How crazy would it be to take a detached garage build with traditional construction (wood frame, on a slab, in decent condition) and hired out the work to increase the size by making a like sized addition onto the back? Taking the two car garage and making it two deep. Is this cost effective? Should I just tear the garage down and build the one I want? I see homes with an existing garage that would be great if it was only, you know, a lot bigger and this seems like a way to try and make some silk out of a pig's ear.
What really brings this question up is that I'm going to be touring this place tomorrow for a look see and get a feel for the house. The garage situation is cute...
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/902-N-Saint-Paul-St-Wichita-KS-67203/77385461_zpid/
In some ways having two seperate garages is kind of nice, like one is for shop duties and one is the safe place to park cars so they don't get overspray or slag or whatever sprayed on them. On the other hand... that's a pretty ugly setup. So what say the hive about all this?
Other than taking up less room...? (more room = project storage 
) If there is power/utilities in the existing shop, extending them should be cheaper.
Personally, if I could have doors on both ends and had room to drive around the back, I would extend the existing one. Maybe have a roll up door between to isolate one from the other when needed?
I'm in the same exact boat right now, except I don't have the space. My property is 50' wide, and unless I want to lose all the niceness of having a back yard, I can't.
I'm going to end up putting an 8' x 12' lean-to on the side so I can move the lawn/garden stuff out there and maybe have space for car things in the garage.
I had looked into replacing my 12x24 garage with a 24x24. The real expense/difficulty would be removing the old garage. That's a lot of debris to move and dispose. If you find a pre-fab steel option like Versatube, the building itself is really cheap. You can get a 24 x 36 shipped to your house for $11k. You and two other people could have it assembled in a long weekend. In reality, you can count on double that until you have the excavation, concrete, garage doors, and electrical all done assuming you hire that stuff out.
I suggest pricing it all out. In my estimation, in my plans it was about a wash. Option A; have a contractor double the size of my garage by adding on concrete/stick framing, or option B; Do it all myself with a steel garage replacement and just contract out the concrete. Had I decided to go forward with it, I would have chosen option B, mostly because of the age of my current garage. Adding on to it would be like putting icing on a mud pie.
Instead, I refuse to give up that much of my back yard, so I'm doing a combination of an 8x12 lean-to and a yard sale to thin out the stuff I need to store. Added bonus there is that it's only going to cost me about $800 to accomplish that.
Curtis: I'm surprised to hear that it would cost that much to have an old garage torn down with debris removed (assuming nothing crazy like asbestos removal is required). I probably wouldn't do steel mostly due to visuals and impact to resale values.
Contractor here.
The cost to build a garage is exactly the same whether it is attached to an existing one or not. If you tear down the existing one and replace the same square footage, you are doubling the cost.
The real question is if the existing one has value (or problems). Is the foundation good? Are the ceilings high enough for the work you want to do? Etc...
There is nothing wrong with a deep long shop. I had a wonderful one with garage doors at both ends and space for 4 cars (2 wide, end to end).
Sometimes there are zoning issues. Like how many buildings are allowed on a property, or what percentage of the land has buildings on it, or what the setback requirements are.
Regarding that property...
At a glance, it doesn't look too bad. The buildings look solid. If the white buildings were painted brown to match the house, it would look a lot better. The price is sure right. Those garages look like kits. I wonder what the approach is to the rear garage... can you get a car to it? I might be tempted to consider connecting the 2 garages...
Good luck!
Looking again... there may be foundation issues with both garages.
I didn't check the links but I have a shop separate from our garage. It is an ideal setup in my opinion.
Kinda like having a separate laundry room and closet. Yes, you could put them both in the same space as both are for clothes. But one is for working on clothes and the other is for storing clothes, so it makes sense to keep them separate.
In reply to SVreX (Forum Supporter) :
Really? I always thought adding onto an existing building and slab added considerable cost and complexity vs building new freestanding because you're now dealing with a different design and someone else's BS.
In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :
Nah. It's just building.
That's what someone would say if they wanted to charge you extra.
There's a couple things you gotta figure out- rooflines, flashing details, eave configurations, matching floor heights... but it's still just building. You are also SAVING the cost of building the 4th wall, a power panel, the utility feeds...so that makes up for it a bit.
There are plenty of contractors who are not very good at what they do, and can't solve those problems. For those guys, it's probably easier (and cheaper) to build something freestanding that involves no brain cells, but the truth is it shouldn't add much cost (and certainly won't make up for the cost of tearing down the existing building and then rebuilding it!)
