I fell in love at first sight with this great barn of a 2-car garage.  Of course, my inspector found that termites had pretty much eaten the entire sill and most of the lower couple of courses of shingles.  The roof was on its last legs since the folks I bought the place from evicted a particularly annoying family of racoons by slapping a new layer of asphalt shingles over half the roof.  ( Now tell me - Who re-roofs one side of a structure, when the whole roof is shot? ) And the termites who had happily feasted on the sill and shingles had also pretty much wiped out the original man-door.  When I moved in somebody had stuffed the holes in the door with newspaper, painted said newspaper to match the door, and then sealed the whole mess from the inside.  And last, but not least, when the original carriage doors were replaced with overhead ones, access to the loft storage space was sealed off.

But, by local standards, this was nonetheless a garage to be envied. After all, it's still standing upright.

The P.O.s immediately before me had wired it with its own 30 amp circuit, so immediately after closing - before I even worried about the leak in the second-floor bathroom that was slowly melting the kitchen ceiling (but after jacking the whole structure up to replace the sill) I called out the trusty folks from Overhead Door, and had automatic openers installed on both doors.  Now, some of you may wonder what the heck I was thinking, but throughout the course of my serial real estate adventures, I've never had a garage that could actually be parked in.  And here in the great state of New Jersey, Mother Nature has a way of throwing unexpected temper tantrums with no notice whatsoever.  To be able to open the overhead door from the comfort of one's vehicle when she's letting fly is not something to be discounted.

Automatic openers and new sill in place, I moved on to more pressing issues (like the leaky bathroom) figuring that the garage would have to survive on its own for a couple of years.

The winter of 2002-2003 was a whopper.  It snowed and snowed, and snowed some more.  Then we got more snow.  My trusty garage happily sheltered the car, but as the winter progressed, I couldn't help but notice that a brand new hole had sprung at the crown of the roof and seemed to be growing at an alarming pace.  The roof would have to be replaced sooner than I had planned.

Coming home from work one night in about March, I happened to look up at the beams supporting the roof and discovered cracks sprouting in several places.  The more I stood there and looked, the more cracks I found.  The hundred-year-old beams were starting to split - probably from years of snow and rain coming in through the old roof, melting and refreezing.  ... or so I thought.

In short order, I called out the local Old Garage Rehab Wizard, who concurred - the garage needed a new roof asap.  A complete tear-down and start over with new plywood.  Ouch!  The cracked beams could be braced, and while he was at it, he'd replace the bad shingles and the old sealed-up door.  I wasn't thrilled with this latest reshuffle of priorities, but it had to be done.

The rehab worked started without incident - old asphalt shingles were scraped off the roof while the carpenter did his magic with the cracked beams.  On day two of the project, I arrived home to an unintelligible message from the Old Garage Rehab Wizard - something about "... the stuff I found under the roof.  What do you want me to do with it?"  I had no idea what he was talking about.

Outside I went to try to decode the message.  Standing on the driveway on tiptoe, looking up into the now open loft space, I could see a bunch of old junk, but I couldn't really figure out what it was.  I got my Old Garage Rehab Wizard on the phone and we agreed that his crew would haul everything out so I could decide if there was anything worth keeping, and off I went to work the next morning without giving it another thought.

When I got home on day three, I wandered back to the garage, and stood there in complete and utter amazement.  There, among the half-rotted canvas awnings, the warped and water-damaged wood screens, the old push lawnmower, and a pile of bald snow tires were...



Four Original French Doors, two of which had proudly hung in the living room on either side of the fireplace, and at least one of which originally hung in the master bedroom.  The fact that there are FOUR of them all but confirms my long-held belief that there was once a doorway from the third bedroom out to the sleeping porch as well.  The third bedroom (currently The Cat Room) has a wall covered in yet more suspicious paneling, and architecturally that fourth doorway would balance the whole second floor layout.  And, amazingly after forty years in the garage loft being, ...um, used by several generations of racoons, they're in pretty good shape (although they don't smell great). 

I am ecstatic.  I am also mentally adding restoration of these doors to the ever-expanding To Do list.  And now I understand why the beams were cracking.

There is a fifth door as well - probably from a closet, but all my closets appear to have original doors and the profile on this one doesn't match anything else that I've got.  My detective skills haven't yet been able to point me to the original location for that one, but I'm going to have a great time trying to figure this out!

we'd love to hear from you!
This page last updated on March 25, 2004.
   © 2004 PGE, Ltd., All Rights Reserved.