The past week and a half I’ve been emptying the garage to turn it into a true studio to work in.
This was prompted by a trip to Ikea.
I took a before picture:
And that led me to notice how awful the place looked… even not counting the mess of stuff everywhere.
I made my plans for the space and drew it out in Sketchup.
Of course we ended up buying different things than planned, so I drew it again. (The kayaks are in the back yard now but hopefully will be brought inside.)
Then somehow I decided maybe I should paint the garage. And maybe fix the floor too? Through some research I decided on epoxy paint for the floor. I ordered some Supercoat from Sam’s Club.
Now I had to get serious about emptying the place.
I freecycled some things right away and then put anything that I knew belonged in the garage into our den.
In just a few hours it looked like this:
I kept emptying the space and painted a couple of coats of primer on the never-ever-painted ceiling. Then the Ikea deliveries came:
I needed some help with the big stuff, so on Saturday Don helped me move the furniture and laser into the den and then we set about preparing the floor for the epoxy.
We swept, power washed, sanded, power washed and swept again and then put down the cleaner and degreaser that came with the Supercoat. It still looked awful, but it was smoother.
Sunday morning we applied the first coat. It was a bit sticky to apply but covered everything perfectly (I wish the primer had coated the ceiling that well!). The kit said it would cover 250 sqft and our garage is 345 sqft. I read online that it would cover more than it stated, but ordered two kits anyway. In the end it covered about 320 sqft and we made it stretch to get the last 25. Since it was applied so thin I decided to use the second kit to do another coat. After you mix the epoxy and color you have two hours to apply it, then you have to wait 12 before walking on it. I did the second coat on Monday morning.
I’m still amazed at how well it covered all the grease, rust, and who-knows-what-else stains from 20 years of use as a garage.
Tuesday we moved the laser back in so I could do some work and then put it back in the den to do the clear acrylic coat to keep it shiny.
Today is Wednesday and I wanted to give the floor more time to completely solidify before setting up furniture (it says 96 hours before you park a car on it). So I did another coat of primer on the ceiling. It’s still not perfect but it’s good enough for a garage. Then I painted two of the walls in a light cream color and the back wall in an accent color that looks like dijon mustard. It all goes well with the gray floor.
Tomorrow I need to get the laser back in and do some work, but I’m undecided on whether I’ll paint some baseboard trim or just build furniture.
But that’s to be expected unless it’s Apple doing the voice recognition programming.
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