Date: Circa 2008 to March 2024
Our original house design did not include a garage, but the need for one has swelled up like a No-See-Um bite on a tender spot. A Tool Hound such as myself can be slow to recognize that every new acquisition is not just a budget outlay but also a commitment to future maintenance, and yes, storage space. Since our original building project I've been working up quite a pile including the tear drop trailer, a 100 gallon air compressor, a Sawstop 3HP table saw, helical planer, dust collector, a heavy duty vice and stand and a classic 1960s Rockwell Band Saw. And we've added a Subaru EV to the stable on a trial lease without disposing of either of the old vehicles. Most of the pile resides in a moldering state on the back porch or in our lower Tobacco Barn, named for the ability to cure tobacco via wind freely blowing through the spacious gaps in the siding. Its a foretaste, but only a foretaste, of being out of the weather. And did I mention the bicycles crowding my office and bedroom?
The pressure from this fevered state of materialism inspired wishful thinking over many years to complete the phrase "Wouldn't it be nice if we had a space with X" where X includes
- Root cellar for the potatoes,
- EV charger driven from solar panels,
- Workbench for working on bikes and other mechanical, surrounded by a
- Well-lit place to hang mechanics and construction tools
- Air compressor with well organized hose for tire maintenance
- Noise-insulated wood shop space with room to process long stock.
- Dry non-freezing storage space for paint, caulk, etc.
- Accessible storage space for the sundries currently squirreled away inconveniently in our attic.
- Guest quarters with views of the hills, dales and sounds of running water.
Site selection for this multipurpose building was pretty straightforward because our property, although offering 60 acres of plenitude, is very constrained. Steep forested slopes and cascading branches limit access to a narrow strip along our driveway. After years of walking 1/8 mile each way to reach the lower barn every time I need an Allen wrench, I wanted something close at hand to the house.
Our property came with several barns, the closest being a 30 foot x 30 foot two story affair facing southwest on the hillside about 50 feet from the east side of the house. This barn was perched atop piles of stones on a respectably slanted hill. Six horse (or mule) stalls divided the aptly labeled ground floor. The second story was for tobacco drying and did double duty as a hay loft for the stalls beneath. Although the weathered 1x hardwood siding had seen a saw blade, not so the bones of the structure: decently straight sapling logs from three to six inches in diameter. A resourceful approach for the barn raiser with more trees and time than cash. This edifice was about 12 feet above the level of the driveway, so using it as it was built for a garage was ruled out.
If you are wondering what those sticks are protruding from the front, that was my mimicking the stick outline of new construction rooflines you may have seen in gated communities, the idea being to give a physical impression of the new building.
So the overall outlines became clear: remove the barn, remove a chunk of the hill to make a flat spot at the level of the driveway, then orient the building and its roof as much to the south as possible to increase solar gain.
First Pass Drawings
A fellow Rotarian is a draftsman so I hired him to do some drawings within a couple weeks of taking retirement from my career as a software engineer in September of 2023.
The garage level has three root cellars behind:
Shop floor maximizes open space with stairs going to third floor from back entrance double doors.
Top floor is a garret room with sloping ceilings. Double doors on right open onto a deck not shown which egress to the hillside behind.
After a series of less than fruitful calls and more fruitful coffee shop meetups on changes, then some weeks of calling asking for progress, I received more official looking plans in late November.
I had these three pages printed on large format paper and started taking them around to potential vendors for vetting and to try to get on folks schedule.
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