$100/month Garage

[Edward Ramirez]

Hello All,

I've been a lurker like most for quite sometime now. I have posted some things before on some of my tool finds, which will be re-posted here as a seamless thread. This thread will serve as my on-going thread of tool finds, restorations, projects and a bit of modest bragging (just because I'm excited, not really bragging). I'm going to re-post old threads and pick up where I left off from my previous 2 car garage (One spot was the wife's parking spot, so it was really a one car workshop).

(Prelude) So here it goes......

Blessed to have just recently moved into a larger more spacious house. We just had our third child and moved in my in-laws to help with the babies and they also need the help as well. The house has an attached 3 car garage. I've always wanted a garage I could be proud of. A place I could call my own. A sanctuary.

I don't have a lot of money, I can't say I'm talented in welding, working on cars, fabrication, carpentry like some the talent seen here on this site. I can't say I'm an expert on much of anything. Although, I do like to dream, tinker, learn, create enough to call myself a general student-of-all-trades.

Over the past year or two, I had bought pretty much every hand tool in Craftsman catalog $100/month at a time. If I couldn't afford it in one month, I saved my money for two months, three months, four months; whatever it took to buy the set I had set my eyes on next. I had pretty good tool sets in the past, but I would loan them out or people (my brothers) would "borrow" them and I'd never get them back and would end up with incomplete sets, which dives me crazy!

I gotta say, if I could afford Snap-on or Matco tools, I'd buy them. If my tools were my bread and butter I'd invest in them. I just tinker, so I can't justify spending double or triple what I spent on my Craftsman tools for premium tools. To me that's taking food out of my kids mouth.

So the $100/month garage...Basically I give myself a $100/month to buy hand tools, power tools, restoration projects, material to build stuff whatever.

The way I came to that amount is $5/day for lunch x 5days/week = $25/week x 4 weeks = $100 any day I don't bring my lunch to work I deduct that $5 from my budget (Did I mention, I'm an accountant? LOL). Again, I put my kids/family first.

Stay tuned...

 

[Sorrys70]

clean that **** out of there a start a project in there. an old car maybe? and continue trowing 100 a month AT that. thats what i do .

 

[Edward Ramirez]

My goal is to build Factory 5 Cobra replicas, but Rome wasn't built in a day.

 

[kfainf]

Congrats on the new house and garage. I really like your budget plan. I have a very modest and currently messy two car garage myself. I like the high end look, but have a shoe string budget also. Everything I have done in my garage has been on the cheap. I could probably accomplish things quicker by adopting your $100 a month plan.

 

[Captain America]

I also save the same way with "lunch budget", I bring my lunch just about everyday! It's hard to see myself pooping out $100+ per month.
That being said,I do every once and awhile do eat out for lunch,gotta change it up some

 

[jd_1138]

Smart to bring a lunch to work everyday. At my job, me and another guy (ex-military) are the only ones who bring our lunches. We save $8/day by not getting a hamburger combo meal and the morning Starbuck's coffee. That's $160 a month -- a car payment.

And we eat healthier (sandwich, thermos of soup, and a piece of fruit) than they do. And we don't have to waste our lunch hour running down to the fast food places to buy their greasy slop. Instead we sit there and relax and casually eat.

Nice shop, BTW. Organize it and build shelving to get everything off the floor. Single layer piles are never efficient.

 

[James-W]

I used to take my lunch to work with me most days, but I got a little tired of "brown bagging it" all the time. That's why some days myself and couple of the guys I worked with would go to a restaurant for lunch.

 

[sublimate]

I figure I'm saving at least $1,000 a month by not doing cocaine, so I justify spending that on my garage.
The fact that I've never done cocaine and wouldn't even if I didn't have a garage is a mere trifling detail.

 

[justanengineer]

Bravo for someone with realistic expectations, priorities, and budgeting!!

