Hot Rods Considering living in an old service station....

Man, be able to open them big barn doors on a cool fall day and let breeze blow through, but then I wouldn't get much done, but how nice would that be.

 

Exactly. Keep a low profile first.

 

I wouldn't
I just watched the Blob and a guy got killed in a service station
Steve Martin got shot at in one also

 

Luckily I have a friend who removes that stuff for a living, so hopefully he can help with that.

 

That's it ,I'm out , I don't need no stinkin blob ruining my place or killing somebody, thanks you just saved me a lot of trouble.

 

Thanks for all the info and laughs, I never thought such a simple question could get this much response. You guys are great, I don't care what Ryan says about you. BigO (Michael)

 

Ok enough info... Remember "CHANGE IS OPPORTUNITY" so move in already!

 

Be sure to check for current rules. The EPA is getting rid of lots of unnecessary, overbearing rules.

 

I could just get a Airstream and park it out front to live in.... There, problem solved.

 

Gas station with living quarters.
Bought it in 1985. Pumped gas till I was forced to close.
Lived there full time.
Still my main address and where all my projects are.

I stole the pic of the beautiful truck from Oldbill51.

 

Yeah, but that's the Movies man!! Jump in, ,don't be afraid! Besides, just keep a Fire Extinguisher handy and you can freeze the Bastard Blob!!

 

You the man.

 

Hahaha.

 

all this talk about a gas station... well it doesn't have to be a gas station, just a place where you can drive cars in. the key to doing this successfully is having a landlord that does not care, or really just doesn't pay attention. the second secret is to live in a motorhome inside. there you have all your living stuff, and can go park down the street when anyone official stops by and there is nothing inside to say you live there.

I moved into an industrial park 20 something years ago. I did it with a motorhome because I was going to paint in there once in a while, and I could just sleep outside on those nights. about 3 months after that they found a guy living there with his wife and kids building motorcycles. they tossed him out and inspected the whole complex and tossed a few other guys out as well. he must have built a whole 2 story house in there with all the building materials he had in the dumpster outside.

another bonus to the motorhome idea is when you leave you have something of value to sell rather than leaving whatever you built for the next guy.

 

The wife and i are trying to down size and have been giving that sort of thing a look see. Old drug store in a small town down from us. Has small apartment up stairs and a huge lower half on the street. The alley behind i think can work for a large garage door. Cars on bottom us on top. See what the city fathers will say on this one. We have been shot down on a couple others already. Seems us hot Rodders aren’t their type.

 

The above idea with a motor home sounds good, but my question is: How do you know when the man is coming around to check things out so you can park elsewhere till he has come and gone?

 

DOM, You're working on the thing. You don't think those gov't guys are going to work in the evening, on their own time, do you?

 

I'm going to look for something like that in the future. I was looking around here years ago in "old" towns, some type of shop with living space above, inside or next to, but everything was either way too much or in a bad area. I really want the fabled "old small town" and live in a defunct gas station, fire station, movie theater, super market, warehouse, old business.....with my girlfriend loving all those places.

I say go for it!!!.

 

Sometimes you can live on the edge of legal for a long time without any issues, then one day, some city employee with a grudge goes after you while he is trying to make a name for himself. One ass can make your life pretty miserable even if your legal, until you can find a way to force him to back off. If your border line, or just off legal, your screwed.

Nothing is worse then a bureaucratic on a power trip, with a mission.

I own a little over a half acre property with a house, that is zoned for business on the end of the street. It is the only business property on the entire street, from one end to the other (about 30 blocks long). I run my business here, and also live here. I have several cars parked on the side grass covered lot. About every 5 or 6 years we get a new city inspector in town, and he runs around town handing out tickets to everyone with cars parked on the grass (there is a city ordnance against privet property owners parking cars on the grass). I know it will be only a matter of time before the new guy shows up at my place.

