Inventing Garage Space

I live in a standard suburb, in a stand sub-division, in a standard house, with 2 standard kids, an unbelievably amazing wife, a standard dog, a standard cat, and a standard 2 car garage.

It's that last bit that is a problem.  I have 2 garage spots, I need to be able to have 3-4 cars.  I need your creativity (and frankly, cheapness).

My lot doesn't really have any ability to support additional parking.  My lot is on a hill with about a 30-45% grade to it.  The front yard is leveled off, but the back and sides are a steep slope.  I have a lot of driveway area, but putting another car there would block my wife in and cause a lot of grief and pain for me.  Street parking is fine for a short period of time, but isn't a permanent solution.  The garage space doesn't have to be at my house, but it needs to be fairly cheap and reasonably accessible.  Help?

Here's a pic of my house/lot:

Build off the back edge of the driveway, support with pylons or a basement cut into the hill?  

I see two cars parked on one side of the driveway down closer to the street.  Looks like enough maneuvering space in front of the garage to be able to drive forward down the driveway past the parallel parked cars.

Until you got to the "reasonably cheap" part, I was going to suggest raising the ceiling of the garage enough to accommodate at least one storage/maintenance lift. So you could store a car on the lift, and park another under the lift.

In reply to WildScotsRacingCampbellCougarSeed :

That would be hard... there are 2 floors above the garage.

The current garage is basically half my basement.

I've been renting a storage unit a couple miles from my house for $200/mo for the last few years.  20amp power, 10x30, 24x7 access, and full consent from management to do whatever workshop-like things I want.

Right now I'm looking to expand that and I've found that trying to get cheap workshop space is mostly word of mouth and not advertised.  Craigslist should get you a few garage space options for cheap, but those tend to be storage only.

Do you have enough headroom in the garage to put one car on a lift and another under it?

Wife parks car inside garage closest to street.

You park car #1 in other garage spot.

Park car #2 behind that garage door.

Park car #3 to that most southern part of the driveway.

Boom.

Edit: Add a canopy or two to protect cars 2 and 3 from most elements.

Extend garage on to driveway. Give wife the prime spot, you get the crap spots in the back.

BradLTL said:

The current garage is basically half my basement.

What about the other half of the basement?  Time to knock down some walls?

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Home office. 

2 standard kids lmao

Extending the garage out into the driveway seems the best option, although it definitely won't be cheap.  And there will be the occasional annoyance of playing musical cars when you want to get one of the cars in the back out. On the plus side, doing this may allow adding an additional room or two to the house (usually makes this easier to sell the idea to the wife unit). The negative side, more live able square footage usually means more home value and thus more taxes.

You left out “standard transmission”. Lol. 

Seriously though, what about paving a second driveway up the side of the front yard that would be next to the main driveway, but not connected to the main driveway. You said it’s levelled off, so a bit of digging might be required to slip it to meet the road. And I’m sure the city would need to k own your changing from a curb to a ingress/egress. And I’m sure your “standard neighborhood” has a very “standard HOA” (aka-communist Russia)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

BradLTL said:

The current garage is basically half my basement.

What about the other half of the basement?  Time to knock down some walls?

This.

How small is the smallest car?  And how much extra floor space do you have in front of one of the two cars?  Tire skates would allow you to wheel one car sideways to the front while you work on it.  Park the fourth one at the end of the driveway with the nose hanging over the yard and back out of your driveway.  I assume this is something on the order of a 20'x20' garage.  If all your cars are minis, you can do this.  If they're all minivans, then no.

"The front yard is leveled off" - Pave that - probably fit 6-8 cars in that space!

Seriously, looks like a good bet is to move in some dirt and extend the driveway further back to create more parking.  Not sure how cheap it needs to be, but it doesn't seem like that would cost more than a year or so of lease payments for offsite storage (could be overly optimistic on my part depending on HOA and building code, etc). 

If your neighborhood is on Nextdoor, post an ad looking for garage space.

