Some of you may recall from my prior COALs, that we moved into an old house about 15 years ago. I haven’t had use of a garage since, unfortunately.
We have a two car garage around back, but one side has always stayed full of the stuff that a family of five has: bikes, skateboards, leaf blower, sleds, you name it! My wife parked on “her” side, but “my” side was the dumping ground. And one reason this situation was allowed to continue was I didn’t have a garage door opener on my side.
So, while I am perfectly capable of opening and closing a door, it was inconvenient. And I have recently figured out it didn’t have to be this way, so I thought I would share this with you all. A GOAL, instead of a COAL!
So this is “my” side, the old dumping grounds, with the Lexus pulled in. The garage was dark and dingy, like garages in 70 year old houses tend to be. We replaced the old bare light bulb with the LED fixture you see in the top of the screen, between the two doors, which was one of only two bulbs down there.
We added some more lights as well, and painted over the drab grey walls and ceiling with plain white. I bought an eight foot long workbench/cabinet setup at samsclub.com on Black Friday, with free freight delivery to the house.
So, things were looking so fresh, and I hauled off so much trash and junk during the painting process, that I decided I would like to make use of my side for once. Having a car small enough to fit is a help too; this bay is not as deep as the other side due to the construction of the house. Bertha will barely fit, and you can’t walk around her with the garage door shut, for example. Another reason I just never tried to use this side.
When moved in the house, we had to get a new opener on the other side. We were told that an opener could not be added to “my” side, as there isn’t enough room. This is the Lexus side, and you can see that there is a metal beam to your left. That’s holding up the back wall of the two story house. And, that beam is in the way of the opener and track.
Aren’t old houses great? To the right of the metal I-beam, is a poured concrete porch across the back of the house, which wraps around and comes up the side of the house as well. So, the Lexus in the garage is halfway under the house, and the back half of the car is under the back porch.
Here’s another shot from the driver side of the Cayenne, where were are able to have an opener. The metal pole in the middle of the screen is the corner of the original house. The Cayenne, then, sits not under the original house, but under the poured concrete porch coming up the side of the house (which we have enclosed to be a TV room). You can see the opener and track have to sit well back from the pole and beam, to have room for the door to open fully.
Not satisfied with not having an opener, I started researching online. I have this spring loaded shaft on my side; can’t you put a motor on that and spin the door open and closed? We replaced the garage doors about a year ago, and the door company said they had never seen anything like that in a house. The cast iron pipe, by the way, is simply connected to ONE downspout above the garage. They don’t build houses the way they used to!
I pretty quickly came upon this: a “jackshaft” opener. Maybe a lot of you know about these, but I didn’t. And apparently the door company didn’t either. Or maybe it’s a recent creation for residential applications? About $320 with free shipping on Amazon.
This is the back, so you can see more clearly that the motor drive sticks out of both sides….so you can mount it in either side of the door.
And it just goes onto that shaft for the door, as I imagined. There is a single clamp to attach the bottom of the opener to the wall.
You need power for it, of course. With concrete walls and a concrete ceiling, and few outlets, my options are limited. Fortunately, one of the former bare light bulbs is nearby, above the Mercedes sign. It has a pull chain fixture, so it’s always hot. I’ll just replace the old porcelain socket with a regular outlet and suitable cover.
If not for the light socket, there is a “low voltage” kit I could have bought. It’s a 24 volt motor, so this kit will let you plug into a far away outlet, and run just the low voltage line up to the motor unit.
They’ve thought of the entry lighting too. Instead of a bulb on the opener, you get this remote control light that you locate and plug in wherever you prefer. The opener sends it a signal to come on for a time you determine, when the door is opened or closed.
Owing to it’s compact size, the opener isn’t intended for heavy duty or commercial usage, apparently, but I think every six minutes is often enough.
We have an entry door in the basement playroom, but no “person door” in the garage. So, I had to spring for a keypad for outside, so a pedestrian can open the door and walk in. About $28 with free shipping.
So this isn’t a “dream garage” like you see on TV, but it’s a dream come true for me! It’s the best garage setup I’ve had in many years.
