Our build thread, renovation and extension

[Muncher]

The door is now fixed and fully working, a little lubrication and adjustment of the runners and it seems fine now.

All of the electrics are now complete, apart from the junction boxes for the lights which will be done on thursday and the 600x1200 LED wall panels will need mounting and wiring which I will probably crack on with tonight. I've been doing about 4-5 hours a few nights each week since Christmas so things are progressing well. Wiring the loft lights into little junction boxes was a really horrible job, but at least that's now out of the way.

All of the cladding round the main garage door is done and the I'm now half way through cladding the door, which is really fiddly.

The tiles have been ordered and should be here on friday, I went with the light grey (second from the left) in the end.

I've got a primer for the floor, but I'm also kind of tempted to throw down some self levelling compound just to ensure no hollows in the adhesive which could lead to cracking. It's generally pretty flat and smooth in most places, but I've never used self levelling compound before so a few bads can't hurt can they? If so any particular recommendations?

[uk66fastback]

That's all bloody impressive.

Think self-levelling compound might be over-egging the pudding a bit but go with whatever you're happy with.

You doing the tiling? When doing it with that size of tile and therefore number used, it is going to take a fair amount of time to get right and ensure there are no 'hollows' of one or two tiles ...

That's why if I do mine - which I'm angling against atm, I'll be using 60cm square ones ... (less chance of any 'dip')

My feet have been freezing of late on my old concrete-floored garage - thicker soles on the work boots or those rubber tiles?

[RC1807]

Love the "attic" lighting, especially, Muncher.
Top notch, sir!

[Muncher]

I will be doing all the tiling, I have the kit and have done it before, but this is obviously going to be a big job and will look very obvious if it's wrong. The self levelling may just help a bit as it takes one source of error out of the equation.

[Peanut Gallery]

I have never personally touched self levelling compound, but have heard that it needs a lot of watering down to turn into something liquid enough to flow.

Are you going for a level level garage, or for a small slope towards the door, so water can run out of the garage? - I found a lot of water coming from snow sprayed up into wheel arches melting, and of course when there is snow the garage is not the warmest of places, so it takes an age to dry out.

Brilliant build, thank you for updates etc!

[Muncher]

I am hoping it is level, the slab should be! You may recall I attempted to powerfloat it, but ended up pouring the concrete on the hottest day of the year and the powerfloat turned up late so the finish is generally good but a little mixed in patches.

[B17NNS]

Muncher said:

I will be doing all the tiling, I have the kit and have done it before, but this is obviously going to be a big job and will look very obvious if it's wrong. The self levelling may just help a bit as it takes one source of error out of the equation.

Might be worth buying a levelling system. I use one on all my large format work now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcxTtcZEDdQ

[Muncher]

B17NNS said:

Might be worth buying a levelling system. I use one on all my large format work now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcxTtcZEDdQ

Yep, already bought one, used the Lash system before which worked well so have bought something similar for this, although these are much smaller format tiles than I have used on a floor before (600x300)

[Muncher]

Before I go out and buy one of these I don't suppose anyone has one going spare?

https://www.ffx.co.uk/tools/product/Bosch-Gtl3-316...

[Muncher]

Tiles have arrived, Direct Tile Warehouse have been great throughout, the sub contracted courier who left them on the road (third time they have done this now) a lot less helpful. And yes, they are as heavy as they look!

[uk66fastback]

Best of luck with moving them in a hurry!

When are you tackling the tiles? Looking forward to seeing how they turn out - darn well, I reckon. What colour grout - grey?

[Muncher]

I've already done it in my lunch hour! I will be using a grey grout .

I have a full day planned tomorrow (finish side door cladding, patch some bits of the ceiling, mount wall lights and maybe do the handrail on the stairs) Next week I will be prepping the floor, priming it and getting some lines drawn then possibly start tiling it the weekend after. I still need to choose a suitable threshold "ramp" if I am going to have one. The aim is to get the tiling done by the end of February which will give me March to play around with the winch mechanism and build a couple of gates before I start to get really busy in mid April with other things.

Edited by Muncher on Friday 19th January 18:21

[jke11y]

I’ve got one of these ;

https://www.weatherstop.co.uk/weather-seals-commer...

Fitted with one edge on the concrete and one edge on tile. I siliconed under it and around it, and it’s been pretty good at keeping water out and being solid.

[Muncher]

Managed to get the side door clad at the weekend, but not much else, I will post pics of that once I have cleaned it up and done the last few bits to finish it off, such as painting the door shuts grey. I also ordered the tile laser to see whether that helps.

I am thinking of using these tile trims on the front edge, any thoughts? I am going to stop the tiling at the point the garage door seal comes down and use the height difference between the tiled section and the bare slab to help stop water ingress, so the trim is just there to give me a straight starting line, make it look a little nicer and reduce the risk of the front edge of the tiles cracking when driven over.



The other option is something like these, but they are more than twice as expensive and I'm not sure they will be appreciably better at protecting the tiles but will probably be worse at stopping water ingress. Any thoughts?

[uk66fastback]

is the garage door meant to sit ON TOP of the last inch of the tile (does it have a rubber seal of any kind on the bottom to stop the water) - or is it meant to sit IN FRONT of that bevelled piece - so the rubber seal would 'seal' on the angle of the bevel on that larger one?

I'm never sure!

[Muncher]

The rubber seal is like a big U shaped bag, it spreads to about 2 inches wide as it touches the ground so I think would cover it all.

[RichUK]

Muncher said:

The other option is something like these, but they are more than twice as expensive and I'm not sure they will be appreciably better at protecting the tiles but will probably be worse at stopping water ingress. Any thoughts?

We used something close to this. We did then have to adjust the garage doors to close properly, so was a bit of a faff at the end.

[uk66fastback]

I'm sure you could get away with the thinner (cheaper) one if the main intention was to use it as a finisher for that first row of tiles and also a straight edge to work from ... the wider one is 'nice' but is it necessary - and double the price is relative to how much the thinner one is!

[Muncher]

The wider one is about £90 and the narrower one about £40.

[Muncher]

85 down, 460 to go!

Fairly hard going, having to butter the backs of all of them. The lash clips which I bought from eBay were cheap for a reason, loads of them broke whilst fitting them with very little pressure. They all seem pretty level and square and hopefully all the beds are solid. Interestingly I don’t think they are quite as tough as the porcelain ones I used in the house.

I tried to keep everything as clean as possible, but that went out of the window towards the end, however after leaving them for about 4 hours to set I went back out, removed the clips, cleaned all the faces and cleaned out the grout joints. I think there’s another 4 or 5 full days left just to get the tiles down, probably one day a weekend for the next month. Should get a bit quicker but I think 4 bags (80kg of adhesive) is probably about as much as you would want to do in a day by the time you have cleaned everything up.