laurie71
Well-known member
So this all began almost 3 years ago as I was getting ready to close on my first home. The one thing the property lacked was a garage -- it had a huge barn and an equipment/woodshed that housed firewood, a 1980s vintage Ford 4600 tractor and a riding mower (both included in the sale)... but nowhere to park (or work on) cars. Bummer.
So I started dreaming big! I designed a gigantic carriage-house garage / apartment that would replace the equipment shed. Here’s the rundown:
It was going to look something like this (but with one more bay on the right):
Once we moved in, spring 2014, I was immediately overwhelmed… Since this was the first home I’d owned, I didn’t own any yard maintenance tools (besides the tractor and mower that came with the property). And the third time I went to mow the yard, the mower quit :-/ I had to get a trailer to haul the riding mower in for service and fetch in a rental mower to deal with grass that grew knee high waiting for the mower to be repaired, a weed whacker to trim around the edges of the pond where I couldn’t get in with the mower, a gas powered hedge trimmer to cut back the trees that were blocking the view of the road pulling out of the driveway, rakes, shovels, pruning shears, it didn’t stop!
Long story short: I dived into home ownership with a fully renovated, didn’t need a thing done house (win!) plus a huge barn in need of repair and 7.5 acres of land, lawn, pasture, trees and pond to take care of without the equipment, knowledge or experience to manage all of it (fail!). The first year was pretty rough...
As our first winter here came to a close and we went into spring again, I found I had a better handle on things. We’d bought a weekend retreat on a nearby lake, though, so a lot of our weekends were spent there that year. Keeping up with the yard took most of the daylight hours I wasn’t at work through the week. Not much time for other projects. And that was the summer I realised how much the dream garage would cost… project reclassified from “back burner” to “unrealistic fantasy”...
The following winter, sick of shoveling my truck out of the snow, I started thinking about a more modest garage -- a lot more modest. Just covered parking for two vehicles, at minimum cost and effort. Simple and utilitarian, and it could go in that problem spot at the edge of the property where we had a break in the tree line to restore the privacy of the lot. Something like this would work just fine:
I figured 5 or 10k would get the job done. Only one problem: the reason there’s a break in the tree line is that it’s a low lying spot on the infeed side of our pond. So it’s soft and marshy, and prone to flooding:
So I called a concrete contractor and asked what a 24x24’ foot slab would cost. He informed me that you don’t just pour a slab of concrete to put a garage on; you need a foundation, with footings and all (I knew so little then…) 7k ought to do it, he said… I hadn’t even described the adverse site conditions yet! After I filled him in he said maybe $10k? There goes my budget…
So I called a local construction company that specializes in garages and had them come out and formally quote it. Maybe they could do better?... Nope! Quote came back at $13.5k :-(
I was going to have to DIY it after all…
So I spent a couple days tramping around in the marsh and woods coming up with ideas… reroute this little creek… dig up the driveway and install a larger culvert… bring in dirt to raise the grade… I don’t know what I’m doing, but maybe I can make this work… Then the wife stepped in.
After five minutes of listening to me describe everything I was planning to do she was like, “Good God, that’ll take you two years to get done! [she’s learnt by now that 95% of my time goes to keeping the yard tidy, and everything else gets slowly done in the time that’s left.] Can’t you put the garage somewhere else that won't take so much work?”
God bless her for that, because the number one reason I was trying to get the garage into that spot was because the gap in the ‘privacy fence’ tree line bothers her so much. So we went out and walked around and she pointed, “what about there?” and I had to reject each suggestion -- that’d be on top of the leach field for the septic system… sure, I could replace the equipment shed but then I’d have to build a new equipment shed somewhere… nope, too close to the bank of the pond… no, it’d be an eyesore there… wait, what?
She finally suggested putting it next to the house, in the one place I’d discounted from the get-go because I assumed she wouldn’t want to look out the window and see a garage (as opposed to grass and trees). She said she was fine with that, and it was a far more conducive location to try and build. Sold!
Part of the reason to relocate the garage was so that I could more reasonably tackle a DIY foundation job. Figuring out cost of materials, I realised I’d easily be saving enough to go from a 2-car to a 3-car garage and have room to work on that Fury that’s been languishing in the barn all this time! It wouldn’t cost a whole lot more to go to something like this:
One small problem… that’s ugly as hell. If it was going to sit right beside the house, I didn’t want it to look like a commercial storage rental building. It needed to be more aesthetically pleasing. So I went looking for other options. Bingo, this looks perfect:
Available in kit form from Menards for under 10k:
http://www.menards.com/main/buildin...r-garage-with-extra-gable/p-1444422402427.htm
If I DIY the foundation and slab and get the kit, I may be able to bring it in at 15k, which would be 50% over the original budget but would deliver so much more value. Parking… workshop… additional property value should we ever sell (maybe…) Worth it! Only one problem: I need to learn how to DIY the foundation and slab…
Enter Garage Journal!
