The Home Ownership Thread

[otc]

Nothing can ever replace styleforum for reminding me that my standards are too low, but repairing drywall and painting the inside of my garage is at the VERY end of my list of things to do with my time and money. It does look nice though!

It would probably be different if I had a basement, but I hate the raw unfinished drywall in the garage…and even if you don’t spend time in it as a workshop space, for many people it is the first/last view you get of your house anytime you come and go.

It is so much brighter and feels so much nicer in there with the paint up. It also doesn’t immediately get nasty stains the second you lean something wet against it like a bike wheel or snow shovel…

Annoys me so much that they don’t just have the drywall crew around here put the coat of mud over the tape/screws so it can at least be passably painted. Would have taken those guys like an hour or two max to do it when it was new and they were doing the rest of the house. Don’t have to do the feather coats or actually paint it, but at least cover the damn tape with a smooth pass.

 

[venividivicibj]

It would probably be different if I had a basement, but I hate the raw unfinished drywall in the garage…

I don't even have drywall lol

 

[sugarbutch]

I don't know if it was built this way or it was redone when the house next door was built, but the entire east wall of our first floor (in the garage) is concrete. It's also angled slightly, so adding shelving is a gigantic pain. I basically built a widely spaced stud wall and added shelf brackets, but eventually I want to furr it out plumb and sheathe it with plywood so that I add anything anywhere.

 

[Piobaire]

Still a work in progress but this is what the garage looked like after taking possession (and pressure washing the floor).
View attachment 2326105
And this was after pulling everything off the walls, patching all the holes, repairing bad drywall spots, finishing the taping/mud, and painting:
View attachment 2326107

Storage has since gone in for some stuff (lawn tools and skis) but I'm still trying to sort out
- bike storage (can't settle on the ideal spot...but I have piece of Unistrut and a bunch of sliding hooks ready to go for what I think will be a pretty slick system)
- summer/winter wheel storage (maybe some high up wheel racks? PITA to use, but I only swap wheels on the cars twice a year)
- workbench/workspace
- shelving location/arrangement

End result should keep everything on the perimeter of the room leaving the space between the cars fully open. Its a pretty wide area so I should be able to even do stuff like set up sawhorses and work on longer/larger things without having to move a car outside.

Dream world I'd do something about the slab--it puddles nasty snow-melt water where the car wheels sit (and has remnants of a failed epoxy floor). Raising the height with a sloped pour might work...removing and fully replacing the slab sounds expensive.

WTF? Your garage is not sprinkled?

 

[sugarbutch]

WTF? Your garage is not sprinkled?

I think you'll find the overwhelming majority of residential garages don't have sprinklers.

 

[cross22]

That's only the case when you don't have adequate setback.

 

[venividivicibj]

WTF? Your garage is not sprinkled?

I don't know anyone locally who has sprinklers in their garage

 

[otc]

Although when I was googling pouring a new layer of concrete on top of the slab earlier today I found someone who ran sprinkler lines in the garage floor…

Use them to rinse the salt off the undercarriage in wet winter conditions!

I don't even have drywall lol

Definitely not up to current CA fire code!

That’s the only reason new builds have drywall and a half-ass tape job…need a fire resistant layer and drywall is cheap.

 

[brokencycle]

Fun fact, international building code now specifies sprinklers in all residential homes regardless of size. That's a $20k adder to the cost of building our house.

 

[Joffrey]

My mother's new build from 2020 has sprinklers. I still can't get used to seeing them on the ceiling of a house.

 

[Numbernine]

Santa Cruz Co has required residential fire sprinklers since the 70s also an independent water supply such as a swimming pool or storage tank if building in an area not supplied with muni fire hydrant system.

 

[UnFacconable]

Dream world I'd do something about the slab--it puddles nasty snow-melt water where the car wheels sit (and has remnants of a failed epoxy floor). Raising the height with a sloped pour might work...removing and fully replacing the slab sounds expensive.

We had a drain in our garage which I never appreciated but the place we stay in Tahoe doesn't and the amount of hibbeldy I get from snowmelt, etc. spreading around and into things is high. Very high.

I wonder to what extent it's going to do long-term damage to the garage door (it seems to slowly work its way out there) and the surrounding frame but I'm not OCD (or @otc) enough to remove snow from the car before parking. Plus my family would give me so much sh!t for it.

I think you'll find the overwhelming majority of residential garages don't have sprinklers.

Is that true even when the rest of the home does? Seems like garage fires would do a lot of damage and be fairly likely starting points.

 

[otc]

That’s really a thing now? Dang.

I lived in fricking Chicago forever and the only residential places I ever saw that had sprinklers were my college dorm and relatively recent high rises.

Seems like CA should be putting the sprinklers on the outside of the house…

 

[RedLantern]

NGL, living somewhere where snow is rare, I never even thought about the effects of snow from your car melting in the garage. It's annoying enough with just the rain/wet.

 

[otc]

I guess I was just lucky with my last place (and the house I grew up in). Properly graded to run towards the garage door.

Yes there’d be water/slush/dirt…but never as much absurd pooling as the current garage.

I wonder if earlier in its life it had owners who frequently parked heavy trucks with metal studded tires in it…or the concrete just sucks. Not sure how a concrete slab gets worn down like that otherwise in less than 20 years.