After damp-proofing his home garage, Peter Clayton continues with a refurbishment inside.
With my single detached garage now water-tight, which you may have read all about in the March 2023 issue, it was a prime opportunity to add some final touches while empty. My main objective was to create an accessible, warm, bright, dry, level workshop with plenty of room to shift around any one of my household fleet of four vehicles in various states of repair – I hope I didn’t bite off more than I could chew! With a fairly modest footprint of 5.7m x 3m (18ft 7in x 9 ft 8in) to work with, I would have to plan this with a bit of attention. A good mantra I learnt was ‘floorspace is king’, the objective being to move as much off the floor as possible as you will see in these next few pages.
Insulating the ceiling
With only OSB (Oriented Strand Board), membrane and tiles protecting the garage from the elements above, its current state offered nothing in the way of keeping the heat in – or out, for the two days of summer we have here in central Scotland. This was remedied by 60mm thick boards of Celotex cut between the timber frames. Some 10mm plastic spacers were placed between the OSB and insulation to create a gap allowing water vapour to circulate and exit through the apex of the ceiling. Any small gaps were then filled with expanding foam and all joins were sealed with aluminium foil tape. Some thin plywood then covered the insulation to protect from knocks and scrapes of moving stuff about in my new storage area – and also made the ceiling quite cosy looking in the process!
Creating storage space
Of critical importance was to generate enough space to store items out of the way that I could live without having immediately to hand, such as spare parts and lesser-used tools. The same board used to floor attic spaces was sourced, cut to size and screwed into the existing joists. Rather than create access hatches either end, I chose to keep a few gaps along the entire width of the garage to make access much easier without the need to crawl into the storage space – everything would be accessible within arm’s reach (with help from a ladder to get me up that far!). The joists were only designed to support a tonne or so of roof tiles, so it’s important to be mindful of the total weight of items stored away – this is why all of my extra heavy items are stored somewhere else! Finally, I bent some old IKEA shelving support wire into hooks and brackets to allow my step ladder to attach onto the ceiling – completely out of the way and not taking up valuable space on the wall or floor.
