Garage Makeover

Chris and I took a week off of work. Did we do anything exciting? Go anywhere interesting? Nope. We cleaned out the garage.

We had a storage shed before we moved and we pretty much just moved it straight into the new garage. As you can see, our three car garage could barely hold one car when we started.

We spent the first day breaking down empty boxes and throwing out trash. We still had lots of empty boxes from the move and from Sam's birthday. Most of the trash was just the styrofoam and other packing materials in the boxes. We loaded up the truck and made a trip to the dump. There are two different stops at the dump: one for trash and one for recycling yard trimmings, untreated lumber, cardboard, paper, etc. I wish we would have gotten a picture of the recycling operation. It's pretty amazing. I think we'll do a field trip to the dump with Sam. I think he'd get a kick out of it.

We donated an old exercise bike to one of the senior centers in town. We were so glad that someone could use it. We hate to throw out things that are perfectly functional.

We unpacked all the boxes and found everything that we were missing from the move. Some stuff got moved to the attic, but most of it is staying in the garage.

We spent the second day measuring and calculating what to buy for organization. We pretty much knew that we were going to get the Broder system from Ikea, but we had to calculate what sizes and options. A trip to Ikea and Home Depot was all we got done that day.

Day 3. We broke down the old workbench that Chris and I built out of particle board back in 2002. It was the first major wood-working project that we did. It was sad to see it go, but it just wasn't functional in the new space.

We moved everything over to the other side of the garage and built the free-standing unit in the back with the tool boards and desktops. We broke for lunch and another trip to the dump to scrap the old workbench.

I was dreading installing the wall mounted system. I thought it was going to be hard to install, but to my surprise it went up really quickly. We got lucky and actually hit a lot of studs. Each horizontal suspension rail had at least one screw that went into a stud. The one that we planned to hold the heaviest equipment had three out of seven screws in studs. Then three of the seven vertical posts were against studs.

It was Friday night and Melanie offered to babysit. Did we go out? Heck no! We finished the garage! Melanie took care of Sam and got him into bed while we installed the shelves and organizers and put everything up.

Our three car garage is now at least a two car garage. I'm pretty sure we could squeeze a third car in there if we had to. We still have a little more organization to do on the right side, but we got far enough for us to knock off and enjoy the rest of our vacation.

The whole project was a lot of fun and was pretty much like playing with a large tinker toy set. I honestly thought we would not be done by the time we went back to work tomorrow, so I'm thrilled!

The Ikea Broder system is extremely well made and very reasonably priced. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for efficient garage organization. We're considering another project down the road in using this system to organize the walk-in attic space too.