Chris Marshall - eHow-Garage Improvements

First and foremost, a garage is a sheltered building where you can park your vehicles safely. But it can be much more than that, and it often is. A garage may also serve as an organized and climate-controlled workspace to pursue hobbies or as a utility shed for storing gardening and snow-removal equipment. It may be a workshop, a walk-in sports locker, or an overflow storage area. How can one room do it all? Truth be told, having a versatile, hard-working, well-organized garage is a very tall orderbut with practical projects and the right approach it can definitely be done.

You can finish those bare stud walls and outfit them with pegboard, shelving, and wall tracks to maximize every available inch of storage space. Maybe your dull, damp garage floor could use a facelift. painting and floor-covering options will give you stunning results in less than a weekends time. Now is the perfect time to begin tackling that improvement project. Doing it yourselfand doing it rightis easier than you think.

TIP: Pegboard systems are classic storage solutions for garages and other utility areas. Outfitted with a variety of hangers, they offer flexibility and convenience when used to store hand tools and other small shop items.

Garages tend to be catch-all spaces for anything and everything that doesnt quite fit in the house. Old boxes of mementos or bags of sporting equipment, collections of stuff intended for that next yard sale, a dorm rooms contents home for summer, the broken-down lawn mower that never quite made it to the curb... the possibilities are virtually endless. We simply have stuff to spare, and once the basement or attic reaches its fill, the garage is the next logical spot for overflow. All thats really required to manage your mess is a bit of planning and organization. Even if you are among those rare folks who can keep the disorder down to a dull roar naturally, making storage and workspace improvements to your garage can help you free up space to use in other ways, such as pursuing a garage-based hobby.

TIP: Your garage can be the picture of neatness and function with the right combination of storage systems. No matter what you need to organize your space, theres a project or product option that can help get the job done.

Whatever your garage demands are, the first step in organizing it is evaluating exactly what you need to store. Do you have tools and equipment that should be hung up or can they lay flat? Maybe those boxes in the corner are light enough to store on a shelf or even place on a rack that hangs from the ceiling. Cans, odd-shaped containers, small power tools, and the like will stow well in cabinets, while the really small stuff might fit best in a series of drawers. Does your inventory of necessary chemicals and compounds include hazardous or flammable material with special storage needs? Take stock of your stuff, reducing or recycling what you really dont need, then youll be ready to come up with a garage storage plan that works.

Generally, no single storage solution will do the whole job. So try to compartmentalize areas of your garage for certain kinds of storage, and keep your options open for how best to use the wall, floor, and ceiling space. Two or three different options could provide the ideal system for your garage.

Whether or not to install finished interior walls on your garage is mostly a matter of preference. The only time wall surfaces are required is when your garage shares a wall with your house (an attached garage) or if one of the walls in your detached garage runs parallel to the house and is constructed within 3 feet of the house. In both cases only the shared or closest walls need to be finished to block the spreading of fire. Typically, a wall covering of 1/2"-thick (minimum) drywall with taped seams is required. Some circumstances may demand that you install fire-rated, Type X drywall or a double layer of drywall. The seams between drywall panels on fireblocking walls must be finished with tape embedded in joint compound or with adhesive-backed fireblocking tape.

If the area above the garage is occupied by a habitable room, the garage walls should be covered with 1/2" drywall to provide rigidity and structure, and the ceiling should be finished with 5/8"-thick Type X drywall. Ceiling seams should be covered with tape and compound. Fastener heads do not need to be covered with compound except for visual reasons. If your goal is to create a garage with walls that are finished to interior standards or serve to prevent fire spreading, then drywall is an excellent wall covering. Although the price and availability of diverse building materials fluctuates rather dramatically, drywall is typically one of the more economical choices. But because drywall is relatively susceptible to damage from impact (for example, from tools or bicycles) and doesnt withstand exposure to moisture well, many homeowners choose other wall coverings for their garage. Exterior siding panels are thick enough to hold fasteners and withstand moisture well but are relatively costly, and most have a rougher texture that some find bothersome on interior spaces. Interior paneling has only minimal structural value and some styles are fairly inexpensive, but it may be more visually pleasing to you.

Plywood and oriented strand board (OSB) are popular products for garage walls. Thicker panels (1/2 to 3/4" thick) give excellent rigidity to the walls and are suitable for holding some fasteners. They can be left unfinished, clear-coated for protection with polyurethane finish (or comparable), or you may choose to paint them. A lighter colored wall paint in semigloss or gloss is a good choice. Sheet goods that have a pleasing color or woodgrain may be finished with either a clear coating or a protective deck/siding stain. Lauan plywood underlayment, for example, has a natural mahogany color that can be pleasing when treated with a reddish exterior stain or clear coat. It is also inexpensive but it is thin (1/4" on average) and can only support very light-duty fasteners with little load, such as a stickpin holding a wall calendar.

Brad nails

Circular saw

Coarse drywall screws

Drill

Drywall finishing tools

Drywall saw

Drywall screws

Drywall tape

Dust mask

Faced fiberglass insulation

Fire rated drywall, 1/2" and 5/8"

Jigsaw

Joint compound

Screen strips or T-molding

Sheathing

Staple gun

Straight edge

Utility knife

Use faced fiberglass insulation batts to insulate your garage walls. Staple the backing tabs to the wall studs, driving a staple every 8 to 10". The tabs should be perfectly flat against the studs to block air movement. Do not compress the insulation.

Work around obstacles in the wall cavities. For wiring cables and conduit, split the batts by separating them into two layers. Tuck the unfaced layer behind the cable or conduit and then install the faced layer over both.

Fit the batts around electrical boxes by cutting the insulation with scissors, not by stuffing it. Tuck a small piece of the insulation behind the box if theres room.