All this assumes of course, that the existing building is worth saving.
SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:
Looking again... there may be foundation issues with both garages.
What makes you say that? You're the expert here, not me, just curious what you saw.
There's a bunch of space between the two garages, so a car could be driven around the first one to get to the second, but since it would be in the grass I don't think it would be something to do very often. That's okay for a long term project but obviously not optimal. My thinking on this now is just use them both for a little while and then determine which is in better shape and tear down the other then build on. If they're both junk then I guess I would need to decide if I want to sink that much into the property or not. Probably a year or two after getting in to that specific house. And I'm miles from that point right now.
So far my take away from this is that there is value in adding onto an existing garage most of the time which is the information I was after.
In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :
Just a very quick glance at the crappy photos on my tiny little phone screen with my crappy eyesight. Could be absolutely nothing, but I thought I saw a couple cracks. Just figured I'd mention it before you laid eyes on it.
If it was me, I'd keep both. Build a connector between them with a side porch facing the back yard, then build a bigger taller addition behind the rear one with a lift in it (or 2). I'd paint the whole thing brown to match the house. It would grow into 1 large Garage Mahal.
...but that's just me!
pres589 (djronnebaum) said:
Curtis: I'm surprised to hear that it would cost that much to have an old garage torn down with debris removed (assuming nothing crazy like asbestos removal is required). I probably wouldn't do steel mostly due to visuals and impact to resale values.
Well... expense/difficulty. The amount of debris would be at least two 40-yard dumpsters and in my experience at work, a 40 yard dumpster emptied twice equals more dollars than you think. I'm trying to remember the last one I had at the theater... $90 drop off, $130 pickup, monthly rental $225 but that didn't start until after the first two weeks, and $90/ton sounds about right.
For me alone with a garage that sits adjacent to two other neighbors' garages, it's more like precision surgery. Otherwise I would just use the loader on dad's tractor and crush it/scoop it in a weekend.
nocones
UberDork
4/22/21 10:20 a.m.
It all kinda depends on what your goal is. The property already has ~1000 sq-ft of garage on it. It looks like the property it goes all the way back to those duplexes behind it and has about 1/3 of the total area unimproved. How much garage do you want? What space do you need more of?
Check zoning for what you are allowed to do, but I would strongly consider building a LARGE shop in the open field and tear down the ~25x25 setback on (Eventually after the new shop is done). If zoning allowed I would have this be a pole type barn with side entry so you drive down along the front garage (looks like 13'wide driveway available from Google maps) and get past the setback garage and turn left into you new huge garage. Have something like 28x50 (if allowed) so it's like 4 10' bays wide with a 20' wide shop space on 1 end.
Also the first thing I thought when I saw that property is how high vertically is it above the flood stage for that big brown river 2 blocks away?
Height above the river is a good question basically all across Wichita. Good thinking on raising that question. I wouldn't connect the two existing garages as they aren't inline with each other and it would be *massive*. They aren't even in real parallel to each other; it'd be huge and ugly, at least how my mind sees that coming together. Specifics like side entry vs. end is going to be property specific. What I'm now taking away from this is "it depends, sometimes it might make sense to do an addition to an existing garage, sometimes it might be better to just rip the band-aid off and build exactly what you want and tear down existing buildings as needed to get there".
The example property is now on contract; websites aren't updated, the realtor I'm working with on getting me in to see this home emailed this morning. Stuff's selling way faster than I've been acting so I either hang up the hunt to buy and go back to renting or I focus on moving a lot faster going forward. Good times.
Well, it does depend.
Your question was "Is it cost effective". I responded to that. It's never cost effective to tear down a functional building so you can replace it with a similar building.
Is it good and pleasing design? Heck no. Tear them both down and do it right.
Good and pleasing design is almost never cost effective. Thankfully, most people want good and pleasing design more than they want cost effective. That's how I make my living!
I would envision a partially enclosed pole barn with concrete floor and a couple lifts spanning the difference between the two buildings would be relatively cost effective.
Add in a rear door on the front garage and your are in business. The current garages look to be too low for a lift.
Of course it probably gets cold in Kansas so that would be a pain to work on stuff in the winter. Could always enclosed it? Space heaters?
Too much cold, too much wind, to want to leave it not completely enclosed.
