What happen in 2022?

What happen in 2022? Well, we built an RV Garage which kept us home all year. Jack has put together a quick blog about the good and bad of building the garage in 2022.

We've been busy this past year working on our new RV garage in our backyard.  We have always stored our motorhome off site at a rental yard due to the high desert rural setting of our property where we have a problem with mice and pack rats getting into our parked vehicles and creating nests and causing damage. But as time went by the storage yards found that with all the new out of state residence moving in that storage facilities could get top dollar for covered space and our rent was being raised every six months. So we decided to turn our rent money in to equity ... Well we found out the true meaning to the term equity as "sweat equity".

Being retired and with the construction background we tackled this endeavor ourselves and jumped right in.  I hand drafted the plans and submitted them to the city for first review and found that the only thing they needed was professional structural engineering drawings to approve the masonry wall design.  We fortunately have engineering work contacts so we were able to get the drawings 'stamped' and the city gave us a permit in the Fall of 2021.

Area before grading, we use to park the boat or scout in that spot.

Now what?????  That mean we needed to get serious about this project we had only dreamed about  before now.  So we went looking for a tractor to prepare the pad....only to find out that with the high influx of people moving in to Arizona and wanting to create 'mini ranches' that tractors were in high demand and in short supply.  We went on a waiting list and in over a month later they received a tractor shipment in and we now owned a tractor!  By purchasing a tractor we did our own grading and digging of the footings.  This kicked off the physical work of this equity thing and the tractor helped with a little less sweat!  I think I forgot to mention that the garage is 46 feet long by 17 feet wide interior.

Graded pad area which is lower and wider with the embankment dug out.

We then dug out the embankment and rough graded the pad in December 2021 and then laid out and dug the footings in January 2022 and bent and tied our rebar to passed out first inspection and we were ready for concrete. 

Starting to dig footings

Rebar in and ready for inspection.

Well, that's when things slowed down...we went to order concrete and were told by all the big suppliers that they were so busy that they quit selling to the public and were only selling to commercial account holders.  So again I had to call a work contractor friend and have them schedule it through them.  They were having the same problem with the concrete suppliers as the suppliers would tell them when they would get the concrete.... 4 weeks later we had 'mud' on the ground and ready to start 'going vertical'!

I was able to lay the CMU stems (only two block high) and grout them myself (another part of that sweat equity thing).  Once that was completed that got us to the slab part and again we had to wait on the concrete suppliers for 3 more weeks but we have a great slab with no cracks.

Ready for the slab.

Old steel and lumber 'dunage' to allow the concrete truck to back over the forms and footing.

Progress happening !!

Looking like a real job !

Stems backfilled and getting ready for the masons.

Time to bring in the big gun reinforcements (no not Deb) and again call some of my subcontracting friends who laid up the 16 feet high walls and grouted them in about two weeks total.

First four foot of masonry walls.

Topped out and ready for final grout.

Now by mid-summer it was back in our hands and Deb and I had to frame the roof rafters and roof deck with the plywood in the 100 degree weather... meaning we were up early and quit before noon. 

Setting 2x10 rafters by hand made easier with the rolling scaffolding.

Roof framing almost done.

Once completed we were able to call our subcontractor contacts to do the stucco and roofing. When this was done we now had shade to work on the interior and dried in...which meant that the work was again back on us. But at this point we could see the end nearing.

Finished stucco.

Spray foam roofing.

We installed the insulation and drywall after the fire sprinklers piping was done.  We were so close to being finished but again the construction material supply delays hit again and we had to wait 8 weeks for the garage door to arrive and be installed.  That gave us time to paint the exterior, fine tune the interior with concrete sealer, caulking, lights, receptacles and install the man door.

R-30 insulation in and ready for drywall.

Drywall ceiling in place and ready for taping of the joints. 

After the garage door was installed the city issued a final Certificate of Occupancy in December of 2022. Meaning it is DONE, exactly one year since breaking ground.

We moved the motorhome into its new home the next week. We accomplished so much on our own and now we can say we know what the true meaning of "Sweat Equity" really is.

This summer we plan to do some RV traveling which we missed doing in 2022.  We'll keep you posted.

Thanks for following along.

Jack and Deb