Framing couldn’t come soon enough. We had six of our cars living in the driveway, and after several weeks of homelessness the rain and weather wasn’t doing them any favors. In some of the photos below, you may notice the cars wrapped in outdoor “car pockets” which are designed to zip up and be completely waterproof. In reality, not so much. After one brief rain storm I found two inches of water inside one of them. Next time I’ll just use tarps.


 

The first load of lumber arrives on the scene.


 

A very exciting moment – the first of the walls are erected! The final call on the wall height was made at about this time. Tall enough for the lifts but not so high as to visually overpower the main house.


 

More walls are raised, and we begin placing headers over windows, doorways and openings. Some walls were spec’d for 2×6 studs and some for 2×4, but we poured 6 inch stem walls all around in anticipation of increasing all exterior walls to 6 inches.


 

More headers are installed.


 

And even more headers go up.


 

Finally the inner and outer walls are completed, so we begin installing shear wall before moving upward.


 

Another load of lumber, this one destined for the roof.


 

Some very large, very heavy ridge beams are brought in and readied for lifting. Ridge beams are required due to the open ceiling construction and the distance spanned between walls.


 

Due to their size and weight, the beams have to be lifted and set in place by a crane. Here, the first of the beams makes its ascent.


 

Beams are maneuvered into place.


 

More beams go up!


 

The longest span is completed.  That lower beam is 24 inches tall.  It supports the 36-foot span above it.


 

Nearly there! The overall height of the garage begins to become evident.


 

The outer rafters are nailed in place to support the ridge beams.


 

Many calories later, the beams and headers are all completed.


 

Digging into a new pile of lumber, the rafters begin to go up. We increased the size from 8 to 10 inch.


 

The smaller half complete, larger half mostly done.


 

The house on the hill is turning into the garage on the hill with attached house.


 

The rafters are complete! We now turn our attention to completing the shear wall.


 

The interior begins to actually look like an interior! The first window is installed over the future work bench area.


 

The cars wait anxiously in the driveway as the garage takes shape. As the shear wall works its way across the roof, it starts to feel like a garage.


 

Shear wall nearly complete as the garage literally begins to take shape. Now the neighbors can finally begin see our vision.


 

Voila! We now have a glorified carport. Standing inside, it feels massive again but that will surely change once we start loading all the “stuff” in there. A storage loft can be seen at top left, but as usual there were some design changes and half of it needed to be removed. On the upper right you can see where we re-used some of the forming lumber from the slab work. They were coated so the concrete would wash off, saving us from buying a couple dozen six inch wall studs.


 

Another view of the mostly completed interior. Blocking is still being finished along with a few other minor details.


 

A view to the rear of the garage. A large doorway was framed to allow vehicles and equipment to roll through when needed. Also note the pre-primed fascia boards beginning to go up.


 

The MG TC poses in front of its soon to be new home.


 

With the interior structure pretty much done, the MGA once again (as in Garage Project 1) gets the honor of being the first car in our new garage.