Garage Makeover Progress: New Lighting

We actually got quite a bit accomplished on our garage project this past weekend, including installing some new lighting. Made with $30 collapsible wire baskets from CB2!

Garage Makeover Progress: Building Workbenches and Repourposing Cabinets

Time for another update on our project!

Saturday started off with a fun game: see what random things around our garage we could find to stack to the right height to hold up our old cabinet from above our kitchen peninsula. After about 10 tries we finally found a combo of items that worked to prop the cabinet up on to get it about 18 inches taller than where the top of our workbench would be, since it was way too heavy for either of us to hold it by ourselves while the other one attached it to the wall.

But once we got it into place and level, it wasn't too much work to find four studs to attach the cabinet to. It is already looking better after I painted it last week, but we still have to put the cabinet doors on it. It was much easier to mount it with the doors off though!

Garage Makeover Progress: Cleaning and Painting

So apparently I only blog on Wednesdays now? I guess that's what happens when I stay up late painting every night!

We've been making some good progress on our garage makeover project though, and are going to start building workbenches this weekend. Last weekend we spent all of Saturday cleaning and organizing things, with a trip to the dump to get rid of a ton of useless junk. And we got everything away from the walls so I could start painting.

Before cleaning

After cleaning

Garage Makeover Plans

Guess who has a super awesome husband who fixed their broken computer! :)

It's running pretty slowly, but it works! Makes me so happy, and fingers crossed it will limp along for another 6 months until I'm ready to buy a new computer. Sadly my Jamaica pictures didn't get backed up for some reason, although I still have them on my SD cards, just lost all of the time going through them and deleting duds so I can post a reasonable amount. So instead, I'm going to jump right into posting about our garage makeover plans!

I'm pretty excited about this next project too. Surprisingly, in fact. I mean, it's just a garage, how exciting can it be? But it's going to be so refreshing to not see unorganized piles of tools everywhere, and it means after we finish, I can finally start building all of the furniture I've been eying on Ana White's site!

This past weekend we didn't get much done, with my husband being laid up with a bum ankle. But that just meant I had lots of time to finalize our garage plans, make the 'to get' list, lay out the schedule (WBS to any project management nerds out there :) ) and go on an online shopping spree for the majority of what we need. It's looking like it will take us about 4 weeks to get everything done...yes, I know I'll be eating my words later, since house projects always take longer than expected. But I gotta start with a plan before it can go off track, haha! We're also looking at a budget of about $1500 + lumber for the workbenches, which actually is pretty good considering how much we're cramming in there.

But enough talk, let's see the plans! First, a look at the general floor plan, to see what we've got to work with:

Which currently looks like this. Complete chaos.

Dead Computers, Updates and Next Projects

Welp, my laptop is apparently dead. It has refused to boot up all week, even though I keep trying every few hours. Cue sad face. :(

I have so much to blog about, including our trip to Jamaica and finally finishing our fireplace facade build, but I really try not to do personal stuff on my work laptop, and typing this on my Kindle Fire HD is not very conducive to blogging, especially since I can't easily get my photos on my Kindle. Luckily just by chance I did a big hard drive back up on Sunday, so at least I didn't lose much!

I'm still holding out hope that my husband might be able to fix it with some tips I found online about soldering the power source back to the motherboard, since I'm not really in the mood to spend money on a new laptop, or learn how to use Windows 8 at the moment. I hear it's a lot better with a touch screen, but touch just seems awkward to me on a laptop, with constantly having to reach over the keyboard. I might not have much choice though, if my old laptop can't be fixed soon--I'm already having withdrawals and it's only been a few days!

In other news, my husband sprained his ankle playing soccer on Tuesday. We think it's sprained anyway, not that he's actually been willing to go to a doctor yet. So yesterday I went out and bought him crutches, so we could still use our tickets to see Dave Chappelle last night in downtown Raleigh. This was the second time we'd seen him live, and he was just as funny was he was back in 2004. Fun fact, the first time we saw him it was for the taping of his live show at the Fillmore in San Francisco, and you can see us a couple of times when they show the audience in the video, since we were sitting in the fifth row. Last night we were only in the 10th row, but it was still a great show.

His ankle might put a damper on our weekend plans though, since we were planning on kicking off our garage makeover on Saturday. We've decided that tackling the garage just makes the most sense to work on next, since I have all of this furniture I want to make, and we're constantly in and out of there when working on all our other house projects. And as you saw in my last house tour, it definitely needs some help in the organization department!

When I Own A House, I Want This To Be My Garage Door

I see a lot of interior design inspiration on blogs and in magazines. But for some reason, not a lot of garage door inspiration! I'm sure that's because garage doors are usually pretty boring.

But I'm in love with a particular wood garage door in my neighborhood, and I finally remembered to snap a photo of it.

It adds so much to the front of the house, and I'm especially smitten with the vines on the matching wood trellis above the door. If something like this will look good on a future house we own, I am totally going to steal the idea!

(To be less stalker-ish, I didn't photograph their whole house, just the garage, and I covered their address numbers.)

Have you ever stolen home inspiration from houses in your neighborhood?

P.S. Be sure to check back on Monday, I'm going to be doing another giveaway! All you cooks (or wanna be cooks) will definitely appreciate it.