For all of the guys that have suffered through a HOT summer day working in your garage, I have been there done that. At the end of the day just the sweat alone can drain your energy. As I aged I get less tolerant of excessive heat. I still love to work in my garage but I had to get cool.
Three years ago I decided to come up with a way to air condition my three car garage. A central system was just way too expensive and overkill. I bought one sheet of 4x8 x ¾ inch outdoor grade plywood and 4- 2x4s and a box of deck screws and some glue. I also bought some primer & grey paint. I talked a buddy that has a table saw to drop by and we went to work. We cut the plywood down to 36 inches and in retrospect that was a mistake. I should have made it wider for my application. I then framed up the 2x4s to make a big box and a small box to hold a window AC unit.
I am not going to get into the exact measurements because every application will be different. Here it is in the back of my El Camino only rotated to be top up. The darker grey is foam insulation tape. That is a 2x4 that is attached to the 2 inch side so the frame is 4 inches deep. I know 2x4 are not really 2x4s but I am not getting into all those fractions. For this article it is a 2x4.
Here is the same door into place in the back door of my garage.
This picture shows the smaller acces door open. I will discuss that later.
This is it from the outside looking in. As you can see it just fits outside of the regular steel door and does not interfere at all with that secure steel door. I can close the steel door from the inside anytime.
Just three screws along the top hold the entire thing hold it in place with the help of gravity. I place a treated and painted piece of 2x4 along the bottom to keep the door off of the concrete. The next step is to slide the AC unit into place. I built a shelf right next to my back door that is at the height of my wrist when my elbow is against my stomach. That allows me to slide the AC unit off of the shelf and right into the opening and back out by myself. That AC unit is had to handle by myself and I nearly dropped it once. As self- professed geezer I now call my neighbor to help me move the AC unit into place. That is a lot safer and in fact it is a piece of cake to slide in or out with two people.
As you can see the shelf I built is typical of my over-engineering. It is also ¾ inch plywood and braced with angle brackets screwed into studs and two 2x4s screwed to the studs. It does not wiggle at all. Typical of any horizontal space in a garage it quickly filled up with stuff.
