Not exactly about the car but it's related!
Over the past year or so I've slowly been messing around with my garage, trying to tart it up a bit(/lot). The first thing I did way back when I first moved in was board out the loft space and stuff it full of insulation, then nothing much happened until spring last year. It used to be the office for the show homes so has boarded walls and skirts, and few power sockets jotted around. Here's a few pics from the thread which show how it was when I moved in.
Rough textured plaster walls with lots of flaking cream paint, a few big holes and lots of wall plugs. Dirty skirts and plug sockets.
Standard double door. Floor with a couple of small holes in.
I had all my shelving/workbench/fridge set up on the right hand side of the garage (as you walk in) with a few Fast Car posters and Top Gear calendar pictures stuck up to hide the wall a bit!
First thing I did was decide to paint the bare wooden door frame mounts on the roof white, after that I decided I might as well do the whole lot! I bought some cheap grey and white paint from B&Q and a few others bits I would need and started off by pulling all the wall plugs and anything else that shouldn't be stuck in the walls out. Next I tried to sand the walls completely flat...it took about an hour to do roughly 2 square foot. With that idea abandoned I continued with the sander and just gave them a "quick" going over, getting rid of the larger protruding bits of plaster. Holes were filled, skirts sanded and then I cracked on with the paint. I think it took about 4 coats of the grey on the walls before I was happy! The skirts were painted with satin white.
The roof needed a few holes filling and was given a couple of coats of white to freshen it up. The loft access hatch was also repainted. The board to cover it was hinged and a catch fitted so that it could be opened and held vertically, instead of having to slide it out of the way. I also ended up painting the metal frame that the door lifts into to match the walls/roof, although only on one side. So the other needs doing at some point!
Next I replaced all of the power socket/light fittings. Whilst doing this I tested a few which had been blanked off. 2 were at normal socket height and another at the height of a light switch, all of which had no power going to them. There is a junction/trip box in there containing a huge mess of wires which I could do with getting somebody to look at. Along with the unpowered bits inside the garage there are also 2 exterior lights on the side facing the main road (assuming they were lighting a sign up) and an external socket which have no power to them.
Setting up my speakers was next, these had been wall mounted prior to decorating although the wires were just hung down the walls and hidden behind things. They are a set of Creative 6.1 speakers which I think I got for Christmas when I was 15. I refitted them to the walls where they were originally, 3 on the back wall, 3 above the door, and the sub under the workbench. A few lengths of cable trunking and suitable connectors were bought and mounted around the top edges of the walls and the wiring hidden away. Nice and tidy!
I then decided that I wanted a few wall units for some extra storage space, I didn't bother getting doors for them although that may change in the future. With all of my shelving/workbench/fridge moved to the left hand side of the garage it allows me to reverse in nice and close to the wall on the right and easily get out of the driver's side, definitely an improvement over climbing out of the passenger door! So this is how it currently looks.
Some spare trunking was used to run wires to the laptop and I have wall mounted an individually switched 4 gang extension (with some bonus USB ports for charging my phone!). As the laptop wasn't able to get a very good wireless signal I bought a set of powerline adaptors to wire it up properly. It works great although I haven't figured out how to set the network up properly yet. It connects to my other computer fine on the wireless but nothing through the wired solution, although the internet works fine? Did ask my computer genius mate to check it sometime but it's not happened yet.
Models :top:, I think a Zonda R and a couple of GTRs are needed as well.
Deciding that I was bored of fumbling around in the dark to either enter or leave the garage at night I bought a motion sensing light and mounted it opposite to the smoke alarm on the ceiling. Great success! It's pretty good at bringing out swirls though!
Having noticed over winter that even with the heater still on, sitting in there (on the HGT seat screwed to a kitchen cabinet playing racing games) I really noticed how cold it was. The next thing on the list was to try and warm the place up!
The first thing to sort was the gap in between the metal frame and wood running above the door. Expanding foam sorted this...
Then I decided to sort the gap between the top of the door and the wood running along it. After trying to figure out the best way to seal it I found
The Garage Door Guru on eBay. The 90 degree seals they had for sale looked spot on for closing this gap so I bought one and got it fitted on the outside of the door at the start of the year.
Next I covered the inside of the door fully with some general purpose insulation rolls (the foil/bubble wrap stuff) and then filled the recesses with polystyrene insulatation. This is the result...
Also in the picture above is the second Garage Door Guru 90 degree door seal which I have fitted to the top edge of the door to seal against the wooden beam. I originally thought this would be best done with a 180 degree seal but changed my mind when I saw that they were roughly double the price of the 90 degree ones. :hmmmm2:
With plenty of leftover bits of insulation I have started to cover/fill the areas above the door, and will probably continue around the edges and onto the exposed brickwork.
As you may have spotted from the full door picture above there are still gaps where the sunlight, warm and cold air gets through which I plan to plug at some point! Also I want to get another 90 degree seal to be fitted onto the bottom of the door, replacing the crappy brushes which are fitted at the moment. It's much more comfortable in there on cold days and with the nice weather we have had recently I have definitely noticed it to be a lot cooler in there. Last year the heat would pass straight through the door and turn it into a furness!
So, future plans/ideas for the garage.
- Finish insulating/sealing around the door.
- Possibly cover the insulation and paint it to match the walls (already got some plaster style wallpaper).
- Insulate the back of the loft hatch cover.
- Paint the other door mount and electric box.
- Figure out what to do with the floor (holes need filling and then maybe put carpet tiles down or paint it).
- Fit a piece of missing skirting board (found some spare underneath the bath the other day!)
- Get some awesome pictures of the car framed/canvassed and hung on the walls. I've got an old advert for the HGT Abarth that came out of some magazine that could be framed and put up too.
- Make a sink area with standalone water heater?
- Do some more unnecessary stuff!
- Start paying attention to what needs doing to the house instead? :sleep:
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