Married??? DO NOT TRY THIS!!!!!

Karl La Follette wrote: put hooks in ceiling to use with roped devices that can support up to 300 lbs and boom its still a bedroom

Sounds Kinky!

dmidknight wrote: Um, looks like you won't be marrying anytime soon I'm doing something similar.

I've given away 1/2 + of everything twice divorcing women. Not going there again.

4eyes wrote: Thanks for the slatwall idea. I'm adding insulation to the north end of our attached garage (north side of the house), and was wondering what to cover it with. Have you priced marine-grade plywood? SCORE The only thing I've ever been offered for free, was an ass kicking.

Slatwall was free also! Was being thrown out when a store in a strip mall was being remodeled after a womens clothing store went out of business. I asked the guys remodeling what was getting tossed and they said there was a stack of slatwall out back in a container. It was pink...but that was easily fixed!

GRM Deal Of The Day! Special offer for 4eyes! Send me a pic of your slatwall going up, and I'll send a FREE assortment of NEW slatwall hooks. No, I didn't get them free, but have a lot left from my store we never used I'll ebay eventually. Now you've incentive and something besides a whupin offered for free!

nocones wrote: I am also interested in the story on the burgle. I also wonder what's implied by read your policies?

It's a long story (I'll leave out a lot) involving 2 insurance companies, billing adresses by both myself and companies (without notifying me), a crappy mortgage holder, misunderstood questions asked by insurer, and my failure to notice that one insurance premium was overdue when I didn't recieve a bill while another had been paid twice when I recieved multiple billings at different addresses. But the basics are as follows.

I move my personal belongings to my new (to me) fixer upper house after remodeling the bedrooms, livingroom, etc and figure I'll do the baths and kitchen sometime down the road.

I go to my old house and put it on the market. Have a pan, plate, fork, and a mattress to sleep on. Meanwhile.....

Bad guys bring big truck and take everything in the new house. EVERYTHING! When they take the fridge the feed for ice maker floods house....

After two months I get deposit on old house and fly down to new house. House empty except one bedroom set, couch, loveseat and the cars that were in garage. All clothes, furniture, appliances, tools, electronics etc gone. Like if you came home from work and everything you owned disappeared. If they took the TV they took the table it was on. Taking the lawnmower? Might as well take the gas can with it! Taking a dresser? Why dump the drawers just take them full! Taking the clothes in the closet? Take the hangers too!

Anyway the house had several inches of water in it when I arrived and had been that way at least a month which was long enough for the black mold to take over and destroy anything organic because the AC couldn't keep up with the humidity. CSI said "You can't live here, you'll get sick, go away and find somewhere to live".

A year long battle with insurance companies begins and I'm the looser by eventually giving in. They won't pay for any of my "stuff" and only pay for the damage from the break in and water damage, not the mold damage. READ YOUR POLICYS!

I gave in because meanwhile I'm paying all the bills for a house I can't use and can't live in (the black mold is dangerous to health). Had already entered contract to sell old house and so legally had to follow through. Lived at a friends house for a year and a half. I used the little bit of money from the insurance company to get the mold remediation work done and new sheetrock put up. No baths, kitchen, trim, closet doors, carpets, tile, fixtures, or appliances.

I then arrive at my trashed house to no plumbing or electric, all fixtures gone etc. So I buy a tub, toilet, and sink. I install them and make one bath operational so I can live in the house. Meanwhile the economy crumbled and the value of my house dropped just like everyone elses except mine also has lots of unrepaired damage. Now because of the damage to the house it's really upside down on the mortgage and no bank will finace it or refinance it because it's not a complete house. All the experts from the banks, city, county etc. say "just walk away". Easier said than done, so for now I'm still in the house but not sure whats going to happen with it. Since I know I'll be here at least a year I figured BUILD A SHOP! LOL

WOW. Bummer man. I'm hoisting a beer for you right now. I hope it all works out- but in the mean time, I'm glad you're doing something fun with it.

Holy smokes! I hate insurance companies!

You are a better man than me. I would have gone Postal!

RoadRacer78 wrote: Holy smokes! I hate insurance companies! You are a better man than me. I would have gone Postal!

Not much I could do, nobody to go postal on. Just get people on the phone at corporations who say "Sorry". I talked to lawers about it and the concensus was just to move on. So it reeeeealy sucks but life goes on so BUILD A SHOP!!! LOL

I found some old 2X4's that were getting tossed out that will work to make jacks and a header for the doorway into the garage. They're old and had some nails in them but who cares? They're wood! So I removed an unused door from a storage type room in the house to use for entry to the garage (been planning on using the door unless I found something better). I'd never closed the door since I owned the house but when they were doing the partial repairs a new door was installed so it became the donor door. There's no trim around the doors so it was a quick removal. If I can find a metal fire door for free I'll replace this solid wood door with a fire door and put this one back where it was. That way the door to the garage would be up to code.

Got a couple hours this evening to work on the shop so I finished cutting out the wall, then framed a new doorway and installed the door. Just barely had enough 2 X 4's. When I arrived after the partial restoration from the burglary damage the contractor hadn't cleaned up like they were supposed to. So knowing I might need them I picked up all the shims and scraps from the shims they'd left around the house from installing the other doors when I was cleaning. Had almost enough to shim the door but have to find or make a couple more to finish up.

