Hey guys (and gals, as the case may be),
I was just referred to this forum from the Ford Barn by Y-Blockhead to share with you my G'Raj Mahal that I'd just shared on the Ford Barn. Don't know if anyone's interested in this kind of thing but here goes anyway.
We raised 10 children in our little 2500 square foot home with a two-car garage. We now have 25 grandchildren with 3 more on the way and expect we'll get close to double that before we're done. All but 12 of our family live in the state within driving distance and we gather monthly to celebrate birthdays, eat, and party. Right now that's about 32 at a time.
We have a great back yard for summer gatherings and other warmer dry days. But, we've gotten increasingly crowded inside the house on wet and cold days to the point we started gathering at our nearby children's much larger homes. Many of our neighbors built large gathering rooms onto their homes. We thought about it but then realized that the biggest room in the house was just storing big chunks of metal (the cars). We thought the cars could share their room with the family a few nights a year. So, last year my last child, my 19 year old son Morgan, and I decided to convert the garage into G'Raj Mahal for family gatherings.
So, for all but 6-8 nights per year it is the garage with the cars in it and all of the garage stuff. But, on those 6-8 nights of the year the cars are backed out, the carpet rolled out, the screens are dropped to hide the garage stuff, the room is warmed up with space heaters if necessary, and tables and chairs are set up for a big feed. The room is fully insulated so it stays pretty close to the temperature of the house most of the time. In the winter, if we need to warm it up a bit we just plug in some cheap space heaters that warm it up fast then we have to shut them off when all the people get in there that keeps it plenty warm. In the summer the ceiling fan helps some when I'm out working on my '47 Ford.
You may also note that there is no garage door opener in the middle of the ceiling nor the usual spring bar above the door visible. The garage door is opened by a Liftmaster Jackshaft Opener that just turns the rod that the springs and cables are wrapped around to open the door. It's at the top right of the garage door in the second picture. The springs are just covered with a piece of aluminum bowed into place over it to hide it.
The room also has a built in stereo system with speakers hidden in each corner of the light shelf for background music during family gatherings and while working on the old Ford.
So, here are before and after pictures of the room showing it set up for the family "banquet"
This plaque is above the door from the kitchen to the garage.
Behind the large 15 foot by 9 foot full wall screen at the one end of the room are floor to ceiling shelves 2 feet deep, that's 270 cubic feet of storage space. Plus there is a foot and a half of space in front of those shelves that is still behind the screen when it is lowered to put stuff that won't fit on the shelves like the floor jack, crawler, etc.
In the brown cabinet on the left next to the freezer is my work bench that folds down and, more importantly, back up, so that I can't leave it a mess. The mess is shoved into the cabinet as shown when the bench is lifted up and the doors closed. Also shelves under that for the electric hand tools and others with plastic bin drawers where all of the cans and plastic quart containers are instead of upright on a shelf somewhere.
Finally, there's the smaller screen 3 feet wide and 2 feet deep that has shelves with plastic bin drawers and all of the long handle tools, that's another 54 cubic feet.
That's a total of 324 cubic feet of storage space which is equivalent to a space 6 feet wide, 7 feet long, and 8 feet high packed solid with stuff. Somehow, everything that you see in the before pictures fit in that space except the bicycles, table saw, and spare doors. We have other storage buildings on the property for those. We didn't think it would all fit and were shocked that it did.
We thought about installing cabinets with doors for all of that stuff like many people do but decided against it because of the much greater expense to build and install them, the hassel of having to open a door every time you want to find something and get something instead of the convenience of just seeing it on the shelf and pulling it off, and the bamboo screens are actually much more attractive than cabinet doors. So, except for the family functions, it's just a regular garage with all of the stuff in sight and handy to get to.
Here are some close-ups of some of the details:
The wall that looks like block is just wallpaper. Looks pretty real though.
Built this shelf to support and partially disguise the garage door track.
To pull the attic stairs down:
And finally - Old Henry, our beloved Ford, resting in the greatest room in the house (just in case some of you didn't realize that the space between the columns was actually a mirror wall with the columns split and against the mirror to create the illusion).
