My humble garage: Turning a mouse nest into something useful

First, an intro. I recently moved into a new place, previously occupied by my brother. He moved into a bigger place, and me moving here kinda worked perfectly for both of us. The best part, i'm moving from a 1 car garage to a 2 car. It's roughly 21' deep (little more) and almost 24' wide at the widest point. One of walls isn't straight, but you'll see the pics. High-ish ceiling, too! There's only one problem, this is the garage:

yeah, it's pretty messy. While moving and working full time (and dealing with 2 kids), my brother and sister in law were expecting a child. I say 'were expecting' because it's born now (hooray!). To relieve some of their stress, i said don't worry about cleaning up, just leave what you don't want and i'll get rid of it.

Some of this stuff is mine, like the compressor

And enough 3M sandpaper to strip an old, old wooden ship:

but a lot of these things were left behind (including the cat. his name is charlie and he's awesome):

It's also too bad i'm not a fan of beer:

The lighting situation isn't particularly great. the opener has 2 bulbs, one burned out, the other lame, and the 2 ceiling outlets had no bulbs. I found 2 in the mess and stuck them in (after finding a cooler to use as a ladder, also half buried in the garage):

One 75 watt incandescent, and a spotlight of some sort. Also discovered during daytime, the door doesn't really seal. like, at all:

I'll have to fix that at some point...

And that's basically where I start. all the stuff left behind means i can't start with an empty, fresh garage, but that's not a huge issue i suppose. Step one will have to be an inventory of all the stuff in here, and a quick cleanup. Step 2 will be plan building. I have big plans already. Big, big plans. As much as i LOVE getting ahead of my self, step 1 has to happen first. The problem is i work long hours, get home around dinner, spend family time with kid 1 and a pregnant SWMBO until kid 1 goes to bed, then have like an hour or 2 before i have to go to sleep for the next work day, so incremental progress is the name of the game here. So i have a filthy garage, not very much light, not very much time, no energy at all, my leg hurts, i can't feel part of my right hand, it's dark out and i'm wearing sunglasses. time to get cleaning!

I have no way to play music other than pandora on my phone (no wifi yet, wireless router still at old place), but i do have caffeinated motivation:

First off is a nice cabinet by the door. one of 3, these have fronts that swing open:

Well, nothing much in there. cleaning is easy! next up, i need floor space to put stuff. not like i need to re-clutter, but i need to stage stuff for organization. How about right under the cabinet:

First up for organization, that cooler i used as a step stool:

Why is it so heavy?

OH... Guess i'll put that in the beer area and get to it later... How about the stuff i know is going to get moved? Yeah, like that kid slide dealy... oh right, it takes up all the space, now i need more floor space...

By now i'm losing focus on the task at hand (organizing the junk) and get distracted by all the dirt and leaves, so i found a broom (elsewhere in the pile) and started sweeping. here's how that went:

1: sweep some stuff
2: drink mountain dew
3: sweep some more
4: go inside and 'release' some of the previous mountain dew.
5: go back outside, and realize i can't find the broom
6: look around, find another broom, but decide to look for the one I had before.
7: waste lots of time before realizing that WAS the broom i was using before.
8: Go back to step 1

While moving the beer to be with another grouping (flock? pack?) of beer, i discovered it's not all beer!:

That's right, 9 bottles of root beer! i love root beer! Screw you, empty can of mountain dew!

Hello, awesome mug!

Around this time it was bed time for me. here's the progress:

Night 1 is a success! That was monday night. I also worked tuesday through friday nights, but until today i didn't have a camera chip reader (i lose things. also i'm dumb. remember the broom?) so there is more coming but maybe not immediately as i have to upload and write up and stuff... I will probably post different days in different posts. I need to get this as clean as possible because in a few days we go back to new york, to return a week and a half later with literally every thing we own. This garage will be used as the staging area when the moving truck gets here, so it needs to be free of this crap first...

