When it comes to remodeling, it’s so easy to get carried away and start to envision what you’d like your house/condo/apartment to be. Of course when you own the place, there is a lot more that you can do which can not only make your place more “homey” but can also add to the value of the house. One such project for me has been to have a garage that demands your attention and even highlights the cars that are parked in them.
In our case, we’ll be parking Erin (my MINI Cooper) and Ellie (Allegra’s MINI Countryman) in our tandem garage. While we have some basic shelves already built, the rest of the garage has the normal boring white walls (which could use just a fresh coat of white paint) and the normal concrete grey floors that spells, well, normal.
What I envisioned for our garage instead included red cabinets (pictured above) and sparkling floor with blue sprinkles throughout it. Sure our cabinets aren’t as fancy as the ones in the picture but red paint would surely make them pop while slick floors would highlight our cars and bring a level of sophistication not seen in most garages. This is the part where I point out that my car is likely cleaner than most people’s houses so that should help shed some light on how I feel about Erin.
As you’ve likely guessed from the post title, the project was ultimately not meant to be. The trouble? Price and time. In order to get the full effect, our garage would first need to be painted. While not a huge pain, what comes after is. After a fresh coat of paint on the walls and cabinets perhaps, the real work begins; cleaning the floor.
In order to be able to properly paint your floors and ensure that they have a level of shine with them that helps bring them to life, you must completely clean out the floors. This doesn’t mean just dust, but to pour chemicals to ensure all the oil stains and other similar spots have been cleaned.
After the floor is thoroughly cleaned with chemicals and water and fully dried, only then can you start the process of painting which needs to be done in sections so that you can pour the sprinkles (seen above) as the base paint is only in grey. All of this requires time and money (around $400-$500 for the different treatments, wall paints, etc.). In our case, between the renovation running 2-3 weeks behind and the garage now being occupied by boxes, the situation never permitted itself. While ideally (taking money out of the equation) we would have done this project during our long renovation, our garage never leant itself as being useful as you can see from the pictures below.
I’d like to think this is something we’ll do later but the likelihood of that diminishes greatly the minute you’re moved into your garage and shelves and equipment are placed in. Still, maybe just maybe it will happen next year and if not, maybe our next house?
Till then, if you want to help us along with some of our projects, be sure to check out our housewarming registry list.