A Roof Waaaaaaay Over Our Heads

One of the benefits – and consolations – of the whole renovation disaster a few years back was that I did end up with a fabulous studio with a 180 degree view. So when the garage finally started going up I looked out and got a shock to see it was a lot taller than I’d expected.

At first I was all “WFT? That’s not the angle the garage roof is supposed to be!” We’d started out with this garage project wanting the roof line to be the same angle as the house, which is around 15 degrees. At some point that changed to 22 degrees – something Paul may have decided so that more of the mezzanine level was high enough to stand up under. The front elevation on the documents the company gave us made the garage roof look like the house’s, but it turns out it isn’t in proportion.

At first I was unhappy, but figured that at least Paul had his head room. But as more of the garage went up and more of the view disappeared, this feeling deep down that something wasn’t right kept growing. Finally, as I wrote the first version of this blog post, I realised what it was.

We were devaluing our house by removing a good sales point (the view) and replacing it with something that detracted (a garage roof that looked odd because it didn’t match the house).

The roof didn’t have to be much lower at the left for the view of the horizon to remain unbroken. Could it be changed? Paul was reluctant to ask, not wanting us to come off as crazy people who don’t know what we want and change our minds. I was embarrassed, but I always figure it’s worth asking if something can be done. So we went out, apologetically explained the problem and asked if the roof could be changed.

The answer was yes, but it would be a lot of work. How much? Well, it turned out not as much work or money as we feared. Certainly not so much as I reckon we’d lose by blocking the view. How much head room would Paul lose? A little, but not too much when you consider it’s going to be a storage area. So we discussed how it could be done with as little trouble and came up with a rough plan. The garage installers are going to do some calculations and come back with a quote.

Afterwards we were both relieved and glad we’d made ourselves ask, and agreed that it was worth fixing.

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