Hawks 2.5 car catchall where stuff gets done..ish

[Hawk136439]

Well hello there! My name is Shane and I found GJ shortly after buying my house a little over a year ago. I have been a member of plenty of forums but never made a build thread so why not give it a shot.

A little background, I'm a mechanical engineer that enjoys tinkering with all manor of hobbies, Mountain bikes, cars, trucks, R/C cars, guns, bows, woodworking.... yeah the list goes on... so shortly after graduating college and finding my first "big boy" job I began looking for a house where my now wife, our 4 dogs and all of our hobbies could live. Number one on my list of requirements for said house was it MUST have a 2 car garage or larger!!!

Fast forward a little bit and I am now the proud owner of a 3 bed, 1 bath house on a 1 acre lot with a 2.5 car HEATED garage. WOOOOO

so this is a little catch up and will be where I try to chronicle everything from here out.

When I first looked at the house the garage door was wide open and I could see this beauty all the way up the drive.

The ceiling had been ripped out because the last tenant (rent to own) had completely neglected the place before been evicted so the owners kids took it out since it was soaked with rain and raccoon urine. But good news, it has a fresh roof and the walls are still insulated!

This is a shot of my GTI and my dads Passat TDI in front of the garage for house inspections.

And the first shot after signing papers and getting both my car and truck to their new home:

Now thanks to this wonderful community I knew that no garage is complete without a work bench so it was off to Menards for a load of supplies:

Here it is in the construction process, had to stop and eat some dinner.

And all done for phase one. Dimensions are 20ft long, 48in high and 24in deep if memory serves me right.

Here you can see that there is plenty of space in the garage for both vehicles and my toolbox that got me through college.

The garage stayed like this for quite a while as other projects needed tackling like a fence to keep the dogs in. Can I just say that the little trailer from HF is well worth a purchase if you have an SUV or, in my case, a small truck with a cap?!

That little trailer handled a full skid of 6ftx8ft privacy fencing and a pile of fence post which resulted in this:

After that things kind of slowed down on the garage and picked up in the house. At some point I managed to run out of workspace on the bench and built another 8ft section to make an L-shape in the corner. Then it was lots of house projects and yard work mixed with enjoying this.

and occasionally (read every other weekend) a buddy would come over to work on his jeep.

And then we would celebrate with grilling and more of this.

Yeah this progress is going to be a snails pace can't ya tell?

Dang too many characters ON TO POST 2!!!

 

[Hawk136439]

Yup I was worried I'd gone too long winded...

Continuing my first post...

Eventually as I moved the last of my junk from my college place and my parents place and little projects were almost completed, the bench looked like this.

And the rest of the garage wasn't much better as can be seen in the background from when I got a sweet deal on a new toolbox for black Friday !

I know it's bad... but here she is all tucked in her new home and properly customized

After increasing my tool storage I started attacking the piles of stuff I had laying around with some ideas found right on this forum! I had a box of shelf brackets that my dad gave me and put the to use holding all the yard tools I had accumulated as well as getting longer stock off the floor.

That was a good start but I still had more stuff and yup you guessed it more shelf brackets so the folding chairs gained a home on the wall and the compressor was placed on a shelf above the mower. And the best part was not having to leave the garage for any supplies!!!

So at this point the place was still a mess but it was a little better and it stayed that way for a while.

Then I got bored one weekend and decided to up my lighting level. 4 trips to Lowes, 3 returned purchases, probably 6 hours and a whole lot of swearing and laughing between myself and my buddy (jeep guy from before) and I had added 3 more 2-bulb 4ft lights to the ceiling all in all, much more light!

Once again things got busy and the garage was still a mess until last week when I finally couldnt take it (read wife wont let me spend more money on projects) and decided to get cleaning (read FREE garage improvement) and now my 30ish feet of workbench looks like this!

