My First Garage

[starting]

I have been lurking on the sites for a few months now while working on my house. I have finally done enough work on the house that I can now turn my attention to the garage, the whole reason for buying the house. Its a two car 24x24 with a walkup loft above. I plan to use the plastic flooring from sams club for the bottom floor. As of right now it has a wall in the center. The wall is not load bearing. It does have a center post for the header.

I'm planning to set the garage up as follows:
On the left side put my tool boxes and large metal cabinet. I will also have to build a bench. This side will be used for general automotive work and will 90% of the time have a car in it being worked on. This side will also be considered the "dirty" side.

The right side I would ideally want as a "clean" space. I occasionaly do paint work and it would be nice to have a nice white clean space where I can just spray it down real quick and paint. In this side I would install my $5 Lowe's cabinet find and enclose the upstairs steps.

There are so many great garages and in general idea people here I want to ask for ideas and opinions as I redo the garage.
1. I have several small machines. Drill press, Band saw, Table saw, Chop saw(both wood and metal), Grinder, Buffer. Should I put these in the upstairs? Ideally that would be the best for space but it might make working on projects fairly difficult. I was also thinking of putting these in the "clean" bay of the garage and lose the easy paint ability.
2. Should I leave the center wall up? I could easily remove the wall but have to leave the center post. I wouldn't be all that hard to put up a temporary wall for painting. For those with this size garage would you rather more open space or the ability to keep things almost completely separate?

Those are the two biggest things that I am pondering at the present time. Sorry for the long post, I like you guys get really excited about my garage.

Pictures of the new to me garage.

Left Bay

Right Bay

Upstairs shot from back to front

Upstairs shot from front to back

 

[Dan in Pasadena]

First, huge congrats on your first garage.

Since you're asking, I'd take the wall down. If you leave it up you will eventually want to take it down and by then you'll have done the floor and the walls etc so taking it down will require RE-working...wasted effort. With the column in the middle your can use that as the basis for putting up temporary vinyl barriers of some kind when you do paint related work.

 

[starting]

I got a free Rustoleum epoxy kit from a friend. The garage was pretty rough but i degreased and pressure washed it a few times to get it the best I could. I put it down today and it is looking really good so far. I was worried that it wouldn't last so I went a little thinner then I should have in areas where tool boxes will be. I ended up having more then enough left over.

 

[51rider]

First, huge congrats on your first garage.

Since you're asking, I'd take the wall down. If you leave it up you will eventually want to take it down and by then you'll have done the floor and the walls etc so taking it down will require RE-working...wasted effort. With the column in the middle your can use that as the basis for putting up temporary vinyl barriers of some kind when you do paint related work.

+1 on everything Dan said!

You'll have more options on the layout for the tools you mention & if you do it right you can use the upstairs for storage and have a cool poker room too!

 

[Grizz1963]

Welcome.

That is a great space.

Loor looks good.

 

[Interex]

Welcome!

In terms of the wall - I would take it down, even if you have to leave a post. Once you start doing any type of work on your vehicle inside of your garage, you will have wished you had the extra space to work. It's really best to keep everything on the ground floor. I know how you feel about wanting to keep a neat, open, and clutter free garage (as that's how many are portrayed here), but in reality I would want to keep all of my equipment on the first floor. Make the second floor a nice man cave.

As I'm sure you are well aware, you can probably expect the life of that Rustolleum floor to be about a year if you are lucky.

 

[starting]

After asking for advice I decided to do what i wanted anyway and leave the wall. I have worked in much much smaller spaces and like that I will be able to keep projects seperate.
Spent the last two days putting some paint on the walls and it looks alot better. I want to put plywood on the ceiling and redo the wiring but think that will have to wait a bit.

Next step is to move some stuff over and to start on the other side.

 

[starting]

 

[Finley]

interesting garage. reminds me ALOT of my grandpas garage. one side he keeps his f150, on the other, his bass boat.

 

[starting]

Built this on Tuesday to continue the theme that the garage is for projects and not for storage.

Once I move the ride on lawn mower, snow blower and the other lawn equipment out I will start working on finishing the other bay. I got the vinyl floor that sam's club sells in the other day and it looks pretty durable, while being easy to clean.

 

[rocco]

nice garage - whats the **** welded to the wheel-well of the A4?

 

[starting]

custom widebody that was started but has been on the back burner for awhile.

