Which shiters are lucky enough to own a garage/workshop

[af1]

Our house used to have a built in single garage (which I was never able to use as the mother in law kept her motor in it) but that has since turned into an extra bedroom

 

I have a council lock up about 2 miles away but with no power etc. it's purely for storage!

 

So do any of you have tinker troves?

[catsinthewelder]

No garage here but I've built a decently sized shed with a bench to fix those things that can be removed from the car/bike/house and worked on somewhere dry where mess isn't an issue.  A garage would be ace but I know that I would stuff it with too much tat to be able to work in it.

 

A mate phoned me the other night asking about blacksmithing forges,  there's one in my shed but I'm too scared to use it (in a wooden shed right next to a wooden house).  Hopefully it will now be going to live in his new (huge) workshop and I'll be able to go there to play with it whenever I like which gives me some space back too.

[brickwall]

Have garage, but mostly work outside

[fordperv]

does my front room count? i have built a couple of engines in there, i mostly work in the great open air workshop though

[ruffgeezer]

There is a bit of a build thread on here where I went from a pair of leaky 70s lockups to a new precast concrete garage, it stops short of telling the tale of it subsequently being filled with shit though.

[Vince70]

I'm lucky enough to have half a garage and hopefully the roof will be back on in a couple of days time once the the cement is dry around the joists..

But first I have to turn it the right way up lol

[dollywobbler]

Have garage, but mostly work outside

 

This. The garage is a dingy place and I've filled it with so much shit that it's hard to find space in there to work in a car! However, it's nice to have somewhere immediately to hand that I can lob tools and myself into should a sudden rainstorm appear.

 

Also, as the garage is part of the house, it rules out doing anything 'fumey' in the garage for fear of making the entire house stink.

[Dave_Q]

No garage or shed for me currently. 

I get serious garage envy as I imagine life would be so much easier if I had one, but then I remember when I did have one it was full of a car on axle stands and I did all my work on the drive anyway.

 

I currently work on the small lane next to our house, neighbours don't seem to like it but they can FRO. Changed the clutch on my old A4 out there so it's not like it restricts what I can do much.

 

The main annoyance is all my tools living in the cellar and having to lump everything out and back in again when a job needs doing.

[Skizzer]

+1 for the 'have garage but full of useful* shit' camp.

 

You're not from the Council, are you?

[Sloth in a bowl]

I have a garage that is long enought to store my Z and tools but not wide enough to work in.

 

I saved up for 6 years (plus a bit of fancy stock market investment) and had enough money to buy a small workshop. Then my parents hit the financial shitter and now all my money is tied up in their house and I'm back to square one. Meh.

 

Getting cheap storage in Birmingham is next to impossible. Been meaning to hit the farms out near Clent and see if there is an empty shed for rent.

[daveb47]

I have a 90 ' rear garden with a couple of poly-tunnels for working in,both with power etc and a bench in largest one with grinder/bandsaw/piller drill etc.

Also have largish caravan for working in & another couple of sheds at top of garden.

Son is currently building his latest trike creation i largest tunnel,a twin front wheel 750cc honda v4.

[mat_the_cat]

We have a wooden garage, which is just big enough to get a car in and work on it (with my tools/parts in there too) but it's nicer to spread out in the open air rather than feeling claustrophobic. I'm lucky in that Lana has a stable and feed room for a horse who is currently being stored elsewhere, I I get to fill them up with car bits too!

 

Here's a photo not long after we put it up, with cars artistically* arranged outside it.

 

[Mr Livered]

My little cottage has no garage, barn, or even driveway: this is not good when you're a chod-collector.

 

I rent a barn about a mile away from the village (20 minutes walk from my house), which has electricity, a workbench and so on, where I can keep cars and tinker. It's very useful and a nice place to "get away" but obviously too far away for keeping the cars I'm actually driving. So there's an old lady in the village who has a big house with a triple car port she doesn't use; she lets me use them in exchange for the occasional bottle of scotch, but doesn't like me working on cars there.

 

So my cars are either in the car port in the village so that I can use them, or in the barn so that they can be stored and/or worked on, or just on the street. The camper van has to live outside because it's got a high top and won't fit under cover, and Mrs Livered's Mazda lives outside because it's "modern" by our standards and is thus expected to look after itself.