I was just referred to this forum from the Ford Barn by Y-Blockhead to share with you my G'Raj Mahal that I'd just shared on the Ford Barn. Don't know if anyone's interested in this kind of thing but here goes anyway.
We raised 10 children in our little 2500 square foot home with a two-car garage. We now have 25 grandchildren with 3 more on the way and expect we'll get close to double that before we're done. All but 12 of our family live in the state within driving distance and we gather monthly to celebrate birthdays, eat, and party. Right now that's about 32 at a time.
We have a great back yard for summer gatherings and other warmer dry days. But, we've gotten increasingly crowded inside the house on wet and cold days to the point we started gathering at our nearby children's much larger homes. Many of our neighbors built large gathering rooms onto their homes. We thought about it but then realized that the biggest room in the house was just storing big chunks of metal (the cars). We thought the cars could share their room with the family a few nights a year. So, last year my last child, my 19 year old son Morgan, and I decided to convert the garage into G'Raj Mahal for family gatherings.
So, for all but 6-8 nights per year it is the garage with the cars in it and all of the garage stuff. But, on those 6-8 nights of the year the cars are backed out, the carpet rolled out, the screens are dropped to hide the garage stuff, the room is warmed up with space heaters if necessary, and tables and chairs are set up for a big feed. The room is fully insulated so it stays pretty close to the temperature of the house most of the time. In the winter, if we need to warm it up a bit we just plug in some cheap space heaters that warm it up fast then we have to shut them off when all the people get in there that keeps it plenty warm. In the summer the ceiling fan helps some when I'm out working on my '47 Ford.
You may also note that there is no garage door opener in the middle of the ceiling nor the usual spring bar above the door visible. The garage door is opened by a Liftmaster Jackshaft Opener that just turns the rod that the springs and cables are wrapped around to open the door. It's at the top right of the garage door in the second picture. The springs are just covered with a piece of aluminum bowed into place over it to hide it.
The room also has a built in stereo system with speakers hidden in each corner of the light shelf for background music during family gatherings and while working on the old Ford.
So, here are before and after pictures of the room showing it set up for the family "banquet"
This plaque is above the door from the kitchen to the garage.
Behind the large 15 foot by 9 foot full wall screen at the one end of the room are floor to ceiling shelves 2 feet deep, that's 270 cubic feet of storage space. Plus there is a foot and a half of space in front of those shelves that is still behind the screen when it is lowered to put stuff that won't fit on the shelves like the floor jack, crawler, etc.
In the brown cabinet on the left next to the freezer is my work bench that folds down and, more importantly, back up, so that I can't leave it a mess. The mess is shoved into the cabinet as shown when the bench is lifted up and the doors closed. Also shelves under that for the electric hand tools and others with plastic bin drawers where all of the cans and plastic quart containers are instead of upright on a shelf somewhere.
Finally, there's the smaller screen 3 feet wide and 2 feet deep that has shelves with plastic bin drawers and all of the long handle tools, that's another 54 cubic feet.
That's a total of 324 cubic feet of storage space which is equivalent to a space 6 feet wide, 7 feet long, and 8 feet high packed solid with stuff. Somehow, everything that you see in the before pictures fit in that space except the bicycles, table saw, and spare doors. We have other storage buildings on the property for those. We didn't think it would all fit and were shocked that it did.
We thought about installing cabinets with doors for all of that stuff like many people do but decided against it because of the much greater expense to build and install them, the hassel of having to open a door every time you want to find something and get something instead of the convenience of just seeing it on the shelf and pulling it off, and the bamboo screens are actually much more attractive than cabinet doors. So, except for the family functions, it's just a regular garage with all of the stuff in sight and handy to get to.
Here are some close-ups of some of the details:
The wall that looks like block is just wallpaper. Looks pretty real though.
Built this shelf to support and partially disguise the garage door track.
To pull the attic stairs down:
And finally - Old Henry, our beloved Ford, resting in the greatest room in the house (just in case some of you didn't realize that the space between the columns was actually a mirror wall with the columns split and against the mirror to create the illusion).
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Jesus those mirrors threw me for a loop. The angles in the pictures were dead-on for looking like a 4 car garage and I was wondering why the old pics looked so small until I saw the pic of the Ford, which cleared everything up.