I’d like to introduce you to our brand new garage! This is a huge change from our old garage, which we could barely walk into let alone park two cars in. So we went from a creaky, old, falling-down barn to a brand new garage that just looks like an old barn!

As I’ve mentioned before, the entire process of planning, getting the permits, and building took about nine months… So it’s kind of like this garage is our new baby. Isn’t she cute?! (Because garages are girls, right?)

The most frustrating part of getting a new garage was working with the city to get approval. Because our house is a neighborhood historic site, we had to go through an extra approval committee, and let’s just say it wasn’t all that fun. Two of the main sticking points were the shape of the roof and the style of the doors.

We were originally planning on having the roof face the opposite way, so the point would be in the front like an “A,” which matches the roof on our house, but our neighborhood historic committee wanted us to do a “reverse gable,” which puts the “A” on the sides of the garage. It’s one of those things that really doesn’t matter in the long run, but I still would have probably preferred this roof to match the house.

We also initially planned for a very basic garage door, just to keep costs down as low as possible, but the committee had us upgrade to these barn-style doors. They cost quite a bit more but I love them. These doors are very similar to our original garage doors (which, by the way, weren’t original to that garage), but look! They open! With garage door openers! I could sit and watch the door go up and down all day!