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

I am lucky enough to have access to my parents' lovely garage for workshop use. I just have to share it with a washer and dryer, but there's plenty of space for all my tools. Unfortunately the P6 doesn't fit in it but I can poke the nose in for engine work in the dry.

 

The only downside is because it's part of the house (and shares a wall with the neighbour's living room) that puts an early curfew on noise and anything involving petrol has to be done outside because as soon as fuel lines or carburettors are disturbed the entire house stinks of petrol. 

[dave21478]

im one of the lucky* ones, I suppose, but its not without its drawbacks.

 

At the bottom of the garden, I have this eyesore...

Which looks like a nice modern hanger, but is infact new-ish sheeting over a very shonky old stone and brick lash-up. Its also on quite a steep slope.

 

Its big enough to fit four cars into, but I keep my big mower, log splitter and various other gardenshite in the back of it, so its only got the room for two cars.

Storage is provided by old kitchens I changed for a few different clients years ago and kept their old units as they are decent hardwood rather than chipboard.

You can see the slope here by the way the units and workbenches are staggered.

 

The floor is just packed earth, which is dusty as hell in summer and turns to thick mud in winter due to bad drainage.

This floor surface, combined with the slope make it extremely unpleasant to work on cars there, so I dont. There is a farm about a mile away where I have my main toolbox, welder etc and there is a dutch barn....ie roof and support pillars but no walls...that has a concrete floor where I fettle cars. This is pretty far from ideal too as its basically open to the elements.

 

The hanger is literally falling apart.

Im no structural engineer, but I dont think I should be able to see daylight here. The pillar is not tied to the wall in any way and seems to be making a slow bid for freedom. 

Roof beams are rotten, roof itself is sheeted in corrugated iron which is rusty and leaky in places.

 

Round the back, there is a lean-to where I keep the big trailer.

 

And there is a fuel store round the back of the house where I keep a diesel tank for the garden equipment. Its big enough to fit a car as well, but a massive colony of bats lives in the roof and shit all over everything in there.

[mercrocker]

Garden size - 35ft x 20ft.   Street parking possible for two vehicles.   How many vehicles?   Six including the caravan....

Two in the street, one under a carport in the garden (effectively halving the garden) in front of a 8x8 shed.

Two in council lockups 20 minutes walk away

One in a rented barn 12 miles away

Cant work in the street - no room.   Cant work up the garages - nosy kids and no power/light

Car port right against boundary wall too, which leaves three sides of the car able to be worked on...
Its not too bad, shed has power/light and being a small garden is only two strides to the back door of the house.

At least I can leave jobs half done, car on stands, tools pushed underneath which I could not do when we just had the street to work in.

I just cannot do that any more, half the street is full of well meaning but nosy buggers the other half is full of not so well meaning nosy buggers....

On the plus side 3 of my vehicles at any one time are out of sight and out of mind.

[trigger]

I'm very jealous of some of your workspaces! My workshop was built not long before i moved in 10 years ago, It's the maximum size you can have without planning permission and fills the whole back garden, it's really handy though and if it wasn't for the garage I'd suspect we would have moved by now.

 

 

As being modeled by Conair and his Cortina of this parish.

[Station]

Decent garages are expensive. I pay £270 per month for mine, but it's in a good location and I can stick three cars in, with enough room to work on them. It also has water, electricity (I don't have to pay for these), and a toilet with a little kitchen area. It's in walking distance from my house as well, and it's dry.

Going to stick a mezzanine up eventually for more storage space but have a rule I'm not allowed to clutter it with stuff (excepting cars) I have no need for or I'll never sell and I always have to tidy up after I finish something (regardless of the time).

[twosmoke300]

I suppose I'm lucky in that I have a large single garage at home for the bikes and a massive atcost farm building as my workshop . 2 ramps too.

 

Not so lucky is that I have to fix other people's cars all day so cba to do anything to my own stuff.

