Looking for some space (Lewisville, Flower Mound: house, neighborhood, square footage)

[DWinTX]

Hi all,

I am a long-time DFW resident, currently living in a small town on the north side of Lake Lewisville. We have a large lot as lots go, but we'd like some more space. I am a classic car guy, and own 5 of them. 4 of them are going through some degree of restoration/refurbishment. My 2-car garage just isn't cutting it anymore. I'd like to find a place with one to two acres that either has an extra garage or shop, or the room to build one.

We lived in Coppell for 18 years and have friends there, and family in Argyle and Flower Mound. So we are checking out the northwestern FM, Copper Canyon, Argyle and Double Oak area. We particularly liked Double Oak. Driving through there I saw several separate garages with classic cars. I'd like to be in an area where there are other classic car enthusiasts, as the camaraderie is a big part of the fun of the hobby.

So I have a couple questions. Can anyone who lives in DO or some of the other areas tell me about how difficult it is to build a garage/shop with respect to zoning and so forth? Where I am now there are several issues. I actually have the room, but we can have no front facing garage doors and that makes it hard on this lot. Plus, the building has to be all rock or brick. Can't have any metal buildings. They are making some really nice looking metal buildings these days, but can't do it here. It gets pricey to build it with brick. The other thing here is no free-standing building can be more than 30% of the square footage of the house (w/o the existing garage).

Also, are there any "gotchas" about this area, or any of the individual towns I mentioned? 407 is being widened and looks pretty close to being done, so that's nice. The 407/2499 intersection looks like it has, or will have pretty much all the basic shopping necessities. We're not big shoppers. Grocery, home improvement and auto parts stores comprise most of our shopping needs.

My wife and I are both IT professionals, and both work from home, so commuting is not an issue. One thing we liked about Coppell is they had run Verizon FIOS. Out here all we can get is AT&T DSL, and we seem to have frequent issues with it. I think I read DO has FIOS, is that true? Any other of these areas have it?

Thanks for any info you can give me.

[MckinneyOwnr]

Can't help you with those locations, but have you thought about doing a metal building and then covering it with a brick/stone facade?

Those faux stone coverings are lightweight, look like real stone, and would be cheaper than building the entire thing out of brick. I don't work for this company, but here's an idea...

Garage Photo Gallery | GenStone

[DWinTX]

I've never seen that before, seems pretty cool. I'll have to look into it. Thanks.

[mSooner]

My parents are building in that area now and have done a lot of looking at lots. Much has depended on the individual neighborhood. If you can find a house/land not in a neighborhood, you will likely have more leeway