A blog to record my experience in getting a new garage built in Chicago by the company Garage King.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

A bit more on the garage floor

Based on some comments added to the previous post, here is a bit more on the garage floor. One corner had a low spot, so if I hosed down the inside of the garage, water would puddle up there and not drain out of the garage (as promised). When the cement guy came out, he filled in the low spot (i.e. raised it up), so water wouldn't stay there. An earlier post has some pix of the problem. After filling the low area, the water doesn't stand there now. The color of the cement however is not uniform. Since that area is covered by palettes and garden supplies, that is not a problem for me. jd

Saturday, February 16, 2008

All's well that ends well

After a few tries, the cement guy came back and fixed the garage floor. So everything pretty much turned out okay. I promised in an earlier post to give some thoughts on the whole process of buying a garage. I think what I mainly wanted to write about was the asymmetry of the purchase process. The salesperson sells lots of garages, maybe hundreds or thousands. I buy one garage, hopefully, in my entire life. The sales rep knows all of the details, all of the things I should be asking, and may or may not clue me into it. Like there being sales tax on the materials (but not the labor). And that there might be gotchas from the cement guy or the electrician. Buying cars falls into the same category, and houses too, and appliances. Any of the big ticket items. The Internet helps to level the playing field somewhat, by providing a mechanism for connecting the islands of experience. But that requires a lot of effort on the part of the consumer -- searches and reading and comparing and assessing and synthesizing. Not fun. jd