 | Charlie Traffas has been involved in marketing, media, publishing and insurance for more than 40 years. In addition to being a fully-licensed life, health, property and casualty agent, he is also President and Owner of Chart Marketing, Inc. (CMI). CMI operates and markets several different products and services that help B2B and B2C businesses throughout the country create customers...profitably. You may contact Charlie by phone at (316) 721-9200, by e-mail at ctraffas@chartmarketing.com, or you may visit at www.chartmarketing.com. |
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ANSWER: There are several things to consider when deciding whether to fix or build a new garage. The first thing you need to consider is the floor in the existing garage. If it is cracked or broken beyond repair, one would have to decide between repairing the existing floor and pouring a new one. You might want to consider the option of building new because it can be really expensive to “jack up” an existing building up and pour concrete beneath it as opposed to pouring a new fresh slab. Furthermore, trying to repair cracked concrete is usually never a permanent solution to this long-term problem, and cracks will usually reoccur if concrete is just patched.
The other thing a person needs to consider is termite damage or dry rot on the wood. This is a serious issue and a person might want to consider rebuilding if these problems are visible. Trying to replace damaged wood in an existing structure can be time-consuming and costly. If problems like these exist, they will usually reoccur.
The other thing to consider is the type of materials that the old structure was built with. Lots of times, in order to get exact matches on “vintage” materials, it is very costly, and sometimes impossible.
The last thing a person needs to consider is local building codes. A lot of buildings built before we adopted unified building codes were not built to today’s standards, and in order to bring these buildings to today’s standards, it can be more costly than building a new structure. For example, buildings built to today’s standards require concrete footings, whereas building constructed 30 years ago did not. Therefore, it would be very time-consuming and costly to bring the existing building to today’s code.
The bottom line is if you think a structure may need to be torn down, it probably does. Believe it or not, you will probably end up saving money building new construction to today’s standards as opposed to trying to bring an outdated, dilapidated building to code. And in the long run, you will most likely be happier with a modern building built to today’s codes, but keeping in mind the architectural details of the older building to match the home.