I already know it's going to be too small

[amkluttz]

Hello All!

My wife and I are at a point where we are considering a garage addition to our house plus some usable living space above the garage. The plan right now is to attach the garage off of our laundry room and build a 1.5 story using attic trusses. What we are trying to accomplish is:

1. A place to park 2 cars and 1 motorcycle
2. Some shop/work space for myself
3. A couple of bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs

What we've come up with is a 26' deep by 30' long usable garage space built around our current laundry room exit door. This will mean that the upstairs length will be closer to 40' built over the current house. The problem I keep running in to is that with this layout planner I'm using I can already see that I'm out of space. I have measured everything in my current shop space and drawn it to scale in the new space. I would like to tinker, do general car maintenance, metal and wood work out of this space. Our budget just will not allow us to go any bigger. We've gotten quotes ranging from $50,000 to $90,000. The other problem I'm running in to is stair spacing as the new stairs will have to be above the existing stairs that enter our laundry room door.

We are in the planning and preparing our budget stages right now. If you have any suggestions or can see where I've made mistakes feel free to let me know. I'm including pictures of our current layout, the empty shell, and hopefully what will fit in the garage. Everything in the last picture is all of the cabinets, tables, work surfaces and toolboxes that I have pigeonholed in my 12x22 single car.

-Andy

 

[a52-830]

move the door out of the back of the garage to allow you to put a sink backed against the bathroom wall.

what is going on under the stairs across from the bathroom? is that also the basement stairs? can it be configured to allow access from the garage directly into the basement?

how tall is the ceiling in the garage?

is there a reason you can't extend the single bay further back, making a sort of L shaped garage? you can avoid a weird shaped upstairs by just putting a roof over that part, and not carrying the footprint up to the second floor. if you think that might be an option to consider for later, you can likely get them to frame the wall with a header there so you could pour a slab outside later and add an addition without major structural work on the existing house.

 

[amkluttz]

move the door out of the back of the garage to allow you to put a sink backed against the bathroom wall.

what is going on under the stairs across from the bathroom? is that also the basement stairs? can it be configured to allow access from the garage directly into the basement?

how tall is the ceiling in the garage?

is there a reason you can't extend the single bay further back, making a sort of L shaped garage? you can avoid a weird shaped upstairs by just putting a roof over that part, and not carrying the footprint up to the second floor. if you think that might be an option to consider for later, you can likely get them to frame the wall with a header there so you could pour a slab outside later and add an addition without major structural work on the existing house.

The back door is there because it leads on to the back patio. I forgot to add the patio to my drawings. That patio also leads to the back entrance in to the house. I like your thinking about the sink; I'll have to look in to that.

There is no basement. That door that I'm encasing inside the garage (as the entrance in to the house from the garage) has a set of existing stairs leading up to it. Currently floor level is about 3' off the grade at that point. With changing the grade for the garage it should be around 2'. If it looks like a set of stairs on top of a set of stairs it is. We are attaching this to the house so we can put the stairs leading from our laundry room to the upstairs bedrooms. It would be much cheaper if we didn't want to do this. I think these stairs are going to be a major design flaw. The only other opening to place the stairs is between the bathroom and the side door; that takes a ton of depth out of that garage bay.

The garage ceiling should be somewhere between 9.5' and 10.5'. I don't really have a choice here as I have to work with the grade and making sure floor of the upstairs room clears the ceiling in the current house.

That's a great observation for future expansion. Not something I would have thought of. Thanks!

-Andy

 

[mitusa]

TWSS

 

[astroracer]

I will recommend moving the big garage door a couple of feet (at least) off the wall. Looking at your last pic you can see there is no room to comfortably open a car door. You may want to consider down sizing the doors a bit to make room around the cars.
I like to keep the overhead doors at least 4' off the walls just to provide walking, working and storage room around a parked vehicle.
Mark

 

[Chevy-SS]

I recently built 36x44 addition with 30x30 garage. I have workbench, shelving on both sides and a 4-post lift. All I can say is - it's tight. I have two vehicles (car & truck) but usually keep one vehicle outside.

I don't think your picture is realistic. I just don't see how you can squeeze a car & truck on one side, and then have large area for motorcycle on other side.

IMHO your layout is pretty good if you can live with just having one car/truck in the garage, and then you would have a nice open space for all other stuff.

Build it as BIG as freakin' possible. There are posts on here ALL the time (like every hour) about guys wishing they had built bigger.

Good luck. Have fun. And my one other tip is - be prepared to spend more than you budget. I thought my addition would cost ~$100K and it ended up close to $250k. Really killed my bank account. So watch out for that.

-

 

[mike93lx]

Good luck. Have fun. And my one other tip is - be prepared to spend more than you budget. I thought my addition would cost ~$100K and it ended up close to $250k. Really killed my bank account. So watch out for that.

-

You either did a terrible job planning or can't say no to upgrades. Either way, that is an obscene overrun that most people should not have to be prepared for.