During the course of my cleaning frenzy I did stop to make some "shelves" to help organize the piles of hardware I seem to have accumulated. Bottom houses a large HF organizer bin filled with bolts, nuts, washers and other odds and ends as well as a small HF organizer bin that is dedicated to all the small R/C bolt, nuts, and whatnots. In the middle are all of the HF hardware kits I have purchased for different projects like hose clamps, cotter pins, rubber grommets, etc. and the top is a Dewalt Tough system organizer I picked up after the holidays for all my different wood screws. The reason for switching to the Dewalt box is because I also have a larger tough system box with all my Kobalt lithium brushless tools and they can lock together for getting to where I'm working. Another post holidays purchase that made its way to this part of the bench is the HF 8" drill press that was on sale and coupled with a 15% off coupon was to good a deal to pass up!

I think my next project for the garage is going to be organizing this pile of stuff and continuing to sift through the totes under the bench.

So that's pretty much where I am at at the moment. I have already learned a ton from this forum and hope to be able to return the favor somewhere down the road. Please leave some thoughts and suggestions and I will try to keep this all up to date!

One last picture because who doesn't like a panorama?

Thanks for looking and sorry about the massive first post!

 

[matt_i]

Lots of work there! I am wondering how you are doing with heat in the winter months? It would seem like a nice ceiling would help you entrap more heated air Keep the pics coming, looks like a great job so far.

 

[M-technik-3]

Very cool you have heat in you garage but I imagine it's cold with out any sort of insulation. This winter has been pretty brutal this year in the mid west. My kids live in Michigan and every couple of days I get an text saying school was cancelled for weather.

Come spring is it time to clean out and start fresh?

 

[Hawk136439]

Lots of work there! I am wondering how you are doing with heat in the winter months? It would seem like a nice ceiling would help you entrap more heated air Keep the pics coming, looks like a great job so far.

Thanks! It's a work in progress for sure. the current plan is to leave the ceiling uncovered and insulate the roof to leave it feeling as open as possible but that is always subject to change. I only fire up the heater when I plan on being out there working for a while to cut down on costs as well.

Very cool you have heat in you garage but I imagine it's cold with out any sort of insulation. This winter has been pretty brutal this year in the mid west. My kids live in Michigan and every couple of days I get an text saying school was cancelled for weather.

Come spring is it time to clean out and start fresh?

Yeah it's been a dream come true to have actual heat out there instead of a space heater or something like that. Even with no insulation in the roof the heater does a great job getting it nice and warm in there. As mentioned above I only use the heater when I am out there working to save some heating costs. With that said I have a thermometer on the opposite wall from the heater in between the man door and the garage door and have gotten that to read 50*F when it was only 5*F outside.

Thanks for checking out the garage Guys!

 

[Hawk136439]

Small update from yesterday.. like itty bitty...

As I said earlier this year is mostly going to consist of small improvements that can be done for the least possible cost (needing to pay off some bills after buying a house, replacing a vehicle and getting married in the span of 2 years who'd of thought? )

Moving on, I have always enjoyed a well organized tool box and decided to work on mine starting with my screwdriver drawer so here is the before.

I'm sure it's not the worst anyone has seen but it still has room for improvment. So, after a quick sketch on the computer and a few hours (or days...) of running the 3d printer I had a solution for the screwdrivers. Coupling that with an old socket box given to me by an old roommate in college for the chisels and punches and we have this!

Now there is still some fine tuning to be done and only time will tell how well these holders work in practice but I'm happy with it for now so we wait. The misc. screwdriver bits were moved to another drawer for now until I can come up with a good way to store and organize them.

Also while out in the garage I put some other tools to use and finally built a paper towel holder! Now try not to be too jealous of my amazing carpentry skills

I know it's amazing right!?

Anyway thanks for stopping by and let me know if you have any questions, comments, concerns. Until next time!

-Shane

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Subscribed!! When are you putting the ceiling back in?

 

[Hawk136439]

Subscribed!! When are you putting the ceiling back in?

Thanks! I'm not sure if I will put a ceiling in or just insulate the roof and paint it all white. It is kind of nice having easy access to all the rafters for hanging things at the moment.

 

[JustinS]

I had one of those trailers too, hated how noisy the slip springs were over bumps.

 

[Hawk136439]

I had one of those trailers too, hated how noisy the slip springs were over bumps.

Yeah I will admit there are times it sounds like it just rattled off the truck but for around 400 new I cant complain.

