I feel your pain. We moved into a house with a completely inadequate
small 2-car garage, planning to tear it down and replace with slight
expansion. The project took over three years, once we started. I had
plans done by a design firm (to get it through the city planning
office), subbed out the slab, stucco, roof and much of the framing -
there are a lot of tricks to learn in framing, so you'd want to make
sure you have an experienced resource on call (I had a retired master
carpenter save me several times). You want to know enough about the
stuff that you sub out to recognize when the sub is doing a bad job, too
(did they flash around those windows? Should they have? :-)
The first thing to do is find out about your local building codes. You
appear to be in Fort Worth, so there may not be any to worry about ...
but you need to learn basic things like setbacks, maximum height,
maximum floor area ratio, fire codes (minimum separation from other
buildings and lot line).
You say you want it to match the house, but you don't say how the house
is finished :-) You might be able to get a metal pre-fab building
finished to match the house.
Think about lighting, heating and plumbing. Insulation. Windows? Doors?
Skylights? Power? Ceiling? Storage? Attic? Cabinets? Lift?
Fine Homebuilding magazine puts out a series of books that collect back
articles by subject. Many libraries have them - I suggest you try to
find them and spend some time looking through them for ideas. I learned
an awful lot just by doing that, and got lots of ideas.
And I'm sure you'll get a flood of advice from this list.
chris
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