The trick to a successful construction project of any type is having in place a good plan before you lift a single tool, except maybe a tape measure. Planning for this garage took over a year. I wanted to make sure that I spent time thinking through every detail and getting the answers I needed before I started. I also needed to purchase tools and heavy equipment, and those purchases required careful research as well as a bit of patience and luck (there's always someone out there who wants to convince you to pay far too much for something, and those people always seem to be the easiest to find). I didn't submit my permit application until I had everything I needed and every question and issue I could imagine had been resolved. 

New issues are always going to arise in mid-construction. You mitigate your risk by thinking through as much as you can beforehand. Most people will want to skip this info and get right to having a "wall raising party", but planning and foundation work are both far more important and must be completed first.

Go through this section carefully, because I raise questions that might not be obvious if you are just beginning to think about your construction project.

Most people don't like to think about the foundation, they want to get straight to raising the walls. Turns out the foundation is the most important part of construction. Depending on how you do it, it can also be the most time consuming and the most expensive single element of the garage. In this section I go through all of the choices I had to make and exactly how I created a foundation that wouldn't settle or shift, and would hold the garage firmly in place no matter what kind of wind mother nature decides to throw at it.

The wall framing section describes in detail the process of assembling the walls and attaching them to the foundation. We'll talk about things like the strengths  and weaknesses of the framing, how important sheathing is, nailing schedules, and spacing.

This is the section that I'm currently adding information to so new articles will be appearing here over time.