Garage TLC

Our garage has seen better days.  However I cannot for the life of me recall those days. It's been under a heavy use and it's busting at the seams.  And a disaster to walk into and look for stuff.  I do a lot of renovating around the house, and maintenance on our cars and bikes.  Whatever needs to be done.  Well that work usually leads me to the garage.

All of our overflow from the house is in the garage, including foodstuff as we have our old fridge is in there.  But mostly we have tons of sports stuff.  We USED to play a lot of sports.  But with COVID, we are limited now in our activities.  Just to reduce the risk of getting the virus.

I have never done so many renovation projects in 1 year.  It's been a strain that's for sure and an understatement.  I've been wanting to get to this project now for a long time.  The garage was a hazard.  It was also very untidy.  We just couldn't put stuff anywhere without piling it up.  And it became more and more unmanageable.

We started to declutter the garage in June.  I was hoping to have gotten to the garage after I had gone as far as I could with the laundry/2nd bath and before the flooring.  The idea was I'd have a clean place to work out of to do cut all the floor boards.  Well that didn't happen and I could barely do anything in the garage.  But we managed to find a way.

We have now started to give the garage the TLC it deserves and re-work what was there.  I have a plan layout to build storage.  And I looked at many YouTube vids to figure out what would be the simplest and best for us.  So here we are.

We built the first set of storage building 3 shelves 24x14 ft.  I picked up 3/4" plywood and got HD to cut it exactly in 1/2.  They have a cool machine at the back that rips sheets easier than I could with my track saw.  Also the price of lumber has been going up.   Good thing I did it when i did.  Wished I'd gotten the plywood sheets before that had cuz it went up more than 11% in the last week.  At least I only needed 3 sheets.   Also I've been saving all my scrap wood just for the garage.  I reused pieces from a bench i built for the kitchen years back.  Now I'm trying to figure out how to layout the garden tool area for Tresa.

This is the ONE project I've been looking forward to.  Well I look forward to all of them. Sort of, but this one doesn't have to be too pretty or exact.  It has to be functional and still I'll make it so it looks good.  This is how I am.  Not really sure why.  It's both a gift and a curse.  It can lead to bouts of immense frustration, but also fleeting joy.  But it's the old adage.  Do you see a glass half full or half empty.  A beer glass half empty means it's Miller Time (end of a hard day's work and time for chill...for those that didn't know.  It's a 70-80's beer commercial).

Hopefully today I'll get the workbench installed.  I'm not sure how I will do the drawers yet.  I plan to build cabinets and put them under.  But I'll build the top and then figure out the cabinet part later.  The lockers will move to the front.  I know Tresa wants them gone, but I like them and put jackets and long skinny stuff in them.  And...who has a locker??!  I have 2 of them!

After that, I'll build a bike storage area.  I/We mostly ME. has a lot of bikes.  I only really need 2.  A mtn bike and a road bike.  But I have many more.  They just show up and never leave.  Well that's not true.  I've sold bikes.  Mostly Kieran's and Tresa's.  But anyways I will build an area to park the bikes and store our helmets and accessories.

Once I'm done with the infrastructure of the garage.  I plan to redo the electrical.  Installing outlets where i need them and centralizing the switches.  Then I'll tackle the stuff in the ceiling and the lighting.  We have stuff accumulating in the ceiling. 

It's definitely a challenge working in the space with all the stuff around.  When we put the stuff back in the garage for the end of the reno day.  

All the major work for the garage was completed today.  The last big thing was a new side door.  I was trying to see if i can just get a standard off the shelf pre-hung exterior steel door that i could install.  The problem was the rough opening.

Before i decided on whether to go with a custom door or standard, I needed to find out what my options were.  Turns out the opening was wide enough, but just shy of 82" for a pre-hung door.  But after talking to some experts, I could make it work.  Plus i found it was on sale at Lowe's and the locket was on sale at Rona.  So double whammy for me.  I just needed 1 more to make it to 3rd!

And as my luck would have it, I was thrown a curve ball.  The way i was planning on installing it, wasn't going to be easy.  I went to ask my neighbour Sam for advice.  At first he said.  Just cut the door.  That was something I didn't want to do.  Then he came over to see what i was doing and he said.  Cut the floor.  I thought that was the harder route.   But then after looking at he said just cut the part where the door way is and get the door in.  45mins later, and a whole crapload of concrete dust, from scoring the floor with my masonry blade.  I got the chisel and pounded the sucker out in pieces.  It came out pretty clean too.  Now what do I do?

Sam came back and put a 2x4 cut off under the bottom sill and i was able to make shims for the sides out of scrap 3/4" plywood.  He'd given me the direction i needed and it was working out.  I could get the door in.  I was so happy.  I just need to get it secured and the lock installed before night came.  The next day I'd plan to pack the concrete under the door sill, and spray foam around the door.  It turned out better than I expected.  I was so happy.  I cannot remember when we last used the side entrance.  We had not used it since the deadbolt lock was seized.  Then we barricaded the inside part with building materials.  So it didn't matter if you could open it or not.

But now it's great having a side door.  With a light over the doorway.  I relocated the lockers and re-wired the entire garage, putting outlets where I needed them.  centralizing the lightswitch to the side entrance and adding a second row of lights on a 2nd switch.  It was so much brighter now.

Since I was adding a light over the side door entrance.  She asked if we could put more lights in the soffits and have them come on before she left for work.  I said sure.  It's pretty dark back there and having extra lighting was a good thing.  It wasn't very hard to run the wiring to the soffit lights.  I should have gotten an extra deep box for the timer though.  It was pretty challenging to get the wires all in.  But i managed to get them in without shorting anything.  Kieran didn't even realize I added lights to the outside of the garage.  It's nice they turn on at dusk and automatically turn off late that evening.  And are on before Tresa heads to work.

I'm still in the process of sorting and purging.  We've already done 1 run to the dump with a full car.  I have a bit more to go, but the garage is way better than it was.  I can now walk around in it without falling over something and I can now find my tools.   It feels like I've reclaimed so much space.  Soon we'll be able to park the car in the garage again. 

I made an area for the garden tools and snow shovels,  a cordless tool dock above my bench.  Kieran and I even built a new bike rack area and pull-out tire tray.  It's great.  It's so much easier to get to the bikes now.  And i can take them down and walk them out without an obstacle course in my way.   Things are slowly finding their place.  And it's great.   I have a place for our snow blower, our tires...everything can now have a place.

I used to hate seeing the inside of the garage. Now I love going into it. It's so much better than it was.  There's still stuff I would like to build, but right now it feels awesome the work that we've put in that's making things around our home so much nicer for us.  I love it. 

We did this together.  I still go in the garage from the big door.  But it's nice going in the side door.  Old habits die hard.  Sooner or later I'll use the side door more often.

Garage Re-do