Raising The Garage

The weather is nice and we are able to do fun stuff again.  This is a picture of the crappy garage, with the low doors and low ceiling.  We just decided to lift it up 3 feet last weekend.

We opted not to tear down and apply for permits to build a 2 story garage, because as a "garden suite" second story, only a single family is allowed in the house, and we are already 2 familys, going for 3 suites, 3 familys in there.  

The whole lifting process took a day with the garage. We used 6, 8 ton bottle jacks, and a lot of 4x4s and 2x4s.  We were shooting for 36 inches, but at 32" the dunnage was getting really rickety, so we built 32" walls to go under the garage. That is where we had an epic fail, and learned the importance of lifting all the jacks at once.  we were squeezing a half wall in the side, for some reason the middle was lower than the  end, but only by an inch tops, more like 3/4.  So just jack the middle jack up rite, squeek the wall in.  Wrong!  We did it and the wall kicked out and moved the whole garage a few inches out of alignment.  So because of that we also needed winches, and we winched the structure back in to place chained to the van.

We just about have the garage all sheeted with new doors and windows. Then we will vinyl side it, its too rickety for stucco, and money is a bit tight too, vinyl is cheap.

I also moved the big shed from the 94 street house finally now the snow has melted.  This is how the new truck is so awesome.  We just winch the shed on the ground level deck, truck does the rest.

The truck has been pretty high maintenance, but it makes money.  I picked up 2 basically free forklifts advertised on Kijiji for scrap, but not many trucks can pick up forklifts.  We fixed one forklift and use it in the shop.  The second one I really wanted to fix, but instead I scrapped the $6000 battery pack for $600. and it saddened me to let it go, but took the hunk of steel fork lift without its electric motors, forks, and hydraulics to the scrap yard and got $100 for it.  Thats half the usual rate because it is so thick "its more difficult to process".  But how many forklifts does a guy really need.  I will have videos soon I know these pictures are kinda lame.

Pretty Much Summer

I ordered a video camera to make some videos of our life here, but till I get it the best I can do is some pictures off the phone.  This was this afternoon, Easter Friday, hanging out in the back yard with Dade.

We have lots going on just with owning too many houses. We have a basement suite going in one house, which is so far just a bedroom.  That house basement needs a bathroom and kitchen and second bedroom, probably 4-5 weeks work if we don't drywall the ceiling outside of the bedrooms.  Then the latest house we have rented the main floor. We scabbed up a quick basement suite in 2 weeks for an existing tenant that wanted to move, but then when  she couldn't help herself to move, we decided to go back to work on it, make it nicer and charge more money.  Lots of interest in it at $1200, $300 more than she is capable of paying.  

Then that house has a great loft space which we will turn into another great apartment, with deck and stairs to access its own entrance.  The loft apartment is going to require a new roof with some magnificent dormers.  

Before  we tackle that project the new house has a scabby single car garage with 5'8" doorways.  Most annoying garage ever.  We can raise the garage up three and a half feet without applying for any sort of special permission, we plan to raise it three feet.  But the garage is a corner lot which means we could raise it 10' and put a full second story suite over the garage if we wanted.  I think we might just build a new garage there, I just realized that was possible.  I was thinking the rules said "only if the house is a single family dwelling" and here we have 3 apartments in the house, 3 familys. But if my memory serves me correctly that is actually just a 10 year condition on the government grant application.  So we have to spend the banks money instead of the governments.  It makes so much sense to do.  For example the "loft" loan, $35,000, approximately $500 monthly payments for 5 years.  The suite renters pay us $1200 a month , we are making $700 a month the second its finished.  Don't forget its 1% vacancy here currently.  And I am an awesome landlord, everything is rented before its even finished, everyone wants me for a landlord. Then in 5 years the loan is paid, we are making the $500 loan payment and rent is probably more so we are making more than $1200 on the one apartment.  

The garage math should work out almost the same, but maybe cost a bit more to build, tapping into city sewer and water lines is expensive. But I get the added benefit of the garage at the end of it, and it only makes sense to put a bathroom in the garage if we already have all those lines there.

So I could really keep myself busy all summer, even the next 12 months with my own projects. And I still do lots of service calls and new construction wiring..