Garage Addition
Well my last two vacations were relaxing and/or fun (Mexico/Walt Disney World) so I figured I’d do some work on this one. That is before the rain and storms!
I acquired a house which has an unusable garage. First off, the garage is too narrow, only 18 feet wide. It’s also built so close to a retaining wall that it makes using it pretty much out of the question, unless I buy a clown car!
So, I’m basically going to add an attached garage to the house and in the process expand and free up the old garage for play area for the kids.
The first step in a project like this is planning. But before I could even do that, I needed some details about where exactly my property lines were and where any easements and utility lines may be located.
My first call was to Global Precision Survey. They located my property pins so that I knew where I can build and where I can’t Just so you all know, in most cases, your property line is NOT the street. In fact, my property line is about 10 feet off the street in question.
Old Garage and Retaining Wall
Then, there are setbacks. For a side project like mine, the setback is 15 feet. Therefore, anything I want to build on this particular side of the house was going to have to be 25 feet off the road. This then gave me some idea on how to proceed.
Next, I loaded up my house design program, Chief Architect, to start planning how I was going to do this. I wanted my garage to be attached to the old house in some way insead of free-standing. Because of the 25 foot resctriction, I had to shift my garage down to the corner of my existing house. Also, because a retaining wall is involved, I was going to need a concrete stem wall to hold the new area of fill.
The enclosed plan shows in detail how it’s all going to work.
Plan for Garage Expansion
My brother-in-law and I plan on doing much of the work. I’ll have additional blogs and videos to present as the work progresses!