You’ve heard of snout houses, I assume? Those are houses where the garage projects so far forward it overpowers the rest of the architecture. Developers like them because you can put a garage (a selling point) on a much smaller lot. Architects hate them, and planners tend to look askance at whole neighborhoods where it’s easy to tell that the cars are happy but hard to tell whether any people live there. They’re much more common in the lower end of the price spectrum for single-family housing, but you’ll sometimes see very high-end snouts. I know of one that some neighbors have dubbed the “Taj Garage.”
I’ve read articles about how in some neighborhoods, the garage-with-open-door has become a sort of front porch, where neighbors gather to drink beer, play cards, etc.
But what do you do when you have to keep the garage door shut? Private enterprise (European-style) to the rescue. Now you can buy a garage door photo tarp. The company, from Munich, Germany, is style-your-garage.com. The garage door tarp pictured atop this blog would set you back 289 Euros (about $393).
For a chuckle of the day, check out their wares and imagine them decorating garages all over town.