I Built Harbor Freight's Garage in a Box—Here's How It Turned Out

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I recently moved, and my garage situation suffered a big downgrade. As in, I no longer have a garage. There's a rustic carport kind of building, but its two open bays are barely big enough for my recently acquired Daihatsu Rocky, let alone all the other machines, tools, and detritus that had filled my former garage.

Obviously, the smart move would be to get rid of some stuff until my pile of belongings reaches an equilibrium with my onsite storage. Simplify. Downsize. Marie Kondo that sucker and find the serene peace and harmony of letting go. Or... just go buy a Harbor Freight garage in a box and keep all my stuff in there.

Guess which way I went?

On the surface, Harbor Freight's 17-by-10-foot Coverpro Portable Car Canopy seemed like a pretty good solution for temporary storage. It's affordable—normally $229.99, although I got mine for the member price of $189.99. It's also quite sturdy, as I discovered when I tried to pick up the box and found that it weighs 150 pounds. That's mostly due to the frame, which is 1.27-inch-diameter tube steel. This sucker is beefy.

Nevertheless, the Harbor Freight cashier tried to sell me on the extended warranty in case a gust of wind blew it away. It's nice to know they'd replace the carport if it got caught up in some real Wizard of Oz–type weather situation, but one of my small joys in life is refusing extended warranties and letting everyone in a given store know that I am a risk taker, a buccaneer, pretty much a Red Bull athlete, out there taking my chances with no safety net. So I declined.

At home, I unboxed the carport and got to work, reading through the instructions and affirming that there's one step that requires two people. Or should I say, recommends two people. Because I'm here to tell you that you can do it alone if you believe in yourself and are dumb.

This Harbor Freight carport is really quite easy to build. The tube frame went together quickly, but once the legs are on both sides you realize you also need a ladder to tighten the nuts up on the ridge, which is now about nine feet overhead. (As with most projects of this ilk, I highly recommend that you have a drill/driver on hand, because there are a lot of nuts and bolts to fasten.) Lacking a handy stepladder, I simply backed my truck under the frame and stood in the bed. Problem solved.

The next solution was enabled by an earlier project involving Harbor Freight wares—my boat trailer fiasco. I kept the lifting straps I'd used for the boat, despite thinking I'd probably never need them again. Sure enough, you'll need long straps or rope to pull the fabric cover up and over the approximately 10-foot-high frame. Once that's done, this thing starts looking like a real structure.

The two end sections use straps that fasten down to ratchets. These straps are run through a channel, like a drawstring on a hoodie. And if you pull them out of that channel because you don't know what you're doing, you'll be just as annoyed as you are when a hoodie and its string go their separate ways in the dryer. Why do I know this? For the same reason I know you can pull the straps back through using a straightened wire coat hanger while cursing the carport gods for not putting a big knot on the strap or something (they did come tied off at the ends, a hint I failed to grasp).

So that one's on me. The only other big hurdle I encountered was a function of the design. If you want your carport to stay earthbound, you need to affix each corner to one of the included ground anchors. These anchors are fairly robust, with a loop on top. You could theoretically screw them into the ground by twisting the loops with a short tool like a regular screwdriver, but you'll be half insane with fingers torn to shreds by the time you do that on all four corners. Use a long heavy-duty screwdriver or other metal bar instead.

Lucky for me, I had the perfect tool available to streamline this task, a big straight piece of metal designed for this very purpose—it goes with a UBall portable basketball hoop that can be set up on the beach and provided enough leverage to drive my anchors all the way into the ground.

My final build didn't look quite like the photo on the box—I might need to stretch and tighten the canvas some more via the ratchet straps—but so far, my instant garage has been a clutch performer. The zippered door is a little bit low relative to the interior height, but I still parked a 2024 Lincoln Nautilus in there with room to spare. And it stood up the rain and winds delivered by tropical storm Debby on her way north.

As I'd hoped, the Coverpro Portable Car Canopy from Harbor Freight is an affordable and easy solution for keeping bikes, ATVs, and even the occasional car out of the weather until I build a real garage. For now, this is real enough.

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