I got a call from some people who wanted to expand their single-car garage to a doublewide. They didn’t want to change the style of the garage—just stretch it. So I took some measurements, went home and started making a materials list.

We needed identical concrete blocks for the foundation, the same board-and-batten plywood siding, the same gable-end roof overhang and the same paint. The clients even wanted the shrub near the corner of the garage moved over 12 feet.

As I went through the parade of events in my mind — demolition, dump run, framing tomatch-existing, siding to-match-existing, painting to-match-existing—it seemed crazy not to let the old end wall be the new end wall. After all, it was sheathed with plywood, which turned it into a giant gusset that would stay together nicely during a move. Around here, a crane costs about $100 an hour, but even with that expense, we figured we could save our client about $700. Here’s what we did.

We built a new foundation, establishing its width and height by extending lines from the old one. We put the new anchor bolts in precisely the same place in the new foundation. To detach the end wall, we cut the nails at the corner studs and plates with a reciprocating saw, and pulled the siding nails where the sidewalls overlapped the corner studs. On the roof, we peeled back the shingles to a logical dividing line and cut the plywood roof sheathing. Before bringing on the crane, we added nails to the plywood siding wherever they were missing, and we left a few nails in place at the the corners to hold everything together.

As shown in the drawing, the crane’s cable was centered on the ridge of the end wall and secured to the top plate of the studwall on the interior side. With the cable pressure snug, we pulled the last few nails, and away she went. We slipped the wall over its new anchor bolts, plumbed and braced it, and filled in the empty spaces with new garage.

—Roger Gwinnup, Oxford, IA

Edited and illustrated by Charles Miller

From Fine Homebuilding #64