Vis a tergo

Garage cleanup

A number of things have made me decide to tackle my garage-to-shop conversion. First of all, scheduling and the weather have made me decide to wait to begin my kitchen. Secondly, a bunch of the home projects on my list are all dependent upon either work I need to do to the garage, or the garage being a space that I can work in. The last reason is kind of a quasi-reason -- I think I needed another half done project around here :)

I actually remembered to call ahead of time and rent a dumpster for disposing of the refuse from my cleanup, so things started off well. I did forget to document the original state of the garage and driveway area, but here is a "before" picture of the left hand side of the garage:

A lot of the work was tearing out badly built old storage like this "loft" space. Yes, those metal bands were the main support for the platform (the boxes are empty):

And this rickety shelving:

I also bought something to motivate me to get the project done as quickly as possible:

So, my short term goal is to get the garage into a state that I can run my new compressor. The steps to get to this goal started out as:

1. Throw out everything that was unwanted


2. Get everything that belonged to someone else back to its' rightful owner


3. Rip out and toss all of the rigged and badly made cabinets, shelves and storage space that existed in the garage


4. Get an electrician to install a subpanel and run a number of 120V and 240V circuits


5. Install galvanized steel or copper air distribution lines throughout the garage.


6. Pour a 4' x 4' concrete pad on the side of the garage.


7. Install the compressor


8. Surround compressor with a protective housing.


9. Break in compressor


10. Use compressor

I've made it through the first three in the list, and if everything goes right (ha ha), I'll get through a couple more by the end of next weekend. But just as some of the items on that list are independent from each other, there are also other lists independent from this one, with the grand unifying theme being the conversion of my garage into a shop. One thing that I hadn't put on my original list can be illustrated by this picture:

So, termite eradication and repair work are now on the master list. I can't drywall until that and electrical work are done. Anyway, I did make quite a bit of progress on the garage. I did take "after" pictures, but they don't do justice to the amount of work I actually did. There are a couple of boxes and a large filing cabinet that will be gone soon (I hope). The compressor takes up a big space in the middle of the garage. I saved a lot of good wood that will be put to use on the housing for the compressor and some other small wood projects. The five arcade games take up quite a bit of space, so I'm trying to figure out my options for them. Other than that, there are piles of stuff that just need a place to live -- which they will get once I put drywall and cabinets in. So, at the risk of it looking like I haven't done much, here are the pictures as it stands now :)

Here's the left side of the garage. You can see that it's bare up to about five feet deep. After that you can see old screens, doors and wood along the wall and a stack of glass for the garage doors on the floor. All of this is really material for finishing the garage and related projects, so will be gone when the projects are done. Beyond that are the filing cabinet and boxes that I mentioned, then the back four feet or so are taken up by stock parts from my RX-7 and my Bronco. I'm considering a shed in the backyard for storage of these kinds of things.

This is the right side of the garage. The picture was taken before the left side was clean, and before I had taken off the garage doors. Now, that clear walking space is actually where I grouped all of my paint and caustic chemicals, waiting for storage. All of the cans and bottles of this stuff take up most of the middle of the garage, along with the air compressor. The video games will live where they are for the time being. At the very back is wood storage, which will also remain.

Here's an overall view of the driveway and garage in the state they are as I type this. If you've seen this area before, you might get an idea of how much I actually got done last weekend.

That's it for now. I didn't intend to be so long-winded. Once the weather dries up, I'll be able to paint the floor, insulate and drywall. I guess the garage doors need to be put up too :) -- I'll probably tackle that after some of the other work, so the doors aren't in the way. Maybe I should make a list....