Chesapeake Region
Article: Beach Wood Escape Garage Restoration Steve & Joan Wood The desire to renovate our 1928 garage had been in the back of our minds for close to the entire 24 years of our ownership! But alas the house & property came first, not to mention raising the kids, coaching sports, participating in community events, etc. Plus, the daunting task of solving logistics were the most difficult. I stressed over trying to figure out what to do with the cars for the 4-5 months, where to store the tool chests, and what to do with heavy stuff like the 400lb upright air compressor! Lol, all of those things held me back for a long time. It wasn’t until the pandemic hit that our son was able to come back from Long Island NY and help me with the hard stuff. He still had his apartment, his job, his life, but furlough allowed him to come back for 2.5 months, and THAT was the muscle I was going to need to rebuild the entire front wall. The werks included lally column support, squaring up new 2x6 stud framing (which, for 93 yr old horse barn style openings, getting things square, plum and level was a treat!), electrical wiring, insulation, Azek trim and eventually new garage doors were all on the docket for the rebuild. Then some nice new enhancements were also part of the plan, such as a new concrete floor coating, car lift, wall cabinets, and more. We stored the cars at a local storage facility (stressful in & of itself), moved stuff into sheds, and had bins & boxes of tools & supplies moved into our attic. For the garage doors, given lead times for product & labor, we picked out and ordered new garage doors & openers (qty 3), so that we would not be left with a wide open building for more than a day. We narrowed our search for the doors down to Garaga & Clopay, and finally chose the 2” thick, 3-layer Gallery, R18 Clopay doors in a raised panel coachman style. It seemed a perfect style and match for our colonial style home. Plus I was also able to switch from the overhead bar-&-chain style opener, to a header torsion & vertical cable style. This would give me much more ceiling headroom above the bays, and allow greater height for a car lift. Being a 90+ year old building, the ceiling height is only 9 feet, so giving ourselves the most headroom was very important. For the floor coating, we decided to pay a little extra for a monolithic MMA Acrylic epoxy coating, verses just a regular epoxy, or even a polyurea. We wanted something that was quick to cure, extremely resistant to chemicals, and very durable. Regular 2-part Epoxy meets most of those demands, but the German based BASF product was the clear leader. It is the product of choice for large commercial installations, and our local company has a lot of experience mixing those chemicals. The best part of using that product is that it was literally ready for our cars that same night. It sets up so fast, and is as hard as it will ever get within 2 hours of installation.
Interior: Before
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