 

[Rando]

Nice job like the paint job

 

[starting]

This was the car in its prime. Lots of custom peices and learning. My first paint job, interior with suede inserts, and a ton of other stuff. Hopefully I can get back to it sometime soon.

 

[starting]

I also put down the sams club vinyl floor on one side of the garage today. I really like it. Hopefully I can get some of those pictures up tonight.

 

[starting]

Spent a little time working today. Put the Sams Club vinyl floor down, made a little shelf/work bench for a few grinders, and put in my Lowes clearance cabinets that I got for $30. Still a ton of work left to do. Biggest will be the electric.

 

[Interex]

Nice deal on the cabinets!

 

[starting]

My fiance will be very happy when she gets home tonight.

 

[demondriven]

Nice space. Keep up the good work and posting photos. My garage is about the same size but no the second floor.

 

[starting]

Made two tops for the cabinets today. One is just a peice of half inch plywood and the other i made out of scrap 2x4's. I am very happy at how it turned out.

 

[starting]

The garage got filled with some stuff while I have been working on my house. I cleaned out the bottom today. One side is back to being clean and the other should be there tomorrow.

 

[ambenz]

Man, you work fast! Nice start to a great garage!

 

[Curt_pnw]

Is that an S4 or just a regular A4? I look forward to seeing what you do with the car, what wheels are you thinking of using to fill those flares.

 

[starting]

It's just an a4. I should have left it alone, it was stage 3 with some other goodies. These days it looks like this. I'm still debating on what drivetrain to go with but I have to make the choice soon.

 

[Curt_pnw]

Oooh. Lots of work a head of you then. I know the feeling, like, why did I dig into this project so deep. haha. Hopefully with your new updated garage you have a better space to finish what you started.

 

[starting]

Took a couple pictures of the other side today. Still have to move a few boxes out. The table saw will be moved to the basement to clear up a little more room.
On one side we have my harbor freight purchases,

And on the other are my small work areas and a few more tools.

 

[starting]

Well I have decided to change around the layout a little. The center wall will be coming down and I plan to put a lot of stuff upstairs. The upstairs has become a messy storage area so I'm working on cleaning it up and organizing it a little bit. With so many other projects I can't spend too much time on it right now so I am using whatever scrap I have laying around to close it up. I would love for it to be a nice space but realistically it will just be for storage so I don't care what it looks like. Here are a couple pictures from today.

Before.

Storage Shelf

During

 

[Grizz1963]

I like the strips of wood you laminated to create a heavy duty worktop on the one cabinet.
Sensible creation.

Ohh, and that bandsaw really does it for me too.
I just brought one home yesterday for the new woodwork shop, not as old as yours, but more personality than the **** modern ones. Posted in my thread.
I am also watching this pillar drill on Ebay.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/290619117454?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

I will also keep watching to see the Audi Hotrod evolve.

 

[starting]

Quick Update from today. I took some little breaks from working on the house to tear down the middle wall. This garage feels so much bigger. I should have listened to the advice and done this from the start.

 

[starting]

The wall is now completely down. It feels huge in there. I still need to do some cleaning but it was so nice to be able to pull cars in and walk around. I did two oil changes and spark plugs on a 3rd car today in about an hour.

I will need to build a workbench. I might build a wood one with 4x4's and use an IKEA butcher block as a top. I also would love a metal bench. The main problem I am having is even with being organized the floor tools take up a lot of room. Having a nice big bench would be wonderful but it would take up a lot of floorspace.

Garage Sale 5 dollar dart board in like new shape.

Garage Sale Chipper. Kemp. Paid $150 and think I got one heck of a deal.

 

[starting]

I started trying to cleanup the upstairs today. I hate how little I am using my garage so I want to get everything I can neatly stored upstairs. Today I put up some shelves and cleared some floor space.

The pile to the right

went over here

I am doing this on a tight budget of almost nothing. I am using underlayment plywood to enclose the upstairs and will be building shelves and work benches around the outside. In the center I plan to build a long workbench to put some wood working tools on.

 

[ratdoggy]

That garage looks very similar to my old one. I had the compressor upstairs and had a column right where you do. I took it out and put in two lally(?) columns spaced out that I could open a car door easily.

 

[JMcFly]

Very nice garage.

 

[starting]

I cleaned up a bit more and started making a large work bench. The dimensions are 10' x 4'. It is pretty strong already but will be getting two cross braces and a piece to go along the bottom. The top will be doubled up 1/2 plywood I have laying around. I will put a couple of my smaller machines on top and will fill the bottom with Tupperware containers.