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disguised garage door

6 months ago

Does anyone have an idea on how to disguise a garage door that faces the street to make it look like part of the house and not a garage door. My lot cannot accommodate a side load garage.

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Comments (8)

Olychick
6 months ago
Hard to say without pics of your house, but one way is to make the door look like a wall of windows. You could have them have a reflective finish so no one could see inside, tho at night you would have to have the inside unlit.

The use of pads instead of a concrete driveway helps:

These would work on a contemporary or modern home, but not as well on something traditional
Boxerpal
6 months ago
I agree making windows out of the doors.. Depending on the style of home you could do something like this...

Garage French Door Conversion · More Info

Traditional Garage And Shed · More Info

Custom-Made French Garage Doors, French Garden Gates & French Exterior Shutters · More Info

Evergreen Carriage Door · More Info
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Depending on the cost, I intend to do a full-fledged professional conversion of the left half of my 23 ft wide x 20 ft deep garage into a 10 ft wide x 20 ft deep practice space for my very loud drummer husband who currently practices in our aluminum sunroom (bless our neighbors who have put up with him for 15 yrs! & me for having no sunlight entering the back of my house ; ). Most say I'm crazy to do this, but this is probably our forever home, Charleston is a hot market, and I could describe it as a theater room if I ever were to sell. We live in a flood zone so our house is 5 ft high. There are steps leading down to garage which is at ground level. We would begin by framing in half of the garage facade & installing a new single door to replace the current double door. Once that is done we would have the most expensive part: the concrete piers extending from the garage slab floor to support the new floor so it is level with the rest of the house. We are lucky to have a garage with a huge ceiling! Sooo back to the original question, how do I make the exterior look normal? It helps that we have a huge oak tree in front so the driveway is only a few feet long in front of where the new room will be, helping it blend. My concern is merely what will become the dead/negative/blank space. It will just be a wall of nothing but boring vinyl siding 10 ft wide and 8 ft high (see photos/it will be the left side). Thank you all so much!!! Sorry for being so long winded.
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Damian, we live in western Washington state so it does not get that cold here. We used fiberglass insulation. The walls are 2x4 so we just used R13 insulation. The floor is concrete with we have hydronic heating tubes with 2” of insulation. On the doors we just used weather stripping. Hopes this helps, it’s been almost 17 years so I had to tax my old brain.
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Any time, effort and money spent on modifying these is a waste. It will look bad. Just leave them until you can afford to replace them with whatever you prefer. Is the rest of your house modern? Do these stand out as out of place? I know you personally hate them, but they are very common and nobody else would probably notice them unless it's a glaring contradiction in styles with the rest of your house. Could you afford to replace just the doors in the public areas of your house and leave the private area doors for another time?
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You might also want a "people" door from the garage to the outside, ... perhaps between two 12' doors, so you'd want six feet in between the two 12' doors and another six feet at least one each side. ... perhaps alongside the house between house and car leading to ?back? or ?front? door ... in which case you need to allow walking space for that. If your garage will have your cars parking with the house to one side, then, budget and lot/landscaping/driveway permitting, of course, something else to consider might be to add a back door to one of your garage slots so you can literally drive all the way thru as if it were an open carport. On that kind of garage (that could have a drive thru feature, whether or not it does), something else I like (but have seldom seen), is to have a small unheated breezeway between car and house -- a small "room" between garage and house with a window facing the front and a door facing the back -- both with screens -- and a ceiling fan or two. That breezeway doubles as a space for a door from the garage to both the house and to the exterior without going thru the house or making room for a second "people" door to enter/exit the garage AND it enables you to have a space to catch/remove fumes and smells from the garage before they enter the house. You really don't want either car or lawnmower exhaust in any part of the house, even the mud room. It is also a place to park a bike or two or a leaf blower or snow blower or hooks for heavy wet coats to enable them to air dry before bringing them into the house.
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Patricia Colwell Consulting
6 months ago
Really we can only answer with context so post a pic of your house and garage door here in a comment DO NOT start another post .
kandrewspa
6 months ago
It sounds like you're building a new house? If you don't already have an architect involved, get one. They are experienced and qualified to solve this problem and more. You have been given some good ideas above. If nothing else, having the garage doors blend with the other exterior finishes instead of contrasting will help. But if the plan is to have a three car garage on the front and the house will mostly be behind it, it will be difficult to disguise the garage. If you post a picture of the exterior elevation of the plan (if it's not an existing house) people will be able to offer suggestions that are tailored to your situation.
ci_lantro
6 months ago
You could do a detached garage and just let it be a garage. Like the photo with the Evergreen Carriage door above. Perhaps set back from the front elevation of the house, space permitting. In any case, the garage will have to have a driveway pointing directly to it. Which makes attempts to hide it futile.

Note that the French Door Conversion photo is just that--dealing with garage door openings when a garage space is converted to living space. The driveway tells everyone, "This used to be a garage."
Lyn Nielson
6 months ago
Verticle siding
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kateedelman
Original Author
6 months ago
Thank you all. I will hire an architect soon. The lot is empty and is small. This door looks like man doors by Schweiss doors out of MN. I do like the vertical siding idea.
Boxerpal
6 months ago
last modified: 6 months ago
Your architect will make this magical. Lovely home. Enjoy it.
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