We get to work with some amazing people on some really cool projects. This project in particular has some of my favorite people (clients) of all time. They appreciate what we do and allow us and trust us to design for them. Phase 1 of their project is to design a detached garage / barn / workshop addition. The goal with this addition is to help with the scale and proportion of their existing home as it sits on the beautiful site in Shenandoah County. They learned during the construction of their home, designed by a builder, how important it is to have a holistic approach to a project to compliment the building site and to achieve their aesthetic and functional goals.
Existing House
The detached garage / barn / workshop addition will house some of the equipment used to maintain the property, give a place to store the messy stuff in a neat and orderly fashion, and expand the space to make stuff in a second story workshop. The structure sits in the corner of the lot not to take away from the existing structure, but to complement it and tie both together aesthetically. We will also do some work on the existing house to improve function and aesthetics in a later phase.
The framing is in process and the builder is taking good care of our clients. Here are some photos of the progress.
It all started so innocently, we became a car based society and wanted to protect our investments. So we went from parking our cars in a driveway to parking them in the carriage house at the end of the driveway. Then came the carport – an attached to your home open air structure that protected the car from rain and snow. Then someone, probably an architect, said, lets build walls around this structure and make it part of the house. That is where our troubles started.
Yes, the attached garage is a convenience that most people in our area enjoy on cold and wet days, but there are problems lurking. It is impossible to completely separate them from your living spaces. This leads to indoor-air-quality issues in your home. As wind blows against your garage door, the space become pressurized pushing fumes and chemicals into your house. After all, where do you keep all those pesticides, gas cans, old paints if not in your attached garage?
So what is the solution? A detached garage not directly connected to your home. It can be connected via a covered walkway or screen porch. This detached structure is completely separated from your living space protecting your indoor-air-quality. Interesting that the google web definition is a garage not attached to a home, usually found in older homes. We have found that many of our clients want a healthy home. To create this you have to make the thermal envelope very tight which makes the indoor-air-quality contaminant prevention even more important.
There seems to be a new kind of man cave popping up all around our area; the detached garage. It protects indoor air quality, offers flexible work space, and extra storage. The detached garage is making a comeback!
These structures used to be fairly standard in residential design, but fell in popularity to the attached garage for convenience. However, these attached garage structures are usually limited in size to maintain proportions to the rest of the home. They also are usually on the front of the home dominating the architecture – better purchase a nice garage door. The detached garage offers a place for a guest apartment, can vary in size and aesthetics, and is a place to store all those chemicals (paint, gas, oil) that you don’t want sneaking into your home. The detached garage can take on a form to compliment the home, look like a barn, or blend into the background.
