Exeter's Suburban 3 Car Multi-use Remodel

[Exeter]

I've lived in the same house for 14 years and each year I've thought "maybe this will be the year I update the garage". Truth be told - thoughts of the amount of work necessary to get my garage in the shape I want have been almost overwhelming. But THIS is the year and I'm going to eat the elephant one bite at a time until get it the way I want.

I've been inspired by all the great ideas that I've seen here on GJ in each of your remodel and build threads and I'm sick of dealing with a subpar garage.. it could be so much more. So I've decided there is no time like the present...

First off - funny story time. When my wife and looked at this house after a job transfer, I spent most of the time looking at the rest of the house. The garage was almost an afterthought since our previous house had a 1 1/2 car detached garage and a 3 car garage was going to be more than sufficient. So when I peaked in the garage (admittedly I didn't walk around in the garage at the time) it looked fine for our needs. Fast forward to move in day - when we opened the garage door for the first time, I was seriously shocked at how big it was. I didn't realize that 2/3rds of the garage was the full depth of the house. I hadn't peaked around the corner when originally looking at the house. The garage is right around 900 square feet.

My goals for the project - I'll probably add to it as I go:

1. I need light! With only 5 flood lights on the ceiling for the entire garage, it feels like a cave at night.
2. Fix up all the damage to the walls & ceiling The previous owner had a paint booth in the small bay and had rods and rails attached to the walls and ceilings. He also hung everything on the walls and then took it with him when he moved out. there are nail and screw holes everywhere! Also a little water damage and holes cut to reroute cables internally.
3. Update the paint scheme The interior was fully finished when we bought the house, but it's a warm tone creme and we've been slowly remodeling the house to be a neutral pallet - whites, grays, blacks.
4. I want a proper workbench Enough said
5. Add cabinets & storage While my tools and everything else is fairly organized with what I have, it's not a good use of space. I need to remove the junky shelves along the back wall and put in a cabinet system like NewAge Pro 3.0. Ceiling racks are also on the list.
6. Make it a better multi-use space I'm not a ******** woodworker or motor head, but I do dabble in a lot of different things. I do enjoy home remodeling, car maintenance, bonsai (yes you read that correct), woodworking and other hobbies. I'd like to put a small gym and a flat panel TV in. It needs to be able to store my wife's many bins of holiday decorations, yard care tools, my fly fishing and skiing equipment and oh - hold a couple of cars too.
7. De-junkify While strictly speaking this is not a remodel activity, I'm hoping this will force us to go through and get rid of unneeded stuff to free up more space.
8. Polyaspartic floor Because they're just so cool and easy to clean.
8. Misc list Replace small garage door and opener. Replace furnace & AC. Tile under the mechanicals. Add a window to the back wall. Put in a larger door to the backyard. Fix up the central vacuum. Add built in shelves above the freezer and a tire rack for storing snow tires. Ceiling fan.

So here's what I'm starting with:

 

[Exeter]

Ceiling Painting

I started by by patching/sanding all the holes, mostly where the paint booth had been, and then adding the orange peel texture back to the sanded spots. I've gotten pretty handy with the texture in a spray can and was able match the texture nearly perfectly.

I had the larger garage door replaced 2 years ago and when they replaced the guide rails they were not as long as on the original door, so they just bent the ceiling supports at a weird angle. So I pulled the old angle iron off and dropped a plumb line to attach a perpendicular support and then patched and filled the space left by the old support, I also made the 2 rails parallel. They weren't parallel on 2 planes so the garage door was getting racked and the rollers would nearly come off the top section when all the way up All fixed now. I moved the supports holding up the opener as well.

Before:

After:

Then it was time to paint. This turned into an all Saturday activity. Started at 6 AM and finished up after dark. A couple coats of SW Extra White in semi-gloss. Painting an 11' ceiling is NO fun, even with an extension arm on the paint roller. Looking up all day left me with a very sore neck.

In progress pics:

All done:

 

[papp101]

Looks awesome! Nothing feels better than being DONE painting a ceiling.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using The Garage Journal mobile app

 

[Exeter]

Overhead Storage

With the ceiling now painted, I installed two of the 4x8 Onrax ceiling racks, one above each garage door. Installation was pretty straight forward and we've already gone through a lot of the stuff that was on the shelves on the back wall of the garage and put them in bins on the shelves. The 4x8 rack can hold 24 of the 14 gallon Rubbermaid totes. It's nice to use space that previously went unused.

 

[Exeter]

papp101 - Agreed!