Otherwise, if parking a couple parallel down near the road (but in the driveway) won't fly, then a shed structure hanging off the back end of the driveway seems like a good spot.

I actually have no HOA in this neighborhood (that was a requirement when I was house shopping).  Both the current cars are minivans, or minivan-like.  They take up all the garage space.

The slope is pretty massive.  In the space labeled "1", just above that is the retaining wall for the front yard.  At the bottom of the driveway that wall is over 9 feet tall.  Hind the hedge at the base of the driveway the hill falls off.  It's probably a 45* or greater slope.  My house backs up to another property, looking out the windows from my mail level, I can see over the roof of the house behind me.

With that much of a slope are post supported buildings safe?  If I was going to bring in dirt, I would have to build a large retaining wall and manage drainage, that doesn't sound cheap.

Before my wife's new car, I could do 3ish.  Race car was in the garage in front of 2, I parked my truck outside behind the 2 spot, and the wife had spot 1.  Now, she's had to move to garage spot 2, and I can't park a car in spot 1 without her having to a 9000 point turn (that's accurate, I've seen her reverse) to get out of the driveway.  

Cars are: Honda Odyssey, Toyota Venza, F-150 extended cab, and a TBD autocross-mobile.  No, so Minis.

Can't knock down the wall in the basement, it's where my home office is and I actually use mine.... like for work... frequently.  Besides, even knocking it down wouldn't create enough space for another car.  It would add maybe 10-11 feet.

Here's picture from street level (ignore the luau setup in progress):

The post building idea has merit, and, if you do it right it is basically a perfect car lift.... (Make a pit underneath)

How close is the driveway to the lot line? Do you have room to make it wider?

Looks like there may be som room behind the house under that balcony.  Use that area much?

The no money parking plan;

Wife's new car in garage space #1

Race car in garage space #2

"Odd car out" parallel parked tight in front of garage space #2. 

Truck in the lower corner in the "L" formed by the tall bushes.

She'll have room to back out between the odd car and your truck and drive out.  You can back up toward garage space #1, then drive out.  Getting the odd car out will require a multi-point turn.  How often does the odd car out need to move? 

I can see it drops off pretty steep at the end of the driveway.  What would it take to remove the bushes along the side of the driveway and widen it another lane?  Is the race car on a trailer or does it get driven to events?  It will take a significant structure to cover the area at the bottom of your driveway because you wouldn't be able to have mid-supports underneath with the need to shuffle cars.  If you're still there when the 2 standard kids start driving you'll have to deal with it eventually anyway...,  

Dig out front yard to the level of the driveway.  Build block walls.  Put flat patio above it.  Boom under ground garage.  Most lots are not setup to have garages in front of the house. Yours would be perfect because a flat roof garage would be entirely not vissible.  Have access be 90 degrees to exist.  Pull into driveway parallel to existing door and back in.   Cost is probably fairly high but..  what's the price to pay for evil underground layer?

Are you looking for "more parking so my wife can park comfortably" or are you looking for "extra garage space so I can work on cars without my wife's car being in the way"?

Problem A means extending the driveway past where the hedge row is now, have the retaining wall built with poured concrete instead of block.

Problem B means building a shed/shop/whatever in that same area, possibly a post barn set on pilings or building up the ground in the same manner you would in problem A.

Also, is it possible to just give her spot 1 back and you deal with making the 9000 point turn?  Why/how did she get bumped to spot two?

In the street view picture that big retaining wall there is where you need to park your daily, tight against the wall and not sticking out into spot 1.

Wife gets spot 1 back. When she back out she needs to go far enough to drive out past your driver on the outside. You may have to back off the corner a bit but you can make it happen. You should be able to park two in a row tight to the house side of the driveway and still drive around the outside into stall 1.

oldopelguy said:

Wife gets spot 1 back.

I wish we could do that, but her minivan doesn't fit in spot 1 any more because of a pesky water heater.