We talk a lot about dream cars here on Jalopnik, how we’d fill up our garages if we had infinite money to buy ourselves that Lamborghini we had on a poster as a kid. But I’m going to flip that one on its head: what’s in your dream shop? What tools and supplies do you pine over when it comes to working on cars?
My husband and I are currently undergoing the awful process of buying a house in an obscene market. Here in Texas, houses are sold within hours of being listed on a realtor’s website. They’re selling for at least $100,000 more than they would have last year. If you’re looking for anything that’s not a modular home or a cookie-cutter house stacked into a suburb, you are, to put it succinctly, fucked. Our realtor told us not to expect houses on the market until they start getting foreclosed on after the COVID-19 mortgage deferral ends, which feels exceptionally scummy.
That gets even more painful when you’re trying to find a house with a shop. Having a shop is one of the very few prerequisites we have in our search (aside from price and general location), and you’d be surprised at how hard it is to find either a house with a usable barn or a house with enough land to build one.
But early on in our search, we stumbled across a house that had it all: it was in our budget, near my family, placed next to a nature preserve, and had a shop. And it wasn’t just any old shop, either. It had built-in shelving, electricity, air conditioning, a bathroom, and a lift. It came with a goddamn, professional-ass, several-thousand-dollar lift. The problem was, the seller had changed his mind about the sale and took it off the market.
I am not exaggerating when I say that, ever since then, our search has been a disaster—not just because the market is awful, but because my husband is like, “But it doesn’t have a lift.” Buddy, I really don’t think we’re going to find another home with a shop that already comes with a lift. Do you like this home on three acres with a concrete pad or not.
So, that’s become the one thing the Blackstocks want in their dream shop. A lift.
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