Ten Years – My Garage

I lived with our garage with no insulation and no electricity for four years until I managed to save up enough money and motivation to tackle it alone in 2019. It started with moving the electric out from the barn to the side of the building. (I hired that out.) Than I ran the electrical throughout the garage before moving on to insulation. The electrical was no big deal, this was literally a stick building so that was a breeze. The fiberglass insulation though (combined with a 90 degree day) left me on FIRE. I can look back and laugh about it now, the blog post I wrote about it was pretty hilarious, but my gosh what I did to myself that day was just horrible. It actually made me sick!

There was a small building here when I purchased the home that my grandpa had basically abandoned years before. It was leaning significantly and the roof was gonzo.

It had big rolling doors on the front of it but neither was wide enough for a car so it was more of a machine shed than anything else. (So mad that the only pics I have of it are when it was almost gone.)

After I tore it down this was the only place to put a garage that made any sense at all.

I opted for BIG when I ordered it from Menards. I wanted plenty of space around the cars but even more I wanted a much deeper garage than the average.

With its dimensions I technically ordered a three car garage. We can practically put our Hondas on one side if we park them bumper to bumper.

I grew up spoiled with a three car garage at my childhood home and living in northern Minnesota means I really really really never want to have to park my car outside in the winter.

It was due to winter that finally gave me the push to run electrical and insulate this building properly. I had to jump my old Toyota Corolla twice one winter even though it was in the garage. Without insulation the building still didn’t provide enough protection with the severe cold that year.

I ran an extension cord from the house so I could plug my car in after that but the situation had me all levels of crabby.

On top of that, opening the garage doors in the winter by hand was also really difficult.

After one particularly bad winter storm I had to use a crow bar to carefully pry one door open enough so I could get my hands under it.

Just what you want to be doing when you’re late for work!

I also added a side door too and that had been desperately needed for years as well.

Since then Lodi joining my life has changed things out here pretty dramatically. We needed a true third car garage so we added an addition a few years ago plus a HUGE apron across the front.

The last updates on my end were when I moved the work bench and all of the cabinets to the back wall plus I added a lumber rack for my materials. Most of my workshop finally come out of the house then and stored great out here.

You might be able to see where I’m going with this. I need an actual workshop where I can build and refinish furniture and this garage is slowly (finally) evolving into that for me.

My next project out here is building a second work bench along the left wall with a lowered section in the center of the bench for my miter saw.

For the first time I won’t have to get my miter saw “out” to use it – I can finally just use it!

That will mean finally parting with my two garage sofas but they’ve really put in their time.

We plan on building a rack in one of the corners too for our air compressor. How nice would it be to easily blow off our cars, the cement pad, or to fill up tires. We have the air compressor its silly that we haven’t been using it!

The two walls of the new addition and the ceilings throughout remain uninsulated so we would like to, some day, spray foam all of it. But that’s more dreaming than anything else.

I know Lodi would love to get a decent source of heat out here which is just silly if we don’t properly finish insulating the building!