Renovating my Garage

I bought the house 6 months ago and have been working away on this and that, one of the first majoy jobs was to make the garage a large clean open work area that could also house the car. The shape is a wide single with a triangle stuck on the side thats about half the size of the main garage. When I moved in the fron half was being used as a dirty dusty storage ares (he was a builder) and the rear larger half had a raised floor, laminate flooring, plaster boarded walls and was used as a play room / laundry room.

First man thing I did was to knock through the plastrboard wall into the dirty side!





The wall I was taking out was battening floor to ceiling with plasterboard on both sides like a sandwich and wall sockets on it, it seems a mouse or two had walked along the ceiling, fell down between the boards and couldnt get out. This is what I found!



perfectly preserved, and a bit wierd. Fourtunatly the garage was all very dry and dusty and there was a noticeable lack of bugs, just the occasional dusty spider.



Took the next boards out, trying to save them as best I could as I had already decided to carry on with the boarding and do the whole garage. It was either that or rip out everything and be left with a huge mess.

After that I took up the laminate floor and started to hoof up all the wood that was under it.



Found another mouse den, but no mice, yay







After pulling all the nails out of the wood I had salvaged and getting the nails and screw out of the board I started to baton the walls, making sure to put the batons just over the width of the plaster board. I also used insulation inbetween them to keep it cozy in the winter.

Like a big jigsaw I was making do with what I had, when I ran out of board I bought some sheets.



here you can see the insulation and also where I re ran the electrical sockets.







i'll finish this up later on.........

I started to add some down lighters, there are 2 lighting circuits, one for the front hlaf and one the rear, so im using these as 8 lights over the car and then 5 over the work area. I got some cheap lights form wickes then added 5w LED bulbs, rather than 50w halogens because 65 watts is better than 650 watts!

I bought 12 or so plasterboard sheets small enough so I could lift them overhead without dying and managed to get them on the ceiling and balance a screw on the end of the cordless drill all in one motion, followed up by extra screws jammed in my mouth or anywhere else handy



pretty hard going but at this pont it was starting to look a bit more like the picture in my head.



8 main lights in and on



added the light switch on the pillar to do the 5 over where the work surface will be. The ceiling joists are pretty uneven so I had the plaster board over them as best I could, at the end of the day, its a garage not my front room.



Now theres a gap of a week or 2 where I did some plastering, this is a messy business, especially when you have "learnt" to plaster form a 3 minute video on youtube. It went up ok but there were some rough bits that needed sanding down. I did all this by hand and the dust was pretty heavy going, I got a lot in my eyes and spent a lot of time out there working on it. Basically as usual I pushed myself hard, but on this occasion a bit too hard and lost the plot a bit and had to spend a few days chilling out to get back to normal. So when I got better I swept out all the dust, cleared out most of the crap and painted it.



You'll notice at the bottom the "skiting board" is actually a strip of plaster board, because the floor was raised the bottom 10 inches was just bare brick.





I kept the old kitchen cabinets that were in the garage, pulled them apart and cut them to sizes that would fit where I wanted them, then ordered 2 £90 solid beech worktops and set about cutting them to fit.











Next the floor was rough, so i bought 10 ish bags of self-leveling floor compound and managed to lay it all in a day. you have to work fast with this stuff and trowel it round to get it flat. The wet patches here are me using the last bag to fill some low spots.

After it had properly gone off I painted it with grey floor paint and got some floor tiles to do the work area.

My mill and lathe just slot in the gap I left.



oh yes and I had to turn the door round! it opened inwards but this would have hit the car. So leaving the hinges on the door I swaped it to the other side, cut the frame so the door could pass thrugh the door ... hole, if you get me, then hugn the door and made a new fram with some thin strips of wood, so the door butted up to it.



Once it was all painted you ant tell its not all one bit of wood.

This blew the budget, £1200 on an electric roller door, managed to leave enough room in the roof for the motor unit, then made up a plasterboard panel to cover it so the door drops down out of the ceiling



Added some more b and q cheap cupboards. To get the perfect seal to the wall I used silicone sealant.



Bought my dream car to go in said garage



main lights off and just the 5 work lights on



... and under full lighting power!



Total cost probably about £1000 in materials, then the garage door which was about £1200. 4-6 weeks of hard work (around a 9-5 job) lots of late nights and weekends, dirt dust and depression. If I did it again i'd go a bit slower and probably ask for some help form time to time which I never seem to be able to do.

Love it... Nice job on the plastering

Wow thats absolutely amazing.

Not only do you have the garage of most people's dreams, but you built all by yourself

Congrats mate.

Also, I recommend this at some point

http://www.racedeck.com/

You can mix and match the colours as you want, and lay them on top of your current concrete floor. They're plastic tiles that just click together. You can lay em in a morning.

If any of the tiles crack, just click it out and get it replaced. Very neat system and there's some great designs floating around the net.

There's also a UK version as well

http://www.dynotile.co.uk/

oh and if you enjoy looking at other peoples garages, can I introduce you to these websites:

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=7

http://www.luxury4play.com/automoti...ics-insane-garage-picture-thread-50-pics.html

awsome garage! reminds me of my old one under my flat was 30ft by 30ft i miss that so much

I wish I had a garage so I could renovate it.

you can pop round and do mine if you want lol!

That mouse!

Nice work
I might get an electric roller door if they are only £1200