Like was said before, youre a better man than I...I know where the corporate offices for my ins. company are, and after our recent flood, I was just a breath away from getting in the car and going on a road trip. I literally had my keys in my hand and the missus talked me down off the brink.

Good luck, and aside from the whole terribleness of the situation, Im kinda envious of the shop build

In reply to Rad_Capz: ROFL Thanks man that made my day.

This thread is rife with awesome. Good show man.

Wow, what a horror story. But at least you have that old red Trans Am!

thats awesome....

A great exampled of making lemonade from life's lemons, good job!

4eyes: I was serious, soo.. Get to work! LOL

When I had hurricane windows installed in the house a few years ago there was an extra window ordered, or delivered by mistake, or something like that. In any case, when I asked about the extra window the supervisor said "Why you want it?" And so the window's been in my way in the garage since.

When I started considering the shop build I'd been thinking I might use the window. I was hoping to come up with a couple 2 X 4's for the framing before starting but haven't yet. So I started opening up the wall for it anyway now that I've got the permanent location of the big table decided. I might have to (gasp) buy wood! A window will make it brighter in the shop and in the garage while getting it out of my way. Checked the fit of the opening with the window inside out just for fun.

Someone said something about an intake mani on a dining room table. This has actually happened to me TWICE. Sort of. Walking through my uncle Tim's house one afternoon, see a REALLY nice Edelbrock high rise for a SBC (most likely the one that WAS in the 69 Camaro) sitting right were you'd expect to see a nice display of flowers.

The other time- ok, it wasn't the manifold itself. But it WAS every bit that attached to it between fresh air and the turbo off of my ms3. And the stock midpipe/cat combo. And a spare bumper for HER car. And 3 sets of wheels.

Yes- I live in an apartment. And after having an NOS set of stock GSX wheels stolen from me for my (former) DSM- my parts stay in the apartment.

Entropyman wrote: A great exampled of making lemonade from life's lemons, good job!

I agree.

GRM- you need to do a feature article on this guy! Seriously, there's a lot of good stories in there!!

I like your attitude, and wish you the best.

I wish I had the ability to pull off what is going on here. Please keep posting updates, I have a feeling this could turn out to be one hell of a garage/house, perfect for the gearhead....

There will be a lot of jealous members on this forum if you pull this off.

Thanks guys! Have no fear, I'll keep updating the thread. Todays update:

While explaining my shop project to someone, the free wood subject came up. "FREE??? wood?" was uttered, in a non-believing tone. It sounded as though the person invisioned me sneaking onto jobsites under the cover of dark, like a fustrated underage skateboarder whose parents wouldn't buy them a ramp. After that conversation I started thinking maybe people reading this might think similarly. So I took my camera on my latest quest for building materials.

Just around the corner from my house is a large appliance store. They pile all their junk for the trash pickup behind the building. I've been there before in search of big boxes or large sheets of cardboard (with their approval) when working on messy car jobs and was never disappointed. I'd gotten a skid to put engine blocks on there once so I stopped by today to see if maybe there was anything that might be usable for the shop project. Much to my delight, there was an ample supply of skids. One skid was made of regular 2 X 4's instead of the ususal crappy Yellow Pine AND the longest pieces were 1/2" longer than the longest pieces I need to frame the window opening! So within 10 minutes, I was back home with more than enough new (almost) 2 X 4's to complete the window framing.

It's shaping up to be a car guy's dream home, as long as you keep that one bathroom working Great resourcefulness, keep it up!

What an awful story man. That sucks so much, but one day when you have the utlimate car-guy house, you'll be able to look back on all this and laugh and thank those burglers (a pipe wrench to the head is how you thank someone right?). Just wait. I like your attitude and can't wait to see how things start to shape up. Cheers!

BTW, this topic should be voted up. I'm not even sure what that means, but here's one vote.

Love the fbodies

Voted up. Keep going. When looking for a house 8 years ago the wife said NO to an attached garage for fear I might burn down HER house. Now I have a single car garage with no heat, but at least it's dry.

vwcorvette wrote: Voted up. Keep going. When looking for a house 8 years ago the wife said NO to an attached garage for fear I might burn down HER house. Now I have a single car garage with no heat, but at least it's dry.

A detached is nice because you can use products that smell, crank the stereo if a favorite song comes on, and do generally anything you want without anyone being annoyed. I built my Firebird and a couple other cars in a tiny detached, I think my wife looked in there maybe 5 times in 15 years. LOL

Anyone know what the "vote" thing is for anyway? I've been on the board a while and always wondered. I guess I'll vote so I can see how it works anyway, but before that I'll post todays progress.

With some wood available for the window framing I used some free time I had this evening to continue. Got the window framed and ran across another bunch of shingles for door shims I'd put with some tools so I knocked both of those things off the list first by framing the window and mounting it then finishing hanging the door. Funny, but both of them operate better than the ones installed by the professional contractors. Hmmmmmm

With the door and window in place it was on to installing some insulation and sheetrocking the garage side of the wall.

Since I'm using the sheetrock I took out, I stripped back the paper on the cut edges to allow for joint compound and tape. The compound is old and crappy but with a lot of mixing it was usable, a real taper wouldn't touch it but it's already here sooo... And I had a couple rolls of tape thats gotta be 20 years old at least but hey it still works! I'm waaaay out of practice taping but with a couple coats and some sanding it'll be great!