If heaven were a garage, it would be ours!
Thanks to custom garages for helping to make it so!
We had a minor change originally planned for our dingy, dark and very unorganized hodgepodge garage, I mean, who cares about a garage right?? (Well, we do.. now!)
It all started with replacing the 12 year old water heater.. then we thought, well, let's go tankless, going tankless meant we had to put electrical hookup outside and while we were at it, why not have some garage lights put in? (we always hated that single bulb for a two car garage that faces north!) Oh! And let's add a couple outlets. Then all of a sudden we realized in the chaos of our garage, where would we put them? And when we can see the mess and horribly stained concrete floor (with the new lights), well, let's do the floors. That's when we found organization heaven (I mean, custom garages). We came across them looking up epoxy floors, I was completely tempted looking at all their Yelp clients with these gorgeously clean garages showing only smooth cabinets, slat walls and NOTHING on those amazing floors (I mean, this is HGTV drool!!). All of a sudden we were renting a pod and demoing wire shelves.
The owner and staff of custom garages were wonderful to work with, they gave us ideas for designs, suggestions on where to place the chaos and worked with what was needed for our life and stuff.
We ended up modifying their design a bit to incorporate a small workspace, and one of those neat "Costco storage" bookshelf things where you can reach in to grab surplus paper towels. It turned out AHH-MAZING! Needless to say, I'm a big fan and now hang out in our garage on the regular. My kids and I sit on the floors of this garage and do projects, my workouts are surrounded by cabinet serenity and all is well. I had no idea a garage could be so transformative but even a trip to the beach became a delight when I knew right where everything was from the beach chairs, luggage and sand buckets! Thanks Gary, Carrie, James and the whole team at custom garages!
Helpful tips:
Bins:
we had every size and shape bin imaginable before. But when I took measurements of our new cabinets I went on the hunt for a bin that would fit the new cabinets well enough that would utilize the most space on the inside - with two depths of cabinets to work with (yikes!) - 24" depth and 17" depth.
In comes the incredible ezy bin at target - these bins fit both sizes perfectly! the pictures speak for themselves (you can thank me later):
https://www.target.com/p/ezy-storage-52-8qt-ip67-waterproof-storage-box/-/A-81967134
Cabinet hardware:
Custom garages offers hardware but I saw another yelper who had these gorgeous oversized handles and "in for a penny, in for a pound", I asked him about his handles and after no reply, I went on the hunt! I found these awesome handles on wayfair from hickory hardware. We got 18", 12" and 6.5" length handles with recommendations on size per door from custom garages. They look so good! https://www.wayfair.com/home-improvement/pdp/hickory-hardware-skylight-collection-kitchen-cabinet-handles-drawer-pulls-bathroom-hardware18-in-center-to-center-ymf10625.html
Side note on the shelves and getting things that were not complete the final day of the project:
1. we had a damaged shelf that they noticed and took back to replace
2. We had a missing door
3. We had 2 missing shelves
Custom garages mentioned they would have to come back by to fix these, they said next week but it ended up a couple weeks - we didn't mind and they are a small company, they have jobs in different areas and they aren't always near each other.
Either way, they really took care of everything and they delay gave us time to figure out what extra shelves we needed and they helped put in some hardware that hadn't arrived before the install. Really amazing service and these guys weee so great to work with. 10/10! read more