Buying a new house for the garage space ...

Hell, I have a nice house and an oversized 3-car garage . . . and I find myself looking at houses just to get a bigger garage!

 

My wife and I raised our two kids in a nice but smalls home that had a detached 24X42 shop. We saved for 25 years to have the place we have now. It started as a dream (this is what I/we want) and we never lost sight of the goal. Now she has a nice 3 bedroom 2500 sq ft house, 3 car attached, deck/gazebo with full finished ba*****t and inground pool, and I have a 40X80 2 story shop sitting on 5 acres out in the country. FULLY PAID FOR. Life is great, but it's even better if you have a plan and stick to it.

Frank

 

Here is how to work this, you start by lining up a trailer and a car or two with plenty of space between them, then after she is somewhat use to seeing that, bring in a third car, once again leaving plenty of space between it and car number two. Then you can start to slide in more cars every so often by placing them in between the other existing cars. One day you will have brought in as many as six. But, she won't really catch on to what you are doing. Whereas if you brought in six all at once, well then, you would be a canidate to recieve to the "big sigh" from her. Gary 4T950 Chevy Guy

 

Just in the process of building a new house with this outbuilding/shop. 26 X 50 with 220 power. Heated and air-conditioned. The siding's on it now. We move in at the end of the month. The house has its own 2-car oversized garage.



As you can see, I built the garage first. That's the house foundation on the left.

 

I have an 8(?) car garage. Someday i may add a house to it. Gets cold spending the nite in it all the time.

 

Yep, me and the wifie are cashin in on the housing market and going to the outskirts where prices are lower and the garages are bigger...Ideally I wanna big detached three car (read: stuff 4 cars in the space, though I wont do that...gotta have the benches and workspace....especially for my big old sleds) that most likly wont happen and I'll have to settle with a attached three car....thats the only problem with the military life....you move around so much it makes it hard for customization of the home due to having to sell it in a few years....

heck I told my wife.....I dont care what the house looks like....its yours, I just sleep there, but the garage is OFF LIMITS (there was hell to pay once when I came home from deployment and half my garage was full of furniture....I drug it all in the driveway, and reinformed her of the deal we made and told her she best find another home for the **** that was in the garage...)

 

Don't forget the outdoor stuff. LEVEL driveway, LONG driveway, street parking, street traffic, rear yard access. I hate my short (20') driveway on a slope! My house is on the street that feeds the neighborhood, too busy to load and unload the car trailer. Good luck in your search.

Craig

 

I just built a new house on 2.5 acres just for the sole purpose to have a seperate shop for my race cars/hotrods. I was tired of working out of a 24 x 40 garage that had my daily drivers parked inside. Everytime I needed to make a mess(paint, sand, weld) I had to move cars outside or move them to get my project out.

I ended up building a 2,600 sq. ft house with a full exposure so I could build a two story garage. The main garage is 33' W x 28' deep that is on the main level of the house. My shop is below (ba*****t level) that is the same size. We used Flex-core beams set on the foundation walls that are 10" wide then you pour a 4" cap on top of that to create the main garage floor. It was way cheaper doing it this way than building a seperate 24'x 24' garage. It would have costed me $5,000 just to fill the garage foundation with gravel to make grade. For an additional $5,000 , they just dig it out and make it usable space. Its almost bomb proof, plus its a great place to go in case of tornados....

 

I bought my house 10years ago. The house had to be gutted, and rebuilt. The 2car attached garage, and the 30x50x12 shop were in move in condition. They were the only reason I bought the house.

3 years ago I bought the 12.5acres that I wanted to build my new house on.
I built the shop first. 60x100x12 with a 20x100 shed roof on the back for covered storage. Not what John Q Public would do. It makes me happy.

 

Yea I was lucky my wife let me build the shop first. Now can you believe she wants me concentrate on finishing the house. Thats hard to do with a new shop and some new tool, and I have to work on a house...

 

When the little lady and I moved to atlanta 90% of the house in our price range we nixed because they didn't have a 2 car garage. Now we are thinking about buying a smaller/older bungalow like the wife has always wanted in the next couple of years. now I'm fine without having a garage as long as we have atleat a level .5 acres for me to build a min of 30X30 building.

I know where your coming from.