Maybe GOAL should be a regular feature, we can all post ideas and improvements to! Any other GOAL projects out there you want to tell us about?
Nice set-up, you really can’t beat keeping your cars inside. Blazing hot here at the moment, and every time I get in the car I wish I had it parked in a nice cool garage.
I do have a nice spacious garage, but it’s in a house that is currently rented out, and we’re not moving back until Easter 2019. Until then, I have the pictured garage, which has some obvious inadequacies.
I’m not going to complain too loudly; I’m grateful that I’ve got any garage at all. However, apart from the small size and the tin roof (that make it a little oven in this heat), the main downside is that it is a 200 metre walk from my house. That’s a 200m walk that I know very well indeed…
Forgot to attach the picture.
Nice bike.
Congrats on the door opener. I have two of them in my new garage, recommended by the door company. Of course, they didn’t mount the controls near the house door, but rather adjacent to the garage doors. Just try and find your way in the dark to reach the controls without tripping on stuff. They didn’t put the remote light in, so I bought one on line and put it in. Bought another remote on line and velcro’d it at the back door of the house. Now I can open the door from inside and have light to walk through the garage. Much better.
Nothing like having a two car garage with two cars in it!
I’ve always had two cars in my two car garage. It boggles my mind the number of home owners that park their cars outside because of all the “stuff” in their garages!!
I always did until I started commuting by bike more often and my kids bikes got larger. Then I added a bar in the garage and the old kitchen fridge. That kicked the company vehicle onto the driveway. Remote starter resolves cold vehicles in winter.
Yeah, I feel the same way. If your garage is full of crap, you probably have too much crap.
+1
The houses in my neighborhood are fairly small, around 1200-1300 square feet. Apparently most of our neighbors have downsized their housing because most of them have their garage full of “stuff” while one or two cars get parked in the driveway (all of the houses have two car attached garages). Sometimes it appears that my wife and I are the only ones on the block who can park two cars in the garage. Except of course for my next door neighbors, they have two cars in the garage and two more in the driveway. I’m not 100% certain he isn’t running a low profile used car operation from his house but who really knows. We downsized when we built this house back in 2000 and we realized that things that were kept in the garage at the previous house would need a new home here. We had the contractor pour an 8X8 concrete pad on which we erected a yard barn. It is now full of stuff that other people keep in the garage.
My garage has a fair amount of crap in it, and I do have too much crap. Guilty as charged. But my “shop” is in the garage, and I’d have no room for any projects or even room to jack up car and work around it safely, if we kept more than one car in the garage. And though I have a 2 car garage, it’s barely long enough for the VW, and my Tacoma won’t fit all … the garage is too short.
Those lift masters have existed in commercial versions for a long time, but I think the residential models are newer. If you want to waste a lot of time search up the garage journal. The forums are filled with how to and beautiful garage recreations.
Renting an almost 100 year old house here. There’s a detached single stall garage that is just big enough for my 50 year old Mustang – the monster size sedans of the 50s and 60s definitely would not fit in that garage. My wife’s Terrain would fit but my Highlander? No way.
“Aren’t old houses great?”
I used to love old houses. Then I bought one.
We bought a 90-year old house two years ago. One of my (many) frustrations with our house is the garage. Or, I should say, the former garage. Our house was built in the 1920s with a detached garage, but the previous owners tore it down. Judging from the pictures, which look vaguely like your opening shot, this move was justified. They left the concrete foundation, which is badly cracked in need of replacement. We do park our cars on it, but I wouldn’t be completely surprised to look out one day and to see the whole foundation as a crumbled mess.
So… instead of having a garage, I’m teased by a cracked foundation where the garage used to be. Of course, I’ve love to have a new garage built in its place, but of course there’s plenty of other stuff that needs to be done to the house itself. Out of necessity, the garage takes a back seat.
But, the house has “character,” right? Congratulations on your garage — it looks great.
