It may look like a garage but per my building permit this is definitely just a plain old boring 14x18 storage shed. It took forever to complete because I could only work on it a few hours every few evenings, and maybe an afternoon here and there on some weekends. There was also a lot of normal life and work stuff to deal with and other projects that were competing with this one. It was nearly 28 months from the time I broke ground until the last paint was dry.
It started out in June 2017 by paying the professionals to dig out and build a foundation. Over half the budget went into this but it was totally worth it.
After 5 months I’d finished putting in drainage, backfilling the holes, building retaining walls, leveling out the hilltop adjacent to the shed, and loaded over a dozen truckloads of dirt for various Craigslist respondents to my “please take some free dirt” posts.
It sat mostly idle until the end of the following July when I was able to start framing.
After about 3 months I had it framed, sheathed, roofed, and wrapped.
I built the first set of shelves late that fall so I’d have a safe place to store all the fiber cement siding until I could get around to installing it. A lot of it ended up in the attic as well. I also put in a rolling steel door around this time so it could be sealed up.
Some other things came up and I didn’t get any more work done until June 2019, when I built some more storage space in there. It doesn’t look like it from the outside but it has 9’6" of clearance to the bottom of the joists along with a pretty decent amount of attic space.
I worked on the finishing touches (fascia, soffit, siding, trim, caulk, paint, etc) through Sept and Oct.
Got it all finished up and passed inspection 3 days before my building permit expired! Here’s what it looks like after I filled it up with shelves and storage and all our other junk.