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I've been scarce on the forum lately, busy with another secret project. It's been in planning for a 18 months but I was told today that we'll have our building permits next week. I'm getting a 3 car garage!

Gone are the days of changing brakes, pulling differentials, and replacing radiators in the driveway so all my neighbors' kids could expand their expletive vocabulary. Gone is lying outside on my back in 100 degree DC summers sawing the rusty bolts off my kid's leaking exhaust. Gone are the greasy oil stains on the cement, requiring careful placement of cars and lawn furniture to hide. No more appropriating the rear porch during the winter months as my bike shop, being careful not to leave those oily clutch plates on the wife's sofa or add an oily new pattern to floor tile.

I'll have a three bay garage, two bays wide with a third bay deep. 220 outlets for the compressor and welder, sink, high ceilings if I ever opt for a lift, next to the kitchen so I can cool bearings and bake wheels without walking through the house. I'll do an enamel floor to catch those inevitable spills. Maybe I'll get a gas heater for those cold January days when I need to visit the bikes and dream of warm weather riding. I even have a garage door on the side of the house that will be just for getting bikes in and out!

And wall and and base cabinets with locks so my tools don't keep disappearing every time my kids' friends come by to work on their cars. A couple weeks ago my daughter called me to help her boyfirend who was having a hard time replacing the brake calipers on his friend car. I get over there, 8PM at night after a day at work, and see he's got my sockets, misc. wrenches, mallet and was using my torque wrench as a breaker bar, all without my knowledge or permission. I guess he thought if it was OK to take my daughter's virginity, borrowing some tools wouldn't be a problem.

I did have to make some compromises though. In exchange for getting my garage my honey gets a new kitchen with all the accoutrements, and a new living room, and a dining room, and 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, there's a library, and there will be a finished basement and rear deck (after I build them), etc, etc. But marriage is a compromise.

Actually, the garage comes with a new house. We're knocking down our old house and building new on the same lot. Pretty common here--it's cheaper than remodeling and the land values support the prices.

Here's an approximate floor plan:



After 18 years in our home (and about 3 years left on the mortgage) we move out in a couple weeks and will be renting for about a year as the demolition and building go on. I still have plenty to do as "we" (which means me) are responsible for all the site work and permitting.

Since I will be busy (and broke as usual) for the next year I'm planning forego track days and just collect some parts (if I can get to them before Mr. Deep Pockets a.k.a. JB OWO1 does) and just work on the bike. I'll try and make it look pretty with some paint and powder coat, maybe do some motor work (if Hooligan ever calls Dutchman) and try and find an inexpensive enclosed trailer to haul my stuff. Then next winter move into the new garage and prepare for the '08 track season.

Kontoboy

AWESOME News!!!!

Congrats on the Garage!!! The rest of the House..... well, I guess it is somewhere to sleep.....


It'll be nice when it is all done...

you just gotta take a shot at me, don't ya?

glad to hear things are finally coming together. plans look good and i am green with envy about your new workspace.

have you thought about taking your daughter's boyfriend's virginity with your torque wrench? you know what i mean...

Hooligan wrote: have you thought about taking your daughter's boyfriend's virginity with your torque wrench? you know what i mean...

:pistol This is all it takes for the boyfriend

Congrats on the new house and cool garage. :cool

I can't believe how big that house is! You seem to have more space than my entire street. I live in the middle of the row of houses pictured below, They're known as 2up 2 down's here, You just get the living room & kitchen dowstairs, and 2 bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. The 2nd bedroom can fit a single bed and not much else.
The front door opens up onto the public footpath, and to the rear we have a single yard thats shared between 6 houses so we can't build an extension. Due to the highly inflated house prices here its currently worth about £90,000.

Real estate prices just amaze me...
I have about 6500 sq ft and was apraised at just under $400k
Yet over in Seattle those same dollars will get you a house MAYBE 1/4 the size and three times the crime rate
We built a house on Maui, bought one acre in Kahanna on the west side for $140k. No power, roads or water. A year later there were five 3 million dollar houses. Just amazes me.

Congrats KontoBoy ! I know your pain however mine is even slightly worse. My driveway is gravel. Just take a guess at the number of parts laying embedded in gray stones !

Jason--I only dig at you because I consider you a friend. I treat my own kids the same. They are all seeing psychiatrist because I love them so much.

We've been pretty lucky with the real estate. Our first house was a fixer upper we bought in '86 for $130K and with some sweat equity sold for $200K two years later. We took that, added some more and bought our current house, also a fixer upper. Twenty years and a lot more sweat it's more than tripled in value. But even if we sold it, our profit wouldn't be enough to trade up to newer/larger home unless I'm willing to spend 2-3 hours comuting every day (I'm not).

