Lou Pelletier's initial idea was to move the garage and have it placed on a new slab foundation. My concern was that the garage was never going to look right in relation to the new home; there needed to be a common dialog between the two buildings. I suggested initially that we remodel the roof, a simple trusse roof, to adjust to the "shed roof" language of the new home. This idea stayed with us until the excavator had readied the site for it to sit. At this point, we all realized that the existing garage would have to be lifted up to sit on its new foundation slab. I became concerned that once the garage was moved, it would never get remodeled, as the Pelletiers' budget for the whole project was shrinking. The cost for moving the existing garage, without any modifications, was estimated at over $3000 bucks! Also, the garage was unnecessarily big; two cars is one more car than they have. The ideals behind the construction and design of the Pelletiers' home was to use what we had available on site to save money and to recycle (i.e. the foundation from the original trailer at the home site).

The construction of the new garage went quickly. I drew construction drawings, which were similar to the house in that the gable shed walls were pre-dimensioned with window jack and header lengths. A cut list was made from the construction drawings, allowing Emily to mill the studs up quickly. The window holes designed to accommodate two custom windows that had been mistakes from the building of the Pelletiers' home (I knew we would find a use for them). Jack and I erected the gable walls, then cut the existing garage walls to lengths that would infill the span between the end gables. The walls were top-plated with doubled up 2X6's (I feel that 2X4's are too flimsy as top plates and the walls are sketchy to walk on). We erected a beam (an additionally purchased material) that would support the tool shop roof and create a clearstory effect. Jack cut in a few windows and reframed the holes to accommodate some reused windows and a door that Lou had bought cheaply from Habitat for Humanity.

The moto of this reuse structure was to use up any building materials that were left over from the home construction. We used up a variety of materials like the windows I mentioned, we found usages for some of the cedar siding, a lolly column, the original electric garage door motor and track, the remander of the polycarbonate panel from the home awnings to make the clearstory windows on the new garage, nails, fasteners, etc., etc.
In the end Emily and I wrapped the building with tyvek, and sided it with a rough ship lap cedar 1X6's. that we had milled locally by a guy named Dewy. In the end This garage is a beauty rather than a blight now…