Garage II



12/5/03
Garage II


I took a couple of days off to work on my new house, and one major project I wanted to get cracking on was building walls around my oil fired furnace. I spoke to many people about how to build this room, and got a lot good advice. I even got some statistical information from some engineers who work for the Consumer Product Safety Board!

Although statistically I’m in a good place with the oil burner, building a wall around the boiler would give me an extra margin of safety from open flames. The plan is to poke a hole in the wall behind the boiler so I can get combustion air from outside the garage, eliminating a chance of igniting gasoline or other flammable liquids that may spill on the floor.

For the framing, I found a new favorite tool; a “hammer gun!” A friend of mine lent it to me to make attaching the studs to the concrete floor and walls easier. It takes .22 caliber gunpowder cartridges, and drives special nails that you load in the muzzle of the gun. The one I borrowed fires very much like  a gun with a trigger, but it has to pressed firmly against whatever you want to secure before it will fire off the cartridge. I gave my wife fair warning before I fired a test shot, and she waited nervously afterwards to see if I was still alive down in the basement! I waited until she wasn’t home to do the framing, so she wouldn’t be so startled every time there was a gunshot in the basement!

The next step is to hang the fire rated sheet rock. Eventually, I’ll have a door made to fit my application since the opening is too short for a regular sized door, but we’ll just take this one step at a time.

Getting all these materials home to start this project was a struggle without a pickup truck! I missed out on buying the F150 I mentioned last week by one day, so I guess it wasn’t meant to be, but I still had plenty of work to do with or without a truck! The 2X4s fit fine on the roof racks I have for the Camry, but when it came time to get the sheet rock, things got a little harder. I bought some pegboard, and some extra 2X4s on my second trip to the lumberyard, but getting it securely tied to the roof racks with the sheet rock took more time than I cared to spend! It didn’t help that one of the lumberyard guys looked on mockingly! I wanted to make up a story about how my pickup truck was broken, and I had no choice but to use my wife’s car to haul this stuff until my truck got out of the shop, but decided he wouldn’t believe me anyway! I didn’t buy all the sheet rock I needed, so there’ll be more indignity in my future, unless I find the right truck, so I can buy building supplies with my head held high!


I slid the Mustang sideways in the garage because with the prospect of our first winter storm, driving her this winter will probably not happen. I used wheel dollies I got from Eastwood that cradles each wheel and allows you to move the car in any direction. You can see one on the floor in front of the Mustang. Eventually, I’ll figure out the best way to fit all three cars in my garage, but for now I’ve got plenty of room for the Alpine.

I found another excuse to use the hammer gun, and secured two shelves to the back wall. This began the process of building my shop. For each piece I install, or hang on the wall, I wonder how long this stuff will stay. With any luck, I won’t be moving my stuff for a while, and my tools and toys will have this home for a long time!

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