How to Build the Perfect Hot Rod Garage

We all know what they are; you've seen them around town, they're always talking about their cars, you might even have one in your family, every gear head dreams of the perfect garage in their back yard, this article will attempt to explain my idea of the perfect hot rod garage.

First of all lets talk flooring, this of course depends on what the garage will be most used for, usually black and white checker board is a good call here, or some type of epoxy floor covering, once you have gotten this out of the way it's time to move on to bigger and better things.

The first thing you need to look at is what the city you live in will let you do, my city has an 800 square foot limit on garages, but I was able to get around that by telling them I need it for storage, and so the city would quit issuing parking tickets to people who visit my house.

My perfect garage is four bays wide by two cars deep, this gives me the room to do my projects without having to trip over car parts, this is always a problem with a small garage, because of the fact that their are so many parts involved when you build a hot rod, or restore a car.

After I decided on the size that I needed, I looked in to the construction of the building, my first idea was to have the garage built out of wood, with wood framing and a wood outside structure, I got looking in to prices and quickly realized that I might need to go a different way.

The price to build the garage was more then I spent on the house in 1998, they wanted $170,000 to build the garage out of wood, so I started to look in to metal buildings, and this drastically reduced the price of the build out.

The building shell would cost about $20,000 without electrical and air installed, to get the electrical done with a couple of 220 volt outlets for air compressors, and maybe a welder would cost about $8,000 to $10,000, I'm still working toward getting this done.

On my budget it made sense to go with the metal building, but this all depends on what you have to spend on the build out of your hot rod garage, a compressor of good quality would cost anywhere from $5,000 to $13,000 depending on what your looking for.

Now I was looking for a heat source for the garage, and I looked at a few different ideas to get this done, I got rid of the idea of open flame heat really quickly, due to the fact that it would run the gas bill to the moon.

I settled on radiant heat, which depending on how it's done would run anywhere form $2,000 to $5,000, radiant heat heats the objects in your garage from the inside out, this is a great option because it costs a lot less to heat with, and it heats the things in your garage in an efficient way.

Radiant heat was the best option for my garage, but yours may be different, you need to weigh the pros and cons of heating your garage, and decide what works the best for you and what your doing in your garage, I build muscle cars, and hot rods.

I spend a lot of time in the garage and comfort is one of the main things that I look at, and also ease of cleaning and general aesthetics, it needs to look good, and stay looking good for a lot of years, I don't need to do constant repairs on the garage.

I put a lot of time and effort in to making the garage a comfortable place to do my projects in, while still giving me the room to park my cars in it, you also need to think about parking your cars in the garage, because the city probably won't allow a separate garage to park in.

And last but not least, you need to think about the height of the cars, or trucks that you'll be putting in your garage, I decided on 11X15 garage doors for my garage, I realized quickly that it was hard to get trucks in my current garage, and I needed to solve this problem.

If you plan your garage carefully you won't feel like your missing anything in the end, take your time and make sure that you plan for all things that may happen in your garage, from projects that will stay there for a long time, to the height of the cars and trucks the may come in.

My List Of Considerations For My Garage.

1.Building materials
2.Size & Layout
3.Electrical Setup
4.Heating
5.Flooring
6.Air Compressors
7.Office space
8.Aesthetics
9.Pricing
10.Garage Door Sizes
11.Parking In Front Of The Garage