I tell them that this is a business and those are customer's cars (its legal for businesses to park cars on the grass, even unlicensed vehicles). They tell me I can't run a business in a residential zone. I tell them this is a business property, but they want to argue. Then they want to see my business license. I tell them the business has been running for 25 years, long before a business license was required (existing businesses were grandfathered in from having to meet many of the additional business requirements). It usually takes a few days before they call and are apologetic, but I've had one that called OSHA and all the other business monitoring organizations. With no employees, I'm exempt from many of them as well, but that one ass made my life a bit rough for a while, but I'm still here, and he is gone. Gene

 

Better than a van down by the river!

Closing on an 11,500 ft covered shop at the end of this month. 40x80 enclosed. Might live in it.

Dave

 

A guy here lived with his wife in the upstairs of his automatic transmission rebuilding business and never got caught. When he retired he bought a $800,000 house,. I recommend rebuilding automatic transmissions as a path to wealth.

 

Our house is a 1967 house trailer that was built on to. And it needs too much work. and is infested with termites. We own a 1600 sq ft cement block building that was a country store & gas station and has a 30 x30 red iron & metal shop attached. its located right next to our so called house. So we have decided rather than waste money on a money pit to go ahead and convert the store building into a home. No zoneing or building permits required. The store building already has a bathroom. We have decided to remodel everything handicap accessable. We will tear down the money pit worthless improvement built on house trailer. There was gas tanks here. However they where above ground and belonged to the Sinclair dealer and they removed them. No tanks & pumps here or ground contamination and both of our wells have good clean potable water.There is a footing & block wall where the tanks was. I filled it with soil & compost and grow a garden there. I know a guy that bought a small former gas station. He built a house on the top of it and had it overhang to get more So Ft. It was a flat roof building to start with. I see videos of abandoned stations along route 66. Those might be good cantidates for homes?

 

Can't really think of many cons. Move in, fix/change things at your leisure, park your ride inside (that's my favorite one), enjoy the space, etc. If I were single, I could do the exact thing. Good luck, Bud.

 

We are heading to El Mirage sometime this year and always stop in Winslow. We will certainly check out Williams, too. It's so great to see people preserve these landmarks. There were many on old Rte. 66 back in thr day.

 

I tried to find a Google image of the place my wife and I were trying to buy back in 1988 with my VA loan; it was a stone built service station with a detached 2 car garage that had a one room apartment above it. The station building itself had living quarters behind and above the "office" section. It's long gone now, but would have been my dream home. There -might- have still been tanks in the ground at that time, because the "island" where the pumps stood was still there.

 

When I was stationed in England, I was able to rent a small garage (big enough to get my race Mini in and work on) and a couple of smaller garages to store cars and parts in. I rented these from MWR (Moral, Wellfare, Recreation) for not a lot of money. When the base was closing in 1994 I had to give up my garages so they could be turned back to the British government. I contacted the British land office and was able to get a good sized garage with 3 big bays in the same area. Then I was able to get a HUGE (could have put 50+ cars in there) warehouse across the street. It had electricity but no water (building had been winterized) so I had buckets of water for flushing the toilets. After the wife and son came back to the States, I stayed for a month to finish up business and get a container ready to ship with my cars, parts and tools. I made a bedroom out of one of the offices and lived there for a month. It was great. I went to the barracks on base for showers. If I had been single, I may have stayed there. I was paying equivalent about $100 a month for rent.

A long story just to say I would go for it.
Remember Robert Ulrich in that TV show where he pulled his T-Bird into his warehouse/apartment? I have always wanted to do something like that. But, wives have a way of keeping us from having any fun. Lol!

 

Not to go off topic too much, but it's always struck me as odd that people who had a carport attached to their house often enclosed it and used it as another room.... then built a separate garage in some cases..... I can probably list fifty or more examples within walking distance of my own place. I'd kick a blind man's dog for a decent carport.....

 

A friend of mine turned his carport/patio into a paint booth.

 

If you are ever in Callahan ,Florida stop by Alan Pope's racing transmission's and torque convertors and see what he and his wife did to the old building they bought. One side is his business and the other side is the coolest apartment you have ever seen.
It is right on main street and you would never know it was anything but a business.