Garage Makeover - The Shoe Bench

As part of the garage makeover, we want to have simple, functional, yet elegant solution to our shoe storage, at the same time, serving as a bench for taking on/off bulky shoes in winter. As you may know, we only have a narrow space left after cars parked inside the garage, the dimension of the bench will be important for us.

It is hard to imagine that a simple bench can cost $100, not to mention they are either too bulky or too simple for show storage. And apparently we don't have the skills to build one to our specification, we have to keep looking.

Luckily, there is an IKEA store closeby, even though it may not be QH's favoriate store. I did some research on catelog and IKEA's web site before going to the store. I nailed our choice to three:

1. KANTRA, Bench: $79.00
   
2. LEKSVIK, Shoe rack: $69.00
   
3. OTTENBY, Bench: $99.00
   

Our final choice is LEKSVIK! It is not easy decision, it took us two trips to the IKEA store! This may not be our perfect selection, but we can work with it. The only problem I have is the color, it is too mark and it doesn't match our color scheme in the garage at all. I plan to spray paint it in the near future. Watch out for my future posting.

Garage Makeover - The Water Heater Curtain

Everything is started from this curtain panel. The original goal is to buy something to cover the ugly water heater. The size of the opening is 39 by 79, the regular window cover such as blinds or rollers can't fit in here and the custom-sized blind would be a over-kill for this situation.

How about hanging curtain panel here? Doesn't it involve sewing? No, I'm a dummy when it comes to sewing, my sewing machine went to early retirement since it hadn't been touched in the past four years. We found these curtain panels at IKEA for $30, I only need one panel while it is sold in pairs. But the best thing about it is that it doesn't need sewing. The iron-on tape is provided to fix the border after I cut the length to size. We bought the simplest rod at Home Depot, hanging it is piece of cake.

But what can I do with rest of fabric? Only 1/3 of fabric is used, the rest will not be wasted, I promised QH.

Garage Makeover - The Shelves

I think I can be a really good project manager. I planned the shelf structures on the computer, wrote down a list of things we need to buy, had an estimate for buying from home depot or the container store, even had the budget approved by QH. Everything was planned during the week, when the weekend came, we were ready to go shopping.

No matter how prepared you are, things just happen. The design was changed during the construction because of the availablity of the studs in the wall. It also took us three trips to the home depot to get everything we need. Even though we ran into some bumps on our way, but in the end, we made it!

Here are some pictures from the construction. No picture was taken, the images below are captured from video.



The shelves are put into use quickly.

Garage Makeover - The Wall

This is our first home improvement project, it doesn't cost much, but it was a lot of labor. It took two persons, two weekends and a few trips to the home depot to get the job done. Of course, we learned a lot of lessons after this experience.

It is hard to imagine how ugly the unfinished wall is, and it is hard to imagine we have lived here for six years. After painting the wall, it looks much bigger and brighter, all the effort is well worth it.