My garage
I spent between $5,000 and $6,000 total adding onto my garage and pouring the patio part of the driveway.
that includes electrical and putting in a used furnace.
and it is sided with plywood not particle board.
I could have built the total square footage old and new all on the ground for less but i didn't have the room.
this is an example of maximizing my area and minimizing my profile.
the upper walls are only 5' tall but the ceiling is framed cathedral and has lots of headroom.
from the street the garage tucks in neatly behind the house and does not dominate the property
this is me upstairs before I filled it with junk
Things are really tight here at my place my yard is 45' wide
I have 8' on the north side of the garage and 3 foot on the back and on the south.
I added 12'x22' to a 22'x22' garage.
I also added a 23' x18' storage/workshop loft with stairs and cathedral cielings (oooh aaah)
as you can see I don't have alot of room to work...most times just enough
here I'm finishing up some cleaning where I went through everythign in the shop
Here is a cheat I came up with. it's an open wooden rack to store axles and stuff over the top of my air conditioning unit
sometimes there's wasted space you can take advantage of with a shelf.
The rack over the ac unit is actually a larger rack I cut down. It had joist hangers and spanned a one-car storage unit and was decked out in plywood.
the car fit under and I had 14'x12'x4' extra storage space out of that unit for things like fenders seats and boxes of stuff and still allowed me to get the car in and out and not dent it up by piling stuff on it
The property already had a waver to get a garage in the first place so I was restricted to 750 square feet maximum foot print.
I wanted to go 4 cars but could only go 3.
I let my neighbor park his pickup next to the garage between mine and his for good will. his yard is skinnier than mine.
I know I could have gotten alot more in a small town away from the city for the same money but my folks and brothers are here.
Also I was a trucker when I bought the place. if I was gone 3 months at a time like I was with being out in the country... I would have been cleaned out by meth heads and drunks the first year. here I have good neighbors and they watch each other.
first day moving in they came over and said "who are you? who else is coming or should be here? and I don't care what you do on your property so don't be worrying about what I do on mine and we'll get along just fine".
I shook their hands and said hello neighbors I think we'll be alright.