. We went to Menards after much debated agony on their garage design-it-center, estimator online. We printed our design estimate and ordered an 11,000$ “kit” and scheduled a delivery for two weeks later.  When you do that all at one time, the delivery charge is only about a $100, but you have to have a place to put everything!  You should have seen our driveway and yard.  The driveway was narrow so the truck could only put things near the street – they brought in the rest by forklift.  We still had to move quite a bit by hand to organize it in order of need.  

We hired some great local contractors to level the ground, pour the cement, frame the garage, and put the metal roof on.  We always try to save as much money as we can so we bought during a Menard’s 11% sale and received a $1200 rebate check a month later.  We try to do that for every project.   It helps.  Some people complain about the quality of Menard’s wood but when you order a lot it is handpicked and of good quality.  You can change the standard kit, so automatically you will get boxes of the different nails so if you have framing  or roofing nailer guns you should specify those types of nails.  

One thing we messed up on, (well one of them) was only having one course of cement bricks laid.  We ordered a 10 foot high garage which was at least a $1000 more than an 8 foot high garage.   BUT 2 courses of brick would have given us a 9 foot garage with an 8 foot kit for not much  more money to pay the bricklayer.  

The bricklayer came 2 days after the cement was poured and within 3 or 4 days Jim and his crew came to start the framing.  After about 2 weeks they were done with the framing, a few structural osb sheaths and the metal roof.  

Now it was our turn to take over building.   You are given the right amount of sheathing if you plan your cuts the way a builder does.  We didn’t have to make too many trips back to the store.  Because of the 10 foot garage we wasted more of the sheathing placing a seam where I wanted it. Again we should have ordered 4′ x 10′ foot sheathing, but alas 4 ‘x 8’ footer’s came.  We decided on 4 foot and 6 foot panels  which was still several 2 foot leftovers.  We hand nailed the siding sheaths on, which was bit of a pain, sometimes Steve used the our Senco Stapler .  After caulking all the seams, we rolled the paint, Benjamine Moore’s Northwoods Brown color matched by Menards with their Ultra Outdoor paint.  A good paint for the money.  We spray painted Rustoleum Metallic finish spray paint on the stock white windows and soffits and the spray has held up well after a year.  There is a liquid paint can form that you can order for touch ups called Rustoleum Painters Touch quart.