Building an Eyebrow Dormer

Last year I designed and built a detached garage for a home on Cape Cod. I decided to enhance the garage roof with the graceful curve of an eyebrow dormer, a distinctive architectural element that, sadly, isn't as common as it once was. The difficulties of building the curved and sloped details are most likely the reasons for its decline in popularity.

I started looking around in design books and online for hints on how to build eyebrow dormers and found that most approaches entailed some sort of trial-and-error process involving pencils and string and the fitting of oddly shaped pieces. Often the dormer was assembled or mocked up on the ground before being lifted into place.