JSK
Well-known member
After ogling over so many garage makeovers on this site for a couple years now, I’m finally able to join ranks.
I purchased the house new about five years ago. Everywhere on the property was tastefully decorated, upgraded and wife’ified, but begrudgingly, “my” space always seemed to be put on the backburner.
Interestingly enough however, three months ago, the folks at Dannmar decided they needed a locale to shoot the new MaxJax commercial, scheduled to air on Speed Channel and a few other guy shows. After a few days of convincing, they decided to use my garage as the official MaxJax commercial set because it was wide enough to get different angles, but still down-to-earth enough to seem possible for an everyman.
I figured I’d tell them later that it needed some work to be screen-ready. That’s when the real negotiation began. After arm wrestling a bit we decided that I would pay the cost of the cabinets and rollaway boxes (the Ranger toolboxes are so nice), and Dannmar would cover the epoxy floor, the painting, and of course, their gift of a MaxJax lift. It helped being the MaxJax inventor - my deck was kinda stacked. We needed to get the garage ready and only had a few weeks to finish the makeover and the commercial. We couldn’t waste much time.
Because the clock was ticking, I had to start getting rid of the junk. That alone took two full weekends. Many visits to the dump later, a little reorganization and I had the hard part done. I then sketched out a design for the cabinets and called a cabinet guy. I made sure to measure the exact size of three Ranger roll-always so that they would fit perfectly in the space.
My floor original floor was just a cold, dirty, dark gray slab and I’d been meaning to give my garage a makeover for a while now. This was probably just the thing to get my **** in gear. The cost of having someone come out and do the floor was a little costly, so the lift install guys over at Dannmar helped provided some muscle for the floor job. After studying floor coatings, I decided to go with the folks at Versatile. I chose the 3-car kit plus some extra because the garage is a four-car. I went with the granite color and it came out a lot lighter and grayer than I expected, but I’m really pleased with the look. http://www.garagecoatings.com/Virtu...ystems/DIY-Systems/3-Car-Kits-From-27200.html
Here's the space before the makeover.
There was still a lot of **** in there that I knew I didn’t want to toss. I’m not even sure exactly everything that’s in there, but we wanted to get rolling as soon as possible so there wasn’t any time to sort it out. I ended up putting it into a temporary storage pile on the side of the house. You can bet the wife loved that. We weren’t even able to fit everything out there. During filming, the crew would often tear down the lights and everything to film from a different angle. Then we’d have to grab basically everything that I didn’t feel comfortable putting outside (oh, it decided to rain, by the way) and move it out of the shot. Over the course of a weekend, we probably moved everything around seven times, easy.
First thing we had to do was clean the floor. From what I’ve read and heard, you really need to get rid of oily spots on the surface before coating. The best way to test is to drop water beads on the oil spots. If the water beads, it’s not clean enough. We cleaned first with floor-cleaning soap, and then actually set fire to some of the oil spots with gas and flame. I used muriatic acid for the final step. I really think we nailed the cleaning part and I don’t expect I’ll ever have any adhesion problems in the future.
The color scheme was decided at the last minute - literally. Because I was so happy to get the floor done free I hadn’t expected the guys at Dannmar to do more than just touch up the east and south white walls that would be actually shown on camera. But Simon at Dannmar said we needed to think big. He said it would take his guys just a little longer to paint the entire garage. Man, was this opportunity getting good or what? Because he did some painting on the side, he also happened to have a paint color guide in his truck. I took a look and picked the color and trim. I had to think of a color not too alarming and one that would complement the MaxJax commercial shoot. Kind of an unusual scheme but I like the way it came out.
The Ranger toolboxes arrived and all I needed to do was trim around the bottom edges with PVC molding.
I’m sorry but most all of the photos were lost in my cell phone when it disappeared last month. I hadn't uploaded to my computer yet.
Anyways, after giving them the grand tour of our “performance space, the creative department guys come up with a script and put out the word that we needed a pretty, talented girl for a television commercial. Then the guys at Dannmar installed the MaxJax in an afternoon--and we almost drilled into the tension cables. We had to move our plans over just a little, so I ended up with some “bonus” holes in my brand new floor. *Ouch.* I can’t blame the installers though, they did an excellent job.
Once everything was installed, we did some test run-throughs with the crew. Everything seemed to be in order and we had found the perfect girl for the commercial, so we set up a film date over a weekend and got to work. It’s only a 30 second commercial, but for each scene we’ve probably got around 50 takes. We even spilled over a little into the week for detail shots, but it was absolutely worth it.
After all the editing and trying out different takes, we’re really pleased with how everything turned out.
Looking sweet at sundown.
The talent arrived – getting all prettied up!
One of the BendPak team goes over the script.
Lights, camera, action!
Here’s me getting kinda pissed because I'm feeling rain drops! Of course, the only day it's gonna rain is the day we start shooting.
My play car tucked in the back trying to stay dry. Just had it detailed. ****!
Getting the set ready…
Pause now for some staring…
Her sensuous look…. (ahhhhh…)
One of the cooler things we did was that “infinite white” background trick. It’s actually the back side of a sheet of linoleum flooring painted white! We can’t believe how such a low-budget trick looks so clean and snazzy.
Check out the 30-second MaxJax Portable Car Lift commercial in living color on the MaxJaxUSA website homepage!
Here’s a couple more insider facts:
* The guy under the lift / changing the tire is actually the president of Dannmar.
* The guy driving the car out is me!...and the hand reaching blindly for tools in the first shot is actually my hand!
* We filmed most of the commercial at night to control the light better. And about every 2 minutes, an airplane would fly over head and we’d have to stop everything.
* Out of frame is a whole bunch of carpets and cardboard. We needed to reduce that garage echo sound.
