Ok, so I decided to continue this topic over here where anything goes. I got the estimate for getting me under roof with a 2 car garage with loft. $39k with me finishing the work. Is that insane or what? Gotta love Cali where contractors can write their own ticket. I guess I'm gonna be lookin in to that steel building option someone mentioned. I would need to be able to get plans before I order so I can take them in to the city to approve after I get an architect to stamp them for a fee then I also have to take in my site plan, my soil sample readings from the appropriate agency, etc. Gotta love it!
I had built a small 3 car garage out of cinder block in 1998 in Chicago. The all in price was about $22,000. -Mark
Reg - I went through something rather similar, sticker shock from a contractor on a 26x34 garage/shop. If I recall, it came in around $34K and that's with me doing the finish including electrical. I went a more economical route getting the plans myself and contracting out the pieces. For the plans, check with your County building department. Where I live, they have all sorts of free plans that are already engineer approved/stamped that were drafted by local high school ROP programs. They're not fancy plans by any means, but definitely workable and it saved me much $$.
Menard's sells 2-car kits for less than $6000. Of course you would need to have a concrete pad and footer poured which would probably cost about the same. I think $39k is a little much, around here you can buy a decent house for that, probably with a garage!
that's a great idea. I'll give that a try. I live in a town with a fairly big high school so maybe they have something like that. I'm also gonna look to the steel building thing and see what I can make of that. I may just become the general contractor myself and do the best I can. I can avoid some city crap by being owner/builder.
Subcontracting is always the cheaper way to go, back when I was In California, I had a built in pool quoted from $ 44,000- $ 52,000 for the same pool design, I did a lot of research and found the best contractors on the seven different stages of the pool, I ended up sub contracting the pool for $ 26,000 total, Somehow the word got out around my neighborhood what I done and I ended up building 24 pools via sub contracting and saving people thousands of dollars without any problems. I know you have a big family and I'm sure you already went through this scenario, but maybe it might be more better to just sell and repurchase?
Reg, I'll sell you my 3 1/2 stall garage for $10,000 with all the electrical including 220 welder, compressor hook ups & air supply piping + probably $25,000 or more?to haul it to CA you pour the footing & your in business. Pretty sad you could almost do that for around the same money. I need to rebuild mine w/ 2x6 walls before I can add a second story to it to meet code. The kids have taken over the basement so I need to build myself a new dog house to live in when the angry blonde women I married gets unruly. Figured it may as well have a bar, pool table a kitchenette & a spare bedroom.
