I have pretty average oversized 24x24' 2-car garage. Two years ago when we moved in I did some basic renovations to make the garage usable. I got rid of lally columns and had a LVL beam installed instead to open up the space, coated the floor with polyaspartic coating, fixed the electrical to not be so sketchy, and ordered some cabinets. This served me well but I always wanted more. I wanted to raise the roof to fit lifts and have more indoor space for the fleet.
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| Steguis Motorsports Garage v2.0 |
The problem was that the town allowed a maximum of a 15ft height which is exactly what the height of the garage already was but my maximum interior headroom was only 6.5ft due to all the space taken up by the ceiling trusses. It's hard to get the clearance with a traditional roof so I gave up on the idea for a while until I realized I could do a single pitch roof to get the vertical clearance I needed.
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| Pre-construction |
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| Architect drawing |
I worked with Peter Reo, fellow NEDC member, and owner of Elite Estate Holdings as my GC. He got me an architect who figure out how to get me the vertical clearance I needed. The garage would be 14' 4" at the front and 10' at the back which would give me enough slow to handle snow while maximizing internal space. A triple LVL beam would be used inside to support the weight of the roof leaving me with around 12ft of ceiling room around the area where the cars would be. We would also be putting in a 100A subpanel to run enough power for the lifts and anything else I needed in there.
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| New framing done for the roof |
We ordered the front windows, custom doors and lifts and after about a month or so applied for the building and electrical permits. This would reduce the amount of downtime I'd have. I moved my cars to storage units and put all the stuff I had in the garage into a storage pod in the driveway and then construction began. In one day the whole roof got demoed and the new frame put up.
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| Trench for the electrical conduit |
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| Front windows in |
In the interior, we fully finished it with double layers of fire resistant drywall sheet to meet code, painted the ceiling black, added LED lights and shelves to reduce the amount of lose items sitting out that didn't fit in the cabinets.
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| Drywall in and painted |
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| Siding, roof and gutters done |
We then got the high lift doors installed and I was able to unload my pod and put all my stuff back in the garage.
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| Doors in |
Lastly we got the dual Challenger CL4P7 4-post lifts installed, got it all wired up and I was finally able to bring my cars home.
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| Lifts installed, just need to be wired |
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| Lifts all functional and cars getting driven in |
Lastly, I picked up a cheap 50' LED TV so I can watch shows while I'm working in the garage.
TV installed
Overall it took exactly a month from the moment we started demo to completion. Everything seemed to align nicely. Inspections (2 electrical, 3 building) were done and passed easily. Supplies lined up nice and despite some bad weather during construction, it didn't really slow us down much.
