Team Seacats

With a lot of hard working help from Mark Hale, the walk-through opening that will eventually open into the new garage is made in the block/brick wall. Man, this stuff takes some heavy work! I purchased a three blade diamond wheel set for my side grinder figuring I could make several plunge cuts in the brick and block with it and then connect the dots to make an opening. Honestly, I didn’t expect that blade to last all that long cutting so much material in a dry state. It turns out that it was an animal and it easily digested all the block, brick, and mortar we could throw at it and I never had to change to one of the other two blades. In hindsight, I probably should have purchased a big 10″ blade that I could put into my circular saw to make a large single big deep cut up the wall – I didn’t because I thought they were usually intended to operate wet and wouldn’t make it all the way through the job – and they’re rather expensive.  Anyway, we got most of the opening completed and opened it up one course below the shop floor level. Later, we’ll form up and pour a little concrete pad once I understand where the floor levels are going to be relative to each other.

I still have some overhead work to do to increase the height of the opening and I’m a little unsure how to reinforce the walls once I open that up. It turns out that the joists in the ceiling are running the wrong way over that shop – they run parallel to the ridge line in the roof – but the adjoining carport that shares the same roof line sees the joist run perpendicular to the ridge line, as they should. We’ll have to open up the gable and see how everything is put together to come up with an adequate plan to reinforce the wall and install a proper header for the opening (which may eventually get a door). Thanks goes to Mark for all his help -  I couldn’t have achieved that opening in a day otherwise.

Cuttin' like Buttah'

Bye bye window

There once was a Window

Almost finished boarding it up