 

[J-man67]

Awesome garage/shop!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

 

[dubber]

Man that garage is deep, very enviable!

 

[Hawk136439]

Awesome garage/shop!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

Thank you!

Man that garage is deep, very enviable!

Yeah it was certainly a selling point, I do wish it had a water supply though so I could use some of the things learned from your garage builds (I read both your single and double cover to cover!) and one other drawback to all the space is race deck would surely bankrupt me haha I know break out the worlds smallest violin.

Thanks for the feed back everyone!

 

[Purist]

So jealous that you have heat in your space. It's something I'd really love to add down the road, but it's far down on the To Do list. In the meantime, I think I may start with insulating the attic space above the garage. I'm thinking that will help cut the chill in the garage at least somewhat, since there is literally no overhead insulation in there. Found that out when my buddy and I went up there to wire in my shop lights.

 

[Hawk136439]

So jealous that you have heat in your space. It's something I'd really love to add down the road, but it's far down on the To Do list. In the meantime, I think I may start with insulating the attic space above the garage. I'm thinking that will help cut the chill in the garage at least somewhat, since there is literally no overhead insulation in there. Found that out when my buddy and I went up there to wire in my shop lights.

Thanks man! You would be amazed what some insulation in the walls and ceiling can do when coupled with even a small space heater. My truck has a habit of waiting until the coldest stretch of the year to break so having heat has been a life saver!!!

 

[Hawk136439]

Well got a little bit of Quality Shop Time this weekend as I've heard it called on this board before. So the last time we saw the shop this was was the state of things.

Now this was a good start and things were feeling a lot more organized but a few things felt like they could be improved. For one the only form of storage I had for large sheet materials, 4'x8' plywood and what not, was leaning on the wall next to my car. This had worked out alright but I always had this fear that the wind might pick up and throw the materials into my car ! Now that was not too likely but what actually happened was not much better... While picking up the garage I managed to put a nice scratch in my front fender by rubbing into it with the knife clipped on my pocket! So to try and make sure this never happens again here is my solution.

So hopefully that prevents any future mistakes or fender scratches!

Now this is a little out of order because I needed to make room for this project before it could take shape. After a good amount of thinking it over and even making a 3d model of the garage and most of its contents. I had a solution! Now they say a picture is worth a thousand words so take a look and I'll try to summarize after.

Well that was fun so on to the explanation. The new shelf is actually the lower shelf from the 8' long section of work bench. The pegboard is the same one that was in the garage when I bought the house just moved about 8' to the right to make room for the shelf move. The shelf is tied into the wall studs and supported by one of the legs from the 8' bench and a cut off I found lying around.

The 8' bench lost 2 support legs and got screwed into the 20' bench. Then the Husky tool chest found a new home under the 8' bench. Then in a random stroke of luck the shelf above the mower was a perfect fit next to the tool chest!!!! so that gave me a place for the drain tub.

After that was done I decided to exercise my "amazing" carpentry skills (for a previous example please refer to my "awesome" paper towel holder in an earlier post ) and made a clamp rack.

So with everything buttoned up I noticed that I have this growing pile of license plates that I've been collecting for years and it hit me, backsplash!!!

Now to summarize this weekend we were able to achive:

-Another 8'x2' shelf (mounting the existing shelf above a work bench "converted" the space below it to a shelf)

-4'x8' sheet storage

-An extra 4" of pegboard (it was originally mounted lower so when I moved it over I also raised it up above the bench)

-No more pile of license plates and signs lying on the work bench

And the best part of all is that everything done to the garage this weekend was completely free!!! Yup that's right all the materials were lying around and all that was needed to make it all happen was some elbow grease and a little ingenuity. I do have to admit that most of this would not have been a thought in my head if it weren't for all the amazing information on this site!!

If you have made it this far then you deserve a reward so here is one final picture.

As always thanks for reading and please feel free to leave feedback and questions!!

-Shane

 

[ajohno]

Your garage is coming along nicely.

 

[metalhead140]

Nice work! I need to do some tidy up and build some more storage in my garage myself... Been too busy the last couple of years working in the garage and neglected working on the garage...

 

[Hawk136439]

Your garage is coming along nicely.

