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Everyone knows how miserable it can be trying to work on your car in the middle of the driveway under the hot sun in the summer or having to put down your tools as the weather becomes nasty in the winter. In this multi-part article we are going to cronical the planning and building of a home garage and workshop.

Part 1: Introduction

The project that we are going to follow here is part of a residence therefore may be a little more refined then a typical shop. Who's spouse and/or neighbors would appreciate a race shop in their back yard? Certainly none that I know!

Lets begin by looking at the present landscape and area that we have to work with. This image was taken from Maps.Google.com.

In this image you can see the layout of the property along with the two neighboring properties. The driveway leads up to the house and terminates at a small two car garage.

In this image you can see where the new garage will be located. It will not be attached to the present house/garage but will be designed to integrate into the property without being an eyesore. On the side of the building will be a protected car port for even more storage and work room.

The design calls for the first floor to have 3 main garage bays along with room for a workshop along the back. A fourth garage door was added to the workshop space to easily move large items in and out of the shop. The room under the stairs (heading to the second floor) will be sectioned off to hold the garage's utilities. The first floor will feature a 12' high ceiling and there will be a second floor that will primarily be used for storage.

The entire building will be fitted with electrical outlets including multiple 20amp circuits, (2) ceiling mounted 220v outlets for lifts, and a single 220v wall mounted outlet for a welder. It will also feature a sub floor heating system and hot/cold water. Once its completed, we will run air lines through out the building to a compressor so that we can take advantage of all the air powered tools in our tool box.

The first part of the build was to sit down with an architect and go over the design. We found the basic design for the garage online and was even able to download the plans for a small price. This was a good starting point. We then worked with the architect to modify the plans to meet our requirements. This process took a couple of months from start to finish.

Once the plans were complete, we needed to submit them to the town and obtain work permits. During this time we went ahead an hired a contractor for the project.

In the next article we will break ground and see the beginning of the garage and workshop.