Al Heavens is a Haddonfield, N.J.- based, nationally syndicated, home-improvement writer and author whose newspaper columns, magazine articles, and books have been the first word on remodeling for 50 million readers for more than three decades. He is the author of What No One Ever Tells You About Renovating Your Home and Remodeling on The Money: Fifteen Innovative Projects Designed to Add Value to Your Home and was “The Gadgeteer” on Discovery Channel’s Home Matters program.
The garage and basement were the biggest selling points for me when we bought our house 20 years ago.
I had basements before, but this one was dry and could be finished. I had never had a garage before, however, and this one was perfect. Eighteen by eighteen feet, brand-new, and sided with the same cedar boards as the house, the one-car garage has offered more than adequate space for scores of home-improvement projects over the last two decades.
I call it a garage. The word “garage” was coined by the French in 1902 as a “place for storing an automobile. There is no automobile stored in my garage, although if I removed the basketball goal from in front of it and pushed my mobile workbench into a corner, it would easily accommodate our Prius.
Let me ask: When was the last time you put your car in the garage?
If you cannot remember, welcome to the club. These days, garages hold junk instead of cars. That is, unless you have a three-car garage, where one car has a home until the junk overwhelms the other two bays and a third is needed.
In this article, we will discuss the evolution of the residential garage, and the latest trends when it comes to remodeling garages.
The car has been one of the major influences on home design since World War I. Recently, however, there has been an effort to de-emphasize the garage in the design of single-family houses.
According to surveys and anecdotal evidence, buyers want as much as a three-car garage, but because of security and aesthetic concerns, they do not want it to be as visible as garages have been in the past.
They also want part of those garages to be flexible space — for home offices, playrooms, guest bedroom, or, as with my garage, a workshop.
In response to this demand, garages are being built on the sides of houses or in courtyard arrangements, if the lots can accommodate them.
If they are being built facing the street, they are designed to appear as if they are separate from the line of the rest of the construction, or to replicate the “carriage house” quality of older residences.
Until 1915, when Henry Ford put the middle class behind the wheel, garages had limited appeal. That all changed, and homeowners and builders grappled with solutions to auto storage.
In older neighborhoods, the solution was to build a line of one-car garages in the alleys behind the row houses.
But there was, at first, no attempt to blend garage and house. Before World War II, most single-family houses were built with detached garages. People who owned existing single-family houses, especially those with large lots, built one-car garages behind their homes, connected to the street by driveways carved from side yards.
There were a couple of reasons for this. Early garages were modeled on the stables and carriage houses of the well-to-do. The rich had acquired automobiles first and had merely stored them in these outbuildings.
The second reason centers on the income of the home buyer in the first five decades of the century. Now, about 67 percent of Americans own their own homes. Until World War II, only 25 percent did, according to U.S. Census figures, because mortgages were not widely available, and most people had to save for years to buy a house.
The postwar building boom changed that. A mass-produced house in Levittown, N.Y., in 1947 cost $7,000, bought with a Veterans Administration loan. It also came with a garage attached, because houses were being built on smaller lots to keep down costs.
In 1950, more than half of the houses built had no garage or carport. By 1999, only 12 percent of residential construction came without a place for the car.
Many houses are being built with three-car garages, but the extra space, especially in areas where houses do not have basements, is readily convertible to other uses.
Price range dictates the size and flexibility of such spaces. The ideal location for two-car garages is now on the side of the house, out of view of the street. Whether buyers get that depends on whether they can pay for it.
Side-entrance garages work best on corner lots. It makes the house look larger and is usually considered attractive by the neighborhood.
Though the two-car garage is standard, many higher-end buyers want three-car garages. That said, two-car garages have become standard features in townhouses, which have long had a garage for one car, again the issue being enough room for storage and housing one car.
The tendency to de-emphasize garages manifests itself in different ways.
Some builders have left the two-car garage in front of the house, but they have designed it so the space looks like a separate building. These garages often have flex space above the bays and are designed to look like old-fashioned carriage houses rather than garages, which meshes with the home-buying public’s longing for tradition in design, construction, and decor.
In other areas of the country, flex space is standard in garage areas, especially if a third bay in a garage is involved. In Texas, where houses are built on concrete slabs, that flex space is referred to as a “Texas basement.”
Older houses without garages have a built-in disadvantage when they go up for sale, especially in urban areas where on-street parking can be a risk. Insurance rates tend to be lower for homeowners who can house their cars off-street and in garages.
What if you do not have a garage, which Kira Obolensky, author of “Garage: Reinventing the Place We Park” (Taunton Press, $32), has dubbed “the first frontier in home renovation”?
If you have additional space on your lot to accommodate one, you can hire a contractor to do the work.
A typical job for contractors specializing in this market involves adding a second garage or enlarging an existing structure.
Cars have gotten bigger over the years, so some 10-foot-wide garages are too small. Even some new houses have smaller garages than they should.
Experts suggest that a good one-car garage should be 12 feet by 22 feet, while a two-car garage should be 22 feet by 27 feet.
Anything smaller might only be good for storing junk.
Speaking of storing junk, you might investigate installing a system to organize the contents of your garage so there’s less of a mess.
The folks who manufacture these organizing systems first suggest sorting through and throwing out those rusty tools, broken toys, worn-out sports gear, and other items that you haven’t used in a year or more that are taking up valuable space.
Make a commitment to discard as much as possible – recycling, donating, or selling items, if appropriate.
Then group remaining items into categories, such as holiday decorations, gardening tools, and sports equipment, to begin the organizing process.
Categorizing items and storing them in dedicated areas makes it easier to locate things when you need them and helps designate a parking spot for the car.
Allow enough space for vehicle doors to fully open and for the driver and passengers to walk around vehicles without rubbing up against them.