First post, first garage

[JFortner5]

Hey guys I stumbled upon this site before I even bought our home. I really wanted a two car garage, but the house we liked had everything we wanted, except for that. So, I ended up with a 13'x18'. Its not a huge deal, we weren't planning on parking a car in it, it is my space. It's not big, but its mine and I am really happy to be out of our old apartment and actually have a house with a garage.

Here it is-

We moved in the house in the middle of September, and as you can imagine we had plenty of boxes. Then Christmas came and I had a lot more boxes to deal with so we kind of just started throwing stuff in the garage. I know you probably cant tell, but I spent a couple hours in there today cleaning it out. I've still got to find a place for a lot of the stuff on the left side of the picture, but its an improvement. That's enough rambling from me, I just thought I'd share my pic and start reading up to get some ideas to make it better.

Thanks,
Joey

 

[jeepjunky]

Looks good

 

[Nighttrain]

Welcome to GJ. You have a great space, you will find a lot of good ideas on here about getting the best bang for your buck. After years of only having a storage unit my first garage was a single like yours. I did a lot of work in there. Ended up putting a lot of that seasonal stuff in the attic and I also had a 8x10 IIR shed which I put all the garden stuff in.

 

[OhioSiouxFan]

Nice high ceiling that has a lot of great storage potential. I see the water heater there, and I would recommend you do what you can to keep some clear space around it. We had a house fire a few years ago that started in our utility room because we had storage boxes up against our gas water heater.

Good luck planning your garage and I'll look forward to your pictures and progress!

 

[JFortner5]

My plan is to build a workbench to the left of the water heater, and then find some cabinets to mount above it. Then, along the right side, I was thinking about doing some shelves just to get stuff off of the floor.

Sorry to hear about your fire, but mine is an electric water heater. I make my living plumbing so I do plan on keeping it open around the heater so when it goes out I won't be tearing out shelves to replace it, haha. I'll work at it a little at a time. Eventually it will get how I want it. Now I just need something to work on in there.

 

[ejm1961Tbird]

Just a word of caution about electric water heaters too. Mine caught on fire this summer, inside the lower temperature control panel. Lucky for me, the fire extinguished itself just shortly before it melted through the thick styrofoam insert under the metal access panel. Some smoke damage was barely visible on the outside of the access panel. If I had anything flammable up against my water heater, it might have caught my garage and house on fire.

Anywhooo... Welcome to GJ and enjoy your new garage!