Condo garage makeover

[VINCENZ0]

Inspired by this group, I decided to upgrade my parking area in my shared, underground condominium garage. Sound crazy? Maybe a little!

After 12 years, I realized that thinking about that space in a traditional sense was more a limiting factor than it should be. After all, there were existing wooden storage cabinets, maybe my HOA would let me just swap those out with something nicer.

I put together a little timelapse video with my thoughts and commentary as of the DIY project. Check it out and let me know what you think.

 

[mitchellc]

That’s a really impressive parking area in a condo garage, and it’s awesome that you were able to add in the cabinets too.

Is your building pretty flexible with working on cars? I subletted a condo here in Seattle, and when changing between summer and winter tires, I did the work at weird hours to minimize the number of looky loos.

By comparison, here was my minuscule condo parking spot. A larger or private garage would have been great, but the high-rise view and 20 minute walk to work was a nice trade-off.

 

[VINCENZ0]

Thanks for the feedback!

It's funny, I actually edited out from the video a short section about working on cars in the garage. Our building is small, only 7 units. So overall it's pretty lax on this. I also am the youngest person in the building by probably 30 years so I tend to help out a lot with building maintenance projects and when other owners need help with their cars (e.g. dead batteries, especially during covid-19!) In return, they don't seem to mind if I work on my cars a little.

I've also lived here 12 years so have gotten a pretty good sense of what I can get away with or not. I did a 30k service on my Lotus which involved oil and transmission fluid changes, bleeding brakes, etc and nobody cared. I also wash the cars in the underground garage, which blocks the entrance temporarily but with only 7 units there is very little in and out traffic.

I don't think I would try to do an engine swap or something too major. My general rule of thumb is:

1- Project should be able to be completed in less than a week (e.g. car not sitting on jack stands or in pieces for a long time)

2- Project shouldn't be too messy. I've historically not done oil changes because of this but am slowly warming up to the idea.

 

[mitchellc]

Sounds like you have a good relationship with the neighbors. A condo structure with 7 units seems like an interesting building; I haven’t seen anything like that around here.

I wouldn’t mess with fluids either. I did a few parts changes in my condo, but generally I wanted to be able to finish a job within a few hours. For longer projects, such as changing out the suspension, I rented a slot at a DIY space.

 

[VINCENZ0]

Yes, the building is interesting but not too uncommon for high end condos in the suburbs of San Francisco. It was built in the 1980s I believe, 6 of the units are all around 1400 - 1600 sq ft (2 units per floor, separated by a hallway so you don't share any walls) and a penthouse that is probably about 3000 sq feet and has it's own separate little in-law unit (maybe about 700 sq ft) that has it's own mini kitchen and stuff.

I regret not buying the penthouse when it was on the market around $1.5M a number of years ago. I think it is probably worth close to $2.5M now. Now that I have 2 kids, we have been outgrowing the place. We recently did a significant remodel to convert the dining room to a 3rd bedroom and tear down a kitchen wall to make a breakfast bar and open the kitchen up to the living room (we also moved the dining table to the living room, which is pretty big.)

Here are a couple pics of the remodel if you're interested in that.

BEFORE (enclosed kitchen, open dining room on right to living room)

AFTER (open kitchen, enclosed dining room as bedroom -- currently office due to covid19 work from home)

AFTER (view out to the living room from kitchen)

 

[VINCENZ0]

Note: post was a structural part of the building supporting 2 floors above, so while lots of people advised me on options to remove it, none of them had worked on condos before and didn't think through the load bearing of an entire building. Sure it could have probably been done but wasn't worth the expense in my mind.

Kitchen wall that was removed, and you can see where the load bearing post was:

 

[VINCENZ0]

Not sure why my pics are not showing up? Not allowed to embed from imgur.com?

 

[wasfast]

The https: needs to be http: for IMGUR to work here.

 

[nadogail]

Thanks for sharing.

 

[VINCENZ0]

@wasfast ahhh thanks for the tip!

 

[VINCENZ0]

Latest update on changes to my condo garage, here I am installing a solid workbench top, replacing a dented cabinet, and adding some trim boards. Really happy with how it turned out!