absintheisfun
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2010
- Messages
- 84
I have been lurking for a while and looking for advice. I now feel like I can show it all off. Thanks to all the ideas and advice I found on this forum!!
I always knew that I was going to epoxy the floors, so I wasn’t very kind to the existing concrete:
I stashed all of my tools and items of worth in the back room of my house. Everything else in the back yard for a week!
-it’s amazing what a good grinding, acid cleaning and pressure wash will do!
Before putting down the epoxy, I scraped the popcorn
The gray epoxy was intentionally done with very sparse flecks. Just enough to distract from imperfections and dirt
Re-Tape and bed the seams
Prime and paint the ceiling.
Then it was time to patch the holes and paint the walls.
The black stripe was actually done with rattle can. I painted my 63 C10 with this stuff, and thought it looked pretty good, so why not continue using it? I had 12 extra cans just sitting around
I got two walls done and then starting moving back in !!!
Piled everything from the third wall on a blanket on the floor and painted that.
Insulated the garage door and added A/C. It doesn’t put frost on anything, but it makes one hell of a difference!
Door open: Outside 105, Inside 105
Door closed: Outside 105, Inside 120+ (thermometer only went to 120 and the mercury was pegged!)
Added A/C: Outside 105, Inside 90
Insulated the door: Outside 105, Inside 87
Added a fan behind the A/C: Outside 105, Inside 82
AWESOMENESS! And if you are wondering how it was 105 for all of these tests, it was over several days and the temp for Dallas was 105 every day! We picked August in Dallas to redo the garage (I’m smart huh?)
So after 6 days in the sweltering August sun, it is complete:
Behind the extention cords is my hidden compressor:
I added a “ramp up” to the garage. The step is only a couple of inches, but figured why not:
I have a bank of 9 on-off switches that were wired to accept plugs in the back. I built a box around it and have all of my chargers and fluorescent lights hooked up to it.
I threw a breaker when I had all 9 switches running, the A/C and a few other accessories on the same circuit. (Basically it takes a hell of a lot of drain to get it to throw. I over-killed it on purpose to see the circuit’s limit)
I built all of my workbenches to be completely static. With the “ramp-up” curbs on the sides, it made it difficult to put anything on wheels against the wall. You can see the scorch marks where I tacked the legs together while against the wall.
All of the benches were built to have easily replacable surfaces.
Thanks again for the the help and advice!
I always knew that I was going to epoxy the floors, so I wasn’t very kind to the existing concrete:
I stashed all of my tools and items of worth in the back room of my house. Everything else in the back yard for a week!
-it’s amazing what a good grinding, acid cleaning and pressure wash will do!
Before putting down the epoxy, I scraped the popcorn
The gray epoxy was intentionally done with very sparse flecks. Just enough to distract from imperfections and dirt
Re-Tape and bed the seams
Prime and paint the ceiling.
Then it was time to patch the holes and paint the walls.
The black stripe was actually done with rattle can. I painted my 63 C10 with this stuff, and thought it looked pretty good, so why not continue using it? I had 12 extra cans just sitting around
I got two walls done and then starting moving back in !!!
Piled everything from the third wall on a blanket on the floor and painted that.
Insulated the garage door and added A/C. It doesn’t put frost on anything, but it makes one hell of a difference!
Door open: Outside 105, Inside 105
Door closed: Outside 105, Inside 120+ (thermometer only went to 120 and the mercury was pegged!)
Added A/C: Outside 105, Inside 90
Insulated the door: Outside 105, Inside 87
Added a fan behind the A/C: Outside 105, Inside 82
AWESOMENESS! And if you are wondering how it was 105 for all of these tests, it was over several days and the temp for Dallas was 105 every day! We picked August in Dallas to redo the garage (I’m smart huh?)

So after 6 days in the sweltering August sun, it is complete:
Behind the extention cords is my hidden compressor:
I added a “ramp up” to the garage. The step is only a couple of inches, but figured why not:
I have a bank of 9 on-off switches that were wired to accept plugs in the back. I built a box around it and have all of my chargers and fluorescent lights hooked up to it.
I threw a breaker when I had all 9 switches running, the A/C and a few other accessories on the same circuit. (Basically it takes a hell of a lot of drain to get it to throw. I over-killed it on purpose to see the circuit’s limit)
I built all of my workbenches to be completely static. With the “ramp-up” curbs on the sides, it made it difficult to put anything on wheels against the wall. You can see the scorch marks where I tacked the legs together while against the wall.
All of the benches were built to have easily replacable surfaces.
Thanks again for the the help and advice!