[garbaldy]

I have this garage at my house which I tinker with cars bikes and any other toys I fancy, if I get my arse in gear and finish the starlet that's at the back of the garage then its plenty big enough to work in.



as you can see its full of collectables, rubbish I think the misses calls it


 
I have a part share in a 4 ton two post lift and tyre machine at a friends farm but it is 14 miles away so don't really use it enough, I also pay for more sheds elsewhere which I am slimming them back a bit after loosing a few cars to roof cave ins, I also store stuff at a mates haulage yard and we are busy pricing up putting a workshop in so fingers crossed on that one would be nice to have everything under one roof.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

I own a big stone barn with room for 10 cars!!! Lucky Me!!! Only problem is its 600 miles from where I live. So, I don't get there very often. The morgtage on it's only 350 a month though. I like to tell myself that the treasures inside increase in value by 350 a month, (although i don't want to sell any of them ever). Man maths at work innit.

 

I also pay £100/month to use a unit thats 30 miles from my house with room for 1 car indoors and a couple more outdoors.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Yo Trig, that looks like a well neat set up, Ideal i reckon. Big enough to work on stuff but tidy looking and not so big that you can fill it with an unmanageable amount of shit.

[cort16]

I've got a double lockup a couple of miles from the house in the centre of town. I pay 30 quid a week for it but having power and being able to work on cars without worrying about weather is worth it. The only problem is its annoyingly short so not even the cortina fits in it straight on. I really have no idea why he built them like this as an extra breeze block of length would mean any normal car would actually fit in without jiggling it around on trolleys.

 

I've now scored a council lockup for 30 quid a month so the idea is to keep the Cortina in there once it's roadworthy and keep this one for working on any projects.

 

Having something like triggers is the dream as you can pop out and do a bit without technically breaching the rules of leaving the house. Get's around the problem of I'm just popping down to the garage for half an hour then turning up 7 hours later covered in diesel and engine oil.

 

IMG_2043 by cort16, on Flickr

[vulgalour]

I used to have a corrugated tin garage. It often had cats in it, let the weather in, had a dubious electricity supply and the worst access for any car approaching the size of a Princess. Now, it's my brother that has a corrugated tin garage, with a less dubious electricity supply and a slightly less horrible driveway which has a similar Princess-sized limit on vehicle size.

[mat_the_cat]

We went to look at a house to buy last autumn, which was in budget (if we had a buyer for ours). The house was OKish with good views, but the workshop was a fucking dream!

 

 

 

 

Sadly the seller decided to rent rather than sell, but we're keeping an eye on it for if and when it comes up for sale...

[cort16]

If I ever got some money one of the first things I'd build is a decent garage

[Lord Sterling]

In the UK I rent a 5 car barn from my mate in Evesham which is around £200 per month, but my agreement is per space rather than the whole barn, though he has been rather generous in letting me keep parts and stuff in there. I'll have to sort out stuff in there at some point to free up a bit of space.

 

I also rent a garage in Telford at £20 per month, currently it has a D-reg 820E in it and some rather poor conditioned Prestige alloys from my KV6. I didn't give this up as it's quite wide enough to open all 4 doors fairly wide open and it's a cheap garage to rent in my hometown.

 

In France I have (or rather had) access to a rather large garage under our house, you could probably fit up to 4 cars in there but there was only ever 2 at the most. Enough space to wok in there, we also have a driveway up the side of the house which is where the car is normally parked. I paid nowt for this as it is rented by my work, however I'd only have 10 months a year access.

 

In Brussels I have absolutely nowt. I don't have a car here or any tools to speak of. Renting a garage here is rather expensive at something like 150€+ for a very small garage which could probably just fit a K11 Mica in. There is a lot of underground parking here. If I get the flat I've got my eye on here in Brussels then I'll be seeking underground parking for sure.

[kinkersaab]

 

Im a lucky one, i have these sheds which with careful parking have enabled me to store 13 cars undercover. I have thinned down on my collection so the spaces are now filled with shite of the non car variety. I also have pretty much unlimited parking if temporary storage up this neck of the woods is needed.

[RobT]

To use estate agent wank-speak I have a garage 'en bloc' and it's a good one too, big enough for a Rover 800 but not for an XJ40, which is probably for the best. Previous owner painted the interior white which makes a big difference to the usual grim environs of a lock up, whack the light on and it's a decent place to tinker. I also rent a council garage 6 miles away for 53 quid per month where I keep the Metro. Ideally I'd want one closer as those 6 often congested London miles are what stops me driving it more often.

[TagoraSX]