Carriage house inspired garage

When we first bought our house, the only garage was a one car garage just big enough for my husbands 1928 Model A Sedan. My husband is into old cars and has a few of them on top of our modern every day cars, so one very small, one car garage was not an option for us. Especially because at our first house the shop was actually bigger than the house and we had grown very accustomed to that.

Our yard had a sunken portion in the back that had once held a garden that was now overgrown and dead. The size of that portion of the yard was perfect for a garage. So my husband got to work ripping out the existing bushes and one very large pine tree that were right in the way.

 

 

He then had to haul in 75 yards of dirt to fill in the area and bring it up to the level of the rest of the yard. He then had to haul in 10 yards of gravel for the base of the concrete. This portion of the project alone took an extremely long time as he did this all on his one. Picking up one truckload of dirt at a time.

 

 

The next step was prepping for and then pouring concrete. We have a friend that works with concrete for a living, so my husband worked alongside him to get the foundation prepped and poured.

Next up was building the actual structure. I am not going to lie, I had my doubts. My husband had done home improvement projects at our first house, but none of those projects involved building walls, etc from the ground up. He is the type, however, that when he wants to do something he gets to work researching via reference books and websites and then goes to work.

He did most of the work himself alongside his friend that had done the concrete as a second set of hands.

 

 

 

 

The goal was to ensure that the structure looked like something that very well could have been original to the house. We felt strongly that we did not want a pole building or anything of that nature that would stand out. The building itself is very much patterned after our favorite old carriage houses and barns.

Garage doors were something that we knew could make or break it since most garage doors are very modern looking. So my husband actually built ours from scratch to give them that carriage door feel.

The window in the front is another detail to help keep with the period. We actually found this at a yard sale in our neighborhood from a neighbor that was replacing all of the original windows in their home.

The fascia and soffit trim work on the outside of the garage, in white, is designed to match our little garage exactly, because we left that one standing since it's original to the house.

Restoration of the little garage to follow in the future.

Once the new garage was complete on the outside we turned our attention to the inside of the house, so the inside of the garage still has some work to go. Pictures to follow as that progress picks up in the coming years. We did get it insulated and mostly drywalled as well as wired for electrical though, so it's usable as is.