I'm dusting this thread off and looking for more input. I am planning to talk with my builder starting next week, so I'm hoping to get this project moving soon. I am planning on a 32x40, but the cost might force me to shrink that some.
I am planning to add storage on the second floor, and, again depending on cost, I might go with a living space on the second floor. In either case, I would like to add a staircase to make it easy to use the second floor space. Unfortunately, I think I have to give up a lot of floor space to make that work. At the moment, I'm thinking something like this. However, I'm not sure what to do with the space under the stairs. Any suggestions on placement or what to do with the space under the stairs? Maybe a work table?
Under the stairs can be for hvac water heater , air compressor etc
We just got our garage dried in .
And it’s been a lot more expensive than we expected but the lumber prices tripled right as we were getting started
We designed ours to blend in with the house . And we had to design it to fit on the lot setbacks , and we had to get a zoning variance to reduce the rear setback from 35 to 25 feet ,
And our garage is three bays , with one bay and then a 25 degree angle and the other two bays , we had to do that to get it to fit on the lot and also so the garage wouldn’t look larger than the house .
The house is a contemporary built in 1970 with lots of angles and huge windows etc, so the angle in the garage really helps blend in .
We did 10.5 garage and 9 foot ceiling in the second floor .
We designed a breezeway between the
House and garage, we didn’t want to excavate right next to the house and disturb the oddball foundation of the house And the city requires a “substantial “ roof connecting the house and garage , a detached garage can only be 25% the footprint of the house so the garage has to be attached with a substantial roof to be considered attached .
It’s been a real slog , took 14 months from breaking ground to dried in , and that was using a general contractor, we will be finishing the inside and the upstairs apartment ourselves .
Concrete lead times were six weeks and if it rains on your appointment day and the crew can’t pour it , you’re back to the bottom of the six week wait list .
We did four pours , footings , foundation walls ( site has a 8 foot elevation change from the front of the garage to the back) floor slab , and breezeway sidewalk between garage and house , and three of the four pours , it rained .
So that added 18 weeks of waiting , doing nothing .
Then the place that built the roof trusses , caught on fire the day before they scheduled to deliver them . So that added several more weeks , of my upstairs subfloor getting rained on.
We drilled a bunch of holes in the floor so the pooled water could drain into the garage bay below .
And don’t let the architect or whoever draws the plans use any support poles in the garage .
We finally fired our architect because he simply refused to listen to us telling him over and over that there would NOT be any poles in my garage .
Every print he drew had poles in it.
