Cascade Crew

[STEEL]

Well, you guys are all smarter than your average bear, so I wanted to ask ya'll about this.

My parents are moving, and they have offered a section of back yard to build myself a garage/apartment. This seems like a cool idea, and I have a basic idea of want to build, but I dont know how it will work to get a loan to build this. I also dont know how much something like this will cost.

This is just my idea for where I want to start, please share your thoughts.

perfect would be a 30 x 20 to a 40 x 20. Only need two car wide door. I want to have a non peaked roof, just slanted. The angles of the roof would be 12 and 78. I would want to put the apartment over the garage, only one room.

So if I figure that it will be 12 feet tall on the short side, and 16 on the tall side. I dont know how hard it will be to hook into the existing electrical, telephone's, and other house wiring. These are things I plan to do myself. Getting water to my place i assume wont be too hard, and I plan to do this myself as well. I want a half bathroom, just a toilet and sink downstairs in the garage. directly above this in the apartment I want my full bathroom. The kitchen will be on the same wall, and share the plumbing.

Walls are all just going to be paneling, so I can get behind them for wiring and plumbing fixes after completion.

So help me understand costs.

Step 1. First would just be the four walls and a roof, with a piece of concrete under it. No insulation, no floor between the top and bottom, no garage door, just a bare building to start with. How much would I need to have invested to get to this point?

Step 2. Running the plumbing, and then the wiring, laying down the plywood that will be under the floor for the upper story. Doors are up, windows in place.

Step 3. Insulation, paneling, paint, outlets, and flooring.

Anything you all can share with me about how I can make this actually come to be would be awesome. To me this sounds like it would be a VERY simple and inexpensive way to get going....

[Dewey316]

YOu will of course need to check local zoning and building laws, and get the proper/needed permits, etc.

A job also helps with the loan, just throwing that out there.

There are several bole-barn style pre-fab steel garages, that have lofts, and second story living stuff already designed in. Honestly, if you are in sort of city area, you are probably going to need to work with a contractor or someone who knows the legality of getting all the needed permits/inspections/etc to meet code. It is a lot more than we can probably go over online, and without knowing the specific city rules for it, won't be much help.

--John

[STEEL]

Parents are staying in pierce county, and they want to move out where there is a bit more land. Definitely not staying in spanaway

Edit: At this point this is all speculation, nothing I am for sure going to do.

[STEEL]

Link

This would work as well, but I really think the idea of a non peaking roof would cut the costs.....

[Dewey316]

We aren't going to be much help in pricing, there are SO many variables we can't even start to make any sort of guess. There are also a lot of variables on what you can do yourself, and what you can't do. In some areas for example, you might have to contract out all the wiring and electrical work, in other places, you may be able to do some of it yourself. Same with constuction, etc. Plumbing stuff would also vary widely depending on what is already in place, if it is city sewer, or septic tank, etc.

If you are REALLY serious about something like this, you are going to need to work with both the lending institution to determine what sort of budget you are on, and wiht a contractor/constuction stuff, to determine what kind of building you can do with that budget. This stuff is very involved to go about discussing on zee interweb.

[redlava]

I know this doesn't have to deal with the price but I would try and make your room on top of the garage in what would normally be the loft.

[blue89]

$30k.

A few years back I had a bid for a 25x30 shop, 3 bays, fully insulated with the strong beams uptop for a lift, new slab, and tall roller doors. And that was $13.

[85 T/A WS6]

Permit and build it as a RV garage, not a living space.

Add the rest of the stuff later.

As you see, there is a ton of pre-engineered garages in both plans and kits out there, you would need to engineer the slab as the requirement differs in each municipality.