Thanks a lot man! It's a work in progress for sure. I just wish I could get a nice crew cab ranger like yours to park in it!

Nice work! I need to do some tidy up and build some more storage in my garage myself... Been too busy the last couple of years working in the garage and neglected working on the garage...

Thanks man I know how it goes needing more storage. I've been pretty happy with this shelf design so far if you want I can get some more dimensions on how to make them. This isn't even everything, there's still more storage in the basement of the house too! Seriously how does someone accumulate this much stuff!?

 

[dubber]

Yeah it was certainly a selling point, I do wish it had a water supply though so I could use some of the things learned from your garage builds (I read both your single and double cover to cover!) and one other drawback to all the space is race deck would surely bankrupt me haha I know break out the worlds smallest violin.

Yea water supply is key. I still have adding a separate hot water line on my radar. Well see when/if that happens.

 

[Hawk136439]

Yea water supply is key. I still have adding a separate hot water line on my radar. Well see when/if that happens.

Good luck! I'll be keeping an eye out for your write up on that. And probably looking back through your thread for some detailing advice if/when I can ever pull the car out and give it a good cleaning.

 

[Thirdyfivepickup]

I know it's bad... but here she is all tucked in her new home and properly customized

bonus points for proudly displaying your Bears sticker on the tool box. I wont even mention how crooked it is...

Kidding. Nice progress on the garage!

 

[M-technik-3]

Thoughts to just adding some sheetrock to the ceiling or heck the foam insulation? That way you would get to keep more heat in the space.

 

[Hawk136439]

bonus points for proudly displaying your Bears sticker on the tool box. I wont even mention how crooked it is...

Kidding. Nice progress on the garage!

Haha I knew someone was going to call me on that being crooked! It's actually a magnet so it has been straightened since then and yes I will still support the bears even without cheerleaders and despite their dismal season because that's what fans do (even if I end up yelling at the tv every weekend...)

Thoughts to just adding some sheetrock to the ceiling or heck the foam insulation? That way you would get to keep more heat in the space.

Yeah that thought has been crossing my mind a lot lately and will probably happen at some point if the funds will allow it, but even without a ceiling it still gets very comfortable in there pretty fast.

Thanks for stopping in all! I hope to have some more updates soon!

-Shane

 

[Hawk136439]

Time for another update, once again not much has been going on on the garage but I did get the opportunity to work IN the garage. As mentioned in one of my first posts, my back yard has a 6ft tall privacy fence to keep the dogs in. The final piece of this fence project was a gate that covers the driveway and yet still opens to allow access to the garage as seen below (reposting from first post).

Now in this picture the gate is not fully completed. whats missing is the pair of wheels that I attached to the end of the gate for support when opening and closing that are attached to the end closest to the house. An example of which can be seen below:

The picture above was actually taken a few days ago after I got home from work to find the outer tire (pictured on the left) had gone flat. Not a huge deal, we've had some pretty crazy temperature swings the last few weeks and I'm not stranger to using a bicycle pump. so I fill up the flat tire and while putting the valve cover back on the stupid thing EXPLODES!!!!! Leaving the tire in this condition:

I can only liken it to firing a shotgun with your ear next to the muzzle! So let me set the mood here for a moment. It's Monday around 5pm, all day has been a mix of rain and ice falling from grey gloomy skies, an 8" diameter air filled tire has just exploded in my face, my ears are ringing, my pants are a little wet and brown on the inside and this is not going to get fixed tonight. So I closed up the gate and formulated a plan.

Right so this wheel trying to kill me is a bit of a mixed blessing. Ever since I built this gate there have been things I wanted to change. For one, both wheels are able to rotate which sounded great but in practice meant they were always out of timing so the leading wheel would rotate halfway and then act as a brake. There were 2 possible solutions to this issue. 1, get both wheels in line so that they might be on the same radius and thus in time with each other while rotating. 2, just get some wheels that don't rotate and Finally I decided that I don't ever want to deal with a tire exploding in my face again so I bought non-pneumatic wheels. One other thing I wanted to do is, I wanted to build this thing out of metal. Enough typing and on the the pictures!!!!

