Over a period of three weeks I undertook a total makeover of my garage. I rented a 16 foot POD to store items in while I was redoing the inside area. The first undertaking was to empty out the area. That alone was no small task with five cars, a motorcycle, some furniture and forty years worth of accumulated tools equipment and a lift! Since the shop is divided into two areas with a non load bearing wall and I have a four post lift that has dollies so that it can be moved I had to come up with someplace for the lift to be while the work was being done. I have standard 8 foot ceilings with a 7 foot x 16 foot double door so moving it outside was out of the question. I decided to open up the area separating the front and back half on the non load bearing wall where the lift could be moved from the front to the back. So once the POD was full, everything else from the front was moved to the back to empty out the front so I could do it first.
The previous owner had a furniture repair business and had sprayed some sort of epoxy on the floor in the front part only.. over the time that I have had it dealing with cars and the related spills and cleanup…brake cleaner and acetone had removed the finish in the area where the lift sat. The rest was still intact. To remove it proved to be more time consuming that I had envisioned. I ended up renting a professional concrete carbide grinding machine and removing the top surface of the epoxy and concrete over a two day period.
I then painted the ceiling and covered the windows with wood and painted the walls. I went with a two tone with stripe combination. White on top, red stripe about a foot wide half way down and dark grey on the bottom…all semi gloss. I replaced the aging yard sale special light fixtures with(7) hi wattage 8 foot florescent fixtures. Then I put a medium grey U-Coat-It system with the color chips on the floor.
Once the painting was done I moved on to running new lines for the compressor all in the crawl space above the ceiling and put in 5 retracting hose reels.
I had bought 4 storage cabinets from Sam’s Club about ten years ago and used them for storage of consumables and spare parts. Over the time my sons had adorned them with every sticker imaginable that we had used products from it was quite “busy” to say the least. I decided since I was painting I would TRY to make everything neater and cleaner looking. So I bought four full size Craftsman storage units and five half size Craftsman units so everything would match and kinda set a red and black color scheme to go with the paint on the walls. I even went so far as to repaint all my jack stands and grinder stands red and black.
In the front part I built a cabinet out of wood (red with black doors)and made accordion style doors to hide and protect from the elements/dust a 37 inch Toshiba flat screen TV and I had a separate satellite dish and receiver mounted so that I can watch Spike and Speed channel! I even faked a Craftsman sticker for it to make it resemble my tool boxes. I bought a small black refrigerator to set beside the front work bench that acts as a stand for the wireless laptop.
I have bought a few repo vintage signs that will eventually be hung up. I would like to maybe find a Neon sign of some sort for the back wall. I built a small table for a 7 x 14 Micro-Lux Mini Lathe that I bought to play with. Some new shelving for storage and throwing out a BUNCH of stuff has helped with the overcrowding of before.
All in all a worthwhile project. I can actually SEE to work on stuff now with the new lighting. So now I will be able to keep the doors closed and enjoy the air conditioner when necessary.
They say picture are worth a thousand words…so I took plenty of them.
The previous owner had a furniture repair business and had sprayed some sort of epoxy on the floor in the front part only.. over the time that I have had it dealing with cars and the related spills and cleanup…brake cleaner and acetone had removed the finish in the area where the lift sat. The rest was still intact. To remove it proved to be more time consuming that I had envisioned. I ended up renting a professional concrete carbide grinding machine and removing the top surface of the epoxy and concrete over a two day period.
I then painted the ceiling and covered the windows with wood and painted the walls. I went with a two tone with stripe combination. White on top, red stripe about a foot wide half way down and dark grey on the bottom…all semi gloss. I replaced the aging yard sale special light fixtures with(7) hi wattage 8 foot florescent fixtures. Then I put a medium grey U-Coat-It system with the color chips on the floor.
Once the painting was done I moved on to running new lines for the compressor all in the crawl space above the ceiling and put in 5 retracting hose reels.
I had bought 4 storage cabinets from Sam’s Club about ten years ago and used them for storage of consumables and spare parts. Over the time my sons had adorned them with every sticker imaginable that we had used products from it was quite “busy” to say the least. I decided since I was painting I would TRY to make everything neater and cleaner looking. So I bought four full size Craftsman storage units and five half size Craftsman units so everything would match and kinda set a red and black color scheme to go with the paint on the walls. I even went so far as to repaint all my jack stands and grinder stands red and black.
In the front part I built a cabinet out of wood (red with black doors)and made accordion style doors to hide and protect from the elements/dust a 37 inch Toshiba flat screen TV and I had a separate satellite dish and receiver mounted so that I can watch Spike and Speed channel! I even faked a Craftsman sticker for it to make it resemble my tool boxes. I bought a small black refrigerator to set beside the front work bench that acts as a stand for the wireless laptop.
I have bought a few repo vintage signs that will eventually be hung up. I would like to maybe find a Neon sign of some sort for the back wall. I built a small table for a 7 x 14 Micro-Lux Mini Lathe that I bought to play with. Some new shelving for storage and throwing out a BUNCH of stuff has helped with the overcrowding of before.
All in all a worthwhile project. I can actually SEE to work on stuff now with the new lighting. So now I will be able to keep the doors closed and enjoy the air conditioner when necessary.
They say picture are worth a thousand words…so I took plenty of them.
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