Hope you enjoyed!
Jeff
BendPak
I purchased the house new about five years ago. Everywhere on the property was tastefully decorated, upgraded and wife’ified, but begrudgingly, “my” space always seemed to be put on the backburner.
Interestingly enough however, three months ago, the folks at Dannmar decided they needed a locale to shoot the new MaxJax commercial, scheduled to air on Speed Channel and a few other guy shows. After a few days of convincing, they decided to use my garage as the official MaxJax commercial set because it was wide enough to get different angles, but still down-to-earth enough to seem possible for an everyman.
I figured I’d tell them later that it needed some work to be screen-ready. That’s when the real negotiation began. After arm wrestling a bit we decided that I would pay the cost of the cabinets and rollaway boxes (the Ranger toolboxes are so nice), and Dannmar would cover the epoxy floor, the painting, and of course, their gift of a MaxJax lift. It helped being the MaxJax inventor - my deck was kinda stacked. We needed to get the garage ready and only had a few weeks to finish the makeover and the commercial. We couldn’t waste much time.
Because the clock was ticking, I had to start getting rid of the junk. That alone took two full weekends. Many visits to the dump later, a little reorganization and I had the hard part done. I then sketched out a design for the cabinets and called a cabinet guy. I made sure to measure the exact size of three Ranger roll-always so that they would fit perfectly in the space.
My floor original floor was just a cold, dirty, dark gray slab and I’d been meaning to give my garage a makeover for a while now. This was probably just the thing to get my **** in gear. The cost of having someone come out and do the floor was a little costly, so the lift install guys over at Dannmar helped provided some muscle for the floor job. After studying floor coatings, I decided to go with the folks at Versatile. I chose the 3-car kit plus some extra because the garage is a four-car. I went with the granite color and it came out a lot lighter and grayer than I expected, but I’m really pleased with the look. http://www.garagecoatings.com/Virtu...ystems/DIY-Systems/3-Car-Kits-From-27200.html
Here's the space before the makeover.
There was still a lot of **** in there that I knew I didn’t want to toss. I’m not even sure exactly everything that’s in there, but we wanted to get rolling as soon as possible so there wasn’t any time to sort it out. I ended up putting it into a temporary storage pile on the side of the house. You can bet the wife loved that. We weren’t even able to fit everything out there. During filming, the crew would often tear down the lights and everything to film from a different angle. Then we’d have to grab basically everything that I didn’t feel comfortable putting outside (oh, it decided to rain, by the way) and move it out of the shot. Over the course of a weekend, we probably moved everything around seven times, easy.
First thing we had to do was clean the floor. From what I’ve read and heard, you really need to get rid of oily spots on the surface before coating. The best way to test is to drop water beads on the oil spots. If the water beads, it’s not clean enough. We cleaned first with floor-cleaning soap, and then actually set fire to some of the oil spots with gas and flame. I used muriatic acid for the final step. I really think we nailed the cleaning part and I don’t expect I’ll ever have any adhesion problems in the future.
The color scheme was decided at the last minute - literally. Because I was so happy to get the floor done free I hadn’t expected the guys at Dannmar to do more than just touch up the east and south white walls that would be actually shown on camera. But Simon at Dannmar said we needed to think big. He said it would take his guys just a little longer to paint the entire garage. Man, was this opportunity getting good or what? Because he did some painting on the side, he also happened to have a paint color guide in his truck. I took a look and picked the color and trim. I had to think of a color not too alarming and one that would complement the MaxJax commercial shoot. Kind of an unusual scheme but I like the way it came out.
The Ranger toolboxes arrived and all I needed to do was trim around the bottom edges with PVC molding.
I’m sorry but most all of the photos were lost in my cell phone when it disappeared last month. I hadn't uploaded to my computer yet.
Anyways, after giving them the grand tour of our “performance space, the creative department guys come up with a script and put out the word that we needed a pretty, talented girl for a television commercial. Then the guys at Dannmar installed the MaxJax in an afternoon--and we almost drilled into the tension cables. We had to move our plans over just a little, so I ended up with some “bonus” holes in my brand new floor. *Ouch.* I can’t blame the installers though, they did an excellent job.
Once everything was installed, we did some test run-throughs with the crew. Everything seemed to be in order and we had found the perfect girl for the commercial, so we set up a film date over a weekend and got to work. It’s only a 30 second commercial, but for each scene we’ve probably got around 50 takes. We even spilled over a little into the week for detail shots, but it was absolutely worth it.
After all the editing and trying out different takes, we’re really pleased with how everything turned out.
Looking sweet at sundown.
The talent arrived – getting all prettied up!
One of the BendPak team goes over the script.
Lights, camera, action!
Here’s me getting kinda pissed because I'm feeling rain drops! Of course, the only day it's gonna rain is the day we start shooting.
My play car tucked in the back trying to stay dry. Just had it detailed. ****!
Getting the set ready…
Pause now for some staring…
Her sensuous look…. (ahhhhh…)
One of the cooler things we did was that “infinite white” background trick. It’s actually the back side of a sheet of linoleum flooring painted white! We can’t believe how such a low-budget trick looks so clean and snazzy.
Check out the 30-second MaxJax Portable Car Lift commercial in living color on the MaxJaxUSA website homepage!
Here’s a couple more insider facts:
* The guy under the lift / changing the tire is actually the president of Dannmar.
* The guy driving the car out is me!...and the hand reaching blindly for tools in the first shot is actually my hand!
* We filmed most of the commercial at night to control the light better. And about every 2 minutes, an airplane would fly over head and we’d have to stop everything.
* Out of frame is a whole bunch of carpets and cardboard. We needed to reduce that garage echo sound.
Hope you enjoyed!
Jeff
BendPak
Last edited:
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