 

[James-W]

If you want a really nice storage shed, maybe you could get hold of an old military type conex. They are built from some very solid metal and would make an excellent storage unit. I am not sure what you would have to pay for one, but I suspect the price wouldn't be too terrible. Some of those things are quite large and would hold a lot of stuff. I think they are also called an "Industrial Shipping Container" by some people. It's just a thought, but it might prove to be a viable option for you.

 

[maxpower_hd]

Looks like it will be a nice space once it is cleaned up. I used to have the exact same radio you have on the shelf in the second pic. I got tired of resetting the presets every time the power went out or I popped a breaker so I got an old 70's era receiver. It makes changing channels faster too.

I always wanted to build one of those Factory Five cobras too. There facility isn't too far from me. I just haven't had the time or cash for such an ambitious project.

A friend of mine looked at some of those shipping containers for storage. They were running around $1500-$2000 around here delivered. They are pretty ugly too. He ended up getting a truck body with a roll up door which is pretty nice actually. It's all white so it looks a little better that the conex too.

Good luck with the garage.

 

[Compressor]

Right now, you just need to get rid of stuff. I would vote against a storage unit or metal box - that will chew through your budget pretty quick and without really good reason. Just go through the stuff - keep what you want, sell what you can, and recycle/trash the rest.

Once you do that, you should spend the your first few months' budget on some sort of storage solution. I am a fan of the gladiator stuff but you have to hit it while it is on sale otherwise it's unnecessarily expensive. Their tracks and hooks would make a big difference in your garage for the things you do want to keep. Stop buying tools until you can move around that garage

Don't think too much, just get on it.

 

[James-W]

Getting rid of stuff you don't want is great, there is no question about that. But many times I find that I want to keep some stuff (whether for sentimental reasons or just because I figure I will need it) but I don't necessarily want to keep it in the garage. My garage space is important because I need room in which to work and I can't have a lot of stuff just sitting around wasting space. What I needed to have is a place to put stuff other than the garage. That's why I built a two-story garage and my storage space is up on top. I suspect the opening poster wants to keep at least part of the things he has, but he needs a place to put them, other than in the garage.

 

[UpstateNY]

clean that **** out of there a start a project in there. an old car maybe? and continue trowing 100 a month AT that. thats what i do .

yup.

 

[Edward Ramirez]

First order of business is getting a Pack Rat/PODS mobile storage unit so that I can Epoxy the floor. My community will be having a garage sale this weekend. I plan to unload anything and everything I can. I'd build a storage shed first if I didn't have to go through my HOA; which is going to be a head-ache as they have already been a bunch of d!ck$ about installing shutters. They are limiting my storage shed to less than 100 sq ft. So, I'm going to build an 8'x12' storage shed soon.

We just moved into this house a month ago. Steady progress. There's a ton of things we did before moving and since we've moved in there's been tons of things that had to be taken care of like installing sod, ceiling fans, painted the whole inside of the house, shutters, installed lighting/socket/air line connections in the garage before it gets too hot.

 

[metalart]

You have lots of what my wife calls twigs for your nest. Cabinets, boxes, drawers, etc... I look forward to seeing it come together! We are in a fairly similar boat with allotted money, craigslist and the hot deals section are your friend! Well... Kinda... Hot deals is kinda double edged as I keep finding things at prices that are hard to refuse...

 

[jmarkwolf]

I figure I'm saving at least $1,000 a month by not doing cocaine, so I justify spending that on my garage.
The fact that I've never done cocaine and wouldn't even if I didn't have a garage is a mere trifling detail.

 

[MattVette89]

I like your budget idea. Now it's time to organize!

 

[Edward Ramirez]

Just completed our garage sale. Made $164, not bad for stuff I was just going to donate. Although nothing was sold from my garage

Here are some renderings of what I have planned:

 

[Edward Ramirez]

Finally got caught up with things that needed to be done around the house. I just submitted my approval request to build a storage shed.

I cut a pile of lumber all day so that I can build my 8x12 storage shed. Tomorrow, I'll frame the walls up.

When the approval gets accepted, then all I have to do is raise all the walls and be done with it.