So, now that I've moved, I need to come up with a new plan/design for my garage. I now have a 3 car (yea!) but it's slightly shallower than our previous garage (boo!). The foundation also has a significant bump out 18" or so of the ground, so I'll have to modify the folding table design I used to accommodate that. One wall also doesn't have sheetrock. I haven't investigated out there much yet. The Cougar is in there, as well as a lot of boxes and furniture yet to be moved in.

There are 3 overhead 4' hardwired fluorescent lights that I'll eventually change out and add more. More outlets are in order. Then, I'll have to figure out my cabinets/storage plans. Should be fun, I like planning this stuff.

Get 4' LED shop lights from Costco. They cost $30 each and have great light. Shadow has them in his garage.

I'm planning to do 5 shop lights total. Three in the two car side and two in the one car side.

RX-7 Chris wrote:Get 4' LED shop lights from Costco. They cost $30 each and have great light. Shadow has them in his garage.

I'm planning to do 5 shop lights total. Three in the two car side and two in the one car side.

Chris is right on the Costco lights. I am considering doing some LED bar lights on the walls too, but not sure I need to get blinded by them. I also plan to add a couple of them for spot lighting near work benches. To finish off lighting, a couple of retractable LED work lights would be a nice. for doing work under the hood or under the car.

First phase is nearly complete...getting all of the boxes/furniture out of the garage. I can now fit a second vehicle in there. The plan is to basically use it is a two car, and the truck lives outside. The wife is going to park in the single stall spot. The Cougar will live in the 2 stall area. I'm trying to define storage/work areas. Car, wood, household, etc. In other words, I still haven't planned the layout of the garage at all, yet.

The double overhead garage door was acting wonky, and I got that fixed after my wife threatened to call a repairman. The wiring for the sensors where they feed into the opener motor were tied together with wire nuts that were meant for much larger wires. As such, they didn't tie any wires together at all. Renutted the wires, and all is good.

I really like having a large window for light. It makes a huge difference.

Current state of the garage, as well as the little shelves I built for the wasted space between doors from some scrapwood I had:

Nice. Looks like a good base to work from.

I love the little shelves, and just the usage of otherwise wasted space in general.

3-car...lucky.

Looks like you are getting there. I like how the first two bays look all nice and finished and the third looks like a completely different garage.

Yeah, I guess they ran out of paint. Ha. The third pay will get painted. I think finishing the drywall will wait for a while, though. Same with the ceiling, it's painted about halfway.

I need to build my cabinets that will go on the wall with the fridge. The stuff that's lined up near the Cougar (except the bikes) is mostly garage sale/donate items. I wanted to be lazy and get prebuilt cabinets, but the 12" standard depth is shallow. We'll see, I need to figure out what will be in the cabinets. Lawn, household stuff, car stuff, etc. and how I want to keep things separated. While the over the garage door storage was nice in the old garage, I found it wasn't practical. I ended up forgetting what was in some bins, and bought duplicate things. Or I'd just be too lazy to get the ladder out to get things down that I needed. To eventually get things out of the basement (holiday decorations in bins), I'll do some overhead storage. I need to buy some standard size bins, as right now we have a mish-mash of bins.

Look at Ikea, I believe they are 15" deep.

So i picked up some old kitchen metal cabinets. 2 36", 2 24", and a 30" over the fridge cabinet. Since we lost a substantial amount of in house storage (and gained a first floor office), I'm going to dedicate the 2 24' to household items and have my wife store whatever she feels she needs to store in those. They will go on the back wall near the man door. The 2 3'ers and over the fridge will go...one over the garage fridge, and the other 2 over the 6' work bench. That should give me plenty of storage. I need to go get some 1x4s to put on the wall to screw in the cabinets, as they aren't standard holes in the backs of the cabinets currently. I'd just drill new holes, but prefer to use the reinforced section of metal where they are predrilled. I should have those up this weekend, and the garage a little more in order by Sundary.

Glad you are moving forward.

That should work great

Here's how I started on Friday:



Here's where I am now:




The two roller cabinets were replaced with the additional drawer unit on the workbench. Same with the 3 drawer mid cabinet that was on the workbench. The deep three drawer bins on the rollers were not very functional for handtool storage. The shallower bins are nice, and they roll a little nicer. I'll probably sell one roller and the middle box. The wall cabinets went up easily, and I finally leveled the fridge as well. I have some LED undercabinet lights that will help with task lighting. This is the "easy" part of the garage, next will be figuring out bike/toy storage, and a few of the larger lawn tools.

Right now, I'm happy with this setup. It's functional, easy to access, good height, and great beer proximity. The Admiral cabinets hold a ton of stuff too. Over the fridge is the junk, seldom used stuff. One of the household cabinets near the door is fairly empty. I still need to drywall the north wall and paint the Cougar's stall. I also want to add additional overhead lighting.

That looks good.