4 Important Considerations Before Erecting Garage Kits

Adding a metal garage onto your house is now a far cheaper and easier exercise than it used to be, with the availability of home garage kits that can be shipped all over the country. However, putting up a garage isn’t quite like putting together your Meccano set - there are quite a few important considerations for homeowners thinking about adding some valuable home garage kit space. Today we go through 4 of the most important things to know and think about.

Check building regulations

Dealing with the council is almost always a hellish experience, a nightmare of forms that need to be signed in triplicate and hand-delivered before a 42 day wait can commence. However, dealing with the council is much easier if you find out what you are allowed, and not allowed to do, before you start. If any neighbors have a problem with the building, you'll also be sure that you're in the right before the conversation even starts.

Making good use of the space

If you plan it right, you can get a lot more bang for your garage building kit buck with a couple of neat extras that make good use of the space in your garage. For instance, why not build a pit into the floor so you can easily work on cars without worrying about a jack giving way and 2 tons of metal falling on your head? Or make a few modifications to the beams in the roof so you can use them as storage for canoes, boxes, bikes etc?

What else do you want to use the space for?

Garages shouldn’t just be for cars! Grab a model that has space for the car as well as plenty of wiggle room, and you can create a new laundry room, a music practice room, a 'boys room', or just a space for chillaxing with plenty of couches, curtains and lamps.

Don't overestimate your resale value

Garages can be a 'valuable' addition to your house ... but most of that value will probably come from the uses that you and the family find for it. According to real estate professionals, you are likely to see around a 40-50% return on the cash spent on a new garage. Make sure that the rest of the cash you spend is worth it to you.

Four Functional Types of American Barns

When you were young, all barns fell into two simple categories ... those you were allowed to while away the long childhood hours in, and those that you weren't! As a kid, the thing that was most special about your barn was simply the fact that it was yours. Now that you're grown up, making your own decisions and spending your own cash, there's a bit more thought that needs to go into your choice of American barn. Today we check out 4 functionally classified types of barns that can be built with pole barn kits, easily and on a budget.

Tobacco barns

Travelling by train through the countryside of some tobacco-heavy states, tobacco barns are still a ubiquitous part of the landscape. Air-cured tobacco needed a barn to mature in, but when the states started actively discouraging tobacco cultivation due to its health effects, most tobacco barns were instantly abandoned. Now the little tobacco that is still grown is cured on scaffolds placed throughout the fields. Not quite as romantic as the old barn!

Hop barns

These could once be found on every second farm, especially throughout New York's hoop belt. Now only Washington State still produces hops, and the hop barns that can still be found are more historical relics than functioning hop kilns. The design is very distinctive, though - you'll most likely recognize the tall, narrow buildings with a cupola over one area - where the hop kiln was located inside.

Pole barns

Pole barns can still be found across the country - they provide an easy maintenance yet undercover area for storage and work, and they are also exceedingly easy to put up! Nowadays you don't have to go out and hew your own tree trunks, though - you just buy a pole barn package. If white ants are a problem in your area, there are plenty of steel pole barn packages available.

Rice barns

You might not recognize this building unless you've spent a lot of time in South Carolina - the rice barn is generally seen in Asian countries. South Carolina rice barns were usually clad in beautiful, romantic cypress shingles. Hay lofts, interior stairwells and gabled rooves make this type of American barn iconic.