A Garage Gets Hit By a Car

Who do you call?

The phone rang and the caller asked if I do insurance work. It turns out it was a car insurance claim. His friend damaged his garage with her car. (Not sure if this is along the lines of man bites dog?)

I let him know I would be happy to take a look at the damage and give an estimate and since I am a registered and insured company in the state of NH I am able to perform work under an insurance claim in the Greater Manchester, NH area.

I was very excited to get started on this because I knew it would pose a bit of a challenge.

I was hoping to use a 3 foot pry bar (some Crystal Blue Persuasion) to jimmy the sill plate back in place but I also needed to replace the under sill moisture barrier protection.

After stripping off the siding and the plywood sheathing, which was also broken in the accident; I turned to the trusty old 20 ton bottle jack, lag bolted a 2 by 6 to the studs and jacked that garage right up!

There was a lot of creaking and complaining…. Some of it from my old bones but everything went smoothly and I set that garage down on a dime! (a pencil line I made on the concrete floor)

I checked all around for level, plumb and square and fastened the sill plate to the concrete. I also threw in a jack stud that had snapped in two.

The next day I I replaced the lower sheathing and had to move further up around the window where we discovered some rot. All of the trim pieces were rotted and also had to be replaced.

The caller’s mom had asked for the garage to restored to as close to the original and we reused the old banged up metal corners. They had sentimental value being bent on site by her late husband. (The original builder of the garage.)

I had a lot of fun with this and finished the project in record time. A new record because I have never done a repair on a garage that was hit by a car! 7 days, with a one day delay for a delivery truck breaking down and two days of torrential rain. Don’t worry we covered with poly (plastic) to keep the insides dry.

I thought the biggest challenge would be jacking up the sill plate and repositioning, but it turned out to be the vinyl siding.

Finding the starting point and running up both sides of the window and hooking the new vinyl under the old vinyl siding using my old reliable “Crescent Wiss Siding Removal Tool..” (Made by no other than Acme Tools)

I was very excited to hear the zip and thunk of a solid connection between the pieces.

“Wrap it and ship it!”

This job was a ton of fun to work on because I get a thrill out of making things work out.

The sword of Damocles hanging over my head was the garage door was operational while the garage post was knocked out of position. The owners called me because the garage door company would not touch it until repairs were complete.

I had a huge fear of tacking on the last piece and having the door stuck in the up position! Thankfully that did not happen!

All parties were satisfied with the results of the operation and the site was left clean and safe. Thank you to everyone involved!

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