So I started dreaming big! I designed a gigantic carriage-house garage / apartment that would replace the equipment shed. Here’s the rundown:
- 1 separately conditioned single-bay to house the project car I was in the process of restoring once it got done;
- an oversize bay to contain the tractor and attachments;
- a 3-bay wing to provide parking for two daily drivers plus a workshop where I could finish the project car;
- An entertaining space / game room / man cave / guest apartment above the whole thing
It was going to look something like this (but with one more bay on the right):
Once we moved in, spring 2014, I was immediately overwhelmed… Since this was the first home I’d owned, I didn’t own any yard maintenance tools (besides the tractor and mower that came with the property). And the third time I went to mow the yard, the mower quit :-/ I had to get a trailer to haul the riding mower in for service and fetch in a rental mower to deal with grass that grew knee high waiting for the mower to be repaired, a weed whacker to trim around the edges of the pond where I couldn’t get in with the mower, a gas powered hedge trimmer to cut back the trees that were blocking the view of the road pulling out of the driveway, rakes, shovels, pruning shears, it didn’t stop!
Long story short: I dived into home ownership with a fully renovated, didn’t need a thing done house (win!) plus a huge barn in need of repair and 7.5 acres of land, lawn, pasture, trees and pond to take care of without the equipment, knowledge or experience to manage all of it (fail!). The first year was pretty rough...
As our first winter here came to a close and we went into spring again, I found I had a better handle on things. We’d bought a weekend retreat on a nearby lake, though, so a lot of our weekends were spent there that year. Keeping up with the yard took most of the daylight hours I wasn’t at work through the week. Not much time for other projects. And that was the summer I realised how much the dream garage would cost… project reclassified from “back burner” to “unrealistic fantasy”...
The following winter, sick of shoveling my truck out of the snow, I started thinking about a more modest garage -- a lot more modest. Just covered parking for two vehicles, at minimum cost and effort. Simple and utilitarian, and it could go in that problem spot at the edge of the property where we had a break in the tree line to restore the privacy of the lot. Something like this would work just fine:
I figured 5 or 10k would get the job done. Only one problem: the reason there’s a break in the tree line is that it’s a low lying spot on the infeed side of our pond. So it’s soft and marshy, and prone to flooding:
So I called a concrete contractor and asked what a 24x24’ foot slab would cost. He informed me that you don’t just pour a slab of concrete to put a garage on; you need a foundation, with footings and all (I knew so little then…) 7k ought to do it, he said… I hadn’t even described the adverse site conditions yet! After I filled him in he said maybe $10k? There goes my budget…
So I called a local construction company that specializes in garages and had them come out and formally quote it. Maybe they could do better?... Nope! Quote came back at $13.5k :-(
I was going to have to DIY it after all… So I spent a couple days tramping around in the marsh and woods coming up with ideas… reroute this little creek… dig up the driveway and install a larger culvert… bring in dirt to raise the grade… I don’t know what I’m doing, but maybe I can make this work… Then the wife stepped in.
After five minutes of listening to me describe everything I was planning to do she was like, “Good God, that’ll take you two years to get done! [she’s learnt by now that 95% of my time goes to keeping the yard tidy, and everything else gets slowly done in the time that’s left.] Can’t you put the garage somewhere else that won't take so much work?”
God bless her for that, because the number one reason I was trying to get the garage into that spot was because the gap in the ‘privacy fence’ tree line bothers her so much. So we went out and walked around and she pointed, “what about there?” and I had to reject each suggestion -- that’d be on top of the leach field for the septic system… sure, I could replace the equipment shed but then I’d have to build a new equipment shed somewhere… nope, too close to the bank of the pond… no, it’d be an eyesore there… wait, what?
She finally suggested putting it next to the house, in the one place I’d discounted from the get-go because I assumed she wouldn’t want to look out the window and see a garage (as opposed to grass and trees). She said she was fine with that, and it was a far more conducive location to try and build. Sold!
Part of the reason to relocate the garage was so that I could more reasonably tackle a DIY foundation job. Figuring out cost of materials, I realised I’d easily be saving enough to go from a 2-car to a 3-car garage and have room to work on that Fury that’s been languishing in the barn all this time! It wouldn’t cost a whole lot more to go to something like this:
One small problem… that’s ugly as hell. If it was going to sit right beside the house, I didn’t want it to look like a commercial storage rental building. It needed to be more aesthetically pleasing. So I went looking for other options. Bingo, this looks perfect:
Available in kit form from Menards for under 10k:
http://www.menards.com/main/buildin...r-garage-with-extra-gable/p-1444422402427.htm
If I DIY the foundation and slab and get the kit, I may be able to bring it in at 15k, which would be 50% over the original budget but would deliver so much more value. Parking… workshop… additional property value should we ever sell (maybe…) Worth it! Only one problem: I need to learn how to DIY the foundation and slab…
Enter Garage Journal!
Last edited:
