What Do You Do About Doors And Windows?
Once you’ve got all of your frames standing up then you’ve got a few options. I then decided to put my doors and my windows into their holes.
I built my own window frames and put the window frames into the hole that are made for them. I didn’t put the glass in until I had the frame secured because if you twist the frame too much you end up breaking your glass. If you break the glass then it’s a real nuisance trying to get the broken bits out and it is also expensive and time-consuming putting more glass into the window frame.
You also build a door frame in place and you use the doors to make sure that the door frame is the exact right size because it the frame is too small the door won’t fit in properly and you will have to plane the edges of the doors to make the door smaller so that it will fit into the hole that you’ve allowed for when you made the door frame.
You have to make the opening for the door frame a little bigger than you would expect because it’s very difficult to make the exact right size and if you do make it the exact right size then it’s luck. But it’s no problem if you’ve made the hole too small because you just use packing to make sure that the door frame is the exact right size.
Once you’ve got your door frame in place you can place the door in the frame and hang the door on the hinges or you can leave that until a later date. If you put it in place it’s worth painting the door because doors don’t take well to getting wet and you don’t have a roof on yet.
And of course you have all the bits and pieces that go on the doors like the door handles and you have to drill holes for the door handles and all the other bits. I like this. Read more
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How To Build A Garage
I built my own garage. Building your own garaged isn’t an easy project but I did it anyway.
First you have to pour the concrete to make the concrete slab that the car parks on. So you have to build a framework for the concrete to go in and then you have to put reinforced steel in the framework sitting up in the air a little bit so that the concrete won’t crack too much.
Pour in the concrete is a heap of fun. I love concrete, it’s fun to work with and it’s very tactile. A big truck comes along and pause at all in the hole where your framework is and then you push it all around with a shovel. You need to wear gumboots because otherwise you get lots of concrete in your shoes because you have to walk on the concrete.
Once you’ve got it all spread out then it’s time to smooth it all off. There’s a special tool to do this and you just run the tool along the edges of your framework and this helps smooth it.
This is when you find out if you’ve calculated the volume of concrete that you ordered correctly. Before you ordered your concrete you had to work out exactly how much concrete you need. If you do that right then the amount of concrete is exactly right for what you’re trying to do.
If you’ve done it wrong then you’ve got a whole stack of concrete left over at the end and you have no idea what to do with it. And even worse if you don’t order enough concrete then you can’t finish the job. Then you’ve got a big problem.
Once you use your tool to screed the concrete then you have to use a trowel to smooth it off and make it look good. Then you have to wait till the concrete goes off.
Next day you remove the framework and there you have your concrete slab all ready to go. Read more
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What Do You Do Next?
So once you’ve your concrete slab then you have to build your garage. I made mine from wood.
You have to build a frame for the walls. You build your frame on the ground using a hammer and nails and pieces of pine putting them together one by one into the shape of each wall.
If you need a door then this is the time when you put an opening for the door and if you need windows then this is when put your openings for your windows.
You build the walls, well the framework for the walls, or lying down on the concrete slab because you’re going to stand them one by one once all of the frames are finished. Of course you can always build each of your frames standing but it’s much harder than doing them all lying on the ground and standing them all up later on.
Standing them up isn’t easy though. The 1st one is the hardest because you have to make it stand up and stay out while your standing up the rest of the frames. So you have to devise some way of making the wall, well the frame, stand in place why you’re doing that. I did it by nailing some pieces of pine on to the sides of the frame and using a clamp to clamp each of those pieces of pine to the side of the concrete slab.
But once you have several pieces of framework in place then you can bolt them all together and it all gets much stronger and will stand on its own. Then you take concrete bolts and droll into the concrete in your slab and put your bolts through holes in the bottom plate of your frames and into the holes that you drilled into the concrete.
Then you do them up and once you’ve got your bolts done up and all your frames bolted together and your frames bolted to the concrete you’ve got enough security to leave your frames free standing. You’ve then got the basic framework of your garage. Read more
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