Garage Makeover

I'm hooked on "Design Star" this season (DVR is wonderful) and this week's episode the teams transformed people's garages...into living rooms. The rationale was that in this economy people can't move, so they are making new use of their living spaces...and apparently all these people live in warmer climates. I certainly don't plan to loiter in my garage as a gathering or entertaining space, but I did want to be able to use it as a workshop as well as be able to get in and out of my car without risk of bodily injury. So it was time for a change...


This is one of the few home projects I did accomplish in this quickly fading summer, and I rocked it out in a couple hours one evening last week. It would be much more impressive with a "before" picture of all the junk stacked on the work bench, all the boxes of stuff dumped out of our cars but never sorted away, and all the cardboard I finally broke down and recycled, but you'll just have to use your imagination.


Our entire garage is lined with peg board, which is pretty awesome. I picked up a couple packages of assorted peg board hooks at Walmart and got a lot of stuff up and out of the way like extension cords and sports equipment, but not everything can hang. I also needed something to do with spray paint cans, outdoor Christmas decor, and a football - and I needed it OFF of the work bench so I could start on some Halloween projects soon!


I picked up two sets of these silver wire shelves from Costco for $28 each. They're not heavy duty, but we don't have much heavy stuff in our garage so no need to spend the extra money and wrestle with a heavier shelving system. These are easy enough to put together, customize, and move around if our needs change, and I could wrestle the packages into my car by myself. I set them up in minutes, and voila! The bulk of our piles were easily relocated.

I was sure to set one shelf on each unit at the same height so I could lay my pop up canopy tent across both shelves - that's the huge green canvas bag. The rest I staggered to fit different items.

As I mentioned, I'm also awful about dumping stuff out of my car into boxes during fits of desperate cleaning (usually before I have to drive someone in my car) but then never sorting out or bringing in the stuff in the boxes. I finally faced it head on and found all sorts of gloves, books, pens, and of course art supplies.


Another major annoyance was our garden hose sprawled willy nilly across the top of the heap on the work bench. Since we never water our lawn (sorry neighbors - just can't get behind wasting resources like that) we don't tend to use it very often, and it's sat in a dusty dirty heap since I took it off the house for the winter. Next to the brand new hose caddy I had bought for it soon after we moved. Hmmm. Hose - meet caddy - wind/wind/wind - POOF. A perfectly organized bundle all ready to sit politely on the ignored side of our house (though in the picture it's still sitting nicely on the work bench).

It's amazing how much bigger the garage feels now - just in time to start using the saw I got for Christmas to make some great Wonderland props!