dogtired78
Well-known member
Hi Everybody,
Long story, short - My wife and I and our three kids bought our first house out near Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia last August. It's a mid-80s suburban cookie cutter, but it has a nice basement playroom for the kids, a quiet neighborhood with low crime, room for everyone to grow, and a two bay garage.
I've been wanting a garage since 1994 but life style and work requirements has never lined up in quite the right way. Upon closing, I immediately announced that the garage was "Papa's room" and began figuring out how I could turn it into a comfortable workshop for me.
In fact, I think that's roughly about the time I found GJ and started stalking the forums for good tips and inspiration.
The garage is 20' x 22' - partially insulated and drywalled (the spaces where it tucks into the rest of the house) with exposed studs, no paint, and a bare concrete floor that is in decent shape.
I'm about half way through my renovation, but I thought I'd better create this thread sooner than later. I finally figured out how to host photos so I'm not killing the GJ servers and I think I've figured out how to size them correctly. My apologies up front for the quality of the early pictures - I didn't know much about how to use the camera phone.
To start, this is how it looked shortly after moving in. All of our stuff from storage was piled up in the garage for my wife to sort through for Goodwill.
The angles aren't great with the photos, but you can get a sense of what I was starting with. The only thing I changed in the garage when the photo was taken was the tire rack I hung on the right wall.
By the time the snows came in January, not much had happened with the boxes of junk and I decided it was time to take charge of clearing it all out of my garage. This past winter was a really cold one in NoVA, so I figured the first thing I needed to do was insulate the space to make it more comfortable to work in.
The garage doors were already insulated and the weather seal on both doors was in great condition. I went online, read up on what I needed to do for the walls, and then headed to the giant orange hardware store.
As you can see from this photo, I began insulating while I was still dealing with a lot of junk in the garage.
I used R15 batts. They were readily available, on sale, and made it really easy for a first timer like me to lay up and secure between the studs.
Here they are secured on the left wall:
And here is the right wall.
Finally, progress! Of course, the next thing to do was climb up into the ceiling and see what, if any, insulation was up there. But I'll save that for a later post when I have had the chance to find the pictures and upload them.
Thanks for looking!
Long story, short - My wife and I and our three kids bought our first house out near Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia last August. It's a mid-80s suburban cookie cutter, but it has a nice basement playroom for the kids, a quiet neighborhood with low crime, room for everyone to grow, and a two bay garage.
I've been wanting a garage since 1994 but life style and work requirements has never lined up in quite the right way. Upon closing, I immediately announced that the garage was "Papa's room" and began figuring out how I could turn it into a comfortable workshop for me.
In fact, I think that's roughly about the time I found GJ and started stalking the forums for good tips and inspiration.
The garage is 20' x 22' - partially insulated and drywalled (the spaces where it tucks into the rest of the house) with exposed studs, no paint, and a bare concrete floor that is in decent shape.
I'm about half way through my renovation, but I thought I'd better create this thread sooner than later. I finally figured out how to host photos so I'm not killing the GJ servers and I think I've figured out how to size them correctly. My apologies up front for the quality of the early pictures - I didn't know much about how to use the camera phone.
To start, this is how it looked shortly after moving in. All of our stuff from storage was piled up in the garage for my wife to sort through for Goodwill.
The angles aren't great with the photos, but you can get a sense of what I was starting with. The only thing I changed in the garage when the photo was taken was the tire rack I hung on the right wall.
By the time the snows came in January, not much had happened with the boxes of junk and I decided it was time to take charge of clearing it all out of my garage. This past winter was a really cold one in NoVA, so I figured the first thing I needed to do was insulate the space to make it more comfortable to work in.
The garage doors were already insulated and the weather seal on both doors was in great condition. I went online, read up on what I needed to do for the walls, and then headed to the giant orange hardware store.
As you can see from this photo, I began insulating while I was still dealing with a lot of junk in the garage.
I used R15 batts. They were readily available, on sale, and made it really easy for a first timer like me to lay up and secure between the studs.
Here they are secured on the left wall:
And here is the right wall.
Finally, progress! Of course, the next thing to do was climb up into the ceiling and see what, if any, insulation was up there. But I'll save that for a later post when I have had the chance to find the pictures and upload them.
Thanks for looking!
