Now that's a nice garage and mopars!My wife wants me to eventually have a garage.And of course a cool mopar to go in it.We have a shop and I'd like to add on to it.we already have a cement driveway and electricity to the shop.i thought one of those steel or wood garages just wondering?Good luck with you're garage project!

Too true; when I moved from my 2-car garage to the new 40' X 30' shop I thought that's all I'll ever need...two expansions later and I still need more room.

Dedicate your time to putting together a very well thought-out plan and, as already mentioned, you might as well double the space you're thinking you will need.

I've never heard anyone say that they wish their garage was smaller.

Rushing a garage isn't a good plan.

Mike.

One of the fastest way I have seen to build relatively inexpensive mining industry shop buildings is concrete tilt up.

The first one I saw done was about year 1970 near Paintsville KY and that tilt up building is still used as a warehouse today.

This video shows the kinda “deluxe version”
but the basic concept should be clear:
pour the floor,
then use that floor as the lower side of additional concrete forms that create the other building walls and roof.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC_pEaccZQA

These buildings are investments that an prominent thought to hold in mind is: what can I sell it for in the future?

I am finally building my shop. It seems like it's taken forever. Just under 3500 square feet. My wife looked at the outline, before it started, and said it looked small.

I started at a rented house with an old two stall garage that I had to share with the people in the other 1/2 of the house. My car barely fit in it, I was 19.

6 months later we bought a house with no garage at all (it was what we could afford). About a year later I started renting a 2 car garage several blocks from our home. As expected, it didn't take long to fill it with "stuff". About a year later, I rented a 4 stall garage (it was 20' deep and 36' wide), and farther from home then the last garage was. I ran a dirt track car out of that garage, and filled 3 stalls of it of it with stuff needed to run the race car.

At about 26yo, we bought a house in the country with a 26 x 36 garage. The race car and its tag along stuff occupied the whole garage. The cars my wife and I drove sat outside, but the place had a lot of space I could park parts cars on. At one point I had 13 cars and trucks I was parting out, 4 cars and trucks licensed we were driving, and the race car and its stuff in the garage. We lived there for 16 years. Towards the end of that time, the race car was replaced with parts removed from the parted cars, our personal cars still sat outside, the garage was full.

Then I started my welding shop and rented a 36 x 36 building back in town (still had all the stuff at home in the country). Three years later I rented a larger 40' x 60' building to house my welding shop. That building filled up pretty fast, but a lot of the stuff was not my stuff, it was customer stuff. I finally figured that out when we moved back into town to a house with a 24 x 30 garage, and all the stuff at the house in the country had to be dwindled down to fit into the garage in town, and any spare space at my welding shop. That was not a fun time. At the time, I had to split 10 car trailer loads of parts between the house and my welding shop, and I ended up scrapping 6,600lbs of Mopar motors, transmissions, and a huge assortment of other Mopar parts I didn't have room for.

Two years after that, we sold that house and moved to our current location. This place is zoned for business, and the plan was to move the welding shop here. The issue is, there is one 24 x 24 garage, with another 24 x 24 garage under the 1st garage (a double decker 24' x 24' garage). Here everything except licensed vehicles had to be under cover. The stuff in the 40 x 60 building, and the stuff crammed into the 24' x 30' garage had to fit into those two garages, plus there had to be space to actually work on stuff inside the upper garage. Another major down sizing. This was was much worse, because this was all the "good stuff". I moved the welding shop to the current house 6 months after we bought it.

This current place has a nice flat side yard. The original plan was to put a 40' x 40' building (the size I determined was the correct size for my needs, remember I already had a 40 x 60 that housed a lot of other peoples stuff, and I was not doing that again) on that side yard. It would have to meet current building codes, and it would have to be a turn key set up (I was working long hours in the welding shop, and a building builder I am not). That turn key 40' x 40' building in the year 2,000 was over $50 grand. Money I did not have just after buying the property. When the economy tanked in 2006 (around here), I was pretty happy I was not on the hook for that additional $50 grand. The building was not built, and at this point won't be while I'm alive.

i see lots of guys here telling others that they should build a building 2x what they think is big enough. 30 years ago I would have agreed, but these days I'm not so sure. After having to go through two large building downsizes a few years apart, I can tell you it is a lot harder to sell off or give stuff away then it is to not buy it in the 1st place. If you don't have the space to put it, its a very good reason not to spend your money on it Build the building you think is the size you need, then don't buy what you don't have space for.

Just read what these guys are saying, you will keep buying stuff until you run out of space, then you build a bigger building so you can buy more stuff. Don't get caught up in that mad cycle. When you get to the point your collection has to (or should) go away, its very hard to watch it go, and could be even harder if you have to make it go away and it seems like no one wants it. There is a very big difference between what you need and what you want. Build a building based on what you need, not on what you think you might want. There is nothing wrong with building what you can afford to start with, then adding more if you NEED it.

Good advice. I know a few people who built large shops that ended up costing them more than anticipated and then they were short money to do anything with their cars for awhile until the money situation caught back up.

Also if you think you may want to add more building later place the building on the property such that adding another 10-15 more feet or whatever more to the back of it in the future still works. It's easy to remove one blank shop wall and pour a new slab extension up against the existing and build new walls on down to follow.

If you live in a neighborhood there are likely rules that dictate how high above the fence it can be and where you can put it. In some upper scale neighborhoods they won't let you build a shop at all No boats or trailers in the backyard or anything showing above the fence from the street.

You need to ask around and see if any of your neighbors or their friends are retired contractors. It is really simple to put up a stick built shop building if you have some help from someone with the tools and experience. Pour a slab and then you build the walls on the slab and tilt them up into place. A small crew of 2 or 3 guys can put up a small shop in a couple of days. Get the rafters built off site and delivered by truck. You need to rent a a couple pieces of equipment from a local rental yard.

I had a steel building put up a few years back. It was a super nice building but for a small shop I'd go stick built. Especially as far north as you are. Use 2 x 6 studs and stuff those walls full of insulation so you can keep warm in the winter. No windows, a man door and a roll up door should be all you need.