This is what I came up with. Both casters are straight line only and mounted in line with each other so hopefully the gate will open and close more easily. The welds were done with a little HF 120V Flux welder and well, they're ugly but I do feel that I made some improvements in my welds when comparing the first castor to the second.
First welds:

Second welded castor:

I am obviously not a professional nore do I have the greatest equipment known to man but for a set of gate wheels I'll take it. As you can see this contraption is made out of 1x1x.125 steel angle. The long vertical will be screwed into the gate frame and the short horizontal will act as a support shelf for the gate to sit on. After it was together I cleaned up the welds with a wire wheel and put a couple coats of black spray paint on it in the basement. Admittedly I could have tried to install it last night but it was raining and cold so Ill be putting it on the get when I get home from work today.

So that was just a little update with what I have been using my garage for this week but this is a garage forum so a few fun things about the garage before you go. I built this work bench to get the **** beat out of it and so far welding has been the mos dangerous job with it. The first bits of welding were done directly on the wooden top before I remembered I had a piece of armor plating from the top of a HMMWV that could used to prevent burning my garage down. But as a result of this most recent project my bench now looks like this.

Oh well live and learn. and now here's a couple overall shots of the garage since my wife came home before I could take the last ones I posted.

As always thanks for stopping by and please leave comments or questions.

-Shane

 

[Hawk136439]

Quick updates, The new gate wheels are working okay but will end up getting some rework when things warm up. Now in bigger news guess who has 2 thumbs and just scored a great deal on some metal cabinets this weekend!!! Yup this guy. So long story short I happened to spot a deal on facebook Sunday night. A gentleman in DeWitt Iowa had 2 cabinets and a light weight shelving rack for sale asking $50 for all three. I asked if he would take $40 and he said he would if I could pick them up tonight. So a mad scramble ensued to clear the trailer and hook it to the truck before he changed his mind. Now last time we looked, this was the main area of storage.

And after a few hours of rearranging and about 3lbs of screws removed this was the final result.

As you can see 2 shelves have been removed and the top one was raised about 6 inches in order fit the fridge under it. The cabinets are 36in wide, 5ft tall and about 14in deep so setting them next to each other allowed me to move the fridge about 2 feet away from the man door so now it can open completely! The compressor is now on the upper most shelf (that was fun lifting by myself) and some of the original contents of the old shelves have been moved to the cabinets. The plan is to take the rest of what would not fit anymore and store it in the basement of the house on the shelving rack that I picked up with the cabinets. The garage was still a mess when I decided to call it quits last night but here is a requisite panoramic shot to leave you all with, if you look really close you can spot the new shelf on the far left of the photo.

Some future plans I hope to take care of are as follows:

1) Finish moving the stuff to the basement
2) Add sliding doors to the open shelf under the work bench similar to Mr. Blewregaurd
3) Paint all the framing for the benches and come up with something to protect the work surface (thinking some thin sheet steel or stainless if funds and availability arise)

For those of you with painted work benches, did you use anything in particular the paint the bench top? Just wondering how standard wall paint will hold up to being a regular work surface.

Thanks all for stopping by,

-Shane

 

[Hawk136439]

Hey everyone, not a whole lot to update at this point as I was fighting off a cold all last week and have been working on a small project IN the garage rather than the garage itself. However seeing as it's been a little while since an update I might as well share some pictures because who doesn't like those?

As I said I was not feeling well most of last week but around Friday I was on the mend and the weather was finally starting to warm up (almost 60*F!! ) so the wife, some friends, and myself decided to go to the local ECHL hockey game ($2 beer and hotdog night ). So, with the weather finally looking nicer and a total of 4 people needing transportation to the game I decided it was time to finally get the VW out of hiding and throw her new plates on

The game was a great time, our home team won and quite a few beers were consumed

The next day my wife had a baby shower to go to which left my friend (jeep guy from page 1) and I unsupervised to finish up a project that I had originally seen on here, I know big surprise. I believe it was Mpower5266 that converted an old tv into a liquor cabinet? (Please someone correct me if I'm mistaken I would really like to give credit where credit is due). Anyways this was the finished product:

I didn't do as nice of a job as Mpower5266 did but I'm still happy with the result and only have about $40 invested in it so I cant complain.

