As I may have mentioned to you dedicated blog readers, we bought the house knowing we had some major garage issues. In fact, I believe the exact words of the inspector were, "I wouldn't park my car in there much less walk in there." It's not in good shape, to say the least. What looks to have happened is that they built it on a wood board foundation that is now crumbling away making the whole structure more or less tilt and pitch out toward the street. We also have quite a bit of the wood rotting around the structure -- all a formula for a big mess.
We were told we would have a problem, however, when it came to doing anything about it as it is precariously close to the property line. Code around these parts says that anything within 5 feet of the property line cannot be taken down and rebuilt but rather must be grandfathered in to be rebuilt within the same footprint, virtually not taking the whole thing down but rather jacking it up to install a new foundation and then working with the existing structure. Sounds expensive, right?
I was happy to find yesterday that it is actually exactly 5 feet from the property line. I think that we could knock this puppy down and rebuild it, making our lives much easier and perhaps a little less expensive. Right now, however, I am trying to scrape off the peeling paint and make it look a little more presentable in the year we need to wait until we can afford such a project. I'm finding paint removal not so much fun, particularly as it involves dealing with rotted clapboards around the structure. We're going to get a few different repair lessons in this task, for better or worse. We'll see how much we flub this one up.
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