Flip flops and Garages

I grew up in California. In the Golden State people wear flip flops all year long, roses bloom in February, and car ports protect the Porsches.

Our youngest child with Craig in CA

Now I live in Minnesota. It gets cold in the winter. Very. Cold. I traded my flip flops for Sorels.

Our youngest child's winter uniform.

Midwest snow blows sideways. Car ports? Not so helpful.

Here in the tundra, a garage is a wonderful luxury. Some people would argue it is a necessity. These people grew up in California and like wearing flip flops.

In all the years we have remodeled homes for resale, only two houses did not have a garage. Our last rehab was one of those houses. We went back and forth deciding if we should build a garage. The house was quite small (960 sq ft) and the garage would need to be detached. We decided to list the house for a lower price and make a note in the MLS listing that we would custom build a garage for X amount of dollars.

21 showings later…

… no offers. It was obvious that we needed to build the garage. It seems not everyone who thinks a garage is a necessity is from California.

After getting a few bids, Craig found a company who will build the garage at a great price.  They’ll pour the cement this week, and we’ll have it up soon. You can see the Before picture of the exterior of this house here.

UPDATE:  We now have the house under contract with a buyer… before the garage’s concrete floor was even poured.  They definitely want a garage, so we’ll shovel the snow that came last week and get started on the custom garage.  And I’ll be dreaming of roses that bloom in February.