We needed to complete the leveling of the back wall. Using my Craftsman® 2-foot level, Rehtorbym and I did our best to square up the wall. We would have better success once we had the two side walls completed. After we ratcheted down the anchor bolt nuts with my Craftsman® socket wrench and my Craftsman® box end wrench, we discovered that we forgot to add the sill sealer. For you non-DIYers, this sill sealer was just a strip of 3-1/2-inch-wide fiberglass insulation. It supposedly is designed to separate the wood from the concrete and fill in any gaps. As newbie Just-Okay DIYers, we just shrugged it off. There was no way we were going to remove the wall to slip in the sill sealer. I easily justified my decision with, “It was just a garage.”
We hammered away and raised the first side wall. Not learning from the back wall, we continued to misalign the studs. The edges on the composite board barely touched the studs. This resulted in the nails not holding some of the sheathing tightly to the studs. We were able to level this wall to the back wall and we were halfway there.
The other side wall had an awning window and a door. The garage plans did not address their exact location, so you had some flexibility to where you wanted to place them. We would place the door closest to the front wall and center the window on the wall. The plans did specify the size of the headers we would need, so laying out the wall was straight forward. Those 8’-3” high walls gave us another problem. Our headers were too high. So now there was a large gap between the bottom of the headers and door and window. It was an easy fix. We just added a 2 x 4 to the bottom of the header to make up for the gap.
As we were marking the bottom plate for the anchor bolts, we discovered that a few of the bolts were located under a stud. That was not going to work. We could not pull them out, as Rehtorbym pounded them in so well. We whacked them with a hammer to loosen them. We chipped the concrete as we freed them up. The walls would hide it. So short 2 anchor bolts, up went the wall. Three walls done.
The final wall was the front wall. It contained the 16-foot garage door opening. Again, the plans did not specify the location. I wanted to offset the door, so it started one foot from the far corner away from the house. The garage itself was wider than the side driveway and extended past the house. By offsetting the door, we had a better chance of getting the car into the garage. You still needed to enter the garage at an angle, but you could clear the corner of the house.
This wall had a 16 foot plus double 2 x 12 header. Not a light wall to lift. Since a bottom plate was only needed at the ends of the wall, the wall was not too rigid. Shaky and unstable, we got the wall upright and set into place. The last wall was up.
We went around the walls inside and out, shaking them to check for sturdiness. Rehtorbym remarked, “I think we forgot to put in the cross bracing.” Oh, so that was what those 1 x 4’s were for? The problem was the sheathing was already installed and the bracing went on the outside of the studs. This time we could not blow off the error. We would never pass inspection. We needed to take off the sheathing were the cross bracing went. We tried to take off this cheap composite sheathing without ruining it. As you tried to pry away the sheathing it just ripped a hole were the nails were. What a mess.
Rehtorbym and I laid the cross bracing against the stud walls and traced a pencil line where the braces met the studs. With my Craftsman® circular saw, Rehtorbym cut along the lines just deep enough so the bracing would fit. I followed behind and with my Craftsman® wood chisel and Craftsman® claw hammer, I notched an opening for the braces. We hammered in the braces. We removed the old nails from the studs, before reinstalling the sheathing, and looked for new places to nail it down.
Finally, we needed to add another top plate to lock in the walls. I would complete that task at a later day. As I completed this chore, I noticed the bottom of the walls were wavy. Either it was the anchor bolts, or the bottom plate drilled holes side to side placement that was the problem. With a shake of the head and a sigh, I was done with the walls.