Home Sweet Home

Before we made an offer on our new home, I had one condition--if we got this house I wanted an outbuilding to work on my truck.  To my surprise, my wife readily agreed.  In truth, it was probably more that she didn't want to have to look at my truck everyday sitting in our garage, but I'd also like to think its because she likes to see me happy.  Nonetheless, I had the green light from the wife...now I just had design it and build it, right?   Ahhh, not so fast there, Tiger.



Like anything else, constructing a building can be done in two ways:  the right way and the wrong way.  Generally speaking, the right way usually takes longer, is more expensive, and involves a lot of small details that if overlooked can turn a project on its head.  In my case, I first had to make sure that the such buildings were even allowed in this neighborhood/development.  To verify this, I combed through the Covenants, Conditions, & Restrictions of our neighborhood (commonly referred to as the "CC&R's").  These basically function as the neighborhood by-laws and are designed to maintain property values and to make sure some yahoo doesn't erect a Ferris wheel in his back yard. 

For better or worse, the home we bought is in a development with quite extensive CC&Rs.  After careful review, it was pretty clear that I could build a detached outbuilding....but there were several hoops I was going to have to jump through before I could begin in earnest.

First and foremost, there were numerous "Architectural Guidelines" specified in the CC&Rs that basically eliminated the possibility of building a metal pole-building.  To be "conforming", detached structures are required to match the existing home in "materials, design, and scale."  Translation, bust out your wallet, bub...cause this ain't goona be cheap!"

The other major consideration I had to determine was the building's location.  Like most planned developments, our association has its own setbacks and siting guidelines that must be considered when planning a detached structure.  Between the site survey I got from the builder, Google earth, and some mad power point skills I drew up the following site plan:

Holy crap, batman!  Can you say "not even close to scale."  What-ev...I figured this would be good enough for the untrained eyes of the neighborhood association.  Anyway, as you can see above, all the requite set backs and building codes didn't leave too many options for siting my building....fortunately, I was able to squeeze it into a location that made practical sense and allowed me to share the existing home's driveway (more savings...cha ching!).  The next step was to come up with an actual design.  Now granted, when it comes to architecture, designing what is essentially an over-sized garage isn't exactly rocket science...a monkey could practically do it:

And while my spinal cord injury left me without opposeable thumbs, I like to believe I possess at least a modicum of design capability.  That said, I can't draw to save my life...so getting my "genius" design ideas out of my head and onto paper is a whole other ball of wax.  Fortunately, the good folks at Google make a free program for the artistically challenged:  enter Google SketchUp.

Googel SketchUp is crazy awesome.  I discovered it a few years ago and have been using it ever since to convey various ideas.  There is a little bit of a learning curve to using it, but once you get the hang of it you'll be blown away with what you can draw (unless you are already artistically gifted, in which case you will probably find yourself frustrated with its limitations).

So with the CC&Rs by my side, I did my best to come up with a design that complimented our new home.  In short, it wasn't too hard...basically the building just needed a hipped roof, a few windows and a bump out facing the street (the CC&Rs specify that "walls of bland an uninteresting character are to be avoided"), and some cultured (aka "fake") stone veneer to match the house.  The tougher part was determining the correct dimensions.  Granted, a basic two car garage would have been sufficient, but I live in Twin Falls...land of the RV & 5th wheel. 

 Now while I will NEVER own an RV or 5th wheel, I do plan to sell this house one day and I'd hate for a potential buyer to say, "I would buy it, but your outbuilding won't fit my RV"  (Did I mention the CC&Rs also stipulate you cannot leave an RV outside on your property for more than 12 consecutive days? Poor cousin Eddie, what's he to do). 
 
After talking to several people and doing some research on-line, I arrived at the conclusion that a building 45 feet long by 28 feet wide with a 14 foot high overhead door would basically accomodate 98% of the RV's and 5th wheels on the market.  With that in mind, I arrived at the following design (I included some images of the home for reference):

One of the nice features of SketchUp is that you can rotate your model to get different perspectives (see below)

Were money no object, I would have have wrapped the entire building's perimeter with the same stone veneer that's on the house, but with resale values in mind and a finite amount of resources, I looked for some opportunities to minimize the use of this material.  In studying the existing home's veneer application, it became evident I could probably get away with only veneering the bump out (which would save TONS of dough).

Now with site plan and design in hand, I just had to get my neighbors and the association to sign off on the design--and then I could start looking for someone to build it.