Now what would be a post in GJ without at least a little something done to the garage? While I was planning the tv project I picked up a can of stain but ended up not using it. So on Sunday while cleaning everything up from the tv project I decided to throw a little stain on the work bench and this was the result:

I really think I like it so I will hopefully be staining the rest of the bench this weekend and checking back in with the results.

Thanks for stopping in and please leave some thoughts, feedback and suggestions.

-Shane

 

[Fast914]

Great Idea re staining bench and looks Great!

Love the GTI as well....I have had a bunch over the years and hope to get another soon. Current fleet is a '16 Tiguan, 00' Golf (for the kids to drive to uni), a 74' 914 in the garage (yes, its on jack stands...LOL) and a KTM 200 exc....oh, and an '07 Escape....for sale at the moment.

Congrats on your new house, garage, and marriage too!

 

[-Brent-]

I like what you've done, so far.

After seeing the compressor up on a shelf and the mower folded up, I think a good project would be a shed! Getting the lawn stuff out of the garage was one of the best moves I made.

 

[Hawk136439]

Great Idea re staining bench and looks Great!

Love the GTI as well....I have had a bunch over the years and hope to get another soon. Current fleet is a '16 Tiguan, 00' Golf (for the kids to drive to uni), a 74' 914 in the garage (yes, its on jack stands...LOL) and a KTM 200 exc....oh, and an '07 Escape....for sale at the moment.

Congrats on your new house, garage, and marriage too!

Thanks I have been trying to figure out what to do with the bench and can't wait to finish it up now! I would love to see some more pictures of that 914 if you have any.

I like what you've done, so far.

After seeing the compressor up on a shelf and the mower folded up, I think a good project would be a shed! Getting the lawn stuff out of the garage was one of the best moves I made.

Oh man you have no idea how bad I'm dreaming of a shed for all the lawn equipment but I think that is going to have to wait for some more funds to clear up and I can only imagine what it will be like to pull permits for it but hopefully in the future!

 

[Hawk136439]

Alright time for an update as promised. We got some abnormally warm weather this weekend and as a result I decided to try and get some things done for a change. Friday night was comprised of some regular maintenance for the VW, just an oil change that was due and an O2 sensor that had been giving me some grief for far too long. It was very much in need of replacing as can be seen here:

After the car was sorted out I decided to start throwing down some more stain on the work bench. My final results before calling it a night on Friday were this:

When I got up Saturday I decided that the bench could not stay looking like that any longer so I staind the last section of bench top before heading out to help my parents work on their rental home.

Now the rental house I mentioned before is just about 100 miles from my door so I was out of energy and time when I finally got home but I still had Sunday to hammer out some quality shop progress.

So when Sunday rolled around I still had some more vehical maintenence to take care of before I could do any work on the garage. The wife's truck got an oil change and tire rotation, then my truck got pulled in for a new U-jiont, new sparg plugs and wires. Aaaaaaaannnnnd that's when the beautiful weather got the best of me and I decided to fire up the dirtbike instead.

All in all it was not my most productive weekend, but it was too nice to pass up a chance to get some seat time on the bike.

Thanks for stopping by and please feel free to leave comments, feedback, and questions.

-Shane

 

[Hawk136439]

No real changes on the garage since my last post. Just been using it and enjoy it. The heater came in really handy a few weekends ago for some buddies and I to enjoy a cigar even though it was only about 30*F outside. And last week the stable made a little rearrangement, this is no longer a VW storage barn. Thats right I traded the GTI on a 2012 Nissan Xterra!

Long story short I got a great offer on my trade and our future family plans lean more towards a 4x4 than a FWD turbo. I will miss that little car but I have always been more of a truck guy anyway and couldnt be happier with the Xterra!

Also, speaking of using the garage, I finally fixed the gate this weekend!! It is a fast and VERY ugly solution but at least the gate can be opened without having to lift and carry it.

Yes I know my welds are gawd awful but like I said it was a fast dirty repair that has now made the gate function enough that my wife can actually open and close it. So when weather warms back up I'll pull the wheels back off and properly fix them and the gate.

