The Incredible Fold up Garage

Twas 2 windy days in Mass, with gusts topping 60mph and my "put it together yourself" canvas garage got the shit kicked out of it. Luckily I decided that I didn't trust it enough to leave the Stang in it, so I left it out. At about 3am that morning, after constantly waking up to check on it, I saw what I knew was going to happen. I'll let the pics do the talking.

I had to laugh. Every time I looked at it I laughed. Today (Sat Nov 15) I put it back together along with a few more 2x4's for additional support and a steel cable connected to the massive tree next to it.

Ironically, had I left the car parked inside it would have stopped the garage from going over.

Basically it was huge box kite looking for the right day to fly.
That tree is now an anchor for the walls top steel tube.

Each side of the wood base had 6, 12" steel spikes driven at a steep angle into the ground - not long enough, I should have gone with 3ft.
The entrance had collapsed in on itself. The rear of the garage was braced by the wood frame so it remained in shape.

The roof support tubes were severely bent. Unbending them required a steel cable around a tree stump to the left and another cable on the rear of Mikes pickup, then I slowly pulled the entrance apart and left it that way while I placed 2x4 brace on the floor.

It's a little bent but it's standing perfectly well - and stronger now.

I've added a further 2x4 brace where the walls meet the roof to return some strength to the now weakened roof tubes.
An insiders view. The wind was still blowing on the weekend but once I took all the walls down it was easy to manage.

Incredibly nothing broke. I had a 50gal fish tank in storage plus 4 florescent lights and nothing was even cracked. This is remarkable considering my Stangs old pipes were on the upward side before the garage tipped and the bench, being pretty solid in itself) had a full set of tools on it.

In this pic, the bench sits on the tank with the pipes wedged firmly between the ground and the fish tank.

Everything else is obscured by the billowing floor.
This takes the cake. The bench was sitting squarely on the fish tank. As luck would have it, the other end of the bench stopped at another tree that's why the garage didn't completely go over - wouldn't have mattered anyway, the semi trailer parked behind it would have stopped it going any further.

Note that the full weight of the bench sits on the open/top of the tank.

Updated May 2005