 

[amkluttz]

I don't think your picture is realistic. I just don't see how you can squeeze a car & truck on one side, and then have large area for motorcycle on other side.

IMHO your layout is pretty good if you can live with just having one car/truck in the garage, and then you would have a nice open space for all other stuff.

Even with placing a 18' door instead of a 16' door it seems to place the vehicles too close together. I would prefer to have 3 individual doors as I believe it looks better (more symmetrical) but I can't seem to fit 3 9' wide doors. I could go to 8' wide doors and they space out a little better. I like the idea of the 18' door simply because I pull trailers sometimes and it would be nice to be able to work on them on a concrete surface by backing in to the garage. My driveway is gravel.

To be honest the truck may end up staying outside but I would like the ability to place it (or any other vehicle) inside in case of hail or in case I've just washed it and want to keep it clean for a couple of days. I could live with it being tight for those reasons.

I will recommend moving the big garage door a couple of feet (at least) off the wall. Looking at your last pic you can see there is no room to comfortably open a car door. You may want to consider down sizing the doors a bit to make room around the cars.
I like to keep the overhead doors at least 4' off the walls just to provide walking, working and storage room around a parked vehicle.
Mark

You're right. Since everything is roughly scaled I was able to go in to my program and measure the distance between the truck and car doors which came out to 2.5'. That certainly isn't enough. I always said when I built a garage I wanted to be able to open the doors on my vehicles, not just pull them in. An 18' door just doesn't seem to accommodate my 2 vehicles very well. How in the world do people fit 2 vehicles inside a 16' door?

 

[amkluttz]

I fiddled around with the doors a bit by moving the 8' garage door closer to the exterior wall. My plan is that this will be a work area and parking space for my motorcycle so I'm not overly worried about the door only being 18" from the corner. This allows the big door to be placed a little more central and more room around the cars. If I really wanted to try to squeeze 3 doors in I could put a 10' wide door in the center and 2 8' wide doors on either side.

I edited the picture to label a few things hopefully making it easier to read. I'm also adding a picture of the side of the house I'm looking at adding on to. I did forget about my crawl space door and since this it my only entrance to the crawl space I will need to keep it clear. As far as the back door I'd like to keep it exiting to the patio but I realized I could move the cabinet that's against that bathroom wall and place a sink there. My dad is a plumber and I have a crawl space so a lot is possible here.

As a side note: In the picture to the bottom left is a stake with an orange flag. I believe that was my 24' stake from the edge of the patio which should give you some idea how deep the garage will be.

-Andy

 

[Kevin54]

Even with placing a 18' door instead of a 16' door it seems to place the vehicles too close together. I would prefer to have 3 individual doors as I believe it looks better (more symmetrical) but I can't seem to fit 3 9' wide doors. I could go to 8' wide doors and they space out a little better. I like the idea of the 18' door simply because I pull trailers sometimes and it would be nice to be able to work on them on a concrete surface by backing in to the garage. My driveway is gravel.

To be honest the truck may end up staying outside but I would like the ability to place it (or any other vehicle) inside in case of hail or in case I've just washed it and want to keep it clean for a couple of days. I could live with it being tight for those reasons.



You're right. Since everything is roughly scaled I was able to go in to my program and measure the distance between the truck and car doors which came out to 2.5'. That certainly isn't enough. I always said when I built a garage I wanted to be able to open the doors on my vehicles, not just pull them in. An 18' door just doesn't seem to accommodate my 2 vehicles very well. How in the world do people fit 2 vehicles inside a 16' door?

DO NOT go with 8' doors. They are too narrow except for running a garden tractor through them. I had 9' doors on my original garage, and the mirrors on my Dodge Ram only had inches between the mirrors and the door jambs.

And you really don't want to try and squeeze three doors on the front as it just won't look right. There will be virtually no space between the garage doors.

Is there any possible way that you can go out another few feet in the width of the garage? Say to possibly 36'? My garage addition is 28', and it fits two cars in there very comfortably and allows me to open the doors. My original garage is 36' wide and it allows me to fit three cars in comfortably with room to open the doors and room to walk around. So if you could go at least another 6' on your width, then have a 16' door and a 10' door, I think you would be very well pleased with the size. 6' isn't much, but in terms of garage space is quite a bit. And with that, you're only looking at a few hundred dollars more in materials.

And I'm with A52......move your walk in door over a few feet to accommodate a sink. You can tie in to your current patio by pouring a small slab and pinning the two together. I'd give anything to have a sink in my garage.

Good luck on the build, and Welcome to Garage Journal. When you break ground, be sure to start a build thread in the Gallery to document things.

 

[Chevy-SS]

You either did a terrible job planning or can't say no to upgrades. Either way, that is an obscene overrun that most people should not have to be prepared for.

Your assumption is correct - I did a LOT of upgrading. But once I got started, I saw all kinds of unplanned things that were simply easier to attack while the whole mess was underway, plus I had contractors bailing on me, thus I got stuck trying to hire new guys in a hurry, which will always cost more................

 

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

What are things you don't want to hear on a first date?