 

[Exeter]

Ceiling Lift

Next up on the ceiling is to modify the lift/winch that has been where I've stored my 14' canoe for the last 8 years. The canoe hasn't seen much use lately so I'm going to sell it.

I've wanted to put my Thule roof top carrier on the winch so I can raise and lower it directly on my car. So I ordered up some 80/20 10 series extrusions with some tread strip in the top slot to keep Thule from sliding around. I moved the position of the winch closer to the garage door since the carrier is not as long as the canoe. I'm happy with how it turned out.

 

[Exeter]

East Wall - Repair/Paint Wall & Central Vacuum

The east wall of the garage has several problems - A previous owner had a satellite dish installed and the cable was hung from the ceiling and down the wall. Previous to taking the first before pics, I had cut a couple holes in the wall, one near the ceiling and a couple at near the bottom, so that I could route the cable in the wall. Now I need to patch the sheetrock. I also needed to repair about 3 dozen holes in the wall from hooks and shelves that had been installed and then removed by previous owners. Once repaired I could then paint.

Then there's the problem of the central vacuum. In the pic below you can see what looks to be a shadow on the wall behind the 2" pipe heading to the ceiling. It's actually a 'dirt' shadow. And the PVC is actually white underneath all the dirt/dust. The top canister is the motor and the pipe leading to the ceiling is the exhaust to the outside. So it has positive pressure and here's the kicker - all of the PVC from the motor up was not glued, only slip fitted together, so dirt escapes on every use.. That needs to be fixed.

Before pics:

I didn't take pics of the in-progress of repairing/painting the wall, but here you can better see the dirt on the wall and top PVC pipe.

I removed the central vac, cleaned and primed the wall. You can also see that I removed the sheetrock from the wall separating the water heater. I'm going to remove that wall giving us the 1 1/2 inches that we need to be able to install a larger water heater.

I ended up replacing the dirt canister on the vacuum (the lower section) and installed all new PVC pipe along with an exhaust muffler. I did a clean install with the control wire zip tied neatly behind the pipes. Here's the finished product with the wall painted a light gray.

I also added escutcheons to both places the pipe enters/exits the walls. On the bottom one I drilled a hole in the escutcheon and added a rubber grommet for a cleaner look with the control wire.

 

[el monte slim]

Fantastic work Exeter! I love all the garage modifications and updates you're doing here, plus the attention to detail that you've given to each task. Special kudos for your creative modification to the ceiling winch for holding the roof top carrier securely.

 

[Exeter]

Fantastic work Exeter! I love all the garage modifications and updates you're doing here, plus the attention to detail that you've given to each task. Special kudos for your creative modification to the ceiling winch for holding the roof top carrier securely.

Thanks Monte! The devil is in the details, right?

 

[phule]

So much room for activities!

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

 

[Exeter]

Back Walls

I knew the back walls would take the most work to get them to get them fixed up the way I wanted. After putting it off for a week I finally dove in.

Here's what it looked like to start:

First thing would be to demo the shelves. While it was nice to have the storage space, they're not really needed anymore since I've added a good amount of storage space with the ceiling racks. And the shelves weren't in very good shape. They were made with particle board and not properly braced along the front edges, so they would sag. They were built by the previous home owner. So out they came.

I thought I had taken a picture once the shelves were completely removed, but couldn't find it. What was left was over 400 holes in the sheetrock that needed to be filled. While I was at it I decided to skim coat the wall to get rid of the orange peel texture. Sanding and skim coating was the majority of the work on this post. I added a vertical and horizontal skim coat and a lot of sanding in between. I'm sure that someone that does dry wall for a living could have done it quickly, but this was my first time. After nearly 4 days of work, I ended up with perfectly smooth walls.

I primed the walls and then painted them with a couple coats of light gray.

Here's the finished product. I painted the walls around the door to the house a darker gray. I'm not sure that I like the hue of the darker gray. I looks a little too blue. I'll probably repaint it a more neutral gray at some point.

You can also see that I've added some LED lights to the ceiling. I still need to route the cords, but the light they provide is amazing. It's no longer a dark dungeon in the garage.

The setup with tool cabinets and MFT table along the wall is temporary. Eventually these cabinets and a couple more will be mounted to the wall with a work bench across them all.

I installed a NewAge cabinet above the sink. It was the perfect width to fit the space

 

[Jonnynel]

Where did you get the 80/20 10 series extrusions you used for you cargo carrier lift? I need to do that and like the looks of what you did. Thanks

 

[Exeter]

Where did you get the 80/20 10 series extrusions you used for you cargo carrier lift? I need to do that and like the looks of what you did. Thanks

8020.net - You can also find it on Amazon and ebay.