The Garage That’s as Fun as the Living Room

When Libby May and Eoghan Mahony purchased a 1950s post-and-beam house in Los Angeles’ Santa Monica Canyon, they envisioned someday transforming the garage and adjoining workshop into livable space, with an office for each of them and a family room they could share with their sons, Wes, 14, and Duncan, ten. But then an enormous stone pine crashed unceremoniously into the garage, and suddenly the plan was no longer on the back burner. "Our ‘someday’ could have been years," May acknowledges. "In the end, it was great that we were forced to do the project."