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If a garage is needed and a potential house having a great one might tickle your fancies, but if not, and you can live with building a new "adequate" one, whilst the wife, kids, your commute time, and your ROI is happy, then go for it. If the garage is your utmost priority, then this house is...

CMU can be used for multiple story bearing wall construction. Depending on the design, you may have pilasters and use of wider blocks, like 10" and 12", LOTS of vertical rebar and bond beams. Note that "H block" shapes were really invented to speed up labor, since they make it easier to place...

If you look at the International Residential Code M1602.2, return air should be: - 10 feet away from combustion appliances or draft hoods - not pulled from kitchens. When you block it off, you will have to get that CFM from somewhere else. Usually, you can provide more CFM available opening...

1280SF 3-stall garage for $64K, vanilla spec, no specifics on insulation, roof framing, style, and everything else JeffIvers and Dieselman bring up, seems a bit high for middle America. 3' concrete kneewalls will push your $$ higher though. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY (no matter how many...

Since this house was bastardized with multiple additions and considering it's age, is it safe to assume there are no roof trusses? You have a gable spanning 27' wide on the skinny end and the 34'-6" wide gable may have been built over an existing roof if that masonry wall used to be the...

You don't have a structural ridge beam, you have a ridge board which just makes it easier to place the rafters. And it should extend to at least the cut angle of the rafters, so he coulda used a 1x8 or 10. You are missing the collar beams (ties). Unless he used metal straps on top of the...

Usually a builder doing base or mid-level homes has around 4 or 5 house plans that they build and are efficient with them from doing them so often. So when you have "custom" needs, they can alter their plans to account for them, but mostly the main bones are there (spans, roof layout...

If you plan on a ceiling with blow-in later, the rigid board won't do much at that point. It is very difficult to cut the boards around all the web chords and glue the long edges together to completely seal it off (tape don't last). So you'll realistically have a lot of leakage, which means...

I think what you are calling the header is the top plate of your new walls. Not only is it difficult to build the wall on the floor and lift it up past the angle, but concrete or joists may not be perfect so a 1/4" here and there may make life difficult. So usually basement walls are either...

This portion of the main house is what the garage should basically imitate. With the clipped main gable and gable return on the end, and a dormer above the overhead doors. A majority of your budget will be blown on the aesthetics of the garage shell to match the house, but it looks like your...

Once you flip the single door to the back you'll have the entire back wall for the "shop" next to your future lift. Because you've got a shallow length, you may want to inset the sink, like where the mudroom closet is. You have a basic 3 car garage that is a lot bigger than most spec homes...

Your nails at the overlapped ceiling joists are taking all the tension that a continuous 2x would take. Those ceiling joists keep your walls from spreading out. If you are just haphazardly adding vertical 2x4s to "hold up" the ceiling joists, those will probably be transfering loads down from...

If you have a cracked rafter first thing is to replace or sister it. Then I would check to make sure your walls haven't bowed out at the top and the ridge board hasn't sagged. Check your spans too, there is something causing failure. The "fink truss chords" you installed won't quite work like...

Oh and one more thing I just thought of - your roof rafters are exactly lined up on opposite sides of the ridge board. Then one "half"of the ceiling joist is probably mounted to the rafter and top plate, as it should be. But once you overlap the ceiling joists in the middle, if they are kept...

You might be thinking of structural insulated panels (SIP). The insulation is part of a factory mechanically adhered assembly. Spray foam in itself applied in the field to the underside of a roof deck has no structural value. As others say, for instance "foam block" like used to raise grade...

I see two issues that can cause long-term problems here: the ceiling joists (rafter ties) are two pieces with no bearing support at that split, and you have verticals acting like king posts (though I think they don't go all the way to the ridge). So remove the verticals as they might be...

Just to circle back on the "dig-out" or "fill-in" convo, usually with a short driveway you want to set the top of garage slab a bit higher than the street, curb, or sidewalk based on a slope you are comfortable with (say 2%, or 8%, or varied slope for a portion to park level near garage) working...

Maybe you're talking about building it on your main lot next to the house, I'm really not sure, a lot of pics of the creek. How about a sketch with what you are proposing on the satellite image?

From your first post, my answer on whether to "dig-in" vs "raise grade" would depend on the elevation you need the drive access to be. Of course in-fill brings more difficulties, as does water and loads from a partial dug "basement." Now looking at your additional posts and descriptions, it...

Not sure where your drive is from the satellite pic anyway, but you need maybe 14' extended past the side of the garage to get in a door for the RV? So the confining limit is the leach field, or the setback if you can do this on the other side. Then put an opening on the back wall of the...