Opinions wanted on this garage for my bus

[belfert]

I am selling my house and buying another one to reduce my housing expense.  The house I am looking at has a 40x40 attached garage.  My bus is 43 feet long so I would need to add on to the garage to make the bus fit.  The other issue is the center garage door is only 12 foot tall.  My bus 12' 9" tall with the A/C units.  The garage is taller in the center due to the scissor trusses so the A/C units might fit down the center.

Would I be crazy to deal with a garage like this where the bus has to be perfectly centered to fit?  I don't even know if the garage door could be made to work.  The ideal would be to raise the entire roof two feet, but that would be a lot of money.  Just guessing at $10,000 for that plus another $10,000 to add on to the garage.

The ideal scenario for my situation would be to find a house with an outbuilding that is already built and is the right size, but my max budget of $250,000 and wanting to be within 25 to 30 miles of downtown Minneapolis make that unlikely.  Also, many cities are very restrictive on outbuildings.  A 40x50 building for my bus would cost about $40,000 to build and I don't have that kind of money.

[TomC]

What I'm finding with looking for a sufficiently large lot to accommodate a 60ft x 40ft garage, is to look in a horse community. They usually have large areas for the horses that could be converted to a bus garage.

I want to be able to have storage for my bus, room for my hot rod, boat, a wood shop, shop for my wife to use, and room to build a pipe organ.

Keep looking. Good luck, TomC

[Utahclaimjumper]

 A garage is just like a house,, if its not right you will hate it.  That's a very nice property, but look carefully at the area,, will other residents take kindly to a Detroit diesel running next door and dripping oil in the driveway? (you get the picture)>>>Dan

[lostagain]

The driveway looks steep. You would need extra height to get the bus in to the garage at the transition at the door.

JC

[luvrbus]

Any standard roof trusses can be made into a coffer or some call a tray type trusses it's not that expensive to do one can do the work his self just have a truss company do the engineering,buy the lumber and Simpson hardware and go to work  Fwiw the center door on that shop must after been a after thought not using the coffer trusses 

[Lin]

Maybe you can get an estimate on altering the garage to see whether that will fit the budget over time.  It looks like, if changing the trusses will work, you still need to enlarge and change the door, and extend the garage back or front.  You could just do a dog nose entrance on the front if you don't mind how things look.

It would be much nicer to find one that already fits though.

[wg4t50]

I found, no matter how large, it is never big enough. When I built my 40X60 with 14X14 doors, the only thing large enough is the doors 
Dave M

[niles500]

Like Luvr said go to Simpson ties website and find the hardware, enlarge door opening, add a section of galvanized channel and a door panel and you are there - not really that hard or expensive - HTH

[belfert]

The driveway looks steep. You would need extra height to get the bus in to the garage at the transition at the door.

I thought about that a while after I made the post.  That certainly could be a big issue.

I wonder about lowering the floor, but I suspect that could cost more than raising the roof.  I might have to install new footings to do that and I would need to rebuild the driveway at least in part.  There is another house for sale where the owner added a third garage stall with a 14 foot door.  He made the floor much lower than the rest of the garage and built a lower driveway to the 14 foot door.  It looks strange, but it works.  That garage is not big enough for my bus either and is further away than I would like.  The house is also much older.

[belfert]

I am confused on the trusses.  Are you guys saying they can be modified in place to add clearance in the center?  I always assumed a truss was not to be modified after it was manufactured.  I wonder if I could really get enough clearance for a 14 foot door considering the side walls are 10 feet?  I would find it hard to believe the center door was an after thought as why would the garage be built so tall in the center if not to have clearance for the 12 foot door?

There are places that may have already built buildings that will work, but the price is likely to be above my budget and they are probably going to be another 5 or 10 miles out.  The homes are likely to be older too.  There is one place with a 45x45 building that is probably big enough, but the house was built in 1961 and it is quite a bit further than I want to drive.  This house was built in 2003 and I really like that.  I'm not set on this house and it won't break my heart if it sells before I am ready to buy.

[Fredward]

Brian,
Its great having your bus at home and indoors. It opens up a whole lot of options for projects. That garage you're looking at is finished inside isn't it? So that means you will need to tear the interior apart to redo the trusses? Anything is possible. That house/shop combination looks real nice. If its close enough to downtown, I'd say try to figure out a way to make it work. Those types of places don't come along every day.
Fred

[belfert]

No, the garage is not finished inside, at least not the ceiling.  It is insulated.  The current owner started to put 2x4 ceiling tiles on the trusses.  It looks horrible as they are all sagging.  There are quite a few cases of ceiling tiles in the garage.

The house itself is really dusty and dirty inside and is not occupied, but it is not bank owned or in foreclosure.  It appears the owner(s) may be elderly and moved to senior housing or passed on.  The house just needs a good cleaning and a fresh coat of paint.  The home has been on and off the market for more than a year.  The price has been reduced substantially, but my realtor thinks it is still overpriced.

[wg4t50]

We bought our place lil over 30 yrs ago at an auction, was asking $125K, been empty for 2 yrs, owner died, new wife (12 yrs worth) ran off with everything she could grab, let the rest for the original family to solve.  Made offer  $105K, no, they took to auction to get its real worth, so we bought it for $88.5K.  Had place cleaned by Servicemaster and painted everything fresh, also painted the basement concrete block walls white, that sure brightened up the basement along with light green floor paint.
Love auctions, only way to buy a house. 1983 was a different time  for real estate. Best part, been debt free since.
Very fine Brick Rancher 108' X 36' & 5 acres.  Cleared lots of trees, built a 24 X 36 normal garage to build my kit airplane.   Then 15 yrs later had the 40 X 60 commercial garage/shop built.
Big issue, in my case, by the time you can afford all the goodies, I was not over the hill but could see it coming very fast so I just enjoy being in the garage, but no longer can do what I used to enjoy doing like playing with a MC7.
Dave M

[sledhead]

What about lifting the walls 2' or 3' and adding to the doors ? Is it 2x6 on block ?

dave

[belfert]

For those in the Minneapolis area, the house is in Ham Lake.  It is still 24 miles from downtown Minneapolis and really a little further than I would like to drive.  Cities here in the Minneapolis metro area are really restrictive on outbuildings even some with no sewer and minimum 2.5 acre lots.  I missed out by one day on a house on a 2.7 acre lot in Fridley, MN that was cheap.  That was only 11 miles to work and on a bus line.

Yes, I've considered lifting the walls/roof, but I figure at least $10,000 to have a house moving company come in to do that.  Probably not a DIY job.