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I have a 20x20 garage (at least I believe so if the design specs are correct). What I always did was back one car in and pull the other in. The passenger side is not possible to open while in the garage. The driver is arguably the more important of the two. By doing that I feel I reclaimed a lot of space. I learned this tactic from growing up, my parents had a "2.5 car (detached) garage" and did the same thing.
Quite funny watching this, I suggest you research the difference between a small house in America and a typical city house in Birmingham or London UK. 5ft to get furniture in! it will be less and the skill involved to get furniture through a British door will be more and a Monster Truck sorry 19ft Truck will not fit on a driveway or road parking space in most UK homes because the UK is so small :) There are a lot of 19ft trucks but not owned by all, it needs to stop to prevent more pollution.
I absolutely despise modern home builders for a plethora of reasons, garages being one of them. My 2018-built townhouse has a “2 car” garage which BARELY fits my Ford Escape and Nissan Versa (both fairly compact cars). I end up scraping at least once a week. The garage door is 15’3” and the width of the garage itself is only a few inches wider on each side. Fortunately there is enough depth that we get a small amount of storage in behind the cars. In my not so humble opinion, America needs much higher standards for building codes. As long as builders can get away with things, they will. If a garage is advertised to be a 2-car garage, then it should fit 2 of the LARGEST model of car built that same year, with all the doors and trunk fully open simultaneously, and still have room to walk around. Don’t even get me started on how poorly garages are insulated, ventilated, and air sealed.
Think the American Government rightly so wants 19ft long vehicles off the road unless they are really needed, to take kids to school is senseless concerning the planet and environment.
Do away with the entry hall, and you now have a 19 foot entry room. Sure you need a path, but it sure feels bigger, and you can arrange your furniture however you want You upped it back to 25 foot wide garage, you can up the door to 18-20 feet no more angle.
wow...not only that but developers are and were taking advantage of said "Ideal Layout" that you have at 10:46 for demos / new builds to save money and make bank too. My wife and I moved out to the suburbs in 2019 so yeah pre-Covid and got this very exact model of a home and paid $75,000 MORE than the neighbors here who paid for their standard non-cookie cutter homes that were built just prior with 2 of them closing during 2017-2018 and they have more of EVERYTHING...well all except their total LOT space cause we do all have the same 70x125ft rectangle lot. But their homes have 3 FULL car garages, more square footage inside the home, higher ceilings, better craftsmanship and better materials! We are all close friends now which is how we know all of this and even found out that it was the developers "overall plan" to buy and demo all the other older homes here to build more of these "Ideal Layout" homes. Well, then of course 2020 showed up and changed all that but still all the "money saving" tactics were already in place...at least up here in the Chicago area. Silver lining is yes of course we closed in 2019 so we are locked in with a 2.8% mortgage, but like many others we did not intend to live in this house forever...but now like so many others this will most likely become our forever home.
This isn't that new of a phenomenon. I first experienced this in 1990. I've owned one model or another of Ford F-250 since and I have never been able to park any of them in any home garage! It's just too long.
Location matters. In my suburban somewhat upscale city the average cost for an acre is about $100,000. If you can find it. The average cost per acre state wide is just under $9,000. You are talking farm land with no roads or utilities at that point of course. My garage built in 1953 has a 16’ door. It is 18’ wide and 19’ deep. I have no shed so lawn equipment snow blower and such are in the garage plus our one suv. Our only vehicle. We once put two sedans in there but it was very tight
What’s crazy is that the 20x20 minimum is NOT actually 20x20. By the time you add drywall/ concrete foundation, it’s actually 19 -19.5 ft like mine. You can only comfortably fit 2 cars if they’re Mini Coopers
Also in Utah, In the winter both cars seem to fit, but summer rolls around and my vehicles get to sit outside in the garage. I am currently in a house built in the late 80s. I am going to go home and measure my garage to see how big it is.
I back my car in, so that it's up against the wall. The other car parks nose in, against that wall. That gives us maximum room to get in and out. Any passengers have to get out before parking. I refuse to park in the driveway, it makes the neighborhood look trashy.
I live in So Calif and the city is so paranoid about people illegally renting their garage out as a studio apartment that if you put drywall in your garage they will fine you and make you rip it out. That goes double if you put insulation in under the drywall. Now, the code requires new homes to have drywall in the garage as a fire barrier, so if the home was built new with drywall in the garage, they will not make you take it out. But if it is an older home that didn't originally have drywall, and most are, they will not allow it, even though it improves fire safety and new homes are required to have it. It's crazy stupid. I just wanted a nice workshop, but they considered that an illegal conversion to a habitable space, even though there was no water, no toilet, no heating. My next home is going to have a purpose built workshop in it with full heating and airconditioning separate from the home heating and cooling system.
