit now looking like a total dump.

Got a nice big delivery from Sealey in the meantime, lots of flatpack construction to be had here. More on this later.

I finished up the weekend getting more concrete sealer down in the big bit. This really didn’t go too well, it was absolutely sucking the sealer off the roller and I was getting half the coverage I did in the other half. The concrete is just so soft, porous and sponge-like.

I’ll get another couple of coats down today (Monday), but I’m really running out of time to do this to the standard I was hoping for. By Thursday this needs to be ready to accept a car.

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Update, it’s been a crazy week or two of progress.

Lots and lots and lots and lots of coats of concrete sealer down on the “upper” level of the garage. The concrete here was very different and much more absorbent than on the other level.

As I was leaving a good portion of this concrete exposed, I needed to be absolutely sure it was saturated with the sealer so I kept going.

I think in the end it was 9 coats, which was approx 80 litres of the stuff. Not a cheap gig, but as the final couple went down it was spreading thinner and thinner and practically beading off the surface.

The visual impact is minimal, it was just chalky white before:

…and has a bit of an eggshell satin afterwards.

Next up was a big delivery.

This was a literal truckload of Sealey cabinets which have been supplied by a local dealer at a generous rate to support me in an upcoming endeavour. Very generous. Many thanks to Home - East Coast Sales Ltd

I made a gentle start getting it built up, and first impressions of the Sealey kit were excellent. Very little actual flatpacking to do, much of it came pre-assembled in modules and where I did have to construct stuff it was well engineered so that panels clipped together and supported themselves while you bolted them down, so easy 1-man work.

I also started laying my old PVC floortiles from my original garage up at the top end. This is where my scissor lift is destined to live… when I have the energy to get it out of my trailer!

Between all this, I had a friend and local electrician pop round to start measuring up for my sockets and extra lights. He’s due back next week to sort that. Luckily the consumer unit and all wiring runs are easily accessible, so it’s relatively inexpensive to get power and lighting just about anywhere.

I’d ordered some extra rubber fatigue matting when I was starting to doubt that I’d ever get the concrete properly sealed, so this will give me somewhere to sit/roll around if needed when working on a car in the exposed middle section of the garage floor.

(The concrete worked out fine, so these are probably a little excessive now).

For the far corner I bought a wee catering sink. Nothing plumbed in yet, and need to build a trapdoor of sorts for the hole in the floor where the water feeds come in.

I also don’t have easy access to any drainage. I can sort eventually by digging up the driveway a bit, but even if it drains into a massive bucket for now… that’ll do for washing hands at the end of a session and rinsing the odd part off.

During all this work, all my household/garage crap was piled up high in the “lower” end of the garage sat on the new PVC tiles, so the final job was a full day of moving stuff to try and find a final resting place… That took a while.

Until I get some garage loft boarded out, I’ll have to keep various household bits (Christmas decs etc) lying around in a corner, but I’ve got plenty of room. I also rebuilt the Bigdug workbench, pegboard and upper cabs to act as a wee secondary workstation.

I knocked off rather late on whatever night this was, as I had a big delivery to sign for the following day.

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Following day!

If the trio of axle stands, instagram posts and various other clues hadn’t sealed the deal, it’s finally time to unveil the first project for this new garage:

My Caterham kit was finally here! Ordered in April-ish time, long before I ever had plans on moving house.

The plan was always to get the Lotus stored somewhere else whilst building the Caterham in my original garage, then eventually install a four post ramp and store them ontop of each other. All those plans now obviously redundant, as I have plenty of space for both.

The Caterham delivery van arrived bright and early, and I had two full days booked off to get it unloaded, get my Sealey stuff built and just generally get organised. I had no immediate plans to start bolting wishbones on until the garage felt more ‘ready’.

Delivery driver was ace. Clearly enthusiastic about the brand and had some great stories to tell whilst we humped stuff back and forth.

As for the spec of the car, this is a Caterham Academy car which for those uneducated on such things means I actually have to race this in 2025!!

When purchasing an Academy kit, the purchase price includes a full season of racing with other novice racers all driving cars which should be getting delivered around about now. I’m dead excited, but also dead terrified - but will try to enjoy the process at least.

Over the next couple of days I got my cabinets all built up, did about a thousand tip runs and generally got myself into a position to start working on the Caterham.

So there we go. Still electrician to come next week, but I hope to start bolting bits to the car from tonight onwards. Lotus has since been repatriated from the old house too, it has a couple of 2024 trackdays still to run then in all likelihood it’ll be mothballed for much of 2025.

Was a sad sight leaving my old garage for the last time:

But already looking at home:

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That’s an incredible space.

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