garage remodel questions

Lately I have been fantasizing about remodeling my garage. It's a one car garage, and is mostly unfinished and definitely quite ugly. As you can see from the pic (please don't laugh ), I have a justifiable fear of things falling on my car.

Does have any one have experience with garage remodeling? I would love to hear thoughts about things to consider and what you did or did not like about your remodeled garage.

Things I am considering include: updating the wiring, lights, storage solutions, insulating and finishing the walls/ceiling, moving the washer/dryer, refinishing the floors... etc. A lift would be cool, but is probably not in the cards.

Nice yellow color!

I fantasize about owning a garage!

Cabinets would help with the fear of things falling on the car. To gain a bit more room you could also do some things with overhead storage for items that aren't needed on a regular basis.

Walls, electrical, lighting, cabinets.

I finished my garage myself fairly well, but I still long to do the floor and maybe a scissor lift. Starting from new construction bare drywall, with just one electrical outlet and one bare lightbulb, I added the following and it wasn't too difficult--but it was work for sure! Totally worth it.

- cut out a strip of drywall all the way around the garage, where new wiring would go; preserved the removed drywall sections to put back afterwards
- extended electrical wiring all the way around the garage with GFC outlets
- extended electrical wiring to new 6x lightswitch plate, leading to 6 new 48" dual-fluorescent lights - back row 3 overhead; front row 1 center overhead and one on the wall each side of garage door, since front overhead is blocked when garage door is open
- while the walls were open, ran CAT-5 to a couple of ethernet jack plates on the back wall; but I still don't have CAT-5 *to* the garage!
- replaced the previously removed sections of drywall, re-taped the cuts
- white primered all the bare drywall (walls and ceiling)
- painted walls with white sand-textured paint (does pretty well in hiding the drywall tape seams)
- painted ceiling with glossy white paint (more reflection = more light)
- installed cheapo white-surface MDF Home Depot wall cabinets on back wall (would look a lot better if at the time I'd known the trick to mounting them perfectly aligned to each other)

I'm pretty happy with the textured wall paint, since it's DIY. I think the glossy paint on the ceiling is pretty important to help improve lighting.

Here's a couple of "after" photos I found. Can't see the ceiling lights, but I decided to get the kind that have a plastic lens cover that diffuses the light. Lotsa lights is *very* nice to have -- am glad I went a bit overboard on that!

TI (Alameda) said:

I finished my garage myself fairly well, but I still long to do the floor and maybe a scissor lift. Starting from new construction bare drywall, with just one electrical outlet and one bare lightbulb, I added the following and it wasn't too difficult--but it was work for sure! Totally worth it.

Click to expand...

Nice job! In addition to deciding what I want to do, I also have to decide whether or not to do the work myself or hire it out. So many choices!

I think the glossy paint on the ceiling is pretty important to help improve lighting?