And finally since this is a garage forum after, an overall shot of the new look for the garage!

As always, Thanks for stopping by and please feel free to leave comments.

-Shane

 

[Barrows]

Congrats on the upgrade to the Xterra. I wish mine was a Pro 4x, but I love it just the same. I also had a GTI before and after a long history with 4x4's and Jeeps that car never really worked for me. It was fun and fast but the little gremlins that kept popping up drove me nuts....Sorry to clutter your thread but since I know we all love pic's...

My Xterra in an remote area I never would have been able to see in the GTI.

Untitled by Barrowsjeep, on Flickr

My jeep

 

[ajohno]

Great garage setup you have.

 

[Hawk136439]

Congrats on the upgrade to the Xterra. I wish mine was a Pro 4x, but I love it just the same. I also had a GTI before and after a long history with 4x4's and Jeeps that car never really worked for me. It was fun and fast but the little gremlins that kept popping up drove me nuts....Sorry to clutter your thread but since I know we all love pic's...

My Xterra in an remote area I never would have been able to see in the GTI.

Untitled by Barrowsjeep, on Flickr

My jeep

By all means clutter away! I am loving the Xterra and, like you, the GTI didn't fit my needs as well as I thought. Where were those pictures taken? My folks have a place in upstate New York and that looks pretty similar.

Great garage setup you have.

Thanks! I'm really enjoying making it mine and having an organized place to get things done is a new concept to me. All the wonderful folks and threads here have really helped keep me organized!

 

[Barrows]

Thanks, my pic of the Xterra was taken on Campabello island in Canada which is right across the way from Lubec ME the eastern most point in the USA. I live in Midcoast ME just outside of Camden/Rockland area. Upstate NY is nice but I could never live in NYC. The jeep pic is a local trail to an amazing view.

Campabello Below,

Untitled by Barrowsjeep, on Flickr

Lubec,

Untitled by Barrowsjeep, on Flickr

 

[maddog1949]

Great pictures

 

[Hawk136439]

Thanks, my pic of the Xterra was taken on Campabello island in Canada which is right across the way from Lubec ME the eastern most point in the USA. I live in Midcoast ME just outside of Camden/Rockland area. Upstate NY is nice but I could never live in NYC. The jeep pic is a local trail to an amazing view.

Campabello Below,

Untitled by Barrowsjeep, on Flickr

Lubec,

Untitled by Barrowsjeep, on Flickr

Man what I wouldn't give for local trails and views like that!

Great pictures

I'm pretty sure you're talking to Lubec and I must say I agree with you!

 

[pitterpat]

Very cool you have heat in you garage but I imagine it's cold with out any sort of insulation. This winter has been pretty brutal this year in the mid west. My kids live in Michigan and every couple of days I get an text saying school was cancelled for weather.

Come spring is it time to clean out and start fresh?

Winter must be brutal in MI if school is cancelled. I lived in Toledo, OH for 2 1/2 years (30 years ago) and MI never cancelled school then and we had 2 bad winters. We've had a peach of winter this year in Indianapolis.....no more than 3" of snow total, my driveway was always clear by afternoon.

 

[CNGsaves]

Just went through whole thread tonight as I hadn't ran across it . .
. . . Wow, great transformation on your shop !!

Love the massive bench as it has "anchored" that side of garage. All that storage has cleaned it up so well . . . nicely done.

Not to nitpick but I liked the unfinished benchtop. It really lightened up the area, that now seems too dark with the stain. As kid my dad's bench probably started out as plain wood, but all the grease, diesel, gasoline, etc that soaked in the ending color was nearly like yours. There were drill holes, cuts, gouges, etc. all over the thing but it got the job done. Guess yours will hide all those things so yours will look better stained !!

Don't get in hurry to close up the ceiling. You NEED to finish all your eventual desires for lighting, electrical, etc. Using the garage for a while will help you finalize that, and give you chance to watch for CL bargains that you might use for ceiling (ie tin, free insulation, etc).

Impressed that you've got nice house and garage at your age. You scored also with the NG hanging heater already in the garage. Keep the pics and improvements coming. One thing GJer's love are pics and garages.