Service/people to help plan garage reno

July 15, 2023 5:24 AM

I have a very old garage, zoning-grandfathered to the property line. I'd like to fix it up, but could use help with ideas and planning; possibly later drawings. What should I look for?

I've got some rough plans myself, but when reaching out to contractors they were asking for architectural drawings (I believe I'm exempt from needing formal drawings for permits, as I'm the owner of the building, but...) and asking questions that made me realize I might benefit from bringing in somebody who knows...
- local permits and the parameters of what I can do to this garage while keeping the grandfathered zoning intact
- good advice (the garage is partially below grade, what kind of wall is best for that portion? I'd like to have steps going down and a door from the side yard, but the wall on that side is quite low -- do I need to raise the roof to put in a taller door?)
- potentially architectural drawings/plans -- reading our bylaws it looks like I'm exempt, but maybe better to get this done than not.

I'm in a smaller city, so there may not be highly specialized people/services. I'm not sure how to start looking for the right kind of person. Designer? Architect? Engineer? Some sort of consultant? I think investing a bit of money early so I don't make a $10,000 mistake down the line is wise, but I don't want to waste money either.

posted by Shepherd to Home & Garden (12 answers total)

Drawings tell you and the contractor what it is they are doing and you are paying for. Without them neither of you can be very certain of those things unless it is very simple work.

From your language I can tell I don't live in your country but you need an architect or someone who can do similar work, here that's a draftsperson or building designer but might be different for you.
posted by deadwax at 6:07 AM on July 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: If you can draw at all before spending any money I'd crank out a rough sketch and take it to your jurisdiction's planning department. Here modification of a grandfathered zero lot line building is fraught with specific requirements and it would be a waste of money to pay someone to flesh out drawings that are unbuildable.

Where I live for example as long as the original (in a real Ship of Theseus sort of way) lot line wall is used you can't build the wall any higher but you can build a roof over it to protect it to the maximum modern height allowed. Which gets you into Mansard roofs and what technically separates a steep roof from a wall.

Building/planning departments are almost universally helpful in this regard.
posted by Mitheral at 7:03 AM on July 15, 2023 [6 favorites]

2nding Mitheral. I had plans for a basement reno drawn up by an engineer and the city found very basic problems with the dimensions of the footings and denied the permit. The engineer wanted to charge me for the required revisions. I took them back to the planning department desk for advice - the guy told me exactly what to fix and said all I needed do was strike out the engineers name and sign my own. If I'd known that, I would've done all the drawing myself.
posted by brachiopod at 8:26 AM on July 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Mitheral's advice is solid and mostly conforms to my experience (in the US). My only caveat there would be that sometimes the people working the frontline planning helpdesk that's your first stop for questions may not have the knowledge of the local municipal code that allows them to really get into the gray area stuff like "is it technically a wall or a roof" but you may be able to work your way up to a supervisor that can. My area has a thing with the planning department where you can get a preliminary ruling with fairly minimal documentation and as long as you do what you said you were going to do in the submitted documents, that ruling is binding (i.e. my city can't come back and say "nah, we changed our mind on that one"). You'll almost certainly need some kind of documentation showing how big the existing garage is and where it is on your property at the very least. Some areas allow non-occupied buildings (like, technically a garage (usually)) to be in the setback if they're under a certain size, without any grandfathering or variances or other code gymnastics required - maybe worth looking into the municipal code on that.

Garage being below grade being a problem depends on how much below grade. I don't think it's common, but my city has retaining wall designs for a couple different conditions that are prescribed designs, so using them appropriately means you don't have to do anything exotic with hiring a structural/civil engineer.
posted by LionIndex at 8:39 AM on July 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: When I wanted to build my workshop (in Petaluma California), I sat down with the Internet and learned enough building code to draw up the plans myself, and I recommend the process very highly. When I took those plans to the city building department, they asked for engineering stamps on a couple of details (mostly around my extremely high roof loading because I put a living roof on it), so I went and found a professional engineer to sign off on a few things.

Most of the structural details were handled by building code (for even up to 3 story buildings there's a lot of "if you just follow these tables the building is way over-engineered"), the bits that needed engineering stamps were:

• The roof trusses, which was handled by the roof truss manufacturer
• The sheathing for the sheer walls and the anchoring to the foundation, where I basically paid $500 for someone to give me Simpson Sheet Metal part numbers for the anchors, and tell the building department that 3/8" plywood nailed on 6" spacing on the edges and 12" spacing on the centers was fine

I did make the mistake of submitting the building plans separately from the electrical plans, as when I submitted the electrical plans construction was under way and they said "from construction quality this looks like a habitable building, which means you have to be Title 24 compliant". Which is why my workshop has AC and cost an extra $3.5k... but that's an off-topic whine.

