215. My Garage and Patio

Here, in Potlatch, we can get quite a bit of snow—nothing extreme like the nearby mountains, but enough to keep you busy shoveling. We’re going to have a white Christmas this year (as we do nine out of ten years) and I’ve just come in from shoveling the drive. Don’t get me wrong, I love the snow, but we have a new two car garage that’s just over a year old and I really love it. Potlatch is a company town built at the turn of the twentieth century so the lumber mill workers would not have had cars and the houses were not built with that in mind. When we bought our house 28 years ago we could not afford to build a garage, so we’ve lived here for 26 years parking on the street, getting plowed in several times a winter and having to dig one to four cars out. (The number of cars we’ve owned might also account for why we couldn’t afford a garage…) Being able to get the drive shoveled and into a snow free car has been a great luxury and pleasure for our retirement. I still have plenty of snow to shovel, so I’m not getting soft in that regard, but I do love my garage.

We built a car port on the house side of the garage that we use as a patio for the most part. Since we live on a hill, we also built an extending deck to the back door of the house so that when needed we have wheel chair access to the house as well as steps down to the back yard and garden. It connects right to the street side ramp that we built for wheel chair access from the street. While wheel chair access wasn’t a concern at all when we bought the place, it is now since our youngest son has a mitochondrial disease and at times has needed his wheel chair to get into the house. This became clear to us when he broke his ankle a few years ago which is why we built the deck ramp from the street. It looks just like a deck that extends into a walkway, so it isn’t at all clunky or emergency-handicap-accessible looking.

Because we built the car port/patio on the side of the garage and our property is on a hill, the roof slope required us to build high. That also means that there is plenty of vertical space inside, so we built storage shelves on both the house and ally sides. They are like lofts and you can walk around on them, though you do have to duck a bit for the beams. You also have to get up there with a ladder. We have our oldest son’s furniture stored up there now while he’s away in medical school. Since the garage replaced an old garden shed, I also use it to store my rototiller, lawn mower, and garden tools. I have a portable work bench that I start seeds on beneath the single window on the southside and it also works as a table on the patio if we so desire. I have a beer fridge and a deep freezer. I store our winter pellets for the stove in there and I also store a little bit of fire wood for our outdoor fire pit. When both cars are parked inside it can be crowded, but that’s when I pull one of both cars out and work while the door is opened.

The patio is wonderful. We bought a patio heater to sit under when the COVID lock down started and we had friends visit outside to be safe. The gas grill is there and I can cook on it at any point in the year if it’s not too cold. While the sun does shine on all parts of the patio at one point or another during the summer, because we have a big maple tree nearby, you can sit at one spot or another at any time of the day and be shaded. It’s become our perfect outdoor living space because of its easy access to the house with wheel chair accessibility and the possibility of heat or shade at any time of the year. I keep it decorated for the seasons as well. In spring and summer, it has hanging planters and in fall I put up corn stalks and pumpkins. Now that it’s Christmas time I have it decked with lights and evergreen boughs. Because I love being outdoors it has become the perfect addition for me. I love my garage and patio.