Garage Makeover

Tamar, this post is especially for you!

When Ryan and I moved into this house, we were so excited about our new garage. It was one of the upgrades for us. We left behind a detached 1 1/2 car garage for an attached 2.25 car garage. Yes, I know 2.25 is not a thing, but I just made it one. We rejoiced at simple luxuries like walking inside during a rainstorm without getting wet. Going into the garage without putting on shoes. You get the idea. We loved it and had not a single plan in this world to do a thing to it other than organize it {which Ryan had already done} and enjoy it.

And then...Mommapalooza 3.0.

We hosted Ryan's family and mine for Mother's Day, with every intention of eating at folding tables on the porch, but we did NOT intend for the day to be cold and cloudy. At the last minute, we had to move the party inside to keep all our guests from freezing while they ate. And while we did fit in our living room, it was a tight squeeze and not overly comfortable.

It's a common problem in his family, because there are so many of them. And we realized, as we pondered this conundrum, that nearly everyone in his family serves big family meals in their garages.

You see where this is going, don't you?

We do love our garage, but it was decidedly a garage. Our niece informed us it smelled like a garage, and it was only half finished. Apparently when our house was built, the requirement {or common practice, I'm not sure which} was that any wall that touched a part of the house had to be insulated and drywalled, but that was it. So we had a literally half-finished garage with unidentified splotches of who-knows-what on the floor.

More than adequate to function in every way we needed. Still a luxury to us. But, as I said, decidedly a garage.

So Ryan cleared out the entire thing {all freshly organized, though it was!}, and we started with insulation. We hired a company to come and spray a skim coat of insulation on the open walls. {I say this as though I know what I'm talking about.} They were in and out in less than half a day, and when they left, our walls boasted a lovely base coat of insulation:

Ryan and I purchased rolls of insulation and spent a couple of nights adding that over the top of this skim coat. {I rolled them out, measured, cut, and fluffed them, and Ryan hung them.}

We were stunned, even with just this much done, at how much more finished the room looked and how much more controlled the temperature felt! Whaddya know?!? Insulation works!

Ryan can drywall and mud, but he hates both very much, and at this point, doing that project on our own would have taken weeks, so we elected to hire it done. Sometimes the value of your time and sanity makes hiring a project worth it, right? These guys came to our house over the course of two days, but in total, they were there less than 8 hours. They put up drywall in the remainder of the garage, mudded and sanded it, repaired some areas on the existing drywall, and textured the ceiling to match the inside of the house. It was impressive, and Ryan said it was worth every penny.

The next step was to paint the walls, and if you heard the podcast a couple of weeks ago, you heard about the giant paint debacle that landed us hosing down great quantities of ourselves and items in the garage. It was insane. The paint color we used was the same as the one in our master bathroom. It's a Valspar color called Wet Pavement, and the Lowe's guy told us it is actually one of the most popular paint colors they sell. {Who knew??} It seemed to us to be a nice, neutral, inviting color.

The painting took wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more time than we anticipated, but it looked so nice when it was done. {Incidentally, we also painted the ceiling a white coat before we painted the walls. We were hoping to get out of it, but the fact that the drywall on the ceiling was done years ago meant there were discolorations under the texturing, so we had to paint.}

Our next plan was to do an epoxy paint treatment on the floor so it looked more finished as well. I did a whole separate post on that, which you can find here if you missed it, but let's just say the prep work on that took about a week. The floor has to be crazy clean and crazy dry, so Ryan did a lot of washing, scraping, degreasing, and who knows what all, and then we had fans on it for days, making sure it was 100% dry.

The paint itself went on in about two hours. Ryan rolled the paint on the floor and I threw in the confetti-like chips that give it some personality.

Then that had to dry for several days. We couldn't walk on it, put our stuff back, or park on it while it cured.

But the after look of that was just amazing, in our opinion.

 Once that fully dried, our only chore was to move back in! Ryan wanted to switch some things up and around to make the layout work better for what he needed, so he had fun reorganizing everything.

As for me? I just wanted a pretty wall in the garage. One pretty wall. One spot that we could use as a focal point when we have parties and gatherings.

So working together, we came up with the idea to paint a couple of chalkboards on one wall, and Ryan even went the extra mile to put frames around them to dress them up a little bit! We used two old windows our friend Shawn gave us {THANK YOU, SHAWN!!!} on either side, just to add to the overall look.

And now? It's done. Officially done. I think it looks incredible, especially when you compare it to what it looked like before!

That only took a month. WHEW! Exhausting!!! But we do love it. And for you comparison junkies....here are the side by side before and after pics. {Click to enlarge.}