A Gardener’s Garage Remodel

This month’s Creative Ideas Project with Lowe’s and Growing The Home Garden is all about organization!  By using a $100 gift card donated by Lowe’s I’ve redone a part of my garage to make it more useful for our whole family – not just the gardener!  I think the main problem people have with organization is that they don’t have placed to put things.  I know that is true with our family.  Just having a location for our stuff makes keeping organized a lot simpler.  This remodel has also created a place to store my gardening supplies which I really didn’t have before.  The project is not completely finished yet but let’s take a look at how it looks today!

The garage has always been a place of entry for our house.  We use it much more often than either the front or back doors and so its a natural fit for a bench to take off dirty shoes.  I suppose I’m the one with the most dirt and mud on his shoes on a regular basis. To help us here in the garage I built this bench.  I call it the one legged bench!  I’ll bet you can’t guess why…

…yep it only has one leg!  Creative name don’t you think?  This bench is a built in bench screwed into the wall studs on all the important corners.  It rests on the one leg where there is no stud to screw into.  I should have removed the children’s lawn chair before this picture so you could get a look at my leg.  As you can see I still have tools and stuff around the bench area since it isn’t completely finished yet.  I want to paint the bench then put up several coat hooks just underneath the shelf.  Under the bench itself will go three plastic containers to put our infrequently used shoes in to keep bugs and spiders from making homes in our footwear.

Another garage organization issue we had was finding a place for our bikes.  The bikes were sitting in the way of everything we needed to reach.  The kids toy area and my garden shelves were essentially blockaded and as a consequence stuff just ended up finding homes on the wrong side of the blockade.  I hung the bikes from four hooks that were screwed into two 2×4 pieces of lumber.  The 2x4s were screwed into three studs each for plenty of support. 

Before the garage remodel there was a set of shelves in the location where the bikes are now hung.  The shelves were moved to my garden supply area where I keep my potting soil, perlite, fertilizers and other gardening essentials. I keep the soil in large plastic containers and mix my own potting soil as I need it.  Before the shelves it was a pile of boxes.  Now its a neat and organized soil supply area!

I still have some work to do on this project but that’s what I was able to accomplish over the weekend!  Once I have the bench complete I’ll post a more detailed post in its construction.