Small garage needs your thinking caps

[jfish]

A friend of mine has a garage in need of some creativity. I have read through ALOT of threads here and seen many excellent and efficient ideas. The standard stuff applies and nothing is really out of the question. Sofit storage, elevated cabinets, loft storage above the garage door, fold away work benches etc. We have tossed around the idea of moving the WH / furnace up to the ceiling and framing an entire walk around loft off the door that the cars could park under. Re-configuring the garage door to open tight to the ceiling.

What we have here is a pretty basic 2 car. However water heater / furnace in the corner and the door to the house is 44" up from the floor of the garage. Floor space is all but gone with two cars, utilities and steps.

Dimensions
20' 6" deep
17' 6" wide
12' 8" high at the lid
11' 2" high at the beam

the water heater / furnace eats about 42" of depth and as you can see in the pics the work around to access the door really takes valuable floor space. The Impala stays and there is another car that gets parked as well. Let me know if I can provide any other details that can help.

What would you do with this garage!?

 

[allinon72]

Wow that design definitely wasn't done with space in mind. First thing I would do is tear that platform down and make a simple set of stairs going up along the back wall. I would probably wall off the HVAC and water heater stuff. Build a mezzanine above the garage door for storage.

 

[Vvmvbb]

Is there a plan for a lift?
If so I'd work around that.
Might be nice to wall off the utilities with the compressor inside to keep the noise down. Have to ventilate it properly.
At some point you might anticipate some railings for the steps and landing.

 

[37ford4dr]

you need to move the garage door up tight against the cieling and use a lift for car storage or any other storage on top of it.

 

[jam0o0]

assuming no lift or vehicles that need the door to be enlarged:
-lift utilities straight up to have a 6ft clearance under them. shouldn't be hard
-continue platform across back wall all the way to the door
-remove all of the platform/stairs
-build a ladder like in ships to get to the door. it's basically a steep set of stairs. very easy to use once you get used to it. you will need a 3x3 platform to be able to open the door.
-keep shop vac and compressor under platform. wall it in if you want.
-put a floor right above the garage door. you will only put long term storage up there as it will be hard to get to without a ladder and one car removed.

it's a cool space but all of the current stuff is in the wrong place. IMO
-

 

[allinon72]

Lift utilities up 6ft and that shouldn't be hard?

And I'm not even sure that would be allowed by code.

 

[Cryptic1911]

Wow.. I think that's the worst layout that I've seen

toss the stairs and platform, build something less intrusive, and see if the utilities can be lifted..that would get back a ton of space.

Also do a high lift door to get that last 4 feet of ceiling space back

 

[concealer404]

That platform thing needs to go... Should be stairs only up to door. The rest of what's stored there can be stored on the wall and not take up a bunch of floor space.

 

[jfish]

Great info so far. The Impala almost touches the back wall under the door. The platform was put together basically just to accommodate the car and access to the door. Keeping in mind another car will park on the right. We can re-plumb the water/gas/HVAC, that's easy enough.

My suggestion was elevate the WH/HVAC, park the Impala on the right and go from there. Also, I'm liking the "ship style" steps idea!

 

[ihredo4]

Are the furnace and water heater electric or Natural Gas? If electric stack them with the furnace on top. That would reduce the footprint of them greatly. Move the compressor up on the wall and use a hose real too access the air. As for the steps and landing...GOOD LUCK. Somebody didn't know what they were doing when they built that building.

 

[jfish]

The water heater and furnace are natural gas

 

[sams]

if you keep your door as is then I suggest a deep storage shelf directly above it. For other space saving see my thread in my signiture

 

[NUTTSGT]

Looking at the straps on the WH, is this Ca. ?

 

[Kevin54]

It looks to me to be a crappy setup when the house was built. Then trying to shove a real fullsize car in there along with another car you are shoving the proverbial 10 lbs. of **** into the 5 lb. bag.

If it were my garage and there is no way to add on to increase real estate, I think I would start by ripping out the storage area at the door to the house. Then build soffit storage to put everything. For a good idea on that, look at XcYZ's garage build and his soffit storage. The water heater and furnace...you may be very well stuck with them where they are at. ideally, it would be great if you could add on to the right hand side of the garage and make a separate room just for those two items. If you could do that attractively where it blends in with the house and not look out of place, then you could swing the step that lead up to the door strictly against the back wall and not have any steps coming out into the garage. Family Handyman had a small 5x12 addition they showed on how to build that would be ideal for something like the water heater and furnace.

The only other alternative would be to tell your buddy to give away the '67. I'd be willing to stretch my neck out and take it off of his hands so that he can gain much needed garage space.

 

[FakeName]

I realize they are controversial, but I love my tankless HWH- works great and has a very small form factor.

 

[bad_idea]

It looks like you have fairly high ceilings in the garage. How about a mezzanine over the convertible about 6' or 7' off the floor from front to back of the garage. If you get an engineer to do the calcs, you can overbuild the mezzanine with steel I beams and place one or two for convenient hanging of a chain fall for various repair jobs on the car. Put a high lift kit on the garage door to gain that space. Height is your friend. Put the air compressor on a shelf up high. Tankless water heater at some point in the future. A shed in the back yard for the yard tools is a must.

Get creative. I have a 14x20 attached garage that I do metal fab, some wood working, and auto repair in. When I'm not working on something, my 02 Z28 is parked in the garage. Start with the basic things. Declutter, organize, sort, build cabinets and a work bench. As you work in the space you will figure out what works and what doesn't.

 

[lowheat]

if you keep your door as is then I suggest a deep storage shelf directly above it. For other space saving see my thread in my signiture

This is what I was thinking ^^^