have you considered taking just half of one car garage and making it into a mudroom (full garage might be too big as a mudroom) and keeping the other half as a garage space for storage. That way the future buyer has extra storage in the garage as well as a functional mudroom.

Yes, I like this idea and then we’d technically have an oversized 2-car garage. My question is what happens to the 3rd exterior garage door? Re-side the house and install a regular door to enter into the mud room?

If we don’t do that, I think the bump out in the garage my look strange.

look into doing garage cabinets as cubbies - Monkey Bar Storage has some excellent cabinets- well priced and customizable to the inch www.monkeybarstorage.com

can you post exterior photo?

One thing I would caution....if you keep it as a garage and just add a place for storage with cubbies etc., you will be dealing with all sorts of bugs and spider webs getting into your stuff. We have a 3 car garage and of course have things stored in there, and there’s not really any place that doesn’t have bugs....they get into everything (and I have regular treatment from an exterminator). We’ve also had a mouse or two get into our garage through small crevices in the weather stripping around the garage door. So.....think book bags, coats, pockets, shoes....all are such comfy places for such critters to hide.

I don’t know how your garage is configured, but could you possibly just use half of your third bay? You could potentially keep the garage door installed so it all looks the same from the outside and build a wall on the back end of it separating your now halved garage and your mud room space.

Good call on the bugs! I do not want critters in my stuff. Here’s a picture of the outside (mud room would be in the right garage) and from the inside (excuse the mess!)

How about pics of how you presently enter the house through the garage and a pic from inside the garage looking at that third bay...is there any extra room there on the side (circled in red)?

Here are a bunch more pics. That right side of my house with the windows is the family room and I have a back staircase running upstairs.

I also have a narrow closet when you walk in through the garage on the right. It’s under the staircase. That closet door is always banging into my garage door when both are open. I could use that space as part of the mud room potentially if it could work but would be slanted bc of the stairs.

Closet and garage doors converge.

Back staircase

Do you enter the house from the backside, or front entrance of the garage? If it’s the back, away from the door, could you close in that half for a mud room, leave the garage door, and the kids can still leave their paraphernalia in that now 1/2 garage, enter into the mud room, and put away the rest of the daily gear. Excuse the run on sentence.

Just saw your added pictures, so I’m not sure if my idea works. Can you rough sketch a floor plan, with approximate dimensions?

I’m still not understanding how you enter the house from the garage. Sorry, but can you stand inside the garage as far back as possible towards the automatic door and take a shot of that entire back wall?

Yes, sorry. The garage door (gray) is in the far back right corner.

Why do you want to use the far right bay for your mud room?? If you put a door there going into the house, where would you be entering? You’re already entering the house in the back of the far left bay.....that would seem to be the most logical place to add your mud room.

Sorry.....I misread the pics.....your entrance door is on the right, correct?

Yes it’s in the back right of the far right bay.

I agree leave the exterior as is and it should be quite easy to build a mud room in that space keeping in mind it will need some heating for sure.

Julie.....I think doing half of your third bay would give you plenty of space for a nice mud room. You would just erect your wall where the tracts for the garage door end (so your door will still be operational). I would advise measuring out that area to get a good feel for the size the mud room will end up being and see if it meets your needs.

We did this with one of our homes. We had an oversized 3 car . The garage entered into what was a “mud room” but it was really a expanded hallway with hooks on the wall. It was too shallow to build the mud bench we had hoped to build. So we bumped out that area into the 3rd garage stall. We didn’t delete the front portion of the garage keeping the garage door etc. This worked out wonderfully because all of our garden tools, lawn mower and kids bikes etc were stored there. this actually ended up being useful . We have owned four homes. 1 regular 3 car. A four car. The oversized 3 car I’ve described above and now we are in a small two car. The three car with that conversion was our best.

Did you ever end up doing this project? If so do you have pictures to share? We’re considering doing the same thing, and from the outside view of your house we appear to have the same set up.

Yes would love to see it

No, I haven’t done this project yet but still plan to!