svenchen
New member
when we went house hunting 5 years ago I wanted two things. a backyard and a 2-car garage. i'm a motorsports enthusiast who wrenches on most things that don't require the car to be out of service for more than an evening. i didn't get the yard and i only kind of got the garage... a narrow tandem 2-car with massively high ceilings and a small side closet. given that we live in the middle of a large city i figured it was better than most setups and i could build things out over time until our inevitable migration back to the suburbs.
these are photos from when we inspected the house as the previous owners were moving out. this is terribly judgmental, but i can't imagine living with an unfinished garage for more than a decade. how did these people live?
for a couple of hundred bucks the folks who painted the inside of our home gave the garage a coat of Kelly Moore Gray Ghost. over time i found a set of industrial shelves from u-line that perfectly fit in the closet under the interior stairs in the back left. a friend found a great Black Friday deal on a giant box of Gladiator stuff so that also went up.
it's a narrow garage but we have made it work pretty well. there's still a few things that i really want to improve the space.
• that under stair storage space is in a constant cycle of disaster. every few months i try to rearrange it but the wife somehow acquires some other seasonal thing that she wants to store, or the grandparents get the kids some other giant outdoor toy, or the real problem... i buy a car part and find myself needing to store the OEM part in case the car goes up for sale.
• there's ALL that vertical space and every year i've told myself I will do something about utilizing it. (more on this in a future post)
• jacking up anything that isn't a Miata means parking it far off to one side and then moving it again to work on the other. this makes brake fluid flushes take way longer than they need to. i explored if i could make a lift work but i think i've settled on QuickJack once i can make some extra storage space work.
• i'm really tired of looking at my trash cans every time i pull in the garage. there's no place to store them outside given our community and they're just an eye sore. if we can unlock that vertical space these can go in the under stairs closet OR i can just figure out some way of covering them up. building anything for that purpose will be a tight fit with the 2 cars currently in the garage.
• no place for a workbench yet. if i need to work on something on a flat surface i usually pull a car out and work on the floor. i've always admired the 12-gauge garage's fold-down benches. seems like there's plenty of opportunity for this once i get things squared away the way i'd like.
these are photos from when we inspected the house as the previous owners were moving out. this is terribly judgmental, but i can't imagine living with an unfinished garage for more than a decade. how did these people live?
for a couple of hundred bucks the folks who painted the inside of our home gave the garage a coat of Kelly Moore Gray Ghost. over time i found a set of industrial shelves from u-line that perfectly fit in the closet under the interior stairs in the back left. a friend found a great Black Friday deal on a giant box of Gladiator stuff so that also went up.
it's a narrow garage but we have made it work pretty well. there's still a few things that i really want to improve the space.
• that under stair storage space is in a constant cycle of disaster. every few months i try to rearrange it but the wife somehow acquires some other seasonal thing that she wants to store, or the grandparents get the kids some other giant outdoor toy, or the real problem... i buy a car part and find myself needing to store the OEM part in case the car goes up for sale.
• there's ALL that vertical space and every year i've told myself I will do something about utilizing it. (more on this in a future post)
• jacking up anything that isn't a Miata means parking it far off to one side and then moving it again to work on the other. this makes brake fluid flushes take way longer than they need to. i explored if i could make a lift work but i think i've settled on QuickJack once i can make some extra storage space work.
• i'm really tired of looking at my trash cans every time i pull in the garage. there's no place to store them outside given our community and they're just an eye sore. if we can unlock that vertical space these can go in the under stairs closet OR i can just figure out some way of covering them up. building anything for that purpose will be a tight fit with the 2 cars currently in the garage.
• no place for a workbench yet. if i need to work on something on a flat surface i usually pull a car out and work on the floor. i've always admired the 12-gauge garage's fold-down benches. seems like there's plenty of opportunity for this once i get things squared away the way i'd like.
