Back on the excavator garage

No work on my excavator garage on Friday as it was essential for me to cut the grass. It’s now growing like crazy and if left it would soon get to a height that would defeat my ride-on mower as I’ve found in the past. Just once because once was enough as then I’d had to go all over it with my brush cutter which was both time-consuming and very tiring.

So getting back to the garage, yesterday was time to get started on the roof. I’d made the decision to use the plywood from the crate in which the excavator was delivered but I knew that this would present new problems. For a start it’s quite flimsy so isn’t self-supporting, unlike the heavy ‘aggloméré’ that I originally intended to use. It’s also not of very good quality and neither the sheets themselves nor my garage structure are square, so cutting and fitting them neatly wouldn’t be easy. Nevertheless I’d made my decision.

But first after clearing away the junk in front of it I wanted to try the garage for size by driving the excavator into it for the first time. That meant driving it down almost the whole length of my back garden from where I’d parked it in front of the house. This I had to do very carefully as the tracks cut into the ground even with the very slightest turn as the picture shows of the ground in front of the garage where I had to turn the machine to line it up.

The first thing I noticed was that the excavator doesn’t appear to be as high as the manufacturer’s dimensions appeared to suggest. There’s more headroom than I’d calculated when I made the garage’s framework but I’m happy with that because it’ll give me more room to add stiffeners in the top corners of the open end and will also allow me to park the excavator inside well over to one side to make dismounting and mounting easier. The extra length that I added has also worked out very nicely.

So yesterday was all about adding the plywood roof covering. This was easier said than done and the final result yesterday was not pretty, albeit adequate for purpose. I took my life in my hands getting the sheets up there by placing a prop inside and climbing up on my ladder leaning on the framework outside and then moving round, but I’ve done worse 🙂

Today I’m off to Brico Depot to pick up some strips of timber to screw inside the joins of the plywood sheets and some heavier wood to run along the tops of the walls outside to which to attach the roofing felt. That’ll probably be it for today as we’re not expecting rain and I’ll then take a bit of a break and resume work tomorrow.