So I, like many GJ new comers, have been lurking GJ Forums for a couple years collecting ideas and drooling over the great garage builds. I have been waiting to put my build thread together because I didn't have much progress to show but now I have reached a good stage I feel comfortable to make this.
So last year my wife and I finally moved out of the busy Bay Area of Cali and to a more comfortable town an hour or so away. We lived in an apartment for 2 years that had a carport and no room for me to work on my car, so it was only a matter of time. We bought a 3 car garage with a House
. I am a huge car guy so having plenty of parking spaces was a must. She was sold on the inside so it worked out well.
Obviously with just moving in usually the garage gets back burnered. Since you gotta keep the wife happy the first project in the garage was stripping, painting, and reupholstering a chair she wanted for the "rarely used living room"
Finished Product:
Finally I was able to shift gears and plan out the garage a bit.
I will admit my garage is HIGHLY influenced my Chad's BigBlock Garage.
I ordered a set of NewAge Cabinets from a HD sale:
Packaged efficiently:
From there I needed to get some paint on the bare drywall.
The finish of the tape and mud wasn't the best Level 5 finish but it was good enough for me in a garage so I slapped on some primer.
Don't have a picture of that but it sat primered white for 6-7 months because I had back surgery and couldn't really be too active. But I bounced back and got back to making progress on the garage.
Caught the sale on the Feit LED Costco Lights so I cut a hole into the ceiling so I could flush mount them:
This is the first time I did residential wiring but with the Internet's help and lots of questions to GJ members I got 6 installed on a switch. Huge difference!
Paint next...
Remember I said influenced by Chad's garage, well here that comes:
Another Wife project was setting up an office for her with 360 degrees of horizontal stripes!
That project was actually a good learning experience on how to paint really crisp straight stripes so I used that in the garage of course.
and done!
At this point I was on cloud 9! The paint scheme really fired me up and made the place look top notch!
Next was throwing in the cabinets:
And a little Before and After I threw together:
I was set! I had neighbors walking by asking all sorts of questions and wondering why my garage is so nice when 80% of them just park in their driveways and use their garages as junk storage. They will never understand!
And if you are on GJ enough you obviously know the hype around the HF 44" tool box, so I got one of those and loaded all my tools into that.
Then on my daily Craiglist and Facebook Marketplace searches I landed these suckers
I got the Chas Parker first for $70 bucks and was happy about that buy randomly I stumbled on a Craigslist ad that was 12mins old for the Wilton 4.5" for $20!!!! I contacted the guy and he said he would hold it for me. Funny I went to pick it up and he was a sketchy looking guy but what did I care I was there for the Wilton. I handed him the $20 bill and not 1 min later the pizza guy rolled up to his house and he pays him with the $20 lol! That made for a good laugh in the car.
The Chas Parker worked great just needed a new paint job and the pins replaced for the jaws (some genius put drywall screws and a nut on the end to hold them in)
The Wilton was pretty rusty and grimey so I broke it down.
Next I pressure washed it and now its soaking in a tub of vinegar to melt some of the rust off.
I will update the thread when I make more progress on the Vises and hopefully a solid workbench soon.
Most of my garage tinkering revolves around my current BMW M3 so heres a little photo bomb of some of my previous cars in progression. (I got married and bought a house in that progression so I am sure you can track the Single, Engaged, Married/house phases from my car posts
)
And the current garage dweller ( I have a thing for BMW E36 M3s, cheap and great drivers car)
So that's it for now. Thanks for looking and thanks for the ideas!
So last year my wife and I finally moved out of the busy Bay Area of Cali and to a more comfortable town an hour or so away. We lived in an apartment for 2 years that had a carport and no room for me to work on my car, so it was only a matter of time. We bought a 3 car garage with a House
. I am a huge car guy so having plenty of parking spaces was a must. She was sold on the inside so it worked out well. 
Obviously with just moving in usually the garage gets back burnered. Since you gotta keep the wife happy the first project in the garage was stripping, painting, and reupholstering a chair she wanted for the "rarely used living room"
Finished Product:
Finally I was able to shift gears and plan out the garage a bit.
I will admit my garage is HIGHLY influenced my Chad's BigBlock Garage.
I ordered a set of NewAge Cabinets from a HD sale:
Packaged efficiently:
From there I needed to get some paint on the bare drywall.
The finish of the tape and mud wasn't the best Level 5 finish but it was good enough for me in a garage so I slapped on some primer.
Don't have a picture of that but it sat primered white for 6-7 months because I had back surgery and couldn't really be too active. But I bounced back and got back to making progress on the garage.
Caught the sale on the Feit LED Costco Lights so I cut a hole into the ceiling so I could flush mount them:
This is the first time I did residential wiring but with the Internet's help and lots of questions to GJ members I got 6 installed on a switch. Huge difference!
Paint next...
Remember I said influenced by Chad's garage, well here that comes:
Another Wife project was setting up an office for her with 360 degrees of horizontal stripes!
That project was actually a good learning experience on how to paint really crisp straight stripes so I used that in the garage of course.
and done!
At this point I was on cloud 9! The paint scheme really fired me up and made the place look top notch!
Next was throwing in the cabinets:
And a little Before and After I threw together:
I was set! I had neighbors walking by asking all sorts of questions and wondering why my garage is so nice when 80% of them just park in their driveways and use their garages as junk storage. They will never understand!
And if you are on GJ enough you obviously know the hype around the HF 44" tool box, so I got one of those and loaded all my tools into that.
Then on my daily Craiglist and Facebook Marketplace searches I landed these suckers
I got the Chas Parker first for $70 bucks and was happy about that buy randomly I stumbled on a Craigslist ad that was 12mins old for the Wilton 4.5" for $20!!!! I contacted the guy and he said he would hold it for me. Funny I went to pick it up and he was a sketchy looking guy but what did I care I was there for the Wilton. I handed him the $20 bill and not 1 min later the pizza guy rolled up to his house and he pays him with the $20 lol! That made for a good laugh in the car.
The Chas Parker worked great just needed a new paint job and the pins replaced for the jaws (some genius put drywall screws and a nut on the end to hold them in)
The Wilton was pretty rusty and grimey so I broke it down.
Next I pressure washed it and now its soaking in a tub of vinegar to melt some of the rust off.
I will update the thread when I make more progress on the Vises and hopefully a solid workbench soon.
Most of my garage tinkering revolves around my current BMW M3 so heres a little photo bomb of some of my previous cars in progression. (I got married and bought a house in that progression so I am sure you can track the Single, Engaged, Married/house phases from my car posts
)
And the current garage dweller ( I have a thing for BMW E36 M3s, cheap and great drivers car)
So that's it for now. Thanks for looking and thanks for the ideas!
