The Garage: Step 1 & 2

When you become a homeowner you go to Home Depot a lot more then you ever thought you would and you do things you never thought you'd care about like pay good money for rocks and paint floors.  I've been dreading the day we'd face the garage for a while but it's one of those projects you just have dive in and do at some point like it or not.  If it were up to me I'm not exactly sure when this would have happened...if ever!  I came home from work Friday exhausted.  All I wanted to do was sit down and watch TV but Mj was already out in the garage working so I did what any good wife would do.  I dragged my tired butt out into the heat, complained about how hot and tired I was and then joined in the fun.

Boring old concrete floor

Step 1:  De clutter the garage.  It's really easy for the garage to become the dumping ground for all things you don't know what to do with.  We can't get too out of hand because we park our cars in there but there was a lot of junk accumulating and it was time for it to go.  We went through the various bins and boxes and loaded up the car for a trip to Goodwill the next day.  On Saturday everything that we were keeping went outside overnight and it was on to step 2.

Sweep, squeegee, scrub, squeegee...then we finally got to paint

Step 2:  Epoxy the floor.   A lot of dust accumulates in the garage and this is a good way to help cut down on it and make the garage floor look pretty.  As if it really needs to look pretty...but whatever.  This was an all day affair and we sure picked one of the hottest weekends ever to do it.  It's quite the process.  You start by washing the floor.  We swept out over a years worth of dirt and cobwebs.  Yuck.  I made Mj do the corners.  Then, we wet the floor and went over it with a giant squeegee mop.  Then we wet the floor again and scrub a dub dubbed it with a scrubbing brush using soapy cleaning concoction from our epoxy kit that sizzled.  Then we wet the floor and did the squeegee thing yet again.  By this time the garage floor was cleaner then any floors inside the house and clean enough to eat off of.  We waited hours for it to dry out and then we could finally start the painting.  Mj painted with a roller and I artfully sprinkled the pixie dust decorative chips all over like a little Fairy Epoxy godmother.  It's a big job and I imagine we saved a ton of money in labor by doing it ourselves.  We were able to put our things back in the next day but we can't park in there for 3 days.  I love the way it looks.

Stylish epoxy-fied floor

The decorative chips really make it pop

Step 3:  Buy shelves, bins and hooks as needed for organizing.  We've got our eye on some heavy duty shelves at Lowe's.  I parlayed my credit card points into a $100 gift card from there so I think we'll get them next week.   We'll use bins to organize everything and hooks to hang up bikes and tools.

Step 4:  Move some of the things in our storage closet under the stairs out into the garage.  This closet has has also become a dumping ground that could use some organization.  Some of the things in that closet can go into our newly re organized garage so we can organize the closet and make room for other things in there.

Most of the indoor house projects I've been wanting to do have come to a screeching halt so it was nice to get something accomplished even if only to the part of the house where our cars live.  A garage has always been sort of a scary place for me.  It's dark, dingy, dirty and creepy crawly things hang out there.  Ideally, our garage will feel a lot less like something out of a horror film once it's clean, organized and user friendly.  How can you be afraid of a room with a shiny pretty floor accented with blue, black and white sprinkles?

House Project:  The Kitchen