Building a Garage

In the fourteen years we’ve been married, we’ve owned two houses. The first was a little crackerbox on a tiny lot in Rexburg, a block north of the Ricks College stadium, so we got lots of cannon noise when they played football and lots of people parking in front of our driveway as they went to games. The second is the one we have now, in much quieter Sugar City.

Neither one has had a garage.

That is a problem, given we live in an area where it snows five months out of the year. We’d like a garage where we could park the cars, maybe a bicycle or two.

So without moving to a new home that already has a garage, that leaves us building one where we currently are.

That’s another problem.

Sugar City, of course, flooded in 1976. A lot of people, when they rebuilt, bought additional lots next to theirs. Not the intrepid owners of our current home. Instead, they built on a rather narrow lot, not leaving future owners a lot of options, garage-wise. We have two, as I see it, and that means only two options for the driveway, not the garage. The garage itself would have to be in the back yard somewhere, preferably to the south, since the only exit to the front yard is on the north. Our other option is an exit to the alley, but since it’s not plowed during the winter, we’d have to plow it ourselves. Not a fun option.

Then there are the setbacks and the size limitations and the fact that if we build, we’d kinda like a bonus room atop the garage – which presents another difficulty. So I’m doing the homework on sizes and setbacks now, and, this weekend while Michelle is away at Scout training, I’ll go out into the back yard and stake out a few likely options. I have to see how things’ll fit visually – as does Michelle – before I can really envision things. I’m plenty worried we’ll end up with nothing but garage and driveway in the back yard, which is something we’d like to avoid. That is, unless we take the alley exit option. That’s what I’m leaning towards, but Michelle isn’t sold on the concept. So we’ll have to see what I can figure out this weekend.