Build-Threads Garage: Site Preparation & Shed Delivery

Here comes part two of the Build-Threads garage! In the last installment, I outlined my plans for the structure and gave you a bit of background of my garage history.

Now, we break ground!

So once I’d locked in the shed design I started the process of getting a building permit. I chose to go with a private surveyor because I’ve been told they are faster than going through the council and easier to deal with. I am very lucky in that one of my best friends does drafting/architecture for a living, so he smashed out all the plans I needed to satisfy the surveyor.

When it came time to prepare the ground, I decided to do it myself with the help of a few friends, including one of my best mates who has done slab formwork for a living for a very long time.

A potential bobcat fell through, and being the impatient ~30 year olds that we are, we just decided to start digging by hand!

 

But not without some fuel.

After one day with 4 of us we got this far.

We found a friend…

…and a foe

The next day, two of us got the rest dug out. But we needed to get that rock out.

A bit of this…

…and some Toyota diesel power…

…got the damn thing out after snapping a few ropes (and the stupid thing falling back in the hole!). Now it’s just sitting there. I’d like to get it to the front yard somehow and place it in the garden as an ornament.

Now I have a crap load of dirt to get rid of. I’m currently knocking up a 5.4m x 1.5m veggie garden out of pine sleepers, double height, so that should help reduce the pile. After that I’ll continue that theme around the house by raising all of the existing garden beds which are all ground level. If anyone in Melbourne wants some top soil, hit me up!

I’m half way done with the veggie patch build, just need to stain the bottom sleepers and keep filling the damn thing up with dirt!

Now we were ready for concrete. While we had planned to do the form-work ourselves and bring someone in for the pour, things just didn’t go to plan, so I had to outsource the whole job. Within a few days after locking someone in, this greeted me on my return home from work one evening…

(bar chairs not installed yet)

Then a week (or two) later, this happened…

Unfortunately the truck was too big to get down my narrow driveway (damn old houses!), so he had to crane everything onto the front yard. Not wanting to leave all of those valuables on the front lawn, I went about carrying the whole shed to the back yard, one piece at a time. That was definitely not a fun exercise.

I wanted to put as much material as I could on the deck to keep it out of the weather, but after a while I realised that 70sqm of shed was probably too much weight for the poor thing, so the longest parts were put on the lawn, using some wood to keep it off the ground, then covered with plastic.

Roller door was delivered separately for some reason, but the guy’s truck was really cool, and old 60′s era International, I should have taken a pic.

A few weeks later I came home to a very pleasant sight…

That’s all for now! The next update will see the building start to take shape.

Original: Build Threads