At the top of the list titled “Things we’d like to put off forever” are 1. our kids growing up and leaving us and 2. rebuilding the garages. Necessary, but not my favorite way to spend $$. As I write this post it dons on me that perhaps we could kill two birds and create a compound for our kids to live in the garages, thus avoiding the horror of #1 altogether. Eh? While that isn’t the plan I’m legit rethinking it this very second – I mean what is the housing situation going to be like in 15 years?? Anyway, these garages I know will be a valuable way to invest in the property and as my business moves more into product development or different future revenue streams (Yes, I’m always toying with a podcast, design retreats, and/or photo studio space). You can’t have this real estate taken up by four extremely dilapidated garages forever. Here is how it looked last year during construction (pre-new re-grind driveway).
Here is how it relates to the property – it’s near the kit house (or what I’ve been calling the Victorian), but separated by a few feet (we’ve thought about connecting them and might construct the garages so that if we wanted to one day do that we could:) You can see our house in early construction in the back there.
Here are some things you should know:
- It would likely be cheaper and easier to just demo them out and rebuild with basic electrical, drywall, etc- to rethink the whole thing entirely. But they are so close to the property line (thus our neighbor’s houses) that we can’t rebuild. We need to keep some walls to be grandfathered in, thus remodeling and not just rebuilding.
- The structure itself is probably from the 1850s, so close to 200 years old. And let’s just say that this little old lady did not take good care of herself. She is absolutely falling down (you’ll see) and can’t even really be storage right now as everything gets wet, moldy, and spidery. Truly a waste of space (and likely dangerous).
- There is a lot of history here! As a massive sentimentalist, I love that these were once carriage houses (so sweet!) and a sheep barn. While we can’t really retain much of the original structure I’m curious how we can rebuild them to keep or add any charm.
- None of the garage doors work – one goes up and down, but they all have to be replaced. So yeah, it’s going to be a thing but at least it’s on this area of the property that we don’t hang out in at all so it can be relatively contained.
So What’s The Plan??? Why The Garages Before The Other Kit House??
Step 1: Garages, Step 2: Remodel the Kit House (oof). We need more space for work, but NOT an “office” per se. I love having a collaborative space for the days we are together shooting or designing, but we all prefer writing/editing or doing computer work on our non-shoot/prep days at our own houses. The long-term plan is to redo the original farmhouse on the property – a kit house from the 1850s that came flat-packed on a train. It’s adorable, despite not having electrical, plumbing, HVAC, or one straight angle. But right now that kit house is used for dry storage (props), rugs, furniture, etc – all necessities of my job. We are not prepared for what that will cost or how we even want to go about doing it (DIY over 5 years? Just make it safe? Totally invest and make it a proper house for future parents or kids or a guest house as we potentially rent it out?). After three years of renovation on our main house and yard, we need another 1-2 years to save $$, pitch partnerships, and think about it all. So our plan is to invest in the garages (knowing it will still be very expensive) because it’s much more straightforward. It’s hopefully not going to take too much of my creative energy (I have to focus on the river house). Sure we have to have a plan and of course, I’ll want it to look really good, but they will be more functional, utilitarian, and most of the work will be done by our contractor and subs. Then once we are done with those we’ll move the prop storage into it and hopefully by then feel ready to tackle the kit house. We feel pretty good about this timeline – I should be done with the river house by the end of 2024, early 2025 so then I can jump on the kit house.
It’s a lot of square footage and could easily be a six-car garage, but obviously, we aren’t going to do that. I don’t know how we are going to use the space but I do know that this job requires storage more than any other (and office/studio/projects). We are very grateful to have all of this potential space, that’s for sure.
We had the garages painted at the end of the summer because they were so dilapidated that they were bumming us out since the house finally was done. So we found a painter who was willing to do very little prep and just give all the outbuildings a coat of white paint (except the barn) so that they looked 30% better. The siding is in terrible shape and properly prepping it (scraping off decades of old paint, sanding, etc) would’ve taken so much time and been so laborious. We know (almost 100%) that we are going to have to reside altogether so investing in painting this properly was dumb.
The plan is as follows, left to right:
- Storage for larger pieces – This would be for rugs, furniture, and larger shelves for vintage furniture. While we love the idea of the sheep barn, we plan on zero sheep in our future. This room won’t have a window but will have large doors to get furniture in and out of easily. I’m thinking some pretty/sweet carriage doors.
