Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

On question of pole barns, size matters

Mary Jane Honegger Correspondent

Bigger is better when it comes to accessory buildings.

According to Kootenai County records, nearly 300 residential (meaning noncommercial) pole buildings were built in the county last year, and just over 300 the year before. That means about 600 local men talked their wives – or maybe just themselves – into a new accessory building on their property in the past two years. And you can bet they built those buildings just as big as they possibly could.

Eight years ago I looked out into my beautiful backyard to see a dozen or so wooden stakes pounded into the velvety grass. For 25 years I had worked to make that backyard a private oasis for our family. The quarter-acre yard was secluded thanks to a row of 25-foot high cedars; the perennials bloomed continuously; and the vegetable and summer flower gardens grew profusely in raised beds divided by groomed walkways.

A massive, 60-year-old maple tree held center court, a double ring of raised flower beds guarding its base – a former sandbox when the boys were younger. A hot tub nestled in a secluded corner; nearby outdoor furniture promised relaxation; and a two-story playhouse, complete with fireman’s pole and a trap door, stood sentinel in the play area.

The stakes I could see marched in straight rows across the manicured yard. They began less than 6 feet from my kitchen window and stretched across more than half the yard. It was from that window I had watched my boys grow up and enjoyed the purple haze of my lilac border in the spring, and the beauty when the maple dropped its golden leaves in the fall.

The stakes meant a 40-foot-by-60-foot metal pole building was going to be built in my backyard. A long-held dream of my husband’s, the shop was to be 16 feet high with an RV door, and was being built to house woodworking and mechanic workshops and storage for an eclectic assortment of recreational vehicles and vintage cars.

Somehow, by 2001, my argument – that he already had an oversized, two-car garage, an older single-car garage, a 20-foot-by-30-foot tractor shed, and lean-tos off everything that stood still for more than a year – had somehow become invalid through the years, to him at least. We both knew the stakes were a declaration that the metal building was going to be built.

In the end, neither of us gave in – we just moved. I decided I would rather leave my yard than watch it be desecrated and my husband decided it didn’t matter where his shop was built. We moved in August of that year, and his 30-foot-by-60-foot shop was up before the frost hit.

Call it what you will, I still argued against the shop’s size and location. My new argument was that I didn’t want the massive metal building he was planning, to dwarf our single-story house. His argument was that one can never build a shop too big.

This time we compromised. We built the shop a little smaller, and he agreed to a moratorium on lean-tos. I have paid for it ever since. Before the concrete set, my husband began complaining it wasn’t big enough. Although he finally had the shop of his dreams, the fact that he knew others had bigger ones preyed on him – especially the fact of his best friend’s shop up in Colville. “Mike,” I heard over and over again, “built his shop right.”

“Right” meant a 50-by-90 shop, complete with two 16-foot-high doors at each end. “Right” meant the shop included an enclosed heated garage complete with a hydraulic car lift. “Right,” meant the shop housed Mike’s living quarters, a complete one-bedroom house. Mike, need I say, wasn’t married.

Eight years later, some things have changed. A 20-by-30 tractor shed cropped up near our shop, an 8-by-10 woodshed sits near the driveway, and a trio of movable carport structures forms a symmetrical row behind my lilac border. But my husband says he still doesn’t have enough shop space. He points to tractor equipment lying scattered under the trees behind the shop.

There is talk of a huge lean-to off the west side of the shop and a second floor or shelf inside. And if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard, “I should have built it bigger,” I’d have enough to buy a new four-wheeler – but I wouldn’t have anyplace to store it, according to my husband.

Mike built another shop. Just this week they put the finishing touches on a 40-by-40 little sister to the big shop where he lives and works. He says he built it with a dirt floor so he can park heavy equipment, such as his backhoe, inside, preventing damage to the concrete floor in his big shop. I really think he built it just to drive my husband crazy. He still isn’t married.

Contact correspondent Mary Jane Honegger by e-mail at Honegger2@verizon.net.