The Garage In The New House

My garage is not perfect, but I will share it anyway.

We made the garage huge! The spacing was the result of having small garages prior to this one. A double car garage places your cars too close together. I knew having kids would cause lots of dings in our car doors.  I also created this design when my dad was still living. We got a taste of the space needed with wheelchairs, scooters and walkers, that I planned for 3 feet between each garage door. I selected single garage doors instead of a double door so that I could space the cars further apart.

This allows the cars to be 7ft apart and no car doors touch each other. We can have both doors on the cars open and still not touch. I am most thankful for this decision!

I use the space in between the cars a lot to house my projects in process. But I try to keep the space clear so that I can enjoy the benefits of the wide space.

I also made sure I had space on the sides of the garage. Our last garage we were lucky to have enough space on the side to store our garbage container, but our neighbors were not so lucky. Our neighborhood does not like trash cans to be seen. Unfortunately, we can see our neighbor's, but you can’t see it from the main street. I understand some people not wanting their trash in the garage. I don’t mind at all. It is more convenient to take out the trash. So, I made sure the sides were deep enough to keep a trash can and a lawn mower.

Now, the back of the garage goes deep. I knew we’d need space to house my tools and my dad’s tools. We organized those spaces onto heavy duty shelves we bought from Costco. They are my favorite shelves.

I originally designed the deep space with intentions that we could tandem park two vehicles inside the garage. We ended up not making the space that deep.

 

We also weighed the option to put a smaller garage door on the opposite side of the garage so that we could access the lawnmower and equipment from the backyard easier. We nixed the idea for cost reasons, but I also wanted to have more wall space.

The extra space has been nice. When we built our cross, we didn’t think about storage. But we have a perfect place for it.

It actually serves as scooter storage for the boys. 

Not my preferred method, but it’s put to use!

The boys also have their tool benches out there. That has been the cutest thing. The boys love it! They will spend so much time out there “Building” things. It’s also a place I find many lost sippy cups!

The wagon has become a storage place for my scrap wood. The boys use it for their building sessions.

I’m back and forth on whether I should have done the garage flooring. During construction, our garage was used as storage for material. And even once the material was all used, we began using the garage as storage to start slowly moving things over. Mom’s townhouse was getting crowded! So, we never had an empty garage before moving. And now that there is a ton of things in there, I don’t want to move them out.

But with how dirty we get things in the garage, I’m not sure if I could stand getting the nice floor dirty. We have used the garage floor to spray paint on and residual paint has landed on the ground. 

We bought bike racks from Brookstone to make use of wall space.

We used the Rubbermaid Fast Track Rail system like we had inthe last house. You can hang the rails up and use whatever hooks you need.

On the wall closest to the house, we have the trash can and recycling cans so we can easily toss things in there. There is also a small can we put birdseed in to protect it from critters and a hamper for Mr. JCrew to toss his gym clothes in when he gets home. 

A tip I’d like to share is how we store our flag. Mr. JCrew bought this for me as a Christmas present our first year in the house. We only put it out on holiday’s, but when it is not on display, we store it in the garage. We eliminated the task for having to remove the flag from the pole, by hanging a bracket on the wall in the garage. We just move the flag pole from one bracket to the other. It makes it so much easier to display.

The latest addition to the garage is a clock. We had one out there, that was my mom's but it has since disappeared. I spend a lot of time in the garage with my projects, that it is nice to have a clock so I can keep track of time.

The garage isn’t a perfect, spotless, organized room in the house, but is a workable place that fits our needs. I have to reorganize it every once in a while, but I’m so thankful we designed enough space. We can fit so much “extra” stuff in there while it doesn’t have a home yet and still not feel crowded. Many of my projects land out there while the building phase is going on.