Photos of our Deteriorating Garage
Greetings All!
I’ve just uploaded some photos into our Image Gallery here. They are pictures of our garage that I took last week, just after I gave it a thorough day-and-a-half cleaning out. :
http://www.myoldhouse.com/gallery/categories.php?cat_id=24
Mostly, I’m posting them so that you can see the outside of the garage. It is covered with a thin, almost paneling-like covering that I believe is called “T-111 board”. It doesn’t hold up well to water damage, which is pretty darned obvious in the photos. Any rain splash-back from the ground that hits this stuff sure seems to wear away at it heavily. This causes holes which let insects and critters in (we had a SERIOUS mouse problem in the garage two winters ago).
Now, I’ve foamed up the holes for now, but the damage continues… especially on the front of the garage, above the doors. It was at this point that I made a crucial mistake:
The first day of owning this house, my wife begged me to get up there and take off the awful, ugly, half-weathered set of steer horns that hung up there on the garage, between the two doors. So, I got up there and tried to take the bolts off. But I had to hack-saw them. And I stupidly never filled in the holes. Well, it certainly didn’t take long for water to get into those holes and start wearing away that T-111 board.
I’ve been wondering what to do regarding this. I’m broke right now. But even if I had a thousand dollars or so, what should I recover this garage with?
A friend suggested that I mark off a horizontal line all the way around the garage, at at least the 16-inch level, and then saw that lower part off. He then said I should get some “Z-flashing”, and put that on there at the bottom edge of the T-111. Then, he said I should get some “cement board” and place THAT along the bottom of the garage exterior, butting up to that flashing. An interesting idea. I’m a bit concerned that it would look kind of funny. But it sounds like it would be cheaper than recovering the entire garage.
On the other hand, that doesn’t address our problem ABOVE the garage doors.
In any event, I really WISH we could totally destroy the garage and start over. I’d really like to have a TWO-STORY garage, so we could have some extra storage. But that’s a distant dream at this point.
I plan on posting to the Fixer Uppers Forum (Yahoo Groups), showing them the photos of the garage, and asking them for their advice on what to do.
I’ll let you know what I decide, but since I don’t have any money to actually DO anything right now, there sure won’t be any rush on my part.
Thanks!
-= Dave =-