The Vermont garage

Mostly I want a space to park our two vehicles out of the snow. We have never had a 2-car garage...this will be a first. But I don't want fancy. I want utilitarian. No finishes on the inside, just rafters. Size is important though. In Massachusetts we have a garage that is a tight fit (and won't even fit our Toyota Tacoma pickup truck in length-wise). In Vermont we will have plenty of space to open vehicle doors, hatchbacks, and still have a little room for some storage. 26' x 26'

Two garage doors for two vehicles isn't cheap, but for a couple of 70s-something gray-haired old folks, we need the ease of living with a garage in snow-country. We can pull right in from the driveway with the push of a button for an automatic door. Harry Cooley would be impressed. He used to say that everything from the olden days was not automatically good. It was harder.

From the road you'll see two windows on the side facing west and the matching (to the house) gray metal roof and white wooden clapboards for siding. The trim molding on the garage will also match the house so the garage will look like it belongs there, hopefully (except for those who are still angry that the old house was taken down).

The previous garage for the old house was fashioned out of the saltbox house section- a dirt floor, a narrow space tight up against the extra living room/fireplace room. It was mostly used for storage and an entryway into the house (after using all of your strength to open the garage door, prop it up, then through a house door that wouldn't quite close). I never saw a car parked in there.

Now we will have a 4-season room (porch) where that was. See in the drawing below- the house from the back. The section with 4 windows in a row (jutting out a bit from the house) is the 4-season room. One thing I love about it is- the door that used to go from the dining room into the fireplace room/extra living room will still be there and go out onto this 4-season room.

We don't need an entire extra house, it will be sufficient to have just the Cape and not the Saltbox (though I would have loved to build it exactly as it was with the two houses- Cape plus Saltbox joined together for nostalgic and aesthetic reasons, but it would be an added expense we can't afford.)