- Two car garages – While we aren’t sure if we’ll use them, we know that people really believe in garages (especially “car” people), and while we never think about resale (the likelihood of ever getting out of this house what we will have put into it is ZERO. Due to that we don’t really think we’ll sell it until we absolutely need to, likely decades from now). But we also know many people who have not been able to sell their houses easily because they didn’t have a good garage situation (especially at this price point). Besides in the winter, Brian does want to park his vintage truck in here. So I’m thinking two carriage-style garage doors for storage and two more traditional motorized garage doors for actual cars.
- “EHD Project Room” – This is the catchall term because we don’t know if we know exactly what this room would be for, but essentially it’s a non-in-my-home workspace – for shoots, design projects, and DIYs. We want at least one simple enough white wall to shoot content in front of. The point is – it will be finished out, and act as a secondary work space when we aren’t on our computers (or heck, maybe after the kids get home I’ll write in there?). It will have either one big garage door or more likely a set or multiple sets of carriage doors with windows in them. It will have drywall on the walls and ceiling (maybe paneling), cement floors, and natural light. In a perfect world, we do skylights so that we can keep the walls all storage or shoot walls. TBD. We won’t splurge on good flooring or wall paneling (as of now) and sadly have to drywall that beautiful ceiling in order to have insulation. And then we’ll add a mini-split for AC/heat.
The Project Room
The ceiling is so cool, but it’s also really rotted and we need to add insulation in order to keep it warm enough in the winter (and temperature-controlled for props). While you can add insulation on top of the roof (or so I’ve heard, although you have to re-roof) in order to keep the ceiling beams it’s way more expensive. So we are sadly going to drywall the ceiling and if I feel like we can spend money on it we’ll add paneling. Like I’ve said (repeatedly, now) I’m trying to not go “all out” on a garage-turned-project room but at the same time know that everything is a space that we shoot that can create some interesting storytelling so I don’t want it tooooooo boring.
So this room (the first garage/project room) will be most of my focus to make sure that it works for us without us spending too much mone. Bare bones. Cheap and fast. (Someone go ahead and screenshot that quote and we can all laugh at it in 2 years when I’ve made this the cutest project room ever that took 2 years to finish).
Last summer Gretchen, Brian, Bailey, and I spent a few days pulling everything out of the garages and the kit house and organizing it all (donating a lot). So above you can see it in a cleaner state. We have one extra sliding door that we could add over on that wall (there is some extra space on the other side but it’s all blackberry bushes) but again, not sure if we need that or if that’s just a fun thing to have that will cost money.
Here is what it looks like now. We’d likely salvage that window and keep it or put it somewhere else. I’m unsure if I want all three walls to be blank for storage, or to add windows or doors here (but that means we’d have to clean up the blackberry bushes and probably put up a new privacy fence, and well…everything this is a thing (also fully understanding that even being able to fantasize like this is a total privilege.) I wonder frequently if this would be used as some sort of prep kitchen should we do events here or maybe this is where a parent could age in place because it’s a single story and in that case, we need a small bathroom in here(!!).
The opposite wall will be likely a shoot wall or storage (at least for now). In my fantasies it has a door into the “car” garage and all the tools would be in that space so easy to get to, but not messing up our studio space.
The Future “2 Car Garage”
Now these rooms are huge and could easily fit even three smaller cars, but great for a roomy two-car garage. This will house more power tools and MAYBE this is eventually where we put one of those garage ceiling storage shelves for our holiday decor once the kit house is done (which won’t be for at least 2-3 years).
Right now it holds a bunch of my sister’s bins (watertight I hope!) and a ton of leftover building material that we plan on using.
It’s in ROUGH condition – the floors are wood and rotted (and you can easily step through them and break your ankle). There are many vines that have wormed their way into the garage. Also, the ceiling is falling down.
While the windows in here are nice, the neighbor’s fence is 2? away so we’ll just have these be drywall and forego natural light in here.
The Sheep Barn
Truly a barn of horrors. This room is in the worst shape…
We have thought about foregoing this room altogether, but if we keep expanding product lines I think we are going to want as much safe storage as possible (and it’s not like this part of the yard is desirable or anything to use it for entertaining or playing).
It’s a real job, but like I said – it’s actually not intimidating to me because most of the work and brain space will be done by our contractors (JP and my brother) and a handful of subs. We’ll start with foundation, then walls, basic electrical, drywall, and paint. So easy, right???
What’s The Timing??
We are hoping to start ASAP with dreams of being done during the summer so we can transfer all the props and get settled before the rainy season (November) so that it’s usable next winter. So for those of you into garage content, this is really going to be your season at the farmhouse ?
*Photos by Kaitlin Green