A Long Overdue Update

So it’s been a while since I’ve visited the ol’ blog here. We’ve had a crazy busy summer and winter full of travel, vacations, family visits, and oh yeah, getting pregnant with twins. And since their arrival is quite imminent, here’s a quick update on at least one project – the garage.  

When we last left off, we had insulated walls and a new mud room unit on the wall. We now have new drywall, painted drywall, and we’ve built a set of shelves along the back wall and added some trim molding. (I say “we” loosely, because of course, I watched much of this process from the couch.)

 

After we found out we were having twins, we did a little tour of the town with our realtor. We wanted to confirm that we were happy where we were at, and to see what was out there with a bit more square footage for our growing family. We saw a couple really nice places, and even more total duds. In the end, we decided that staying put was the best decision for now… with some basement finishing to come. 

During the house hunting process, I realized how great our garage is. It is extra deep – technically a 2.5 car garage if you include all that space in the back. Many of the houses we looked at had garages that would barely fit our SUV, with no extra storage on either side.  This simply would not do. Sadly, we have too much stuff.

Right now we are in the cold-weather season, or as I call it “garage chaos.” Even with all that extra space and storage, we are still storing deck furniture, sand tables, deck storage boxes, hoses and various other outside toys inside the garage. So while it still looks like a disaster, I am trying to remind myself of what it looked like before we had all this off-the-ground storage. In the warm-weather months, it is really quite roomy.

The shelf plans came from the Ana White site, which is GREAT for all kinds of inspiration. We did modify them a bit - my favorite part of the new shelves is that they are missing the bottom shelf. This allows us to roll all our wheeled things like bikes and strollers underneath the shelf to free up more floor space.

I also really like the extended middle shelf. To be honest, my father-in-law had to talk me into that one. I thought it would get in the way. But it has been nice to have some extra workspace there without hitting my head on the upper shelf. And it’s especially useful for cutting longer boards on the miter saw.

So this garage project is just about wrapped up. I do need to paint some of the trim around the doors, and the doors themselves, but it has been too cold here lately to get any of that done. I also want to reorganize a bit better when it’s warmer, and establish some kind of recycling station next to the kitchen door. And since I'm nesting like crazy, the whole house list is only getting longer. But for now, we’re focused on other things and we’re thrilled with how the garage has turned out.