The Macquarie Dictionary says that a garage is as follows….
GARAGE = 1. a building for sheltering a motor vehicle or vehicles.
2. an establishment where motor vehicles are repaired, fuel is sold, etc.
3. a type of dance music with vocals, evolving in the US in the late 1970s as a derivative of house.
And, as for a shed, The Macquarie Dictionary says
SHED = 1. an outbuilding, usually for a specific purpose, as storage, work area, etc.: a tractor shed.
2. such an outbuilding with a roof but no walls: a hay shed.
3. a small building in the backyard of a family home, often of light construction, used for storage of tools, lawnmower, workbench, etc.
4. a building, often with an open floor space and high ceiling, sometimes with one side open, designed to house, store, or provide a maintenance area for industrial machinery, vehicles, etc.
5. a shearing shed; woolshed.
So… can you call a shed, a garage or call a garage be a shed instead?
You can if you want… Personally at ShedBlog we think a shed that is intended to be used primarily for the garaging of cars, bicycles and motor bikes means that what you have is a garage. If you park the cars outside and use the garage for storage, a workshop, rumpus room, somewhere for darts or the pool table and bar, gym equipment, then what you have is a shed.
Now we are talking cars here…park a tractor in the shed and not a garage does it make. All you need to do, to give a garage a dose of “shed envy” is drive a tractor past it. I’d even go so far as to suggest that if you park a tractor, ute or any commercial vehicle inside your garage it will, by default, become a shed…agreed?
We have a garage UMR “under main roof” at our house and due to the amount of “stuff” in it we have been parking the cars outside and now… the missus calls the garage……the shed! I guess that makes me a lucky guy as I now have two sheds when before I only had one. At least until SWMBO wants her garage back.