Speaking as someone who fixes house stuff, I can tell you that “new” houses are built like crap. The issues are different, but you still end up spening money. My favorite so far – the exterior siding “planks” that turned out to be 4×8 particle board.
Only my Miata fits in our 1903 carriage house….note the dirt floor covered with heavy rubber horse stall mats. Someday I’ll build a garage, but this is the best I can do right now.
Congratulations on getting the garage going to full capacity. Upon seeing the first picture of its interior, it was obvious why it had no opener; it’s good to see you remedied that.
Old houses have their charms, but they are also a pain. We rented a 100+ year old farm house for a couple of years and the retrofits were painfully obvious in some places, such as the toilet line running through open space and through the chimney (I kid you not) before dumping into the main line. Despite the opportunity to buy it, I wasn’t going there.
Our current house was built in 1988. While I’m blessed with three garage bays (two attached and adjacent, one in the basement), the single bay is a bear to access as one has to do a hard 90 degree turn to enter from the lower driveway. And, like your Mercedes, the Galaxie fills it completely when parked in there. I’m currently using that bay as a workshop for remodeling the basement and the Galaxie is in the main garage with my pickup relegated to being outside, although I could tear down my little, deteriorated toolshed and build something big enough to park a car…..
That garage door opener option is neat, that could also help with having a lift in a garage (but not yours, sorry) where there is barely enough room to stack two already by being able to run the door even closer to the ceiling.
I’ve done the old-house shuffle as well with moving all the crap around and then parking outside. We recently moved from a large 3car tandem with extra space which wasn’t really big enough for everything to a two-car with extra space at the back of it which is definitely not big enough for all the cars and bikes and other stuff.
I’m finally deciding that there are more important things than cars and where to store them and especially “stuff” and where to store it, thus the minimalization project of 2017 looks to continue into the new year. But then again I am also eyeing putting a single garage door on the back end of my garage and adding a pad out back to A) make it easier to pull bikes and other stuff out without damaging the cars that will eventually be in the garage and B) be able to park one in back beyond the garage or have a place to wash it that isn’t under big trees etc.
Jealous. I hate my tandem carport parking.
But then I remind myself what a luxury it seemed to have a one car garage, off street parking and no worries about street cleaning every week when I bought my Shack in Van Nuys.
My house dates from the late 50s. Some of the neighbors have the twin single doors but I have the single double width door. As much as I admire the classic look of twin garage bays, that single door has been a life saver with the wide cars I have owned. With two wide cars (think 90s Ford E series and a 68 Newport) the method was to nose in close to the middle then veer towards the side wall, making for a kind of “Y” formation that would allow for some door clearance.
We have had 2 cars in our 2 car garage almost continually since moving here in the early 90s.
This is why I thank the Good Lord we have a garage for our two cars here in northeastern Iowa. I took this photo on our first Christmas here about 10 years ago.
Our farmhouse will be 100 next year, and has no garage, attached or otherwise. However, I have two pole barn/machine sheds, plus several other outbuildings.
The large machine shed was originally 55′ x 88′, half of which had a concrete floor (old and cracked). I say “was,” because (as long-time readers may remember), we lost half of it to a tornado in 2013.
It took over two years to rebuild, and I replaced the sliding doors with roll-ups (since I no longer store any really large equipment in it), and had a 5″ concrete floor poured in the “new” back half, plus pads in front of each door and a new sidewalk from the shed to the house. The main door got an industrial opener with remote, which makes it nice in inclement weather.
I built a 24’x18′ heated shop inside the shed with a 12′ wide x 10′ tall insulated garage door on one end for vehicle entry, although I rarely have one in the shop due to woodworking or other projects being in the way.
Cabinets and gear going in…
The biggest problem with having a “garage” this big is that it still tends to fill up with junk over time – it’s an ongoing project to keep things from getting out of hand. The pile of boxes, for example, are empties that have been collecting for several years, and are waiting to be sorted for future use or the burn pile. Not seen in the photo are a number of other boxes of stuff that came from my Dad’s house last year after moving him to a care facility. Anyone interested in a bunch of vintage (tubes!) Ham radio kit?
