I have a one car garage that I spend a lot of time in, and I figured I should invest some time and money in to making it nice to use.

Lights

One of the first things I did was install 6x Barrina 4ft LED lights, I did this shortly after moving in, it only cost $50 or so, and the lights are so bright. I paired it with a Amazon Smart Plug on the same outlet as my garage door opener, so I can turn on my garage lights by saying “Alexa, garage lights on”. I also set a schedule that Alexa turns them off every day at 10PM.

Organization

I have 4 jack stands which always take up floor room, so I bought a pair of jack stand wall mounts to keep all 4 of them off the ground. You can see the jack stand holder in this picture to the left of my cabinet, and also how unorganized the garage used to be.

I also bought a power tool organizer to hold my growing number of Ryobi tools.

My tool box is pretty great, it was like $100 on Facebook Marketplace many years ago. I have it labelled, which helps finding stuff, but I also bought this set of tool box organizer inserts to keep it better organized. This way I have my metric separated from imperial sockets, flathead separated from phillips screwdrivers, all my assorted hardware is better organized by type, etc. This set was big enough to organize 2-3 tool boxes, so you can share leftovers with your friends and family.

I also bought this new garage storage cabinet, which holds everything I need and looks good. I wanted to get a nicer Husky cabinet, but they were $500 and the sales when they drop to $250 only lasted for a few hours and I could never catch them, so I settled for this one for $140 and I’m happy with it.

And of course, one of the best things you can do to organize your garage and car stuff is to build a shed and put all your non-car stuff in it.

Floor

My inside A/C unit is located in the garage, and the A/C drain line ran all the way across the floor and out that side of the house. I didn’t like seeing that PVC running across my garage floor, so I re-routed the drain line to run parallel to the wall that the A/C is already on. I had to drill a big hole through concrete to run the drain outside, and it drain into a planter on my front porch. I was able to re-use my Safe-T switch, so the only cost for this was about $10 in PVC. I made sure to do this before my floors were coated so that the install would look super clean.

Before - drain line running across the floor

After - drain line runs along the wall

The biggest expense, by far, was the floor. I hired GarageExperts of Brevard to install a new flooring, and I compared 4 different companies. Not only was GarageExperts the cheapest, but I liked their process the best, or tied for the best. Weirdly, the most expensive company only used epoxy. Apparently, epoxy is not as durable as polyaspartic, so since I work on cars in my garage, I need polyaspartic. Epoxy can also yellow over time. The process GarageExperts followed, and a few of the other quotes I had, was to sand and grind the whole garage floor down, fill in any divots, paint the floor in epoxy, throw tons of flake on, wait a bit, knock any excess flake that didn’t stick off, and do a final top coat of polyaspartic. The result was wonderful and the cost was $2,000 for my 378 square foot garage, minus the A/C and cabinet (quoted for 324 sqft). I was quoted $2,000, $2,300, $3,200 and $3,300 for my floors. So it definitely paid off to get multiple quotes. I almost decided not to do my floors when I got my first quote of $3,300, and I’m glad I kept looking.

Garage floor before

Garage floor after

Once the floor was done, I had to wait a few days to move everything back in, but once I did I tried to optimize my storage, especially around my washer/dryer area. I was able to shove them even further into the corner and get a few extra inches in my garage by redoing the washer drain!

Final Things

I found a metal junction box with live power in it that wasn’t being used, so I wired that into 4 outlets, then bought an electronic drum set to use there. I also brought some old rugs from my wife’s massage business, Mimosa Tree Massage, and used those as drum and “laundry room” rugs.

A few things I did once we purchased the house were to put a tennis ball hanging from the ceiling, so I never pulled too far forward, and to put pool noodles on the walls, so that the doors don’t hit the concrete walls. Total cost for those was $0.

I put an extra Alexa in the garage, and hooked up the audio output to some Edifier speakers I’ve had for a while, so I can jam out while I’m working on the cars.

And the final thing I did was to install a rubber threshold seal, and only needed 9 feet due to being a 1 car garage. This involved measuring, marking, caulking, then letting it sit for a day to cure. This step is DEFINITELY needed - I thought I could go without it once my floors were redone, but the first week after completion, it rained. The rain hit my garage door, then ran under the door, and I found a pretty big puddle in the morning. This threshold keeps any water from making it under the door and prevents that issue.

So that’s how I turned my little garage into a great new workspace that looks much better.