Category Archives: Garage

On this category, you will find the different garage improvement projects we have completed. We have owned three different houses since we got the home improvement fever, neither one of them had the garage completely finished! Here, you can see what we did to all of them, that includes, finishing walls, installing garage door openers, painting, organizing and more!

Our New Porcelain Tile Garage Floor Installation

Garage floor prior to porcelain tile installation

The garage floor right before we started this project

This is the third and last part of our new garage finishing project.

On our previous two posts, we showed you how we insulated, dry walled, primed and painted our new garage. With all those projects out of the way, it was time to move on and install a nice porcelain tile garage floor.

We did it last because we didn’t want to get our new nice porcelain all dirty while working with drywall, primer, and paint.

As you have read before, in our previous two garages, we used epoxy, however, as you have also read, I was not very satisfied with it. So I decided to try something different in our new garage.

After looking at different options, I decided to give porcelain a try, mostly because as you may know by now, it is one of my favorite flooring options. We went with a two color, white and gray design.

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How We Primed and Painted our New Garage

Priming and painting our new garage

This is the second part of our new garage finishing project.

Just like when we worked on our previous garage, right after insulating and drywalling this new garage, our next step was to prime and paint all the walls and the ceiling. You all should know by now that I can’t stand an unfinished garage. Well, I can’t stand an unpainted garage either.

As I’ve mentioned before, a coat of paint is an easy and inexpensive way to transform any room, in this case, our usually neglected garages, into a more comfortable and pleasant place to be or work in.

I definitely recommend everyone to finish and paint their garages, believe me, you will not be disappointed.

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How We Insulated and Drywalled Our New Garage

This is how the walls looked before starting the work

From what we’ve noticed and our personal experience, most builders do not finish garages. They usually just finish the one or two firewalls because it is required by code.

Other than cost cutting, the reason may be because, as far as I can tell, this is not an issue for most people. When we walk around our neighborhood, we see that most garages look just like they did on day one (except they’re full of stuff now). I have counted only one or two that have been drywalled. It was about the same in our previous two neighborhoods.

Unfortunately (or is it fortunately?), as you may have realized by now, I cannot stand having an unfinished garage. Before we even moved to this house, I agreed with Carla that the garage was going to be one of the first things we would work on after moving in. And so we did.

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How Hard is it to Install a Garage Door Opener?

How hard to install a garage door opener

The Chamberlain garage door opener we installed

When I tell people that we installed our own garage door opener, they look at me like I’m some kind of genius. A professional installation costs about $500 depending on the unit, so it must require some special tools and skills, right? All I will say is that if you have the time, some basic tools and the willingness to learn how to do it, then the answer to the question of how hard is it to install a garage door opener is: as easy as it gets!

As with any other project, there are several steps you need to follow. In this case, you need to first assemble the unit, then install it, adjust it and finally test it to ensure its proper operation.

On this posts, I present the steps we followed to install our chain drive garage door opener. The instructions may vary slightly between the different garage door opener brands and models, however, most of them follow almost the exact same sequence.

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Finishing Garage Part 4: Getting, Assembling and Installing Storage Cabinets

Installing storage cabinets in the garage

The new garage!

As the title suggests, the last part of this garage finishing project included purchasing, assembling and installing storage cabinets. As I’ve said before, I do not like anything ‘stored’ on the floor, I’m not a big fan of open shelves either, cabinets are a must for me.

I considered many cabinets from Home Depot, Lowes, online stores and even Craigslist. Most of them were either not available, too big or too small, no drawers or way too expensive for what I wanted. I still ended up paying a lot more than I wanted for the Kobalt metal cabinets available at Lowes.

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Finishing the Garage Part 3: Priming and Painting Walls and Ceiling

Priming Garage Walls as part as my Garage Finishing Project

Priming garage walls, including the concrete foundation

With the walls and ceiling insulated, drywalled, taped and mudded, and the floor wearing a fresh and shiny coat of epoxy coating, the most difficult parts of this garage finishing project were out of the way, that meant it was time to move on to the next task: Priming & painting the newly finished garage walls and ceiling.

This is a step I recommend every homeowner to do (hoping you are fortunate enough to not have to go through the hassle of insulating and drywalling), as it is an easy and inexpensive way to improve our usually neglected but useful garages.

A coat of paint goes a long way when it comes to making any room more pleasant, comfortable and desirable to be or work in, the garage is no different. With this in mind, I considered this to be a very important part of the project.

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Finishing the Garage Part 2: Applying an Epoxy Floor Coating

Garage epoxy floor coating, part of my garage finishing project

After insulating and finishing the walls and ceiling, the next step on this garage finishing project was working on applying an epoxy floor coating.

To be honest, after doing the exact same job in my old garage (I did not document that project), I was not completely sure about doing it in this new one.

I did not have any issues with the epoxy bubbling or peeling, however, I did notice that after a few months, it did not look nice, it looked like an old floor, even right after being cleaned up.

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Finishing the Garage Part 1: Insulating and Drywalling Walls and Ceiling

Unfinished Garage Ceiling, the way it looked when I moved to the house

Unfinished garage ceiling, as it looked when I moved to the house

This is the first post of a series in which I will show you what I did to finish the Garage in my Second House. As the title suggests, this part includes finishing the garage walls and ceiling (insulation and drywall installation).

On my previous Laundry Room Storage Cabinets post, I mentioned that the lack of any Laundry Room Storage was one of the first few things I noticed when I went look at the property that ended up being my second house.

Not ten seconds later, when I opened the garage access door I noticed another one, the garage was completely unfinished, well, actually, one of the walls was finished, but the rest was completely unfinished!

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My First Project Ever! Garage Improvement and Organization

Looking for garage project ideas? Finished garages look great!

Finished garage wall

Right after moving to my new place, I felt the need to start improving it, not only because I wanted my new house to look nice, but also because I wanted it to be functional.

I’ve always been very organized. I didn’t want anything scattered around or laying on the floor, but I also didn’t want anything stored in such a way that would make it difficult to get to any of the items should I need them right away.

A good example of what I didn’t like seeing and that I noticed every single day was in the garage.

It looked very disorganized, one of the walls was unfinished and there were two ugly shelves made of two by fours that took a lot of space. They didn’t have any doors or anything to hide whatever was “stored” on them. Not that I had a lot of stuff as you can see on the pictures, but they were still an eye sore, I was determined to do something about it!

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