You Have To Know Your Limits

While I have been quiet on the blog over the winter and much of the spring I have been busy.

We live in Massachusetts. Springtime is exciting and bursting with color. The summers are glorious, the beaches are beautiful. Autumn in New England has to be seen to be truly appreciated; rolling hills decked in reds and golds are world renowned. And then... there is winter. "Wait", you say, "why are we talking about winter?!" Stay with me.

I suppose if you ski, ice skate, ect. the winter isn't that bad... but I am not one of those people. I like the first snowfall, maybe a light snow while I'm Christmas shopping and possibly Christmas morning and THAT'S IT! From December 26th until some late day in March I question why I live here, what it would take to sell our home and move, or how to afford a three month long vacation south every year.

One of the my least favorite chores in the winter is clearing off the snow from the cars. For 14 winters we have lived in this home with enough parking for 6 cars but no garage. There was a shed at the end of the driveway. The house originally had a barn where the shed stood but that was long gone before we bought it.

We decided that we were getting too old and our cars were taking too much abuse. Two old maples, over 100 years old, flanked the left side of the driveway. I had to go to Google Earth for photos of them because for some reason I did not take pictures of them!

Both were diseased and we knew it was only a matter of time before they would need to be taken down.

Those factors combined moved us to build a garage! What do we know about building a garage? Nothing.

We contracted with a local builder because we know our limits. We are limited to where it can be positioned and how big it can be. To the rear is our septic system. It has to sit so many feet off the front property line and so many feet from our neighbor's property line. That being said we had to be very precise and smaller than we would have liked. We would still need a shed to house yard equipment. Trying to figure out where that was going to go I think was the hardest part.

The shed was needed to store all the stuff that our old shed housed but in a different spot. The old shed was rotting and wouldn't survive a move. The problem was trying to envision where it should sit in relation to the garage once it was built. We opted to sit in on an angle off to the side.

We contracted to build a two story, two car garage and it will sit where the old shed was. The upstairs will be a work space for me; not a living space but a place I can paint or sew or craft and have all the mess out of the house. If you sew you know how difficult it is to have to pick up everything to make dinner and use the dining table for something other than what you're in the middle of at the moment. Downstairs there is enough room for a work bench at the back of the garage.

As I said, we know our limits so it is better to have the shell done by those who know what they are doing but I had plans brewing for the inside! I will be sharing the process here in the coming weeks.

Thanks for spending time with me today.