New garage

I am excited. I’m finally going to have a decent size shop to work in. I have been working out of my one car garage for the past 12 years. After five months of dealing with the city permitting department, we broke ground on the project last week.

It is going to be a 22 X 24 foot building, the biggest the City of St. Petersburg will allow, while also keeping my old garage. The good news is it will have 16 foot tall walls, plenty of room to put in a lift. Per city code, the construction and appearance has to match my house, so it will be wood construction, with a painted Hardie Board exterior, and a shingle roof.

Also, this past week I was at the Daytona Turkey Rod Run, and Advantage Lifts had a display there, and was running a show special. If you bought one of their 9000 pound four post lifts at the normal price, they would throw in a free rolling bridge jack, a $1995 value. So I whipped out the credit card, and got one on order. They will deliver it to my house, when the garage is done.Attachment 76086Attachment 76087Attachment 76088

Way to go! As many here, including myself, can attest to getting thru the permitting process can be a big hurdle in itself. May your frustrations on the project be minor (it will be worth it in the long run).


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What MikeP said!! Congrats on getting past the bureaucrats and breaking ground!!

Oh, that sounds NICE! And then add in a new lift?? Wow that's gonna be awesome

Thanks guys!
So, has anyone priced new construction these days?!
This garage is costing more than double what I paid for the house and property 12 years ago.:eek:

that's why i do my own building but the cost of materials is crazy. Luckly, we bought all out building materials for the remodel in 2020 before it went nuts. still cost a fortune. I'm lucky because i don't have any restriction or permit stuff to deal with.
it'll be worth it when finished.

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Originally Posted by Driver50x

Thanks guys!
So, has anyone priced new construction these days?!
This garage is costing more than double what I paid for the house and property 12 years ago.:eek:

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Built our new garage and bundled it into the rebuild of our home (gutted to the studs), saved us $40 a sq/ft over a stand alone build out. Yes, stand alone will be pricey, if it was attached to the current residential structure, it may have been less. Any way you look at it, your building codes have changed since you house was built, so you need to factor that in to your added costs.

Bill S.

lying covid crap is what ruined the economy.

I agree. We are going to be paying for that for a few more years.

It's the same the whole world over.

Six years ago we built house and shed connected...no major problems. Our major problem was the Inspector's attitude. He would come and inspect the place, if he found something he didn't approve he would stop the builder's work until he had come back to see if the job was done to where he was satisfied
He had to approve it before twenty working days had passed, ie four weeks...and he never returned until 19 working days had passed.
Only then could anyone pick up a hammer again to continue working on anything else in the building.
Then he would continue his inspection on the building. If he found something else wrong he would once again halt all work. And the builder would once again down tools for four weeks until the bureaucratic Inspector had approved it.
All this 'Down Tool' c**p was costing us money, and I was getting wound up enough to give him more than a vocal round-up, But my builder told me to 'Get-the-Hell-out-of-here' when our Inspector was due.
Council Bureaucrats!? A bunch of sanctimonious ar'e-holes in my opinion.
Why didn't he inspect through the entire place in one day?

Bureaucrats!

Bah!!!

My next job on this property was a retaining wall. Over the last sixty years I've built about thirty culverts and bridges and have built the sides of culvert and the approaches of bridges and I've never had one wash away.
I know what I'm doing...I've been doing it for years
When the inspector turned up it had cost me $46,000.
By the time he'd finished with me the price was $64,000...and that was with me doing things my way at half the money...if I'd gone all his way the cost would've been higher again.

Council bureaucrats...not for this bloke!

Wow johnboy.

It sounds like you have it worse than us. A couple days ago, a building inspector came out, and spent 45 minutes staring at the hole in the ground. I guess he had no complaints.


Yesterday they poured the cement for the footers.

Attachment 76089

It looks as if construction has started...good luck to you!
Our inspectors are straight out of Universe...full of education but no knowledge.
When our last inspector told me to use Novaflow for drainage I told him I would be using field tiles that I had on hand...and he had absolutely no idea of what I was talking about, but it saved me several hundred dollars
They're kiln baked 6" clay pipes that are porous and will last for hundreds of years. He had to go and find out from his superior.

I wasn't going to educate him.
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Attachment 76111

Progress. They poured the cement yesterday. They tell me that it’s kind of tough to get cement around here. Most of the cement company’s in the area are selling all of their cement to the production of the new Howard Franklin bridge that is being built a few miles from my house.

Glad you got your share!!

So am I! If you can't get the floor and foundations done you're stonkered.
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Looks like the shop dog has already claimed his corner! Hope you didn’t have plans for that space. :LOL:

I think any of us who have had to deal with the inspectors and contractors have our own horror stories. I’ve got to admit when I read about what johnboy has gone thru it makes the problems I ran into seem minor.

The one that got me the most heated was when we put the new manufactured home (fancy way saying damn old double wide) on the existing pad I had poured (to code) for what was supposed to be a new shop.

Anyway, the county inspector came out to do what was supposed to be the “final” inspection. He asked for the engineers’ inspection for the pad. It was supposed to be one of the first inspections done, even before the house was delivered. Turns out I had been charged for the inspection but it had never been done or even scheduled. You can’t convince me the dirty rotten (add about 2 lines of expletives here) contractors hadn’t hoped it would just be overlooked and they would pocket the money. In hindsight I can’t really blame the inspector, but it did add 2 weeks to get the engineer out, another week to get the written report, and finally 3-4 days to get the county inspector back out. Got to love it.

Anyway, after it’s done and you in to the new building, all the aggravation often becomes fodder for semi-humorous stories. Of course, depending on what you went through often determines how long that will take.


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The inspector has been out 3 times so far, but he always shows up a day or two late for the appointment, so that has been slowing things up. Also, the cement was supposed to get there at 9:00 in the morning, instead it showed up at 1:00 in the afternoon. There was a lot of yelling and cussing going on, but they worked till about three hours after sundown to finish the job. It looks great as far as I can tell.