So you have a couple of questions:

local permits and the parameters of what I can do to this garage while keeping the grandfathered zoning intact — this is a question for your planning department. Go talk to them. Take a really rough sketch of:

1. A big shape for your lot, with dimensions along each side
2. Smaller shapes for each of the buildings on your lot, with dimensions for those shapes and for the distance from each of those sides from the side of the lot. ("Setbacks")
3. Any proposed changes to the outlines of those buildings (even if you don't yet know what you can do, and maybe brainstorm some options). This is where you give some options for those stairs on the side of the garage.

Your planning department should be happy to have a quick chat with you about what is and isn't possible.

At this point, you're then on to talking with the building department.

the garage is partially below grade, what kind of wall is best for that portion — this sounds like an engineering question about retaining walls. Your building department should be able to tell you that they'll need to sign off on a retaining wall, whether it needs engineering stamps, or just needs to conform to a code that they can tell you. That'll tell you whether you use tables, eyeball it, or get an engineer to tell you what you need.

I'd like to have steps going down and a door from the side yard, but the wall on that side is quite low — this is something that should probably be covered in your planning discussion, about how much leeway you get in raising the roof (dormer there, perhaps?), or excavation outside the building. When you do that napkin sketch for planning, do a few options and let them tell you what you can and can't do easily. Also, if you can go higher than you think you need to, do so.

potentially architectural drawings/plans my city building department didn't care who did the drawings, as long as the bits they needed engineering stamps on had engineers sign off and stamp them. Even when I'd done the calculations (in fact, when it came to the Title 24 energy conservation calcs they should have gone with mine rather than the engineer's, 'cause my spreadsheet was way more conservative). Drawing isn't that hard, except that I'm a computer geek and thought I was gonna do this all with CAD and found it way easier to do pencil on graph paper.
posted by straw at 8:40 AM on July 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Not to threadsit, and I'm very appreciative of the advice so far, but just to clarify the "below grade" thing, it's like 16 inches on one side where the garage abuts the side yard and the wooden wall is clearly rotting.

I guess I've been assuming that the city planners will be more adversarial than partnership-minded; this is very reassuring in terms of reframing my thinking of the city as people I can talk to rather than just looking at plans and saying "yes" or "no."
posted by Shepherd at 9:05 AM on July 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

[for non-Californians: Title 24 is technically the California Building Code, but generally gets used as a term to describe energy use requirements stipulated by the code, and you typically have to submit a checklist of prescriptive design measures along with your plans OR a bunch of calculation showing how you comply. Other areas may use something similar like "Comcheck"]
posted by LionIndex at 9:07 AM on July 15, 2023

I guess I've been assuming that the city planners will be more adversarial than partnership-minded; this is very reassuring in terms of reframing my thinking of the city as people I can talk to rather than just looking at plans and saying "yes" or "no."

Your fears are not unfounded, but it depends - partially on who you talk to, partially on your attitude going in. Lots of homeowners go in with scorched-earth "this is my property and I can do what I want with it" attitude and people that work with the general public might be on guard for that. Some planning department workers are just on a power trip - I've definitely skipped times when I've been called up to the review desk because I knew the person calling me up was going to throw a mountain of BS at me. But that's also a good reason to go in early before you have a lot of time invested in it and be more like "hey, I'm just asking questions", and to have a bit of code (probably municipal zoning code rather than building code) info in your back pocket. If they tell you that you can't do something you may want to get the specific code reference for what they're saying and look it up yourself to see if they're missing something.
posted by LionIndex at 9:17 AM on July 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Where I live, you’d need a building permit for that kind of work and also city inspectors come during and after construction to make sure your work is up to code. This is where professional engineers and architects are good for you, you will get something sturdy and good looking from them that will not incur the fines you are trying to avoid.
posted by Vatnesine at 9:25 AM on July 15, 2023

If you live in a small enough city or town, you can ask the city planners which general contractors usually have their ducks in a row relative to submittals and good quality design-build drawings. You are not asking for a recommendation, you are just asking about who is good to work with from a planner perspective. A good GC will be friends with the folks In planning and have a cooperative, problem-solving approach to working with the city.
posted by chuke at 11:25 AM on July 15, 2023

Best garage idea I've ever heard: Someone on AskMefi once suggested to paint-spray the entire interior of the garage white, and pour a white epoxy floor. It makes the garage feel like part of the house instead of part of the yard, so it stays cleaner and is more pleasant for storage and staging of items. I LOVED this idea and dream of the day. Thanks to whoever posted it!

Also very helpful: start a Pinterest board of garage ideas so you can show your planner what you like.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 2:09 PM on July 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Re adversarial relationships: Someone from my city building department has explicitly said "we don't care so much about what you do with your property, we care about the risks to others and to subsequent occupants", and "we'd much rather get our eyes on the project than have you do something unsafe and us not see it". If you go in with the attitude that this is a cheap way to get a second set of eyes on your project for the safety and longevity of the work you do, I think you and they will get off on the right tone.

Planning similarly is about making sure that what you do follows the rules so you don't piss off your neighbors. Those rules may suck for you, but they're just doing their job.
posted by straw at 10:33 AM on July 16, 2023