Here it is

My mini excavator garage is now more or less finished. I say ‘more or less’ because I’ve used 240 gm/m2 UV resistant tarp for the walls and I’m going to bang more securing nails in all around the bottom of the walls and along the mid-height horizontal beams in order to make the walls as wind-resistant as possible. It was very frustrating fixing them in place today because we had a cold north-westerly wind with strong gusts that kept making the walls billow out and impossible to fix while the wind was blowing so I had to keep stopping and waiting until the gusts had gone through.

I cut and mounted the side walls and back in one piece which made them harder to fix in place but ended up with no gaps through which the wind will enter and try to blow the walls off. It doesn’t look perfect but I’m happy with the result and think I was quite fortunate in that I didn’t level the ground on which the structure now stands and the framework could never be described as precision built. I think it’ll last as long as I need it to… at least I hope it will. But just in case I’ve fitted thick wire guys to the front verticals to prevent the framework swaying in the wind.

I’ve got enough tarp left over to make a curtain for the open front end but I haven’t thought of a design just yet. Ideally I’d like it to be like one of those curtain roller blinds with a string on the side in an endless loop that when you pull one side of the blind rises and the other side it falls. That would need some kind of sprocket arrangement though, which I think is a bit beyond me, but I’m still thinking.

So what did my garage end up costing me? I’ve saved 55€ by not using the two sheets of ‘agglomerée’ that I originally bought for the roof and used ‘free’ plywood from the crate the excavator came in instead. However, I’ve not costed in the roofing felt that was left over from the last garden tool store/shed that I built in the garden of my old house in Plazac. Totting up everything else, for the wood, nails, glue and anything else I’ve bought along the way, the total comes out to about 185€.

I don’t think this is too bad when you consider that the only other alternative I could find that was high enough to take the excavator was a 3m x 4.5m vehicle garage from Vevor with open ends and one open side, costing 880€. This also had the disadvantage of really being a permanent structure. I did find another 3.3m x 4.8m tent-garage costing 695€ but this had a door only 2m in height which was not high enough. Anyway, I hope all my postings about this build might be of help to anyone else considering such a project.

So what next? After banging in all the extra nails that I mentioned earlier and thinking up a design for a door curtain, my next job will be to go all around the excavator making sure all the nuts etc are tight and greasing all the grease nipples and anything else needing a smear of grease eg the bucket and auger mounting pins. That will make the machine ready for use and the next task will be to mark out the base for my proposed 4.5m x 3.5m garden tool store/workshop.

This will be the excavator’s first big job but before that I might get a bit of practise in by skimming the top off a hump at the bottom of my garden to the left of the new garage which always tilts my ride-on mower to an alarming angle when I cut the grass. It should be fun 🙂