We're very close to what's become a booming commercial area (Tysons Corner), a short commute to downtown DC where I work, and a new subway stop will be going in just down the road. Metropolitan Washington also has the second longest commute times in the nation combined with some of the highest family incomes (all those lawyers and lobbyist), so land values have consistent strong growth.

For us it just made sense to hold onto our lot and rebuild here. Traffic will only get worse and unless a dirty bomb goes off down the road at the CIA, the traffic will just make our lot worth more.

My son is a Junior in college majoring in Economics. With a BA in Econ he knows he's not going to have a lot of job offers so we've been talking about other things he could do after graduation. He's very outgoing, lots of friends and likes the idea of having his own business so I've been suggesting he look into getting Realtors license and work it part time for awhile. I think he could be great at it, and with time he could build up a portfolio of properties that would secure his future.

Or he could join the Peace Corps, go native halfway around the world and marry a local like his dad did.

Kontoboy

i know it steve, just keeping you on your toes...

a now ex-coworker's wife recently picked up her real estate license here in wilmington. a few thousand bucks and months later and i think she's sold one house. i have a feeling she just doesn't want to work.

i live in a crappy apartment on the shitty side of town six miles from my garage in a shittier part of town AND my girlfriend took a job in cleveland. it's great. can't afford to buy yet, i figured i would wait until my student loans are paid off.

konto's right about dc's traffic. IT IS HORRIBLE.

I think traffic everywhere is has gotten worse. In Nashville we have several major highways intersecting on the south east side of town right where the industrial section and airport are. A couple of years ago we had a bad week where we had a tractor trailer accident every morning for 5 days in a row. Fortunately I don't have to go that far in town. You'd think our government would get off their laurels and offer companies some incentives to develop work-from-home programs. I'm in the running for one from my company and it sure will take out a lot of wear and tear on me, the bike and the family. Until then I'm working grave shift. I get to laugh at the early morning commuters heading into town as I leave. I'm hitting 90mph out and they're all just sittin' around.

I hear ya on the commute thing. I used to have a five count em ...five hour commute .
Now it's just moments if (As Tim sez) there ain't a dog jacknifed in the door way...

My office is 13 miles from my home. That's considered "close in" to DC and is inside our beltway. If I leave at 8 AM its a one hour commute for those 13 miles! It just crawls.

Metro isn't much better for me. I have to drive to Metro, park and then take the train. That takes over an hour. )The new Metro station going in down the road will change that.)

Most days I either get up early to beat the rush, or I take the bike and the HOV lanes. On the bike I can get to work in about 25-30 minutes, 10 minutes for the first 10 miles, 15-20 for the last three miles inside DC.

I know people that get up at 4:00 AM, leave their house by 4:30 so they can be at work by 6:00 AM to beat traffic.

I wish I could work at home. 90% of my work is on the phone or the computer and my Agency (EPA) is suppose to be a big advocate for alternative work places. As the IT security guy I spend a lot of time helping other people so they can work from home (setting up encryption, two factor authentication, and VPNs). Somebody up my chain doesn't like working form home and that' all it takes.

Kontoboy

And THAT Sir is why I am the person up my chain.....

We've got a pretty long chain here.




Kontoboy

We built a new home 3 years ago which is 27 miles from work. We moved to the country to get away from the noise and stuff. When we moved in to the new home I could get to work in 30-40 minutes. Now with all of the new homes out here it takes on average 1 1/2 hours to get to work. And we get all of the noise and stuff again.

There is an new tollway being built that should be complete by the end of this year. It will make my drive a lot shorter time wise but will cost about $5-6 a day to use it. Maybe I can just stay on the access road and not pay the tolls and let the traffic use the tollway.

he's got my sockets, misc. wrenches, mallet and was using my torque wrench as a breaker bar, all without my knowledge or permission. I guess he thought if it was OK to take my daughter's virginity, borrowing some tools wouldn't be a problem.

I'm waiting to see how I handle my daughters losing their virginity. But I do know, you toucha my tools, you sleep with the fishes.

I'm a real hypocrite about the virginity thing. My son has a hot girlfriend that's my daughter's age. She practically lives here when they are home from school, and I let them have their privacy.

Even though my wife and I waited until after we were married, I'm not so old that I forgot what I was doing with all the other girls when I was that age.

Yet even though I respect my daughter's boyfriend, I can't help feel more protective of my daughter. The last thing I want is to see is them get hurt or make some irrevocable mistake.

Who knows, maybe they'll get married some day and I can buy him his own tools as a wedding gift.

Kontoboy