# Eliminating Drywall Ceiling In Attached Garage



## shane2943

Hi everyone!

For my first official post outside the Introductions section, I'll ask what might be an odd question.

But first, to describe my setup.  I have a 2-car attached garage in my house.  It shares one common wall with the house and the other 3 walls are exterior walls.  The ceiling height is 8 feet at the head of the garage, and then a step down of 3 inches makes the ceiling height about 8'3" over most of the garage.  It has two single doors instead of one large double door (I hate that but live with it).  The distance from the top of the ceiling joists to the highest point of the roof deck is approximately 4' and tapers off from there.  The roof peek is centered over the garage and runs from the front of the garage to the back.  There is a ridge vent installed on the peek over the garage.  The attic space above the garage is shared to the attic space over the rest of the house.  The ceiling above the garage is uninsulated.

OK, now that I've descibed my setup, I want to tear down the drywall ceiling above the garage so that I can:
a) have more space for things - there's not really room up there to install a drop down ladder and floor the space up there.  It'd be better for me to be able to just lay long pieces of wood across the tops of the joists for storage and/or install a pully lifted shelf.
b) have more ventilation - as it is, the garage in the summer stays about 10 degrees cooler than the attic and for those that live in Texas, THAT'S REALLY HOT!   I figured the ridge vent might help a bit there.  Maybe I'm wrong.  In the winter time, the garage does stay pretty warm...but then again, I'd rather have it cool in the summer than warm in the winter.
c) Have the space to hang a garage filtration system - with the 8' ceiling, the filteration system would hang too low and get in the way of things

I do plan to extend the common wall up to the roof deck and seal it, effectivly making the main attic space smaller.

What are the pros/cons of my idea?  Is it lunacy?  Have I been drinkin too much cough syrup?  Are the Halloween gouls effecting my BRAIN? 

Thanks in advance! :beer:


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## oldognewtrick

shane2943 said:


> What are the pros/cons of my idea?  Is it lunacy?  Have I been drinkin too much cough syrup?  Are the Halloween gouls effecting my BRAIN?
> 
> Thanks in advance! :beer:



Possible lunacy, cough syrup poisining, sugar overload from to many Butterfingers...never rule anything out, but could you post a pic of the garage ceiling and also the attic framing?


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## shane2943

The garage and it's ceiling will be easy. The attic framing above the garage.....not so much since the only attic access is on the complete opposite end of the house so I'd have to crawl all the way over there.

I'll do it though. Done it before.  Gimme a bit...


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## shane2943

OK, got the pics.  When I said that the garage shares a common wall, it's more like 1.5 common walls but that's neither here nor there.  Would just make separating the garage from the rest of the attic a bit more of a pain, but doable.

Ok, I'll do my best to describe the photos:

This is the front of the garage, taken from the bed of my pickup.  You can see the roof ok from here:






This is a shot inside the open door:





This is a shot at the ceiling from the head of the garage by the door into the house:





This is a shot from the same spot, but aiming across the garage towards the back corner:





[continued on next post]


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## shane2943

This shot is taken off to the right of the garage so the peak of the roof and ridge vent can be seen:





All 3 of these shots were taken from the back wall of the garage towards the front of the garage (where the two garage doors are).  Please forgive the ghettotastic wiring.  Yet another project I have to do.













Hope those shots were what y'all were after.  Bout the best I could get.  There ain't much room in the attic of this house.


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## havasu

What you are doing was exactly what I did to my garage last December. Because of the lack of space in the attic portion, I lowered the entire ceiling one foot. I then installed a low opening roll up door, and cut a hole to access the new attic space. Below are some pics of my garage.


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## shane2943

DANG!  You gotta nice garage there, my friend.

Actually, what I'm wanting to do does differ from what you did in that I want the attic space, and the garage space to be one in the same.  The only ceiling I want above the garage are the ceiling joists and roof deck above that.  I want to get rid of the drywall ceiling all together.  It seems as though you have a bit more attic space than I do, even if I were to drop the joists down a foot.  There's really not much space up there which is why I nixed the idea of flooring it and installing a drop-down ladder.


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## havasu

Thanks for the compliment! I now understand what you are trying to do, but I think it will be more work than you think. I have about the same headroom in the attic (about 4 1/2'), and once it was insulated and lined with 1" plywood, there was more room than I imagined. Your firewall is an important fire block and mandatory by most fire codes. This means if you remove it from your ceiling, it may come back to haunt you, unless you line the entire lower roof ceiling with 5/8" drywall. You would also need to add structure and support to keep your walls square and your roof from potentually sagging. 

I think the easier solution is to cut a hole, box it in, relocate the exposed romex, line with plywood, and call it a day.


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## shane2943

Not quite sure what you mean by adding support to keep my roof from sagging.  I don't want to remove any supports.  I intend fully to keep every 2X10 and 2X4 that is currently there in it's place.  I only want to remove the drywall to open the space up.

Now, your firewall statement really makes some sense to me and I didn't consider that before.

What's romex?

And thank you for the reply! :beer:


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## havasu

OK, I assumed you wanted to eliminate the 2 x 10's along with the drywall. If you left them intact, you would not lose strength in the structure. Drywall as a fire break will still be a consideration for you, if you chose to eliminate the drywall. The romex I was referring to are the wires laying on top of the 2 x 10's, which power your garage door and ceiling lights.


