No Guarantees Garage

True story, I can't guarantee anything. So I, like many others have been perusing this site for a very long time. The wealth of knowledge and ideas are endless here.

My wife and I purchased her first home and my first garage 6 years ago, because that's how it works right she gets the house and we get the garage? The home is a cookie cutter home that had a finished 3 car garage. I have some what documented the garage transformation from the beginning. I document it more so now than I ever did before. I have been wanting to create this thread for some time now and I just never could find the time.

The name for my garage came about as a joke between my brother in law and me about a year ago. We were replacing the head gasket on his Honda and I told him jokingly "there is no warranty work here" and he responded with "what is this, no guarantees garage?" And that stuck.

On to the pictures. Please forgive the poor quality, my phone was junk...

Getting the color scheme on the walls/moving in.
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My first little one playing that isn't so little any more at the time.
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My wife came up with the scheme. I got to pick the colors. I picked the top color because it was called "High Speed Steel" the other two I just liked. I think she really only wanted to practice painting in the garage before starting on the inside of the house.


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Looking back on these now, I can't believe I took such crappy pictures. That is the beginnings to my work bench.
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Walls and bench are finished.
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Some posters and my bikes hung up.
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And my daughters toys so neatly organized.
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More to come, remember this is going back to 2009. I wouldn't say it has totally changed since by the color scheme is about the only thing still the same.

I like it. I like the stripe being so high. I'd like it a touch better with a narrow, maybe an inch wide neon green, blue, or yellow stripe under the black stripe just to lighten up the scheme, maybe just the bright white of the door trim but it's truly good as is.

Does the dark lower wall show damage easily from bikes/toys bumping into it, etc?

Now I know why I have been putting off posting for so long, my pictures are everywhere.

Dan I like your idea of a brighter color stripe to break the colors up. I don't think I will go with all darker colors next time. You live and you learn. The lower color held up to everything except the handles bars of the bikes which I have just recently touched up.

So from late 2009 to mid 2010 I was on a tropical vacation, minus the tropical part and vacation part. I came home to a bunch of parts that I order for my car and an additional family member living with us.

This is how the garage looked when I got back:
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The empty beer bottles was probably me.
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And after probably a day or two of organizing, I like an organized area to work in...
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Right after getting everything organized I finally started to disassemble my car for its restoration.

Being that I am in a HOA neighborhood I choose to pull the engine with the garage closed, it was also late in the evening when I started. The wheel dollies were great.
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And the engine is out...
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The next day...
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Now probably a week later...
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This was July of 2010. My wife's father passed and she inherited his tool box full of tools. We had to travel to north west Arizona to pick it up and brought it back on my car trailer.
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This goes to show that I actually do park more than one car in the garage...
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And a decently organized work bench. Always a battle with this one.
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More of the car broken down and more added to the garage. I built an engine cradle that you can see behind the welder so I can roll the engine under a shelf. I have a new one for the car.
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My father in laws box in place and in use. I am very thankful for it every time I grab a tool from it.
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Still clean and organized. I really don't know how.
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Parts are stacking up.
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tools and other junk too...
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My wife's Fusion Sport that we had for a bit.
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This is the small section of wall between the single door and double door. I found it to be a nice place for a few metal signs.
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This is it for tonight. This brings the garage to the end of 2010. I will add more later this weekend.

Nice set up.

Looks good, and came along nicely.
I like the outlet jacks for the garage door sensors! I've only ever seen dangling wires everywhere else.

awesome garage. love the mustang. thats one of my favorite color schemes on fox GT's. what are your plans for it?

WarrenJ: Thank you.

Ripcurl: That is how it was done by the builder. Our house was built by someone that backed out of it mid way through the build. One of the things they asked for was extra outlets in the garage. That was great. Most of the houses we looked at only had one or two outlets.

bergs: Thanks, you are going to have to follow along to see how it turned out. It is done though and still the same color scheme.

So I left off at the end of 2010. Most of my pictures of the garage were from trying to document the build of my mustang.

This is January 2011, I have the engine bay how I want and more stuff is stacking up.
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The interior has been completely removed.
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Junk everywhere. I don't sleep well when the garage is left like this.
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My lovely wife did get me this for Christmas. I do have a little Hotwheels addiction.
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So the only thing I couldn't tackle myself on the car was the paint. This is the first time the car has been out of the garage since we moved in and I have a mess to clean up.
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Like I said I try to keep things orderly.
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That pile of parts is literally everything from the car minus the body parts and rear end.
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The car was gone from February to May and I didn't document anything in the garage during that time. Car is back from paint.
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Time to install all the go fast goodies (the fun part). You can see the awesome roller assembly I made since all the front suspension was removed. Also started putting the 5 lug conversion together.
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Front suspension is in.
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This is the last of what I have for 2011. I will post up 2012 in the next few days. Thanks for following along.

Nice work on the Mustang.
I'm doing similar on a 73, minus new paint. I just welded in new front apron last weekend.

Nice choice in paint colours, looks great. Nice touch with the Hot Wheels display case, i'm a big fan.

Very cool thread I just found it today! Nice work on that Stang! What is the engine combo going to be? Expected HP?

