Looks great, Lynn! Man, I had to mix a few bags of the redimix stuff making a pad for the split A/C system for Kelly’s tack room. What a pain. And mine didn’t seem to turn out quite as nice as yours.:hmmm: Actually, the Freemasons showed up and after the laughter ceased, they took my membership card.:blush::eek2:

Looking good!

Cheers:beers:
Dave

Well, I THOUGHT I would have all kinds of time to update on my workshop after my shoulder surgery. Oh well. Kept finding things to keep me busy.
I have this very cumbersome 12 x 12 sliding door to my work space area, where I have the two post lift. It is a giant pain (literally) to open and close. The part of the wall that I have circled in the first pic is completely rotted out behind the corrugated tin. So, I decided to open that up, frame out for a roll up door, rebuild the wall, reinforce with OSB, and then install some siding. Got my permit, and started to work.
The next few pics show how bad that wall was. In the third and fourth pics, you can see I had already started removing some of those bricks that were added at some point. I managed to smash BOTH of my thumbs. As i write this three months later, neither is completely healed yet. Those bricks came out really easily. 30 inches down I ran into another old footer. At least there is something solid under there.

The rest of the South wall (left of the door) was deteriorating something fierce. The brick stem wall was crumbling, and the bottom 1 to 2 feet of the 2x6 studs was all rotting away. Here are some before pics. If you think you could just reach down there and pull out some bricks, well you would be correct.
I needed to build a frame for a 16 foot wide roll up door. I also needed to support that part of the roof while I was doing so. So, I built a temporary wall with 2x6s with stiff backs on them. Then, to keep that wall from racking, screwed OSB to it. I placed some of the old floor joists (100 year old Douglas fir with no knots) on the floor to spread out the load and screwed a 2x6 to the ceiling for a temporary top plate.
This all went up real fast using a scissor lift and a buddy who helped me for a couple of hours. Also put up a couple of shoring posts under the existing door frame just for insurance.

Oops; forgot the pics of the South wall to the East of the door opening.

Next, I needed to pour some substantial footings to support the walls just outside of the roll up door frame.
I had to break out some serious concrete. Whoever poured the old floor, just poured it 5 inches thick. However, by the door way, some of the concrete was 11 inches thick. I cut it up the best I could with my concrete saw, but it only cuts 5 inches deep. I got out the 10 pound sledge and hit that first piece of slab 35 times (yes, I counted… I was going to quit at 100) before I saw the first little crack. No wonder I am feeling old.
Got the concrete all busted out at the East end of the door way. On the West end, it was just a matter of removing the crappy brick job someone did many years ago. Those bricks were not original to the building, so done some time after 1922.
Started digging down for my footers. I wanted to go minimum of 30 x 30 x 30. I was a little apprehensive given all the ground water that was under that old wood floor. I was prepared to put in ANOTHER drainage system, especially considering how unusually wet we were last year. To my surprise, I never hit water. Finally, something went right. Dug down 30 inches on the East side of the door way. Removed bricks on the West side until I hit an old footer at about 2 feet. I don’t know how wide it is, because I didn’t care to excavate just out of curiosity. I was already tired of digging. Whatever it is, it is wider than 30 inches, so I figured it was plenty strong to hold the new footer. I drilled a few holes with a 5/8 masonry bit and hammered rebar in those holes to tie the two pieces of concrete together.
First two pics are of the East end of the door before digging, but after removing the slab.
The rest of the pics are of the holes, rebar and poured footers. I talked the local concrete guys into delivering 1.5 yards on New Years eve morning. Met the driver at 7:30 and were done pouring by 8. Its great when they can just back up the truck and start dumping. As you can see, I wet stabbed three ¾ x 16 anchor bolts for my bottom sill plate to bolt to.

At this point I am getting a little nervous. I haven't even ordered the door yet, it is New Year's day, there is a two week lead time on the door, and I am having major shoulder surgery on the 23rd.

Poured mini stem walls a couple days later and attached sill plates. I had to open up an area for my door header, but couldn't knock out the whole wall West of the door or critters (and thieves) would have free reign of the shop, and I already had a bunch of stuff in there.

I bought two 16 inch by 2 LVL timbers 20 foot long to build my header. A bit of overkill, bit I hate saggy buildings. Besides, my labor on this deal far exceeds the extra $180 bucks for going double.

In these pics you can see my sill plates are in place. On the West side of the door, I am still working around part of the existing wall that will come out. This way, I can still close up the shop during construction. The roll up door is going to be in the inside of the wall, and the old sliding door is on the outside, so they don't interfere with each other.

Pics.

The shaded part of the concrete will all get busted out and a new approach poured.

Before we started on the frame, I spent a good 4 hours tuck pointing that vertical wall. I would not be able to get to that mortar once the framing was up.

Next, I had to figure out how to get two 18 foot 16x2 LVLs up there. First, I put screwed a 2x8 to the bottom of the old header (well, as much as I could… that header did not extend all the way across; it came up short on the West end.

We were able to set the LVLs on top of the scissor lift, get them hoisted all the way up, then put jacks underneath to push them up tight. I secured them temporarily with some 10 inch timber screws from above, along with a few steel straps just to be sure they wouldn’t fall.

After securing a 2x6 on the bottom of the LVLs, I quickly used three floor jacks with temporary posts to get the header up really tight. We then started building the king studs on the sill plates. Four 2x8s is for sure over kill, but why not?

After the door way was framed out, I removed the temporary wall. Here it is framed up. Now I could take measurements and order the door.

You can see that the two outside vertical studs don’t to under the LVLs. The one on the left goes up to an existing steel beam. The one on the right goes up to the wood beam that is under the steel beam. I didn’t want to attempt taking that beam down, so made the decision that a 10 foot high door was good enough for me.

At the other end, in the storage area, I still have a 12 foot tall door, just in case I want something really tall in there.

Lynn,

You are an animal and I mean that in a good way! Keep up the good work and the updates. It keeps me and likely many others motivated.

Jason

Now it was time to tackle that broken down wall East of the door way. I had to build another temp wall to hold the roof up, so I could cut off the rotted parts of the studs, and rebuild the brick stem wall. No building codes in 1922 to speak of, so there were NO anchors in this wall holing the bottom sill plate in. Not that it would have mattered. After I cut the bottoms of the studs off with a sawzall and removed the bottom row of tin, we just broomed off the sill plate. It was dust.
My good buddy Joe did the masonry work for me. I am comfortable doing brick flower beds, and tuck pointing. This was more serious.
I already posted some of the before pics of this stem wall. Here are pics of the progress.