Making an Unused Space Useful

[Stuart Ablett]

I have a good client here in Tokyo that has a house in a very expensive part of town, where every inch of space is a premium. They have a garage on the first floor of the house that has a shutter at both the back and front of the parking spot. The back shutter opens into a small triangular-shaped area that is 3.5 meters by 2 meters by 3.1 meters. There is a concrete block wall on the property line, and behind the house is a small alleyway. They want to use the spot to park their electric bicycles, but they cannot get the bicycles past the parked car. They wanted me to put a door in the concrete block wall.
To do this, I'd have to cut the doorway, build a metal frame for the door, build a door, and move two air conditioning units up out of the way.
We were doing a bunch of other maintenance work on the house as well, and it was HOT, 40C or 104F, and humid.


This is looking at the area from inside the garage


Looking at the wall from the alleyway


The idea, a door, two aircon units mounted on the wall, and a roof, eventually.


I built the door first

Its built from Batu wood, kind of like IPE but not quite so heavy or dense and about 1/3 the cost.

I even bought a dowel maker so I could make dowels out of the same wood


Glue up time


Nice tight joints


I put a piece of the back to help keep the door panels from rattling


Finished with outdoor UV Osmo oil


These will be come the bracket to move one aircon unit up off the ground, but there are some pipes on the wall I need to avoid, so the brackets move the unit out from the wall

Two of these will become the door frame


The inside door fram in place where we will cut the hole



I put two pieces of angle iron bolted through the wall to stabilise the top of the wall.


Here is the stand-off bracket for the one aircon unit mounted


This is the second aircon unit mounted on its wall bracket.


And the first aircon unit mounted on its wall bracket, which is mounted to the stand-off bracket I built


Both aircon units are up and out of the way, with the electrical, drain and refrigerant lines all re-connected.

It was then decided that the door had to be a step higher than the alleyway surface.
This house flooded during a very heavy rainstorm a year and a half ago. Lots of damage.
Therefore, it was desirable to have the door one concrete block higher up.
We removed the angle irons on top of the wall, and I went a bought this 3-meter-long 10cm by 10 cm structural steel tube.
I made some simple brackets for it to bolt through the wall, but first, I had to flatten the top of the wall, as it was rounded.


Here I am with my big Makita concrete saw, flattening the top of the wall.

The tube dry fit.


With the brackets attached and about two tubes of heavy-duty construction adhesive applied it was time to set the structural tube in place.


The structural tube is all glued and bolted in place.

Now I'm not worried about the wall falling down in the next earthquake!

 

[Stuart Ablett]

Next, we cut the doorway into the wall. I have a large Makita dry-cut concrete saw. It is a beast, but it sure cuts well.
We would cut down a block, then cut horizontally to slice the rebar, and knock out the two blocks. It was a hard, slow, dirty, dusty, and noisy process, but we got it done!

Here I am cutting the bottom of the doorway. The vacuum cleaner actually did mitigate a lot of the dust.

The door frame is installed.

The door hung.

A view from inside

With the latch and lock fitted, the door is basically finished.

The next job was to paint the wall, which required a lot of old paint to be removed, and I spot-painted those areas to try to make it all look the same once painted.



The wall got two coats of paint that is designed for painting concrete.
I think this all turned out good, and I have to say I love the way the door looks, too bad it's on the back of the house, no one will ever see it LOL.
There was LOTS more work done on this property, which I'll try to get to post later, but the door is in, and the client is happy.
Cheers!

 

[Bill Satko]

Great work Stu! I am glad to see that your project ended up being much more complicated than first appears. I was beginning to think only my projects always end up being a rats nest of complications to overcome.

 

[Tom Niemi]

Good looking door and great installation Stu! Looking forward to seeing more of what you’ve been up to

 

[Toni Ciuraneta]

That's a lot of work with great result, I bet the customer was very satisfyied.

 

[Rennie Heuer]

Wow - Fantastic! Great having you back.

Encore!!

 

[Darren Wright]

Very nice work! Looks like you'll have one happy client.

 

[Stuart Ablett]

Thanks, fellas!
The next part of this job was to put a roof over the space, nothing too serious, just to keep the rain off the bicycles. The space is already partially covered.



Here you can see the basic idea of the roof; it's a strange shape, but I'll get it to fit somehow.



We started by putting a ledger board up on the wall above the opening for the shutter.
It is screwed into the concrete and has the correct adhesive for wood to concrete applied as well.



We put a board on top of the steel tube on the wall to run our rafters to, and ran the rafters; there are some really funky angles.



An overall view.



A view from inside the garage.



Getting the purlins put in, some of them got a bit bent, but fit.
That's my buddy Mark.



Putting the corrugated roofing on and the drip edge above it



Coming along nicely



Under the aircon on the wall at the right, there is an opening,
but it should not be a problem most of the time, as there is a concrete roof above it and it's fairly well covered.
Maybe during a typhoon or really heavy rain, some will get through, but talking with the client, the extra time and effort involved did not make sense.
It's not like they are storing paper in the space; it's going to be a place to park bicycles.



The drip edge is screwed on a glued with a specific adhesive to attach the drip-edge to concrete.



This roofing lets in lots of light and is rated for 10 years in direct sunlight.
This area is on the North side of the building in an alley, so it gets about an hour or two of sunlight a day.
This should last a while.

 

[Stuart Ablett]

The client asked that the ends of the roof be covered.
They have a stray cat problem in the neighbourhood.
They are concerned that cats will get into the area and use it as a bathroom.


This is one corner of the space, there needs to be s small roof and a fence of sorts put in.




You can see the gap in the wall here that needs to be fenced off.



I got some fencing and closed off this access point.


I put another small roof over this corner.



I need to put up some wire mesh in this small triangular area.



Wire mesh installed



I did the same on the other end.



OK that space is done, on to the next thing!

 

[Darren Wright]

Looks like it should do the job Are the metal clips on the roof panels for ice or just a specific clip for that type of roofing?

 

[Stuart Ablett]

Looks like it should do the job Are the metal clips on the roof panels for ice or just a specific clip for that type of roofing?

They are "Umbrella Screws" for the corrugated roofing. They have a shaped washer with a soft rubber grommet under them, stainless steel.