Garage Makeover

Derrick had President's day off on Monday so he helped me build some shelves for our garage. Ever since I built the workbench in there I was itching to get the rest of it under control. I had a vision of a shelving unit on this wall so that we could use the vertical space in our garage. Our garage is super tall. 

I found some plans on Ana White's site and on Monday we braved the ice and made our first trip to Lowes. A second trip followed almost immediately because we forgot five 2x4s.

They came together pretty quickly. We had to build them around the electrical panel so that it could still be opened and the cover could be removed if necessary. Apparently you're supposed to leave a buffer around your electrical panel........oops.

Derrick's preferred leveling method was with a ball. They passed my test with an actual level and his test with a ball so thumbs up all around!

The trickiest part was attaching the outside frame to the cleats because the shelves are only 15 3/4 inches wide. That meant I only had 15 3/4 inches to get in with my drill and screw all the cleats to the frame. It was a tight fit and I had to change drill bits every time for a short one and then an extended one to get it done.

The workbench was a lifesaver for this project and worked so well! It's very nice to be able to clamp things to it and to not have to worry about dinging it up.

Weight test passed.

And done!

The whole point of this is to be able to use our garage for storage/working and still be able to park in it so the next afternoon I completed phase two. I don't have a good before picture but that space to the right of this picture is a little alcove in between our steps and the wall. We currently stash our golf clubs, sports bags, and lawn mower in this area. We decided to build a second set of identical shelves in this spot for all of our sports equipment.

The only difference was we made these shelves only 12 inches deep which turned out to be impossible to drill the cleats to the outside frame. I had a Tim Gunn moment and made it work. In the end it's nice and sturdy and worked out perfectly!

Here's where we ended up!

So much better right??

The sports shelves are a game changer. We left just enough room between the shelves and the stairs to put our golf clubs and the top shelf is easily reached from the stairs although our less used items go up there. Bocce anyone??

We ended up taking the big pegboard down because it just wasn't being efficiently used and it ended up feeling kind of forced. I did put in a smaller peg board to use some of that wall space but the shelving space and shoe cubbies are working much better for our needs.

All of my scrap wood is on the top shelf. Eventually when we end up with more stuff...probably inevitable, I may work on finding a better solution for the scrap wood because it's a lot of wasted space up there. For now it works great.

Now...the other side of the garage isn't looking so hot yet. The main reason is the old desk that I just need Derrick's help loading in the car to take to the dump.

The other reason is our leaking water heater. Yep, the water heater has officially busted and is currently soaking the back corner of our garage. We're going to be upgrading to tankless in the next few days (hopefully!) so that will allow us to put this side of our garage back together and it will also free up a lot more space in that corner for lawn mower storage.

I'm super thrilled with how the shelves turned out and how our garage is shaping up. It's way more efficient and the goal of being able to walk around all sides of our cars is still in tact!

Now, I'm off to pick up my girl Crosby! She had her teeth cleaned this morning and I've been worried about her all morning!