Boosted: I would be interested in seeing that.

dubber: The Hot Wheels are a way of owning all the cars that you would like to have in a life time.

sean Buick 76: The car has been completed for a few years now. I went with a 347 stroker with AFR 185 heads and a custom ground cam. The engine is estimated to be 375 HP to the flywheel. It is a fun car. Puts a smile on my face every time I drive it.

This is April 2012, getting ready to stuff the engine in.

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A new helper moved in
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Engine is in after 3 years of working on the car.
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Everything is as organized as it can be.
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I believe around this time frame I was starting to think up a new layout for the garage to try and make better use of the space. More to come
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The car is moving under its own power at this point. This was September 2012 and I was about to take another tropical vacation, minus the tropical and vacation part.
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I had cleaned everything up since I was going to be gone for 6 months.
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While I was gone I was able to think up how I wanted to redo the garage. I wanted to make new shelves and put my work bench along the single bay wall and kind of move everything over to that bay since the car was mostly completed. This was the end of 2012. More to come....

So from the end of 2012 to mid 2013 I was out of the country. When I got home I went straight to work at reorganizing the garage. Since the car was pretty much done I could focus on the garage more. Unfortunately what I have come to realize is I didn't document as much of the reorganize that I thought I did. So here is what I do have...

I built my own selves for the wall in the single bay, and incorporated my workbench into the center of the shelves. I think this made better use of my space.
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I moved the tool box down.
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I built another overhead storage area.
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I moved the two shallow shelves over to the back wall and rearranged my posters and hotwheels cabinet.
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Finally, I was able to surprise my wife with a new ride. This was how the cars were staged when she came home from work that day.
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More to come.

Nice! Great work on the Mustang too, nice car.

Thanks for the compliments metalhead, it was a journey getting both the garage and car to where they are now. Ill post some more pictures of the garage this weekend. I finally found a cabinet for cheap after watching craigslist for a few weeks.

Nice color combo on the Mustang. And that engine bay looks incredibly clean and tidy, need to see a picture of it finished up!
You certainly know how to use every square inch of a shelf! I bet when traveling with the family, you're the one organizing the trunk

Keep the updates coming.

Ripcurl: You are absolutely correct, I am the one that organizes the vehicle for road trips. I try and use as much of the given space as possible and still be orderly about it. Here is the engine bay in its current state.

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Back to the garage. I didn't need to focus on the car much anymore so I could turn my focus to other things. During 2014 I started using my garage for minor metal working and fabrication. I picked up a nice Miller Diversion 180 TIG welder from a friend that just wasn't into welding in his free time any more. I also picked up a Lincoln Mig welder as payment for some work I did for another buddy of mine. The TIG welder came with a custom built welding table that fit perfectly into my single bay. I have done quite a bit of modifying to the table to meet my needs, it still isn't completely where I want it but is perfectly usable. Most of my pictures are from projects that have come though the garage this last year. These are not in any particular order...

First project I had was fabricating new seat mounts for my buddy's Comet. Dont worry, the beers were from the end of the days work. Just about to clean up.
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Whoever had the car before him put had put 4 different holes at every mount location for aftermarket seats. He was going back to a factory seat from a mustang of that year.
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Seats are in.
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The next project was intercooler piping for another buddy's turbo build
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A big mess just trying to modify a used turbo hot side to fit his application
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I found some time to make some beer bottle cap magnets. I use them to keep my upcoming car show fliers on the fridge in the garage.
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And finally the coolest project I did last year was this old Craftsman toolbox a friend bought and then quickly realized it was to much work for what he wanted. I had the perfect use for it so I took on the challenge of restoring it.
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It was pretty bad
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this is the welding table I mentioned earlier and that spot in the front is were the Craftsman box will be going.
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I striped it down to bare metal, cut out the floor and most of the lower portion of the box.
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The old floor.
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I modified everything on the bottom of the welding table and here I am mocking up were the box is going.
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Fast forward through alot more work and its done and in place. I use it to keep all my sanding/grinding disks, sand paper, wire brushes, and clamps in. don't mind the wood shelf. It is just temporary.
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That wraps up 2014. I am going to get some good pictures of how the garage is currently this next week. I'll post up some more of my projects as well. It should be easier to keep the thread up to date now that I have caught up. Thanks for following.

Well, finally for those that are still following along here is how the garage looks as of yesterday.

There are a few projects that I will go back to. This is my single bay side and workshop area. I searched for at least a month or more daily for a cheap cabinet to pop up on craigslist. I finally scored the tall brown one for $50 from a electronics shop that got new shelving. The smaller white one was $15 and is made by IMPCO, Industrial Metal Products Company. Does anyone have any information on that company? I will eventually clean in up and paint it to match the old Craftsman box from above.
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That empty shelf is getting donated to my brother in law since I found a cabinet to replace it. I made some custom brackets to display my old BMX bikes.
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My butcher block work bench. I have lined the back of it with all the different beers that I have liked.
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The shelving that I made a few years ago
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And my over heads that help store alot of the "forgotten" stuff.
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I picked up this drill press and belt sander over the last few months to help with my metal fabrication. I brought out my Craftsman box that was used for storage and took the casters off to make it sturdy, cut a piece of 3/4 birch that was left over from another project and stained it for the top.
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The walkway between my welding table and work bench. Its right at 2 feet I think. And in the back you can see my pile of mountain bikes. This is really my last problem area. I have not been able to come up with an ideas of how to store those bikes.
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