Repairing A Garage Wall Push Out By A Car
“Honey…. What was that noise?”
A customer of mine called me recently to tell me that her husband accidentally drove into the back of their garage wall.
The beauty of having loyal, repeat customers is she didn’t call to ask for an estimate she said, “please come and fix it.”
Don’t Forget To Put The Car In Reverse!
The force of the impact sheared the nails and pushed the bottom wall plate off the foundation sill.
That force buckled the door and damaged the door jamb / frame. The gray box on the wall and wire coming out of the lower section of the wall is the lawn sprinkler control box.
Photo of the door. This photo does not accurately show the damage.
This photo shows the outside view after I removed the door. Our plan was to try to use a come-a-long and chain to pull the wall back in place.
The plate broke off a bit at he 2×4 bottom plate, and the nail that was holding it can be seen still in the foundation sill. [click to enlarge any picture]
The wall moved approx. 8-10″ off the sill.
This view is on the opposite side of the door. It did not move as much.
Pulling The Garage Wall Back – The Plan
To pull the wall back we needed to get an anchor point. To accomplish this we drilled several holes with a spade bit through the wall so the chain would fit through.
We used a short staging plank to support the wall and help spread out the pressure. A 2×4 or 2×6 would have worked here, but this is what we had.
The view out the back door, yes it was snowing at this time.
We used a tow type strap to anchor the come-a-long cable to the van. If your using a vehicle to do something like this, make sure you attach the strap to the frame and not the bumper.
The chain holding the plank was attached to the come-a-long cable and tightened. We tightened the cable slowly while one of use used a sledgehammer outside the wall.
Hitting the moving plank with the sledge hammer moved the wall, with out the cable pulling the wall and holding pressure, the wall would have just bounced back.
New Door And Siding
Once back in place and checked for plumb we re-nailed the plate to the the foundation sill, replaced the insulation, 5/8″ fire code wall board and the exterior trim and clapboards. A new door was also installed.
Finished exterior view, still snowing.
Finished interior view. Total time on project approx. 5 hours.
