A couple of years ago a friend was working on their house. Their current project was a necessary responsible update for the house like new attic insulation or new windows. She said, “This isn’t sexy. I want to paint or work on something more glamourous, but I know this is a necessary evil.” I didn’t really understand what she was talking about until I started on my last project of 2016……the garage. It started out as the WORST. PROJECT. EVER. There’s no glam, or sparkle when it comes to a garage. But if I start something, I’m going to finish it. So just in time for the end of the year, this baby is complete! And I have to say, it’s one sexy garage.

When I purchased my house the garage was unfinished. The builder hung the drywall, taped it, and put one skim coat of mud on it.

It needed 2 more coats of mud to finish it off. So last fall (2015) my dad came up and spent 2 days finishing the drywall mud. It was really nice of him to help out. Then it took me almost the entire year to pick this project back up. Who wants to work on a garage when it’s freezing in the winter, or in the spring with all the pollen, or in the summer when it’s blazing hot!? I blame the weather for the delay in finishing this project, but in reality I was dreading sanding the drywall. The weather just would have made the situation worse.

Sanding drywall has to be the worst job I’ve EVER tackled. It’s not a project you can just pick up and work on for a random short period of time. That shit gets EVERYWHERE. You have to wear crappy clothes that you don’t mind getting filled with dust. I wore a hat to keep it out of my hair, safety glasses to keep it out of my contacts, a dust mask, and crappy shoes. It felt like it was a never ending process.

I used 150 grit paper for this project. It took about 1.5 of the large contractor packs of sand paper to finish the garage, including the ceiling. The ceiling was awful. I don’t do heights so being on the ladder was not my favorite part. I worked on one half of the garage and then moved all my stuff to the finished side to then sand the other half. I WILL PAY SOMEONE TO SAND DRYWALL, NEXT TIME.

It took me a couple of weekends/nights working on the sanding to complete. Thankfully, this project was out in the garage. I wasn’t concerned about making the drywall “perfect” looking, but it turned out pretty well for my first time.

One weekend in December, my dad came up to help me finish everything. The first day we spent wiping all the walls down and removing all the dust in preparation to paint. I chose an off-white color called Radisson by Olympic. It has a slight gray/blue hue. I bought a 5 gallon of Olympic paint in satin, for the entire room. We ended up using all but about a gallon and a half. It took 2 coats.

It’s AMAZING what a coat of paint can do. It looks like a completely different room. It feels complete; it feels like a real room and that it’s not just a garage.

We also framed out the access door to the garage. It really finished off the wall and made it look complete, instead of half done. I got to use my new miter saw that I got for my Birthday!

The second day we put up some storage so I could organize all of my tools and supplies. Two years ago a friend was renovating their kitchen and installing all new cabinets. They had a tall pantry cabinet that I was able to snag for my garage. It was easy to install the pantry in the garage. The concrete slab has a small lip, about 3.5” deep that sticks out from the drywall. We used a 2X4 and a 1X4 to bridge the gap and anchor the cabinet to the wall.

I purchased another wall cabinet from Ikea back in November in anticipation for this project. It was pretty easy to put together and anchor to the wall in the studs. I like it for the most part, except for the small gap in the doors.

I bought a bunch of hooks and other small accessories to organize the remainder of my items.

I love having a place for tools and where things can be organized instead of it being chaos.

I found after I started organizing things, that I have A LOT of spray paint and sample cans of paint. I could open up a store!

I LOVE that everything has a place now it is SOOOO organized. Now I can’t guarantee that it’s going to look this neat and tidy all the time. I’m not always the most organized person. Just ask my mom. While I was growing up she bought me a poster of this tornado coming down a two-lane road in the middle of nowhere. She said it represented my room because it always looked like a tornado had just come through there. I have gotten better with age, but haven’t improved 100%. The right side of the garage, where all my stuff was stored, looked like total chaos prior to this project. I didn’t have any place to store tools or organize things. But now, it’s a little more organized. I also moved a lot of stuff to the attic, to have more space in the garage.

It feels great to FINALLY knock this room off of my to-do list and have everything organized. It’s been a year filled with all kinds of DIY projects this year. And you can see with this stack of old windows, I’ve got plenty lined up for next year.