Since moving house in April, the Mini has been sitting under a tarp in the patio waiting for it's new home. I have had time on weekends to sort out and erect a new garage, a DIY install kit from Stratco - 7.7m long x 6.2m wide, 2.7m wall height, gable roof and 2 sliding doors. In our old house I had half of a double garage and a small workshop area so this gives me almost twice the area I had before.
First job was to remove heaps of bushes & trees, then shift ~10m3 of sand for the slab with a Kanga digger I hired. This was 8 hours of fun and made very light work of shifting the sand.
The slab was poured soon after. The orange and white conduits at the front are for power supply and future comms (CAT6/Phone/TV). The white ones at the back are for water inlet and waste drain. The gutters (not yet fitted) will feed some water drums which in turn will supply a sink in the garage. Right at the back of the photo, there is a 2nd orange conduit for potential future power use (pump/compressor/other).
I then waited 3-4 weeks for the concrete to cure before I painted it with a industrial grade 2 part epoxy paint to provide a hard wearing, water/oil/chemical resistance barrier. Unfortunately I was pushing my luck by doing this in June over a couple of days where the weather was supposed to be good. There was a bit of rain on the slab from a cold night after the 2nd coat of paint was applied and about 1/4 of the slab was shaded for most of the the next day so it affected that part of the paint before it had 100% cured - it has lost it's gloss which the paint rep has advised won't affect the performance, but unfortunately looks quite blotchy. The rest is a nice gloss grey colour. The garage kit was delivered in the same week.
So over the next few weekends where time permitted, a few mates & I erected the garage. In this photo you can see on the right part of the slab how the water has affected the appearance of the epoxy paint before it completely cured. I may decide to repaint this side of the slab before the garage gets fitted out.
As of last weekend, it's complete and now the Mini has a proper weatherproof home instead of being stuck under a tarp in a patio for the last 3-4 months. All the Mini & Starlet parts and my tools have been moved into the garage but soon, so will about 1/3 of everything in the house. The extension on our house begins next week which involves demolishing the entire back wall of the house and the garage is temporary storage space until it's complete. Until then, I'm happy that the garage is complete but the Mini project (still) lays dormant.
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-Alan
I blame my dad for my love of minis. I think I was conceived in the back seat of one
I also blame my Dad for me being 6' 1" - not really the optimum height for driving a Mini.