The humble garage. It’s just a slab of concrete with 4 walls. Always used for storage. Even for a car. In the fall of 2012, I was in my garage and just stared at it. I did that sometimes even for as long as 20 minutes. It was one of those wistful stares that you see in a John Hughes movie. You know the one about unrequited teenage love and existential angst. Yeah that look.

But the object of my longing during these creepy moments was my garage. I was Andrew McCarthy. My garage was Molly Ringwald.

As best as I can tell (really told to me by my contractor) my garage was originally a car port. At some point, two more walls were added, the roof built over it, and a garage door put up. The walls that were put up were unfinished when I purchased it. Unfortunately, the garage was used mostly for storage. There were those rare moments when I did clean it out so that I can fit my car in there but that was often not the case. So I would stare at my garage, just imagining what could be. This happened more often when it was rainy and/or cold. 

So in early November of 2012, I decided to do something about the situation. I put on my Bob the builder pants and started renovating. Here’s what I needed to do.

• Insulate the walls
• Put up drywall
• Paint
• Replace some outlets and switches
• Replace a light fixture and a garage door
• Install flooring
• Install shelving

I originally thought “hey I can do that easy! It will take me two months top.” These would be famous last words if I was famous. Or if they were the last words spoken on this subject.

The insulation part wasn’t too much of a big deal. Years ago I put in new insulation in my attic and crawl space. That made a big difference in my heating bill. I really recommend insulating the crawl space if you have one. After the insulation came installing the dry wall. This was the most difficult part of the project. Being an independent type of guy, and with an unpredictable schedule, I installed the dry wall myself. Dumb idea. Hauling those huge pieces of drywall by yourself is not a good idea if you have short arms which I am afflicted with. It was also a dumb idea to put up drywall by yourself without the proper equipment. It took me a couple of days just to hang up the drywall. It was a pain in the tuckus.

Then came the most difficult part of the project. Finishing the drywall and sanding. My track history with drywall is spotty at best. I never quite got a handle on sanding it down to a smooth finish. I did learn a new tip for this project though. After laying down your first layer of mud, you add another layer with a watered down batch of compound that has the consistency of mayo. That made smoothing out a lot easier. The other challenge was the corners. You have to place corner taping at the corners where the drywall meet. That was more difficult than expected. Placing the mud at these corners especially near the ceiling were frustrating since I wanted a smooth finish. What made this even more difficult was that I was doing this project in an unheated garage in the middle of the winter. That made waiting for the drywall compound to dry to be more painful than watching paint dry. So I bought a hair dryer to help speed things along but the cold weather was not cooperating. In addition to finishing the drywall I also had to patch up the wall for all the dings and such that punished the walls over the years.

After a week or two of slapping down compound and sanding it down (it more or less) it was time to paint. After priming the entire garage I decided to go with an exterior white semi gloss paint. I also added some blue accent on the door trim.  Some minor electrical work got me new outlets and a ceiling light.

Then came a new thought. I needed baseboard trim. Which was the perfect excuse to get a mitre saw! If you ever decided to start doing any sort of molding or trim work, buy yourself one of these tools. I got mine for less than $100 which saved me a lot of time and aggravation from doing it with a mitre saw box. I should know. I’ve down shoe molding with the mitre box. And it was a royal pain the crown molding. For this job, I had to leave a bit of a gap between the baseboard and the floor. I was going to lay down these plastic tiles for the flooring and I needed the gap so that I can slip some of these tiles in there. I loved these garage floor tiles. Great colors, easy to install, and covers up the dirty concrete flooring that I head earlier. I only wish that i got a table saw or something to make straight cuts. I used a jig saw and it didn’t work out too well. But hey, it looked good enough.

After the baseboards, I put up the shelving. It was your standard Home Depot wire shelving system. Nothing special, but a lot of storage issues got solved.

Last, but not least, I got the garage doors installed.  I was not ambitious enough to do it by myself.  As Clint Eastwood once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”  Installing a new garage door was mine.  So I hired professionals.  The old garage door was pitted with holes, made of wood, and the lifting mechanism was on its last legs. The new garage door is made of metal and has a good insulation rating.  The garage door opener is whisper quiet and even automatically closes after a set period of time.

So kids, this is what I learned from my garage experience. If you plan on doing even a modest amount of DIY work around the house, seriously consider getting power tools. The entry level power tools like the mitre saw I got saves you time and frustration over the long run for a better looking outcome. Plus you can lend them out to friends in exchange for adult refreshments. Also, try not to do drywall by yourself in the middle of winter. It sucks. Get help. Wait for warmer weather so that stuff dries faster. And lastly, stop dreaming about what may be and put in the work and sweat to make it happen. Yeah, that’s contrite and uber-obvious. But I can now say that I got an awesome new garage just like how Andrew Macarthy got Molly Ringwald. And I did stare at my garage with the smugness of having achieved what I wanted.