Technical When does a Garage become a Shop............

Garage = park cars. Shop=kinda dirty where cars are built. museum=look at all my pretty cars & signs

 

The definition is critical in some places and absolutely irrelevant in others. I ended up moving from my last home and "garage" because of the city planner. I now live in a place with no restrictions and it doesn't matter what I call it or what I do in it. My horrible past experience was because I went to get a building permit and made the mistake of calling the building a "shop". That ended up not being allowed however I was allowed to build a 1000 sf house with an attached 1600 sf "garage". I finally gave up and moved. When you are talking to the government employees who control your life its very important to know the right words and definitions before talking to them.

 

Being in a commercial complex, I consider my workspace a shop and I call it the BillyBob Shop. However, during those dry stretches when I lose my ambition, I term it the BillyBob Museum.

 

I'd say thats kinda how I feel too. I know professional mechanics referred to their buildings as "garages" back in the day, but by todays terminology I think Bangngears has a pretty good definition. Myself, I think the way to tell the majority of places that actually qualify as a "shop" is the presence of tools which haven't been put away because you are using them and aren't done with them at the end of each day. Yes there are some guys who keep their shops spotless and put every tool away at the end of the day, but generally a shop will have some amount of disarray and tools that are waiting for their next use still sitting out....... Ift's always clean and organized its either a garage or a museum............

 

I feel better now!








Bones

 

A garage becomes a shop when you can talk your wife into parking outside so your project car has a nice indoor work area!

 

I have a 3-car attached garage with a "shop" in it.
3 road-ready cars reside in the garage but occasionally a short-term project will happen by shuffledancing the cars. The "shop" is where I create my custom shift knobs. The garage is wider than the front of the house, allowing the last bay on the right to wrap the side of the interior area to make a 6' x 7' deep 'bump back'.
So when I tell my wife. "I'll be in the shop", she knows not to simply look for me in the garage but to peek around the corner into the "shop" if she needs me.

 

Exactly Rickey, very well stated.

 

Totally agree. But not quite far enough. My shop is the very center of my universe. My 0-0-0 place. My house has a 24 x 24 attached garage. My wife has it so crammed full of crap she can't even get her own car in. My 30x36 shop with 10 x 20 and 10 x 30 lean-to's is 75 feet away from the house. Fridge, microwave, big screen TV, stereo, a lifetime of tools, wood stove, and my laptop. Room for the three hotrods that were built there. I spend all my time in the shop. I tell everyone I live in the shop. I just sleep in the house.
Wife and I get along great, but if I spent all that time in the house instead of my shop, I am afraid that we would be splitting assets 50-50.

 

So I'm confused! I only have a 24x30 attached garage, with one corner cut off for an 8x8 laundry room (don't underestimate the value of giving up some space to SWMBO). The daily driver resides in the one side with the laundry room. The other side roughly 12x30 holds the whatever project, 2 lathes, 2 drill presses, 2 welders, 2 work benches, 2 different storage rack systems, more parts for Son of Whatever, and so many hand and power tools that I have to keep track of.

By most of the responses, I can't determine if I should call it a garage or a shop. I make stuff in it and I park a car in it. Oh well it's what I have, so that's where you'll find me building the whatever project or parking my daily driver...

 

Shop....2 car shop

 

If you can paint a car in it , its a shop

 

We also have here "Man-caves", which means it has a big screen TV, lots of car and sport posters, some sort of fancy floor, but no actual work gets done in there. The difference between a "Shed" and a "garage" is that you would never walk barefoot in a Shed, unless you like stepping on swarf, screws, etc. I even had a floor in my shed, but I last saw it in the early '80's.

 

had a buddy who bought a house with an attached garage with nothing behind it. he did not build a shop there he built a 40 foot long family room with a 12 foot tall ceiling and a cement floor at the same level as the garage. after all the permits were signed off he knocked out the back wall of the garage and worked on cars in his family room.

this was in a neighborhood with a homeowners association so anal he could not park his work van in this own driveway.

 

Any Garage will become a Shop if it is threatened to be called a poser ''Man Cave'' JW

 

So now we are going from garage or shop to man cave, I love the HAMB!

 

No, only when threatened to be! JW

 

Lol.

 

It has been mentioned a few times, but back when I was younger repair shops were garages. There’s still some old paint on the back of a wall in town that said “Sudebaker Garage”, we used to have the “Oakdale Garage”, but I think the name has changed now.
I do recall older folks when I was a kid saying they needed to take their car/truck to the “garage”. Seems nowadays it’s to the shop, etc.

 

My shop is as close as I ever plan to having a man cave. No couches, tv, or any of that nonsense in my shop.

 

I have an attached garage, and a shop out back, and they both have almost the same tools, as I work on my cars at both. But most extensive build work gets done out back, and the attached garage just gets repairs, or small updates. I do a little in the driveway in front of the garage also, but only in nice weather.

 

My first gig as a paid mechanic, back in 1970 was a very large building called “ Central Garage”. We worked on everything!






Bones

 

My shop for 60 years .

 

Hey, budget36;
Any photo(s) of that wall w/"Sudebaker" garage? Name is awfully close to Studebaker. Just for giggles, could you also post the town n state it's in? The Stude community likes to find/doc the existings of past dealerships/Garages/etc. There is a very large wood-beamed bldg in St Paul MN, that was a Stude dealership/Garage, now is(was? haven't been there for a few yrs) a nice restaurant, among other things.
TIA.

36roaster;
"The difference between a "Shed" and a "garage" is that you would never walk barefoot in a Shed, unless you like stepping on swarf, screws, etc. I even had a floor in my shed, but I last saw it in the early '80's."
Boy, if this isn't the truth... I'm amazed that almost all of you can see the floors or even the walls, in your various-"boxes" . Granted, most of the time mine is some sort of storage container that I play 3-D tetris in - which I hate btw. Been rebuilding/fixingup to eventually resemble some sort of useable working area that I can get something done *in*(now mostly things that get done, get done outside = no fun). Sadly, a few yrs ago, an opportunity came around w/2 large barns & a '20s house way out in the country; that I couldn't do, due to then life-events. <shrug> . So I slowly work w/what I have.

Marcus...

 

When you're a reality TV star and you're about to lose it if the build isn't finished in time for the big show.





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This should be rephrased to "when does a shop become a garage". I can barely count the number of times my daily driver has ever been in the shop.

 

so what happens to your shop when you finish your car just the way you like and stop the heavy duty work that made it a shop? does it then become a garage or the dreaded mancave?

 

At my place, we have "the main shop" attached to the house so I can wander around in the middle of the night if I want. I also have a desk there where I work my day job from home. I keep it heated and cooled so we have multiple projects going here all the time. Attached to the main shop is the lift shop where my car lift lives and beyond that shop is a large parking garage where I store finished cars and projects waiting their turn. I've got a couple other buildings too that I store stuff in but the main shop is where all the magic happens.