Repairing Our 150 Year Old Garage (An Update) – We Have Walls Again!

I shouldn’t be so excited about this, it’s just a garage and I don’t even like to drive or know what my own car looks like in a full parking lot (it’s called “car blindness,” and yes, I have gotten in many similar cars that aren’t mine). But as someone who owns probably 19 hammers and can’t find one, I’m desperate to have a real project space to organize my life and transform my personality (LOL). We all have our strengths, and clearly this isn’t mine. So we are updating our garages, investing heavily in making them functional and safe, due to their “100-year-old falling-down-dumpiness”. Today I finally have an update for you – real progress!! As a reminder, here is what they looked like the first year we lived here until we redid the gravel (we used re-grind versus asphalt for all those who are curious).

There are four openings – three “garages” likely done in the last 80 years, what seems to be the carriage house (the two smaller doors that open) and then the random door on the far left was the sheep’s barn. They were ROUGH inside. Let me show you.

So we kept putting them off, getting quotes near or well over $200K to redo them. Y’all, this construction inflation is a real thing right now, and we just couldn’t do it. We put it off for years, but with product lines coming out and us wanting to start DIY’ing the other house on the property for really fun blog and YouTube content, we needed to clear out all the props from there and store them safely. In short, we really really need proper storage for the business, so instead of investing heavily in storage units, we are building them. We finally hired my brother’s company, Afore Construction, because the ease of working with him offsets the stress of what will end up still being a hefty investment. He gets what I like to splurge on (here, almost nothing) and what I’m willing to go super builder grade on (in this case, everything???), and most importantly, he was aligned with repairing versus a full demo/rebuild. He and his business partner, Nick, were willing to work with what was good about the existing structure (the posts were strong, the pretty ceilings were actually in good condition, and some of the foundation was salvageable). We updated it (A LOT), without changing much about the structure.

But first, two summers ago, we had a really inexpensive painter give it a coat of white paint (you can see the regrind here, clearly in fall) to just make it look less depressing while we figured out the next step.

Here’s Where We Are Today…

YAY! As a reminder, we are designing these for our use – personal storage, holiday storage, project space, and most importantly, prop storage, while also thinking about any future owner who might want that coveted “four-car garage”. Again, I want to be very clear, we have zero intention of selling or moving until kids are well past college, but this structure is SUCH an investment that we are thinking short-term use and long-term flexibility. They will look like garages from the front, but inside will be a new version of me – the organized, “put everything away where it belongs” Emily Henderson. I’m so excited to meet her.

At one point, we were going to do two large garage doors instead of four smaller ones, but decided to work with the original posts/engineering and keep the four openings (two slightly larger to get larger cars in). I also think this will look the most charming. What I didn’t predict is that most people actually enter the property through our back entrance near here, so while these aren’t street-facing garages, they get far more attention than we originally thought they would (like WAY more than our front porch, which essentially is a box graveyard). Afore (my brother’s company) poured new foundation, re-sided the whole thing (using Hardie siding), repaired the framing to be safe and sturdy, re-roofed (adding insulation on top of the pretty ceiling), and did some very basic electrical. Very few bells and whistles in here, folks (all of that will be added with the storage and styling).

OOF. We ended up getting rid of all the totally broken windows to save money (instead of replacing them) and to allow for more wall space for storage. This is the first project where I haven’t sacrificed function for natural light (although I thought hard about skylights). I just want simple walls, and instead, put glass in the garage doors.

They had to demo out the flooring and pour a whole new cement foundation. They salvaged what framing they could, scissoring together some beams and clearly replacing what was rotten.

YAH GIRL. They convinced me that cladding the walls with pine would not be that much more expensive than Sheetrock, and would allow for a sturdier structure for hanging anything. The outlets were placed high enough to clear any future counter space (I haven’t laid it out yet, just made that call).

I was originally going to paint the wood, but now I’m considering staining or just doing a clear coat in here. I need to design them all (cabinetry, staining or painting the flooring, lighting, etc). Which is FINALLY the fun part.

We have a pedestrian door on the side of the “prop” garage, and we’ll likely have more lights than just the one you see. Lots of decisions I need to make asap.

The new foundation looks GREAT, and now I’m wondering if we should stain or paint it – even just a blue or green tone, not any sort of fun pattern this time. But something that makes it feel a bit more designed and fun.

That there is Brian’s sad future carport for his vintage truck (his mid-life crisis mobile that he tracked down for his 40th birthday because it’s what he owned in high school). This will eventually get a simple, cheap roof (you won’t be able to see it as it slants back) and we’ll put regrind on the floor in there (a gravel that is made out of recycled asphalt that we have around the rest of the property). This will not have a garage door, mostly for cost/budget purposes. We will also likely put our trash cans in here, and if we ever need to do a super messy DIY (like with a big spray gun or a lot of fumes), we would likely do it out here.

For the garage doors, I’ve hired a local company, Ponderosa Garage Doors, to install them (after a lot of research, they came HIGHLY recommended and I’ve been so pleased with their customer service thus far). They recommended Clopay garage doors to me and I found a style that I really love (that I can even customize the color of), so I reached out to see if featuring could swing a discount. More to come on that, but they would look like this:

These look like carriage doors, but they still are automated up and down. Of course, choosing the paint color is my next job – it feels like a good opportunity to paint a color that makes this whole area of the property feel happy and “designed”. For lighting above each garage door, we chose more of the Carson copper sconces that we have on our house. So classic and pretty.

They are hoping to install the doors in a few weeks, so I need to get on designing or choosing all the cabinetry/shelving inside. One of my favorite quotes is “Without systems, there is chaos,” so this is my opportunity to create systems that are so easy to stick to. Hoping to have a designated “hammer” drawer by the end of the summer Read More