Hi all, I had been turning wrenches for 43 years and am now retired. I sold my shop and house in Port Moody B.C. and moved back to Montreal with my wife. I did find a place with a 2 car garage (which was very difficult being this close to downtown), but the garage was built in 1923 and I have to put vaseline on the door handles to get the Wildcat to fit (not to mention removing all the shelving at the back wall). I always saw myself buying an acreage with outbuildings to play with my cars, but my wife wanted to be close to downtown and she won out. The hardest part is adapting to the fact I don't have a hoist, press ,welding equipment or even a driveway etc. etc. etc. anymore and hate working on cars with jacks and jack stands. I always had my "play hoist" in the back of my shop for my projects. Ceiling is way too low to install a hoist and the floor would have to be repoured. At 62, it sucks crawling around on the floor! The trade has left me pretty beat up and fairly deaf to boot! Wear hearing protection guys, it may not look cool, but the air guns, ratchets etc. will take a toll .I'm still getting my head around actually paying someone to work on my cars and that's the hardest part of all. There, I had my pity party.
Welcome to V8 from NY.I'm 83 and still getting under the car for some things.Its much harder then it was,I just cope with it.Bruno.
The "pain" of not being able to do things is more than the pain of doing those things. I'm gonna do it til I can't anymore, then I'm just gonna lay there with a wrench in my hand and stare at it.
Thanks guys for the responses. I would be too freaked out to rent garage space to work on the car as I don't want to get my tools stolen or car screwed with. A hoist is out of the question until the garage is repaired or replaced.I can't take down my garage as it would automatically be designated green space. I can "fix" the garage and plan to find a way to do that. I will leave the only sound brick wall standing (facing the house) and replace the rest . The same style bricks would have to be used to keep the heritage neighbourhood look,( according to city planning), but leaving it up won't work much longer anyway as the foundations are crumbling and a post was added (right in the middle) in the past to keep the roof from falling in. If I can reconfigure the front with one bigger garage door and loose the post, I would be O.K.. It's all too frustrating.
The garage doors are Model T era and crazy small. The Benz fits because euro cars are much narrower . Pic 2, you can see the near corner is crumbling by the distortion in the garage door surround. Can't go wider or longer as the city owns right up to the bricks. The extension cord is on city property! The brown fence I put up so I could barbeque in peace on the 4 foot wide space between the garage and house is illegally built in the City of Montreal. Now, aren't you glad you live in the 'burbs or country? .
Went shopping with one of the GF's. She wanted to go into VS to look at bras. I was OK, i'll wait. She said, "but dont you want to help me take them off?" She didn't have to ask twice.
Going this weekend to do just that myself .....I've been engaged twice. First girl was when I was 21 and she got smart, 2nd one was when I was 33 or so, and I got smart that time.
I got married and let the wife pick out the house..... But she was nice enough to look at what I wanted in a house. Which was acres (got 16 acres) to build a big garage or have a big garage already there. As in enough room to build a 40x60 or 2. So no garage there yet but she said next year I can get the garage I want built, or rather that I can afford
If you are going to redo the garage with one wall left can you go down? Like build a pit so you can service the car from underneath?
I doubt it. it's all about width. If I could brick up both garage doors and come in on the alley side, that would be great, but no can do. Once I figure out something, I will feel more at home here. Plan to put a roof top deck on top at the same time to make up for no back yard. Strangely, the city seems to have no problem with this as most other places in the hood have done that.
