Make Your Own Detached Garage

I received a request to make a garage, and due to this being a very busy month for me, decided a small building like a garage would fit into my schedule nicely. I may well end up making more than one garage pattern, but for this first garage I decided on a detached single car garage with a side covered walkway.

I decided that I also wanted to make the garage door operable, so that you could have the garage door open or closed depending upon whether you want to show off a car in your garage.

This Is How You Make A Detached Garage

Size of the finished building as designed will be approximately 3 3/4″ W x ″ 3 3/4 D x 2 3/4″ H. These measurements do not include the size of the base. I consider this a beginner pattern.

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The Detached Garage Pattern Specific Materials

Favorite Materials Supply List

• Cardstock, Cardboard (Kraft Board), 30 point Chipboard, or Aluminum Can – your choice!
• Translucent Vellum or pictures to go in the windows.
• Glue – If using cardstock, I suggest Bearly Art Glue or Art Glitter Glue. For aluminum cans, I use Aleene’s The Ultimate Glue. For cardboard or chipboard houses, I like Aleene’s Fast Grab Tacky Glue. I put it in a bottle with a thin metal tip.
• If using chipboard or kraft colored cardboard, start with a base of either Liquitex white gesso or black gesso as primer.
• Decorative papers (optional – for cardboard.)
• Multi-surface satin finish acrylic paints or Ranger Distress Inks or Distress Crayons (for cardboard or cardstock.) Both the FolkArt and the Craftsmart paint brands work equally well. If you use distress inks, make sure they dry thoroughly before handling the pieces or you will have stained fingers. I speak from experience.
• Glitter Gel Pens. I love these for coloring in small details. The company also carries another set with metallic, neon and fluorescent gel pens.
• Tim Holtz Texture Paste or Tim Holtz Distress Grit Paste to make brick or stone chimneys, walls or sidewalks. I actually prefer grit paste as it makes my stonework look rougher or more craggy than texture paste.
• Stencils to use with the texture or grit paste to make stone or brickwork. Be careful to buy or make stencils that fit the scale of your building. For brickwork I often use the Honey Bee Salvaged Bricks stencil or the Stretcher Bricks stencil I cut myself. For stonework I usually use either the Chimney Stone stencil I made myself, or the Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Mini Set #28 Stencils. 
• Bone folder (optional, but strongly suggested) A bone folder helps you make sharp folds when you are using cardstock or cardboard. I have found it even helps with aluminum cans. I now use my bone folder to deepen score lines all the time.
• A Cutting Machine like a Cricut Maker or Cricut Explore 
• A hand-held craft blade like an X-Acto knife or Cricut TrueControl Knife. I also have a hand-held knife called the Excel Knife. It is nice in that it uses the cheaper craft blades, but the blade doesn’t work its way loose like the blade in my X-Acto knife often does. You will also need a cutting mat or a glass media mat to cut on.
• Metal Edged Ruler with cork backing
• An Embossing Machine and folders.

Steps to Make The Detached Garage

• Download the Detached Garage pattern from A Cottage in the Forest library
• Import the Detached Garage pattern into your design software
• Cut out the pattern – I use my Cricut Maker.
• Glue together the garage door
• Glue on window and door trim
• Assemble the building
• Add the roof and columns
• Make base and decorate as desired

How To Make The Detached Garage

Download the Detached Garage Pattern

Download the Detached Garage pattern from A Cottage in the Forest Library. It is dsign #73. Don’t forget to unzip it. The pattern is available in multiple formats – as a SVG (scalable vector graphics), DXF (drawing eXchange format), as a studio3 file for Silhouette, or as PDF file. I now include a 1″ square in with all of my SVG, DXF and Studio3 files. Scale the pattern so that the square is 1″ to make the building in the size it was designed. Of course the wonderful thing about SVG files is that you can easily scale them to make your building whatever size you would like.

Import the Detached Garage Pattern into Design Software

As of this blog post, a Cricut Design Space update in 2021 broke the attached score and draw lines. You will need to go through the pattern in Design Space and change the score lines to Score and then attach them to their object. I am still designing so that if some day Design Space fixes their problem, score lines and drawings import as actual score lines and drawings attached to their object, though I have pretty much lost hope of that ever happening.

Here is a great tutorial from Jennifer Maker’s website on attaching score lines. I make all of my score lines red so that you can tell that they are intended to be score lines.

Cut Out Your Pattern

Cut out all of your cardstock, Kraft Board or aluminum can pieces using my pattern. If you are using cardboard and don’t intend to paint or glitter your building, I suggest visiting Lucy Foxworth’s blog at Paper Glitter Glue where Lucy explores multiple other ways to decorate your cardboard house.

Refer to the PDF I included with the SVG pattern for the name of each of the pieces you need to cut out. You can texture your pieces using your embossing machine and texture folders if desired.

The garage door is operable. Fold the door on the horizontal score lines. Do not fold on the vertical score lines as they are for placement. Glue the garage door trim pieces onto the garage door. There will be a small area at the top which is not covered by trim.

Glue on Window and Door Trim

Fold the building. Glue on the window and door trim. Add vellum if desired.

Assemble the Building

Glue the left wall to the front, but do not glue the back wall together at this time. Glue two of the narrow door tracks together, then a wider track on top of them, making sure that the right edges are flush. Glue the remaining three narrow door tracks together, then a wider track on top of them, making sure the left edges are flush.

On the inside, lay your garage door into it’s opening. Glue the door tracks on each side of the garage door, with the door track that is 3 pieces deep on the right (over the building seam) and the one with 4 pieces on the left. The narrow track pieces should be tight against the sides of the garage door and the wider track piece should overlap the garage door. Be careful to not get any excess glue onto the garage door.

Move the door up and down a couple of times to make sure it moves smoothly. The door should be loose in its tracks.

Glue the back and right side together. Glue the tabs at the top of the building together as this will help to keep it square.

Add the Roof and the Columns

Glue down the roof. Fold and glue the columns and add the decorative trim to the outside of the columns. Glue the columns under the walkway roof.

Make Base and Decorate as Desired.

Enjoy making the Detached Garage yourself! I would love to see your finished design. Please share a photo of it with me by emailing me at Jackie@acottageintheforest.com

MAKER’S GALLERY FOR THE DETACHED GARAGE

FREE CUT FILES & PATTERN FOR THE DETACHED GARAGE

Download the Detached Garage Pattern

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Get the password for the library with the free Detached Garage pattern and SVG/DXF/PDF/studio3 files here by filling out this form:

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Save The Detached Garage to Your Favorite Pinterest Board!