Project Awesome Garage

I love our house. It's a great fit for us and certainly has enough space for us. And while there are a few small things I'd fix, I'm generally really happy with it. There is, however, one thing that must change. We need a mud room.

We have a small coat closet by the front door, but we seldom come through there. We typically enter through the garage door into the kitchen and there is no room there for all the winter coats, hats, scarves, boots, etc. that accumulate. Despite multiple command hooks hanging everywhere, everything ends up on the kitchen floor and is constantly in the way.

Time to initiate Project Awesome Garage. Our goal is to create a mudroom-like space in the garage to contain all the clutter. We don't have room to add a finished room with walls, but we do have a blank wall connecting the kitchen and back doors where we can add some much-needed storage.

Before we can do that - we need to take care of a few more things out there. As you can see, the garage is a cold, damp, crowded mess. And this photo is after an initial clean up!

 The project has four major steps.

1. Insulate the garage. Only one of the four walls of the garage adjoins the house, leaving three walls of uninsulated shiver-inducing plywood. If we're going to add a space to put on and store coats, it needs to be at least 32 degrees at all times. We're hoping some added insulation will also keep the fourth bedroom (directly above the garage) from being so cold in the winter.
 
2. Update the garage door and opener. The old garage door was dented, uninsulated, unreliable and incredibly noisy. Combine that with two light sleepers and a husband who leaves for work early, and everyone is up before the sun. We need something quieter and warmer. (Oh yeah, and one that goes up and down when it should!)

3. Add a new floor to the mud room area. The current concrete floor is cold, damp and not very pretty. We want something that creates a room-like space in the corner of the garage where the mud room will go. (Between the back garage door and the kitchen door.)

4. Install a custom-made bench, shelving unit and hooks. This needs enough storage for all our stuff, a bench and hooks low enough for the kids to use, and a plenty of floor space for things like boots and shoes.

We're making great progress, and I'll go into more detail in some future posts. I'm hopeful we'll have everything done by Christmas!