The easy solution: Don't buy cookie cutter "developer" built subdivision tract houses. I can't understand why/how anybody would want to live in such a "community" anyway. Geez people - just get a townhouse or apartment if you want to live in dense areas and be done with it. The 3' lawn and 6" of separation from your neighbor isn't worth it. If you want a real house move out of the city where you can actually find something that wasn't "one of 4 unique and exiting floorplans!" built by the lowest bidder to maximize profit for a developer who bought up farmland and chopped it into the smallest sellable parcels. I have friends who area amazed that I have an 30x36 shop out back to work in. It's not a big deal - I just didn't choose to live in some crappy subdivision.
Great video and you definitely did a lot of research! Someone else had posted that they can do it themselves or just pay someone to do it for about 1000 and $1500… definitely looks a lot nicer when it’s finished and you’ll definitely wanna do this while the garage is empty 😂😂😂
Garage space isn't included in the sq ft calculations of the house, so a bigger garage makes the house look more expensive per sq ft on paper. Seriously, if it weren't for city building codes requiring a two car garage, builders would only build a one car garage or no garage. In California, which has a housing shortage, you can legally convert your garage into a studio rental unit. I can see builders designing garages with the conversion in mind. Condo units don't require garages, just parking spaces. Growing population and more expensive land is squeezing cars out of the house.
I wonder if it would be possible in most jurisdictions to have the garage underground. It's probably costly sure, and there could be ventilation requirements. But apartment complexes do it. Some townhomes dedicate the entire ground floor to garages and build on top, with entryways on some other side. So could we take the next step and bury garages? They often don't have windows already. Let's also assume the driveway is long enough that you can get in and out without a scaling a ridiculous grade.
I bought my first house in 1991. It was ~1300 sq ft on 0.11 acres w/ no garage. In 2000, I had a 20x24 detached garage. I lived there 20 years longer. I could never imagine not having a garage. In 2020, I met my new wife. She has a large ranch style house on ~4 acres. A detached 24x30 garage with another two rooms attached to the garage with another 500-600 sq ft total. Once I moved all my crap in with all her crap, we have the garage crammed full, with enough room for her Avalanche, My 2500HD is left outside LOL. We are now in the process of building a 14'x32' "Shed" with a 2nd floor that is 8'x32'. After watching this video, I feel like I hit the lottery. And the fact that in many areas you'd pay $500K+ for such a small place makes me feel even better to be located right where we are.
I was fortunate enough to have a new garage built just a couple years before Covid hit in the U.S. So I was able to design my garage to get mostly (cost prohibiting) what I wanted. So I have a 2 car garage, with two doors rather than a single door. It is 24 feet wide, which allows for us to park BOTH of our vehicles inside. I have a Dodge Dakota pickup and my wife has a Subaru Outback. The garage is 42 feet long, meaning I still have space for the workshop area as well as storage areas in the garage. We are STILL parking both vehicles in the garage.
Just building a new house and specified a 25’ x 25’ garage with plans to store 1 truck and one car. It will fit but that’s about it, not planning on a work bench or storage. I solved that problem by building a 2400 sq ft metal building which coincidentally won’t cost much more than expanding to a 36’ x 25’ proper 3 car garage. Problem solved but we also have a 2.5 acre lot.
Um. It's pretty well established that cars are getting bigger across the board. For all of the new construction I see (I work in residential construction) the garages are enormous compared to my parents' house. This video sounds wrong from every aspect.
I can barely fit 2 cars in my garage. I park my little-used car backwards (rear-in) on the left so the driver's door opens to the middle. I then park my daily driver head-in on the right, so its driver's door also opens to the middle. Anyone on the passenger side has to get out before I park. But both cars fit with a comfortable space in the middle to open either driver's door. Doesn't work if you use both cars daily (unless one person is really good at backing in).
My house was built in 1960 on ½ acre lot, and the two-car garage, with separate doors, is still only 20x20'. It's so tight that we can't even park one of our vehicles in it due to needing it for storage.
Sounds like a car issue, most don't even use most of the space in a car 90% of the time. I asked a car dealership why cars are so big in America and he said it was because people in the US are unhealthy and plus size due to the crap people eat in the US. He also said some people in the US think bigger is better even though it isn't always