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## oldognewtrick

Shane, in your first post you mention attic heat and adding ridge vent, looking at your photos I don't see any soffit vents to allow for air intake into the attic. Ventilation is a 2 part equation. For the ridge vent to exhaust it has to be able to intake air. Sort of a chimney effect developes, hot air rises and draws cooler air in at the soffit, lower portion of the roof. Are there vents at the soffit?


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## shane2943

havasu said:


> OK, I assumed you wanted to eliminate the 2 x 10's along with the drywall. If you left them intact, you would not lose strength in the structure. Drywall as a fire break will still be a consideration for you, if you chose to eliminate the drywall. The romex I was referring to are the wires laying on top of the 2 x 10's, which power your garage door and ceiling lights.



I really just want to be able to have a little extra storage above the joists (accessable by step ladder) like laying long pieces of wood that are currently on the floor across the joists to store them.  I would want to build a shelf attached to pullys that would raise up in between 2 ofthe joists for more storage.  And then, I'd want to hang the filteration doohickie in the attic space from the roof joists.  The filteration system would hang too low and get in the way with the drywall ceiling in place.

How could I get around the fire break issue? I certainly don't want to create a space that is unsafe or not up to code.

oooOOOooooh!  That's what Romex is!  Mainly, it just needs to be cleaned up, and by cleaned up, I mean stapled to the joists instead of just laying across them.

Thanks, man! :beer:



oldog/newtrick said:


> Shane, in your first post you mention attic heat and adding ridge vent, looking at your photos I don't see any soffit vents to allow for air intake into the attic. Ventilation is a 2 part equation. For the ridge vent to exhaust it has to be able to intake air. Sort of a chimney effect developes, hot air rises and draws cooler air in at the soffit, lower portion of the roof. Are there vents at the soffit?



The house does have soffit vents all the way around, but I would argue that it doesn't have enough soffit venting.  That's another project for me. Some of the soffits and trim are rotting, so I need to replace the soffits and trim anyway.  I was wanting to go with a 1.5" continuous soffit vent all the way around the house.  Currently, it has 3X6 oval shaped vents about every 6-8 feet.


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## havasu

Can I ask to see a picture of your 3x6 oval soffit vent?


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## shane2943

No, you may not! Those are personal and private! 


(I'll take a pic when I get home.  )


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## oldognewtrick

shane2943 said:


> No, you may not! Those are personal and private!
> 
> 
> (I'll take a pic when I get home.  )



awww... come on, humor the retired guy. This is the highlight of his day viewing soffit vents


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## shane2943

OK, here's a couple pics of my holes....err...soffit vents:

The vents are actually more like 3X8 instead of 3X6.  But that's neither here nor there because either way, it's not enough venting.





And here's the spacing:


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## shane2943

oldog/newtrick said:


> awww... come on, humor the retired guy. This is the highlight of his day viewing soffit vents



You keep being nice to me and I might show you my duct work.


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## havasu

Thanks for the pics. The reason for asking was that I've been involved with lots of new house construction, and never seen an oval soffit vent. Heck, what a great place to install some 6"x9" speakers!


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## shane2943

Shoot, that's what I got this for (notice the upper corners and the sub at the lower right):





What I NEEED is some decent venting (eventually).


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## oldognewtrick

shane2943 said:


> You keep being nice to me and I might show you my duct work.



uhhh...you really don't need to do that...really.


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## shane2943

Ok, suit yourself.  But your missin out. 

So how would I solve the fire break issue?  That's a pretty important detail, methinks.  I mean, I don't have a habit of burning bonfires in the garage, but who knows what could happen.  Plus, I do eventually want to sell this house (probably not for 10 years yet) and I know it won't sell (nor should it) if there's a serious safety issue there.


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## nealtw

I don't think you have a problem here. you will need the fire stop wall all the way up to the roof. The 2x10s are heavy duty but probably span 16 ft or more so they are close to there weight load limit.When you remove the drywall you will need a couple 1x4s or what have to tie all the 2 x 10s in place, like a catwalk. The garage will get hotter not cooler.
The lack of insulation in ceiling and walls is why it is hot. without the drywall it will be a common hot space.


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## chewmanfoo

How 'bout an update on this project?  Did you rip out the sheet rock?  Can you post pictures?


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## shane2943

Nope.   Haven't done anything with it.  I'll just bear the heat this summer.  Maybe get a shop fan.

I'm putting the house up for sale next March, so I'm focusing on doing other upgrades and repairs around the house, like fixing bad siding, remodeling the master bath, remodeling the kitchen, etc.  I don't want to spend money I wont get back.  You know?  If I were staying here another 5 years or something, I'd likely mess with the garage ventilation.


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## Alejogb

Shane,
Did you end of removing the ceiling? I have the same exact situation you have and I am considering doing it. The point made about the fire thing concerns me but while I have pest control for my house, my main concern is getting bugs living up in the open studs which as of today, is limited by the existing drywall ceiling. Let me know. I need arguments to convince my wife.
She is concerned it will lower the value of our home.


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## joecaption

Alejogb, you really need to go back and add your own post.
Way to confusing trying to keep all the reply's straight.


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