My Cramped Three Car Garage

[niferous]

I live in suburbia Houston and have a 21' x 31' three car garage with a 16' x 31' car port in front. I plan to eventually enclose the car port and expand the garage but I've got twins due any day now so I'm not sure how much time and money I'll have for that. I just completely reorganized everything and will try to get some more photos tomorrow but for now I'll just post up my desk and one photo I took last week. I work from home and decided I needed peace and quiet so I made this out of some 1-1/4" square tubing I had and decked it with 1/8" aluminum sheeting. I have plans to make a little tray for my laptop and docking station that will also clean up those cords. But I probably won't have that done until this weekend.

I've got three motorcycles, a 1986 K5 Blazer, a 1984 Toyota FJ60, a 2001 Dodge 2500, and a 2015 Ford F350 that all park here. Lots of toys and not enough room. All that plus that big fab table and everything else makes it a tight fit. Right now I've got the K5 outside but plan on moving it back in the garage this weekend.

 

[niferous]

I made some progress last night and this afternoon. A few weeks ago I couldn't even get to this corner and now I can park three motorcycles in it and move around.

As you can see above and here it still looks very cluttered but I need to organize the shelves. To get everything where I could move around I mostly just put things in about the place they will go so that I can take my time organizing them. I need to add just a little more light in that corner.

I wanted a better chair an the passenger seat in my Land Cruiser was in near perfect condition so I welded up a frame and replaced the smaller base on the stool I had. It sits a little taller too which is good since my desk is at 48".

 

[davegonz]

Nice 60 series.

 

[niferous]

Nice 60 series.

Thanks! It's a 1984 FJ60. I've got an Old Man Emu lift for it and a factory 4-speed with a Fairey overdrive unit ready to go in it. Just need to get my air compressor up an running so I can paint the front axle and use an air hammer to finish removing the leaf springs.

 

[niferous]

I decided that the 10' fab table was just too big for my garage so I took it out and now have plenty of room for my motorcycles and my K5 Blazer. I'm drawing up some plans right now to expand the garage and will post those in a bit. I pretty much just need to organize my shelving now.

 

[niferous]

Here are some basic drawings of what I'd like to do.

Currently my three car garage is setup like this:


It has a nice sized carport in front of the garage that is under the same roof as the garage. On the side of the carport is a little breezeway that leads to a side door for our house and entryway.

This is what I'm looking at doing.


Basically I'd tear down the walls between the entryway and the carport as well as the laundry room and the garage. Also I'd add four feet to the side of the garage in my backyard and then basically enclose the carport so that the current garage and carport can become one big garage. Of course there are some load bearing walls here being taken down so support beams will have to be put in place. However the only change to the roof line is in the backyard and could probably be accomplished fairly easily. Some plumbing fixtures would have to be moved in the current laundry/utility room but that's it for plumbing.

I'm in the county so I don't have to worry about permits or inspectors but I do have an HOA. I spoke to our guy on the HOA board who is over additions and architecture though and he said he's seen this done on a few other houses in our neighborhood and that he'd approve it. He actually suggested tearing off the roof and going with a higher ceiling in the garage to accommodate a lift and adding a second floor to the garage.

I wanted to get everyone's opinion and also ask do you think that adding that second level would say, double the cost? I think ultimately I'll have to get it quoted both ways and see. No idea how much this could cost though so that's the big question. I'm not sure if it's going to cost $30k or $75k.