Testing the comment subscribe feature. Please begin ignoring immediately.
Another test to ignore.
Another test.
I used to keep two cars and two motorcycles in my garage. It did help that one was a Honda Civic. I even managed to keep a ’71 Riviera, and a ’56 Cadillac SdV in one side of my garage. At different times of course. My Wife hated having that old Caddy in there, because the Dagmars would bang into her legs while she loaded clothes into the drier. It’s been a constant struggle to free up the garage for my garage space to use to house my cars and keep it available as a mechanical repair space. My Wife is a crafter/artist with a small business, and has been using part of the garage as storage, and as you can imagine, her storage demand just increases over time. We had many things stashed in a rented (200.00+) a month Public Storage space for quite a while and just had a quality 10’x12′ storage shed built in my backyard. It’s still not enough!
My Wife is very understanding person and respects the fact that I really need to have our garage available for my car hobby. I used to hope that after I retired we would move out to a place in the country with a property that I could build a big shop. Since it doesn’t seem that we’ll be moving any time soon, so I ‘m going to see how I can achieve my goals where I currently live. I am certain that my garage situation will work out in the near future. The other thing that I wanted was to have a den, (never refer to it as a man cave!). I’ve got that now, and I’m a patient man. Here’s picture of my den.
‘
Another pic.
One more, very proud of my den.
Very nice! Looks like just the place to retire for brandy and cigars after supper.
I’m forever amused at our neighborhood- $100K or more parked in the driveway, with $500 worth of garage sale items taking up the garage space. I think the next door neighbors and ourselves are almost the only people in the neighborhood that actually park their vehicles in the garage.
Polar Bear:
Do you believe that people who spend large sums of money on cars would have the common sense to realize how stupid this is? I think that it is now culturally embedded in people to want to display their cars to the public, irrespective of the harm the elements cause to the entire vehicle.
GOAL: great idea. Here’s a nomination (their channel is great, too):
Reminds me of my townhouse I had in the early aughts. Pathetically small garage that looked larger than it was when empty. To be fair, it was built in 1994 before the SUV / CUV boom. The Celica kind of fit inside, but during the winter I would park it to the far left and drive my Accord exclusively just to get the trash out without moving the “garage car”. Stupid size even for then.
I don’t have a garage but both sets of my grand parents did have them. My father’s folks had row house with the garage in the back. It was built into the basement(the dining room was above it). It was narrow but still allowed my grand dad to park a 1979 Lesabre in in and have a electric grass mower in there. You did have to exit out the back door to get at the garage(1940’s home). My mother’s folks had one of those detached 1920’s type garages (even though the home was built in 1950) that had the same siding type as the house. My grandfather used it as a work shop and the vehicle (1970’s Jeep Cherokee Chief and then a 1992 GMC Jimmy, hung out in front of the house.
Cool garage operator option you found. I didn’t know that the side-mount existed. I had a tired old cable-driven opener in the house I sold this past week…staying in a condo until our new house is done with chain-driven openers and they are LOUD.
I’ll have a 24 x 24 garage to outfit once the new house is done…gotta find out how long the concrete has to cure before I can have the Gorilla Garage Floor installed…LOVED it in the old house. Looked snazzy and easy to clean.
http://mygorillagarage.com/
Thanks for posting this, Importamation! I’m going to look into this, as I’m considering putting in a roll-up door in the 1880s farm house we’re restoring to turn the 12×24 lean-to into a one car garage, and the unit you used might work well for us. The problem is that the tracks of a standard door would interfere with the door into the house, and so far I’d only seen commercial grade openers that cost many times what a standard chain drive opener for a tracked door does.
For our home, we have an attached 30×21 2+ car garage. The extra width allows for a small workshop which is nice, but the short length makes it difficult to park anything longer than a midsize car in there and still be able to walk around it. Eventually I’d like to build a ~24×48 outbuilding, but I’m not eager to commit to the extra property taxes just yet 🙂 For now, there is definitely a certain satisfaction in making improvements to less than ideal spaces to coax some utility out of them.