How to Enclose a Double Carport

Preparation Steps

• 1

  Consult with the county building code office and your home owner's association if you have one. You will more than likely have to get a permit and licenses to perform the work on the site yourself. The HOA may have specific procedures to apply for permission to alter the exterior of your home, and dealing with the aftermath of violating HOA rules is never a pleasant experience.

• 2

  Hire an architect to draw up the blueprints of the room you wish to create by enclosing the double carport. The county and the HOA are likely to require a blueprint or two before approving your project. Be prepared for the plans to be rejected once or twice for various issues that are wrong with the original plans. Unless you have some rather expensive blueprint creation software, your best bet is a professional.

• 3

  Decide in advance what your use for this room will be. If you enclose a double carport to make a garage, you are going to have different legal requirements than if you want to use it as an extra room or living area. Spacing the studs, the size of the foundation and even the use of a garage door needs to be addressed even before hiring the architect.

First Steps

• 4

  Measure the areas in the carport that will need walls. This may include one or two walls. You will need the height from foundation to ceiling and the length from wall to wall. If you will be using this area as a room, you may need to build up the foundation according to local building laws. In this example, the goal is to enclose the area for a garage.

• 5

  Install a base of 2-by-4-by-8 boards along the edges of the foundation. Drive a concrete screw or bolt through the base boards into the foundation using a hammer drill. These boards will be the base of the side wall frame. Install 2-by-4-by-8 boards to the underside of the ceiling area to form the top of the side wall frame. You can install these boards using a power screwdriver and 3-inch self-tapping screws.

• 6

  Measure the height from the baseboards to the top boards and cut a 2-by-4 board to fit in between them vertically. Begin at the corner where the existing wall ends and the new wall begins.Set the board against the existing wall to begin the framing process. Use the hammer drill to connect this first board to the wall or use a brace to connect the board to the top and to the bottom boards of the side wall frame.

• 7

  Measure 16 inches from the first vertical board and make a mark on the bottom horizontal board. Mark every 16 inches using a construction pencil. Place a vertical 2-by-4 at each mark and secure using brackets to the horizontal boards. If you are going to be adding a window in one wall, leave space between vertical studs to frame out the window.

• 8

  Measure the front area where the car or cars will be driving into the garage. You will need to know the total area required for installing the garage door you chose. It's best to choose the door and build to those measurements than to go in search of a garage door sized to the opening you left in the garage.

Finishing Steps

• 9

  Measure the total length of the garage door you have chosen and mark off an area at the front "wall" of the new garage equal to that length. The space to the left and right of the measured door frame should be built in the same way as the side wall. How you finish the door frame depends on what type of door you purchase. In this example, a large automatic door would require leaving the area where the door will be completely open.

• 10

  Secure plywood to the exterior of the carport frame using a nail gun or electric screwdriver drill. Cut the plywood to fit over the frame so that none of the frame is left exposed to the outside.

• 11

  Cover the exterior plywood. How you do this depends on the design of your house. You can use siding or a spray on exterior shell to keep the plywood from warping in rainstorms.

• 12

  Cut and hang the drywall sheets on the interior of the garage. Secure to the frame with drywall screws. Apply drywall tape to the seams in between sheets of drywall. Use a trowel and spread some drywall mud into each seam and screw hole. Wait 24 hours for the mud to dry. You are now ready to paint the interior.