subject: It Is Often Tricky To Determine Which Outdoor [print this page] When we moved into our first house, one of the things I was happy to have was a garage. In harmony with my father in law's philosophy, "a car doesn't need a house," I had no intention of parking a car there. I wanted it for storage space and the option of converting it into another room for the house. My wife also had several food storage projects in mind, and using the garage for both storage and as a staging area for food storage preparation seemed absolutely ideal. No, for my car, what I really wanted was a carport. Our driveway was really long and wide, and if we wanted to, we could have easily fit four cars in it, and so a carport just made better sense.
I have reasons for this. For starters, a driveway really isn't good for anything more than parking cars. You can't plant anything in it, and it's no fun for standing around. I guess you can use it to help teach a child how to ride a bike, but at the time, our firstborn was just a baby and couldn't even walk, so bike riding seemed like a distant goal. In any case, putting an awning over the driveway would protect the cars from sun damage and provide shade in case I needed to work on the cars for repairs and cleaning. It would also keep snow from accumulating on the vehicles, which makes for a much better start to the morning if we needed to drive anywhere during a storm.
I also liked the fact that we could have more than one port, and that we could actually choose from a wider variety of styles and colors. We could choose to match the house, which was red brick with green roof tiles, or do something entirely out of the ordinary, like hot pink or some other outrageous color. The fact that they are collapsible and easily modified was also very nice. We didn't intend to live there forever, so something that could be taken or left depending on the people that we would eventually sell the property to was an attractive feature.
We left that house quite a while ago, and now have a two-car garage. Again, I really don't think cars need houses, so we are storing some things in the garage. Our driveway isn't as long as the one was at the old house, but I have some ideas for how I want it covered. It's interesting how old habits remain the same.
