A garage built on-site, not dropped off in pieces.
Framed and finished by the carpenter who quoted it — not a kit, not a crew of installers you'll never talk to again.
The difference isn't the slab. It's who's standing on it.
Carpenter-built (mine)
- Framed and finished on-site, by the person who quoted it
- One trade, start to finish — quote, framing, doors, done
- Priced up front, no surprises once the number is set
Prefab kit / design-only
- Panels or a design package, installation handed to someone else
- Handoffs between the seller and whoever actually builds it
- Price quoted off a plan, before anyone's seen your site
Around here, garages mostly come from three places: a prefab-kit company, a hardware store's design counter, or a generalist who also frames decks and does the odd reno. Only one outfit in the whole area — a specialist in Ennismore — treats garages as their own thing the way this page does. That's the gap this page exists to fill.
What you're actually paying for
A garage looks like a box with a door on it. It isn't. It carries a roof, sometimes a vehicle, sometimes years of stuff nobody's sorted through — and the same frost-heave and moisture physics that make or break a deck or a porch apply here too, just at a bigger scale, with more riding on getting it right the first time.
You can't see which garage you bought until a winter or two has had a go at it. So here's mine, opened up — as much of it as I can put in writing before I've walked your site.
The build-up, top to bottom
tap a layer
The build, layer by layer
Grade / frost line
Part 01
Foundation
A garage floor isn't just a slab — it has to carry a vehicle's weight and stand up to a Peterborough winter without cracking or heaving.
What I use
Confirmed on your visit — I'll walk you through the exact foundation approach for your garage.
Where it goes wrong
Poor base prep or a slab poured without proper drainage cracks with the freeze-thaw cycle. Hairline cracks are cosmetic; the ones that follow settling or frost heave are a bigger problem.
Part 02
Framing and sizing
A garage isn't one size. Single-car, double-car, or something with room to work in — the frame decisions change with what you actually want the space to do.
What I use
Confirmed on your visit — I'll walk you through the exact framing and sizing approach for your garage.
Where it goes wrong
Undersized framing or the wrong spacing for the load doesn't fail on day one — it shows up as sag or bind years in, the same slow way a deck frame goes wrong.
Part 03
Roof and envelope
Roofing and siding are what you see from the driveway, but on an attached garage, the roof tie-in where it meets the house matters as much as the materials — the same discipline as a porch roof tied into the house, flashed to shed water, not just cover it.
What I use
Confirmed on your visit — I'll walk you through the exact roofing and siding approach for your garage.
Where it goes wrong
A tie-in or a flashing detail that isn't done right doesn't announce itself right away. It works loose over a few winters, or starts shedding water somewhere it shouldn't.
Part 04
Garage door
A garage door gets used more than almost anything else on the property, and it's the one part of the build that's an installed mechanism, not just framed and sided — how it's hung decides how long it keeps working right.
What I use
Confirmed on your visit — I'll walk you through the exact door and hardware approach for your garage.
Where it goes wrong
A door hung out of square binds and wears out its opener early — a framing problem showing up as a hardware complaint.
What a garage from me includes
The drawing first
You see the size, the layout and the number before anything is cut.
Priced up front, no surprises
A fixed, honest number once I've seen the site — never an instant figure off a plan, never a change order sprung on you partway through.
Delivery and haul
Van and trailer are mine. Materials arrive and anything coming down leaves with me.
One trade throughout
Same person who quoted it is the person building it.
“The time goes into the parts you don't see. You keep them anyway.”
The part nobody local will tell you straight: permits
A real detached garage is almost never exempt. Ontario’s accessory-building exemption is sized for something a lot smaller than a garage — a single-car build or bigger clears it either way you read the threshold — so the exemption that sometimes covers a small shed practically never covers a garage. Detached garages, sheds, and other accessory structures don’t go through Peterborough’s online permit portal — applications go by email, and there’s a minimum fee.
Start with the visit.
I'll come look at the spot, tell you what it needs, and you'll know more about your own property either way. No charge, no obligation.