completed garage

The concrete driveway was poured last Tuesday. Because of the cold weather, today was the first day we were able to drive on it. I'm really happy with how it turned out!

The garage door was installed today, so the entire garage is now complete! A few people have asked about the cost; here's the final breakdown:

Architect, $915
Survey & grading plan, $2,175
Raise electric service, $600
Concrete slab (20' x 25'), $5,300

Garage, $15,700
Driveway extension, pavers (480 sf), $6,275
Concrete driveway (640 sf), $5,950
Permits & Inspections, $350

TOTAL: $36,350

garage update

The roof is on, the windows are installed, and the power is working in the garage. The concrete guys arrived this morning to remove the old asphalt driveway; we're hoping the new concrete driveway will be poured on Monday or Tuesday.

pavers

The paver guys arrived at about 8:30 this morning and were completely finished by 4:30! It looks great, there are just a couple of odd angles where the driveway meets the patio that we'll need to hide with some good landscaping.

faming continues...

The garage guys worked most of the day yesterday (Saturday) and are pretty close to finishing the framing.

a quick update...

This is what the garage looked like this morning. The garage guys were hoping to get to a point today where they'd be ready for a framing inspection tomorrow morning, but with the rain this afternoon, I'm not sure if they were able to finish everything they were hoping to. Also, the paver guys haven't been back since Tuesday; I think they're waiting for the "pre-pour" inspection, plus the rain may have delayed them as well.

framing

Things seem to be moving along pretty quickly now. They began the framing on Monday morning:
Yesterday the garage guys continued to work on the framing while the paver guys prepared the area where the driveway extension will go:

lumber delivery

The lumber for the garage was delivered this afternoon. Surprise, surprise, they couldn't get it into the backyard where it was supposed to go, so they ended up leaving most of it on the grass in the front yard.
They were able to take one small load into the backyard, but in the process they drove across the patio and destroyed this 2' x 2' paver that was covering a cistern.

detached garage update

The good news is the concrete was poured yesterday...

The bad news is that 1/4 of our existing asphalt driveway, which we weren't planning on replacing, was destroyed during the process:

So now we will be replacing the entire driveway with concrete.

detached garage

BEFORE PHOTO:
In August we decided to build a detached 2-car garage in our backyard. We thought we had a pretty good idea of how much it would cost, so we hired an architect and engineering company, and along the way found out it'll actually cost more than twice as much as we had originally thought. But since we had already paid for the blueprints and grading plan, and it won't get any cheaper if we wait to do it in the future, we decided to go ahead with it.

So we gave our contractor a deposit and applied for a permit. We've had all kinds of trouble with the city because apparently we have a deed-divided lot instead of a sub-divided lot (more than 80 years ago our lot was part of the lot to the north of us, and the owner sold part of the lot to someone else.) Also, our lot is "non-conforming" because it's only 40 feet wide, and the city requires all lots to be at least 50 feet wide. We're going before City Council tomorrow in the hopes of making the "lot consolidation" process that the city is requiring less complicated, but either way it has already added a large additional cost to the project.

PLANS:

But on Wednesday we finally got our permit, and on Friday our electrician raised our overhead power lines by several feet to provide enough clearance over the driveway extension. And today the concrete guy came over and dug up the ground where the concrete slab will go: