Over the course of years, my husband and I have owned 5 houses with 2-car garages, and one with a single-car garage. Up until this house, we’ve never parked both of our cars inside, mainly because the garage became a repository of assorted, um, crap. I suppose it could also be that 4 of the 5 were in Florida, so scraping ice wasn’t an issue. Our house in Virginia had the one-car garage, and we kept the Corvette parked in there because its roof leaked.
But now that our renovations are done and the leftover furniture has been given away, we have the space in our garage for both vehicles, plus the motorcycle, plus a refrigerator and a chest freezer and that pile of stuff that we really should get into the attic… Still, I love being able to drive right out in the morning in an unfrozen van (it stays above 40 deg in the garage) and I love driving in, shutting the door, and unloading groceries or other purchases at my leisure regardless of the weather.
It occurred to me that I’ve been missing out for YEARS!! So, those of you with garages, or those who used to have garages - do/did you actually used them for vehicular storage? If not, do/did you want to? If the Garage Cleaning Fairy suddenly appeared and gave you the tidy garage of your dream, would you park in it?
We’ve lived in our house with a single-car garage for over four years. The car has never been in it. We’d have to find another crap repository, and unfortunately, we don’t have one!
I have to join you on the “I love my freshly cleaned out garage too” bandwagon.
We built a house which we moved into in August 2003. As the house wasn’t totally finished, we always had a project involving tools, paint, etc on the go and all this extra project junk would get dumped in the two car garage, meaning that we could only park one car in there.
When we cleaned it all out about two months ago, it was the most liberating feeling to walk into a garage which was spacious, clear and not full of crap.
Now we are parking both cars in there and it is still a fantastic feeling to open the garage door and drive into a big clear space - YAY! If you have piles of junk lying around, I highly recommend a trip to the tip to get rid of it all.
Lessee, our second apartment in Baltimore (Otterbein) had covered parking, which was awesome except for the few times it got too icy to get out of there. But not really a garge, more like a carport with a storage closet. Then our first house had a small detached garage which was barely larger than a shed. We never kept our car in there because it was more than a bit tricky to drive past the house on the narrow concrete guide paths (two strips of concrete about 2 feet wide each) without scraping against something. When my friend bought his Porsche 911 he kept it stored back there during the winter months (this was in Cincinnati). When we got a second house in Cincy we used the heck out of the garage. It had some junk in it, but we kept that to a minimum so it was very easy to get both cars in and out. Now, in Florida, we have a two car garage that might best be described as semi-detached. You can’t walk straight into the house, but the area between is covered. We have many boxes in the garage since this house is a rental until we move into the new place, but we still manage to squeeze both cars, assorted bikes, trash cans, etc. in there.
We renovated our 1920 bungalow. The old garage was a tiny one-car brick shed.
I watched the guys literally lean against the old garage walls and knock 'em down.
They then built a two car garage. Unfortunately, my husband is a packrat and we have so much crap in ‘our’ garage that I feel lucky that we are able to squeeze in one car, one bike, and one motorcycle.
It is semi-detached, sounds much like ShibbOleth’s situation. I love having a garage door opener.
Oooh, I’d slice off my big toe for a garage. We live in a 1890’s house near the downtown core of a small city. No garage, no room for one. It’s the only thing wrong enough with this house to make me want to move.
i just cleaned out my garage a coupel weeks ago. i’ve been living there for over a year and a half, and between the boxes of junk i never unpacked, and the sawdust, wood, and tools lying around, i could barely get one car in. but now it’s about 90 percent cleared out and it’s great. maybe i’m a little bit OCD, but cleaning out the garage and the basement is fucking life affirming or something. i love doing it.
i just have to figure out a way to keep it cleaned out, but during a long, slow renovation, it’s pretty much impossible.
I’ve always had a garage, and always parked the car in it. I’d never fill it up with crap so I couldn’t get the car in - it’s just too nice to be able to bypass snowy or rainy weather. Besides, everyone knows that crap belongs in the basement, not the garage.
Of course, Mr. Athena is a garage hound, and keeps our garage nice and tidy just about all the time. In fact, he’s been going overboard lately; he cleans the garage up then declares that the car shall not be parked in it because it would get dirt on the floor. So far, this insanity has only lasted a day or two at a time. If he starts doing it more often, I’ll have to sit him down and squash this obsession.
Our garage is a weird “tandem” model; two cars wide in front, and one car wide in back. My workbench, radial arm saw, and assorted crap are in the rear section. The bicycles and my motorcycle are on one side of the front, along with a freezer, assorted gardening stuff, and a desk that we mean to sell. On the other side is a row of shelves, a row of paper bags full of cleaning supplies that my mother-in-law cleaned out her mother’s house (long story), and my wife’s car. My car stays outside. We’ll put a shed up in the spring, and ditch all the garden stuff in it, along with some of the leftover building supplies, and I think I’ll get rid of the motorcycle soon. We’ll be selling some of the crap, and building shelves for an overflow pantry, but I don’t think I’ll EVER get to park my car in there.
We just freed up a bit more space. The attic stuff is now in the attic, and the old family room paneling (that will eventually be painted white and installed as my laundry room walls) has been restacked so I can park my van closer to the right wall, giving both of us more room to open our doors.
Come spring, more space will be liberated as the aforementioned paneling goes downstairs and the boxes of paper I’m saving for mulching is used for mulch. And with luck, someone will buy the TV we just set out there. With further luck, I’ll be able to convince my sweetie that we should sell the chest freezer, since we’ve got a spare refrig-freezer already.
I was going to start a thread on this a few days ago!
We are the ONLY people in our entire neighborhood who actually use their garage for two cars. Never understood the theory of parking $50,000 or more of cars outside, and keeping 185 cubic feet of junk worth $1.49 in your garage.
Granted, one of the major construction flaws in new homes built in the Southwest is lack of either basement or attic. Storage is certainly at a premium.
However, this just means you have to be more selective of the junk you keep. Luckily, garage sales here are so popular that you don’t even need to put up signs. Just throw the crap on the sidewalk and cars come flying in from all directions. Now, we just have a little section of the garage dedicated to crap and when it gets full - either an impromtu garage sale, or a quick trip to Goodwill.
I have a very large 3 car garage, in which we park 2 vehicles on the dual bay side. The 3rd bay is about 1/3 full of crap, and the remaining area is used as a temporary crap repository at times. It’s a constant struggle to keep that area free & clear because my wife just can stand to part with any of her shit. Instead of selling or donating anything, her comment is to “put it in the garage.” The garage also has 14 ft. ceilings, and over each garage door are large built-in storage areas for lighterweight stuff. We also have built-in cabinets along the back wall that are literally stuffed full. Overall, it looks a little cluttered but we do have breathing room to spare. All the houses in my neighborhood have 3 car garages and I am astounded at how many of them are literally stuffed to overflowing with piles of shit, with no room to park even a single car.
One of my Florida friends lives in a neighborhood where they’re not allowed to park on the street or in their driveways. They must park in the garage. I don’t know what the rule is if there are more than 3 vehicles in the household, or if guests come for a few nights. But at least no one there has a junky garage.
The neighborhood where I last lived in FL was full of garages that had been converted into living space, sorta. People put furniture and TVs in the garages and hung out there, with the garage doors open. All I could figure was that no one wanted to smoke in the house, so they turned the garage into the smoking room.
Yes, we actually use our garage for parking the car, and we’re one of the few house in our neighborhood with a garage. Ours isn’t attached; it’s set back beyond the house, but it’s still nice in the winter to not have to clean the ice off.
We have what’s called a car-and-a-half garage. It’s wide enough for my car, with plenty of space left over for all the assorted crap that accumulates. We have two big cabinets down one side, plus my husband’s tool chests and the assorted lawn stuff and a snow blower. We also have bikes and scooters and various kid’s junk. Also the grill and a fire pit are both in there off-season. It all has to be put away just so, or I can’t get out of the car once I drive in.
It also has a little loft space up top, that holds lawn chairs (folded up), sleds, coolers, a camping table and an extension ladder.
My house didn’t have a garage deep enough so I added 12 more feet to it. After replacing the roof, the walls and foundation I now have 8 original 2x4’s from the old garage. I love it. Can’t help but smile when I pull my frost-free econobox out of the garage and drive past people scraping their SUV’s.
If you build a garage with a 7 in 12 pitch roof you can make yourself a standup attic and store all your crap there. I keep an air compressor, lumber and car parts in the attic. Wish I could get the snow blower up there.
I am a pack-rat and machine-junkie. I live on an alkali flat. I built a 12 car garage.
I walled off a third for a shop/gameroom. Now it can fit about 8 cars. Right now, it has an old Ford musclecar, an old Ford pickup/camper (why I keep the camper is beyond me), 3 other cars that are used pretty often on the side with the door opener, about 8 motorcycles (that I hardly ever ride anymore, except to take the kid for a ride around the desert), a rolling scaffold and various implements of destruction. And a bunch of junk. I’ve learned that the more space I have, the more crap I end up keeping.
In the shop, I have all the entertainment crap and tools. Pinball machines (all of which are now unplayable, much to my dismay. I am too lazy to fix them or haul them to town to get fixed, assuming I can find someone to do it), drum kit, dart boards, tool boxes and the beer fermentation fridge. Saving grace is that everything (except the pinballs, and they are stashed in an “alcove”) is on wheels and can be moved around easily.
If the whole thing caught fire, blew away and left a clean slab (as long as the one “good car” was out, with my skis on the roof), I’d be out about $100! Well, actually, I’d miss the drum kit. My wife gave it to me for my birthday.
