Planning the shop
At my first house I started with fixing up the falling over 2 car garage. By the time I moved to the new house I had a heated 4 car garage with a mid rise lift. While I was content with what I had and intended to stay there another 5 years my life changed in a big way with Charlotte. Our decision to move in together was the real catalyst to make a move. Moving to the new house was primary motivated by wanting more space in every conceivable way.
Having a unique set of requirements (high speed internet mandatory, existing (or room for a) shop, natural gas a big plus, ideally water/sewer, and near a lake) meant houses were few and far between. We looked into building but decided against it pretty quickly. We looked at a handful of houses but they were all either at the top of the budget or just were not viable. We expanded the search area just a bit and stumbled into the perfect place. It ticked all of the requirements, was within the budget, and as a bonus it had a pool and hot tub too!
It had a generous 2 car attached garage (20*26) and an even more generous 2 car detached garage (20*30). I knew I wanted to have a full size lift in a dedicated bay so my original plan was to double the detached garage by adding another 20*30 section to it to end up with a 40*30 detached garage. This section would have a full size 2 post hoist.
I was almost certain adding on to the existing garage was the direction I was going to go but I thought I’d check into the maximum size building I could fit (by both building code and aesthetics) to compare. I decided a 40*50 building would be the largest that could work. I drew up plans for that as well opting for a post frame design over stick built due to the size (cost).
To my surprise after receiving bids it was actually cheaper to tear down the existing garage and start over with a post frame “pole barn” building. You wouldn’t think so but a 40*50 building is nearly twice the size of a 40*30. I was still hesitant to move forward with the 40*50 building due to concerns about aesthetics but Charlotte encouraged me to go that direction as it is what I really wanted.
