[Shop-talk] garage expansion project

[Jim Stone]

My 3-car garage is as large as I could legally fit on my relatively
small lot without going to a 10 foot setback.  In my case, the law
allowed 670 sq ft; my architect tweaked mine until it was 669!  To keep
the costs down we went with 9 foot walls (10 feet added quite a bit on
lumber costs), but used a two level ceiling so that the garage had a
standard roof (i.e., 9 foot ceiling) over the two car bay, but used
scissors trusses to provide a taller ceiling over the one car.  That
part of the garage is also longer than the other.  The intent is to use
the one car bay as the working/storage portion and put in a lift (still
on my 'to buy' list) there.  While my cars (Sunbeam Alpines) are all
small, there is enough room to raise one to any height I could ever
want under the cathedral ceiling.

But, as big as it seemed when first finished four years ago, I have already
run out of storage space.  If I had it to do all over,
the one thing I would do differently is to specify stronger joists.
The builder used standard ceiling joists that are not rated for
storage.  I have done what I can to strengthen them, but really wish I
was comfortable flooring it and adding proper storage there!
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