Garage Floor

For us, the first step and the catalyst for this whole project was the garage floor.  Last spring, we emptied our entire garage into a storage container on our driveway so that we could do something about our concrete floors.  My son spent a summer working at a garage floor coating company that specialized in Polyurea floors, so he took charge of the project.

We spent a weekend prepping and installing the most durable floor coating.  It has been a year and it has held up amazing.  It is a much more durable flooring solution than a DIY epoxy paint kit and is usually not a DIY installation.  

We are very lucky that he had this experience and we were able to get this done with his help!  I wrote a blog post all about the differences between what we did and epoxy flooring, and the results of our flooring makeover!

Paint

This house was built in 1997, which means it’s coming about 28 years old, and I’m pretty darn sure that no one has painted the garage since it was originally done in 1997.

Before we installed the floor, I gave the entire garage a fresh coat of paint (even the ceiling!)  It was a really un-fun job to be honest.  I usually don’t mind painting, but painting a garage is next-level torture.  There are a lot of things to paint around, like garage doors, door tracks, etc.  

Repairing the walls and a fresh coat of paint went a whole heck of a long way towards this garage looking fresh, though!  It looked so much better and instantly had a clean look.

Storage Solutions for Our Home Garage Makeover

Our garage is not very big, so we had to get creative with storage.  We park in our garage and so there is not a whole lot of room once the cars go in for anything else.  We had to maintain parking space for two cars.

The ceiling is also pretty low, there is no room over the garage doors to install any of those cool overhead storage racks to get stuff off the floor and away from the walls.

We did put some shelving that we had previously as high as we could all at the back of the garage, to store storage containers and paint cans and seasonal decor, and things like that.

Scrap wood was a huge problem in our garage because we didn’t designate any space for it or have a scrap wood storage area.

We built two different scrap wood containers in a weekend – one was a vertical storage for sticks of wood and trim, and the other was meant for storage sheet goods.

Finally, to make use of all the space, we built a rolling storage caddy to slide under the stairs where there was ample storage space being wasted.  We store our tile saw and tile supplies there, which we don’t need all that often.

Temporary Tool Storage

We had intended to get some garage cabinets, so we removed the old cabinets that were in the garage when we moved in.  They were falling apart and not really useful sturdy storage for things like tools.

We gave away the cabinets on Facebook Marketplace (they were gone within the hour!), and my father-in-law took the old countertop, cleaned it up and is using it at his lake lot!  I love that the old cabinets found a new home!

Before we could totally finish this garage, we ended up getting sidetracked by another project and decided we would postpone the rest of the garage project until we had more time.  In the meantime, we moved a large cabinet from my husband’s shop to the garage and used it as a tool chest to get by.

That cabinet is way too high for me to work on (it comes to my armpits!) and there isn’t enough room inside to hold all of our tools.  We ended up piling tools up inside, and there was a literal tool avalanche every time I went looking for something.

Those cabinets were really not working all that well, and it is time to revisit and clean our messy garage and organize it once and for all!

Lighting, Power and Water in the Garage

We just had single utility light bulbs in this garage and it was very dark when working.  My husband swapped out the bulbs for some like this and it has been a game-changer!  I know they are not that cute to look at but they light up my garage like the surface of the sun.  I almost don’t need my old lady glasses anymore when I’m doing some woodworking in here!  It is such and easy and practical upgrade for a hardworking garage space!