Things have been a little quiet here lately. For the last 18 months Ive been trying in vain to complete my garage build. What should have taken 6-8 weeks tops has been and ongoing drama, that’s finally coming to an end.
Let’s wind our clocks back to October 2021. I’ve got the council approval to build my new garage on the existing slab that we poured back in 2012 and I’m on the hunt for tradies to get the job done.
Job 1 was to cut out the back section of my driveway and dig a 13,000 litre stormwater tank to collect rainwater that falls on the existing driveway and pump it out to the street. This is where the trouble started!
I spoke to a plumber that I’ve known for a long while and asked him to quote me on that. After a good 6 weeks (which pushed us dangerously close to Christmas) I finally got the quote – $50,000! Thanks, but no thanks.
So I got in touch with a concreter that I’ve also know for some time. Although I wasn’t totally happy with his previous work, I was satisfied that he’d do a good enough job here. His quote was less than 1/4 of the original $50k quote and I spoke with a few plumbers who confirmed that connecting the pipes and pumps won’t be too expensive.
It was January in 2022, when I agreed to give him the job. He came in and started excavations, and for a short time I was happy. Then he disappeared for a couple of weeks – always booking me in for a day he knew was going to rain. Concreter’s follow the weather forecasts closely. Rainy day – No pay for these guys. But what made it worse, was that we were in the middle of a La Niña weather event that meant solid non-stop rain for 3 weeks, then less than a week of sunshine, before another 3 weeks of constant rain. A pattern that lasted for a good 6 months. Of course when we did have a dry patch, the Concreter opted to take on and complete his bigger jobs, leaving me waiting for the next break in rain. It wasn’t until September 2022 that the concrete was finally down and even then it went down on a rainy day, which meant that the finish was less than optimal.
Now, if that wasn’t bad enough he managed to get the levels wrong! So my driveway was 50-100mm higher than my garage floor slab. My property is sloping downwards towards the garage, so this was a disaster from a stormwater perspective. When I asked him about this, he said it was so that when I tile the floor, it levels up – a tiled floor was never an option I wanted and I certainly wasn’t about to raise the level of my garage slab by 100mm. He must have thought I was going to use pavers!
If that wasn’t bad enough, his excavator driver smashed into my house and took out a chunk of render and crashed into my greenhouse – destroying it in the process! When I confronted him about it, he through a tantrum and drove out of my driveway with his excavator, sideswiping a column at the front of my driveway and digging up the my neighbours nature strip with the tracks from his machine!
Moving on from this, because I just wanted the job done, I got in touch with another plumber and agreed for him to do the work I needed. He quoted me a reasonable price, did the first part of the job and ghosted me for 2 months! what is wrong with these people?
I moved on and found another plumber to take on the job. He was much more reasonably priced, prompt and did a great job! I wish more tradies were like this!
I also needed to get another concreter in to fix the levels. If the first concreter was bad, this guy was way worse. While he did get the job done, I’ve never seen a more sloppy concrete job. It’s uneven and poorly finished. He didn’t even set up proper for work before the job!
Meanwhile, I was having the electrician I booked in ghosting me as well! We would agree on a date and when the time came, he just wouldn’t show. After 3 reschedules I stopped chasing him and found a new electrician – a recommendation from the plumber no less. And what a relief! Prompt, efficient and hard working. He also knew how to install my air conditioner that had been in storage for 10 years and installed my roller shutter for me!
Now I was ready to start on the flooring. I wanted an epoxy finish for it’s high gloss and chemical resistant finish. I also like that I could create something unique. I chose to DIY on this, and the finish is truly 1-of-a-kind.
I don’t know what chemical or physical reaction went down after the epoxy was applied, but it didn’t look quite the same after it was finished. I was slightly disappointed with it, but not enough to refinish it. It probably didn’t help that I had to leave to attend my sons birthday party straight after it was applied. So perhaps rushing it was detrimental to the finished product.
While this has been going on, I had to get my cars out of the way. I was lucky enough to have my mechanic who is 300m from my door kindly take the 450SLC into storage for a few months. Unfortunately, when it came time for rego, it failed due to rust in the floor. He was kind enough however to arrange for a repair by another workshop and so I drove the car there for the repair.
It’s been 6 months now, and while I have seen some signs of progress, it has been minimal. I haven’t pushed it because I needed the car away from home during construction, but now that construction is done, I want it back. We’ve also discussed doing more work on the body, but we’ll see how much that comes to in due time. At the time of writing I’m ready to bring the car home, but I think it will be many months before that happens.
Now the the garage is near completion, the plan is to give more attention to the car restoration. I’ll be writing up each of the job’s and hopefully doing some videos of the work. I have big plans including an engine and transmission swap for the 450SLC.
