Kim knew I wanted to get a motorcycle. I told her early on, I didn’t want there to be any surprises. She was cool with it - I think.
Fast forward about a half a year….2017 Mid-year
Kim said, “If you want the garage, it’s yours”. Hmmmm… It took me about 13 seconds to form a plan in my head. I would clean it out, fix up whatever needed to be done, have power run to the garage, which is a detached building, remove the ivy clinging to the exterior, and figure out where the water on the floor was coming from. Okay, sounds good.
One Saturday morning I began this adventure by tearing down the ivy that was covering the stucco exterior, and in the process, I found that there was a side window, that’s good news, I like ventilation. I also noticed that the ivy was growing into the exteriors cracks and into the soffit and fascia, that’s bad news, I don't need that much ventilation. I had more ivy than I originally thought.
Clean
Time to clean out the interior: There was a lot of stuff in there, stuff that actually came with the house, Kim never really used the garage because it was too small for a car really (perfect for a model T), and the driveway tapered and had a slight dog leg right as you head towards the garage from the street. So, everything I’m removing had been in there for God knows how long, but it was at least seventeen years because that’s how long Kim had owned the house.
I’m sure I displaced a rodent or two, after all, a garage that nobody ever goes into can be a nice hideaway.
Everything went into the driveway, where a triage began, to see what would stay and what would go. The junk removal guys I found on Angie’s list actually came twice to haul stuff away. I put some stuff out on the sidewalk free for the taking (where we live, we can make things disappear from the sidewalk like magic, sometimes if your timing is good, you don't even have to put it down before someone steps up).
With the ivy gone, and the bulk of the spider webs removed, and rodents looking for new digs, I put the broom to the floor walls, and ceiling. The ceiling was corrugated metal, and it looked pretty rusted, so I started pulling it down, which turned out to be a huge job. I never saw a ceiling in a garage, perhaps that’s the way they built them a hundred years ago. The ceiling was actually housing about 30 pounds of droppings from whatever was living in there, so I got that junk out of there as soon as possible (safety glasses, old t-shirt wrapped around my face, gloves, but still I should’ve been better covered), then I removed all of the strapping holding the ceiling in place, boy this place was built to last; it took a whole day to do just this (well, maybe 5 hours, but for a Saturday, that's a lot of work).
Repair
We were having a new roof put on the main house, so now was the time to put a new roof on the garage. The new roof on both buildings looks great, and will give us 25 years peace of mind, which is nice.
The garage is actually block construction with a stucco exterior; surprisingly the block had big holes in about seven or eight places on the interior walls, so I filled them with foam backer and covered the holes with a quick setting grout. I used something that would set fast because I was working on vertical surfaces; I was pleased with the way it came out.
Power
My brother is an electrician, so I hired him to come over and bring power out to the garage. We (I) dug a trench and we ran flexible conduit underground (there was actually unusable old knob & tube in the garage being fed by an overhead line from the house, which was unsightly). My brother does nice work, all metal conduit inside the building, industrial wall box with switches, overhead LED lights, it came out nice.
In between each step, I put a broom on the floor and walls to make sure that I got most of the spider webs out.
Let's wrap it up
Now nobody has really used this garage in I don’t know how long, and it was always unlocked. I wanted to make sure I could at least lock it up if I put a new bike inside. I remembered seeing lots of old keys lying around the house and basement in several places. One Saturday I decided to see if I could find the right key, and after trying about twenty different keys, I actually found the right one - unbelievable. Now I have an empty, clean, well-lit space, that I can (and will) consider putting a new motorcycle in.
It’s very satisfying to repurpose, clean up, renovate something like this old garage, it’s all part of the adventure.
A view from the seat, looking out from the garage and into the driveway.