The garage that scared me

So I know I've been silent this week and I'm ready to show you why. I have been out in my garage making it into a place that can actually be used! What I'm about to show you was a garage in crisis. There were sections of the garage that you couldn't get to and you had to pick a very careful path to get anywhere. Sometimes the only way to get to the front of the garage from the back was to walk back into the house and out the front door because you couldn't actually go through it.

Here is roughly where we started (shamefully this is actually after we got some stuff out of there!).



The biggest problem was the areas we couldn't get to. Let me highlight a few issues here:



The back of the garage is SO bad that I don't think I need to describe the issues there. It is worth mentioning that the light back there is a single bulb just like the front of the garage so it was really DARK in the whole place when the door was shut.



My dining table still has the tools from building the pergola because after we dug them out of the garage we had no where to put them short of tossing them on the pile.



So what did we do out there? Well, to start with we added some pegboard by the door for the hand tools to both make them more accessible and make it faster to put them away after they are used in the house.



We primed the back walls and covered the old sayings that the previous person had painted back there and then added a ton of shelves. This was not expensive (about $150 including paint, lumber, screws and a few brackets). We left plenty of room around the water heater for when it needs to be replaced somewhere in the future.



We added two new shelves in the front to hold hand tools as we need those quite a bit and wanted them to be a quick grab.



We changed out the single bulbs for some bigger lights bought cheap at Home Depot and we finally got to start moving in to the new space on Saturday. Just look at that difference! The back isn't just a pile anymore but is fully useable!



My wood pile is organized and now accessible.



All of the tools finally have homes (wahoo!). There is still a box on the floor with all of the wrenches as we need more peg holders for them but we're working on that.



And we now have a dedicated shelf for my "in progress but not yet working on" projects (which also gives you a few guesses to some upcoming posts).



Anyway so that's what I've been up to. I've also started my next project which involves teal and zebra stripes. It's pretty bold, even for me, and I can't wait to get it done.

What did you do this weekend? Any fun projects or did you go somewhere and have a little fun?

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