Double Duty : Tight on Space, Many Turn Garages Into Extra Rooms
From Santa Barbara to San Diego, garages are being turned inside out to make room for offices, wood shops, fitness centers, wine cellars, train stations, art studios and rehearsal halls--everything, it seems, except automobiles.
For example:
* In Inglewood, former Compton College basketball coach Larry Square transformed his garage into a workroom/showroom for his custom-made trophies and awards.
“If I get an idea for a new (trophy) design in the middle of the night, I can go right to work on it,” says Square, whose garage features a full line of computer, typesetting and engraving equipment.
* In Alhambra, longtime collector Robert Trepanier built a two-story garage to house his collection of junk, a passion for 40 years.
* In Anaheim, Jim Paschall, lead guitarist for Thunder Enlightening, a heavy-metal band, uses his garage to rehearse. Paschall, who drives a weather-worn Toyota pickup (parked outside), said, “If we rented a rehearsal studio for the weekend like a lot of bands, we couldn’t produce the same sound quality that we get right here in the garage.”
* In Hacienda Heights, carpentry whiz Al Griffin makes rocking horses, playhouses and wooden toys for his seven grandchildren in his garage hobby shop.
* In Fountain Valley, Rolf Franzke, a Santa Ana bikini manufacturer, says he has never parked his car in the garage, which is taken up with grinders, mashers, boilers and bottles for brewing beer.
“If you just go to your house and sleep and pay taxes on it, then that cuts out living, doesn’t it?” he said. “You need your garage for hobbies and other interests.”
Because it’s rent-free, a garage may be the bright spot on the balance sheet of any start-up business venture.
Dress designer Orsolina Massimino moonlighted by sewing, stitching and steam-ironing for private clients in her Pasadena garage. She gained the money and confidence to open her own bridal shop, True Romance, in the heart of the city’s Old Town.
“I don’t think I could have gotten my business off the ground any other way,” Massimino said.
Kevin Kellogg, a 32-year-old Pomona engineer, wants to make photography his new, full-time career, without going into debt. Last year, he converted his garage into a portrait studio and darkroom for $500, the price some studios charge for a single day’s rental.
“I’m a photographer getting started, so I’m not making enough money to really afford a studio facility of my own,” Kellogg said. “And renting one is rather expensive for the client. So for now, working out of my garage makes the most sense economically.”
A garage office can be a cozy and convenient arrangement. A Pasadena commercial and theatrical agent who requested anonymity said, “I got tired of driving to my office in West L.A. just to read the breakdowns (upcoming roles for actors and actresses) and talk on the phone all day.
“You can’t beat this operation for convenience,” she added.
But convenience has its trade-offs.
To reach photographer Kellogg’s studio garage, visitors must squeeze by two cars and a row of dented trash cans. Consequently, Kellogg worries about his professional image.
“I do want to make it more presentable, and get some landscaping and stuff done,” Kellogg said, “but the clients have absolutely no problem working in here, once they come in and see how well it’s set up and everything. The proof is in my work.”
Adopted from the French word garer (meaning to shelter or dock a vessel), “garage” entered the English language about 1902, roughly two decades after the invention of the automobile.
For the next 30 years, garages remained separate from the stables that sheltered the horses, chickens and goats, and detached from the main living quarters.
In the 1930s, Frank Lloyd Wright was among the first architects to convert the porte-cochere-- or carriage way--into a carport. Others soon began integrating the carport and, later, the garage into the main structure of the house.
“Attaching the garage to the house clearly had to do with the modernist’s idea of functionalism,” said Thomas Hines, an architectural historian at UCLA. “This included the idea of getting from the car to the house conveniently and quitely, especially in bad weather.”
The appetite of car-crazy Californians for larger garages threw a monkey wrench into the modernist concept of discipline, however.
As the home’s newly appointed “front entrance,” the garage allows passers-by to examine the family laundry, garden tools and old refrigerators.
“It was a side effect that was not really thought out,” Hines said.
But housing developers don’t expect a return any time soon to smaller garages.
“Homes with three-car garages outsell homes with two-car garages, and homes with the two-car garages outsell homes with one-car garages,” said Chris Lyman, marketing director of Hughes Homes, a large residential builder in the San Gabriel Valley. “In fact, the one-car garage is just about extinct.”
But not even this corner of the world is without government regulation. Most local ordinances and building codes specify that a garage is meant to shelter the automobile. If a hobby or business supplants a car, cities often require covered parking to be provided elsewhere on the property.
In addition, local laws typically state that a home-based hobby or business cannot significantly alter the structure of the garage, or change the residential character or air quality of the neighborhood.
David Rutherford, a spokesman for the South Coast Air Quality Management District in El Monte, issued both praise and a caveat for businesses operating out of the garage.
“We certainly applaud the idea of a home-based business, especially if it contributes to eliminating the owner’s 20- or 30-mile job commute each day,” he said.
“But then again, it depends on what the occupant is doing. If he’s running a spray-paint operation and polluting the air in an unregulated atmosphere, we would certainly look down on that.”
City inspectors give chase to the most flagrant violators, acting on tips from neighbors, said Bill Russ, a code enforcement supervisor for the city of Pasadena for 14 years.
“If a realtor tells you your house will be worth $10,000 more if all illegal activities cease next door, you might pick up the phone,” said Russ, whose investigations have found pornographic film distributors and massage parlors operating out of garages. Other investigations have uncovered auto detailers, plumbing contractors, carpenters, hair cutters, white-water rafting agencies and lab researchers.
Bootleg garage apartments are another target of enforcement in many cities.
“If you have eight people living in a 900-square-foot home and two sleep in the garage, then we have a tendency to look the other way,” Russ said. “But if we get enough complaints, then we have to enforce the law.”
Similarly, Domingo Sauceda, a chief investigator for the Los Angeles Building and Safety Department, cites the city’s sensitivity toward those living in makeshift garage dwellings.
“Most garage conversions involve family members--a divorced grandmother moving in with a son or daughter, a student going to college, or even a retarded child who needs an extra room,” he said.
“All of these cases are tough on us, but we will enforce them--especially where health and safety hazards pose a risk.”
Doug Eastwood of Pasadena, a retired flight engineer for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, reveals that “his baby” lives in his garage, a detached unit built around 1929.
“I wouldn’t think about parking a 1963 Chevy in here,” Eastwood said. “That’s just another car to me. But this 1915 Sport Roadster Oldsmobile can have the run of the joint.”