This ought to be good

I'm super impressed that you're still fertile after drinking all the mountain dews. My doc said those were the main reason my guys were swimming in circles...Anywho...Nice garage!

day 2! (last tuesday) Here is my starting point:

i did a little sweeping in the morning waiting to get picked up for work, and rode a bike home. Before moving in here we crashed at my parent's place, i still hadn't moved my bicycles. Anyhoo, onto progress.... also known as Menards!

The first blood (cash) drawn from my wallet. Lighting (for garage and house), and shelves for the garage. the hose and weed killer is for operation "chemical warfare" on the dandelion farm that is my yard. This operation is top secret and thus no photos were taken, but i hear our side is winning, though barely...

Here's a before shot of the garage door opener lights:

That's a single lame CFL. They will be replaced by 100w equivalent LED's. They are only 14w, which is nice, and as a bonus they are this bright:

Keep in mind the camera was trying to brighten up the before shot a lot, but didn't do jack with the after shot. The difference is AWESOME. Now for the other 2 lights, between last night and tonight, I replaced the spot light with one of these:

I was told by my uncle that it's a 400w light, that he used for this lovely contraption:

That's right, he had 2 of them (one broke while i was bringing it home ) that he taped to his head. two 400 watt incandescent lights. Why would he do such a thing? well, he was painting his garage (with that sweet compressor) and he needed to 'see what i'm doing'. I guess if you're going to light up a hat, you might as well light the absolute E36M3 out of it.

Anyways, the before photo with one of those looks like this:

and the after...

I know it's hard to see a difference with the camera trying to correct for light, but my eyes hurt now. And I like it. that incandescent light was huge, but the LED's are huge-r:

Well, now that i can see (until my eyes burn out) it's time to break open that shelf!

It's not expensive (under $50), it's big, it goes together quickly, and you get to use a hammer. Wins all around.

positioning it wasn't as fun, but it's going there for now. Time to load up the top shelf with a bunch of tools! First up...

The old paint gun that came with the air compressor! thank you awesome uncle! it looks all aluminum. I seem to remember a lot of small parts came with this... oh wait:

There they are. well, some of them. others slid down and you cant see them in the photo. This any of this still works? I'm not experienced with painting anyway, so even if it does work i can't use it. yet... next up...

Air powered straight line sander and random orbit sander, and enough sand paper and grinding disks to last me for a LONG time. All those boxes are full. Many of them have 100 sanding disks in them. all full. holy crap. it's mostly wood work type grits (he had some construction projects and a wooden garage door). Did I mention he worked at 3M? it shows, and i love it. They also fit nicely on a shelf:

Also i have some masking stuff:

A linear actuator out of a chair designed to help old people get up and down:

No idea what i'm going to do with that, but i'll find something for it to do...

Also, a new pressure gauge for the compressor:

Which is nice because the old one has a crack in it. it still works, but the face is cracked. I probably won't change it for the same reason he didn't. it works, but it's nice to have the extra on hand.

Any idea what this is from?:

Like, it's some kind of pump, but i don't know what kind exactly. Water? blood? beverages?

Also, and extra motor with no diagram, and some extra giant heavy pulleys for the compressor. wow these things are heavy:

Awesome uncle also sent along the most unbelievable heavy jointer i have ever seen:

This thing is cast freaking iron and i may need an ibuprofen smoothy after lifting this beast. My last act for tonight was to move some other wood working tools over by the jointer as a staging area until they are moved to a storage unit for future use, and moving the yard work stuff by the back door as a holding area until they are moved to the outhouse-sized plastic shed in the back yard:

And this concludes tuesday night!

I still have this to contend with for the rest of the week:

The cleanup fun is just getting started. i know there's gold in them there piles of crap! Metaphorical gold, obviously, though probably literal piles of crap. (spoiler, there's a reason i chose this thread title)

In reply to chandlerGTi:

Thanks! i hope so. This is the first garage i've had where i can fit any car i own inside and walk around it. only 2 at a time, obviously, but it will be nice to step out of an econoline instead of squeezing out of a 323 for a change. and to be able to do both in the same garage! what a concept! it's no grosh (tm) but it's basically giant to me.

In reply to Nick (LUCAS) Comstock:

And here I thought It was a good as a vasectomy! Oh well. Kid 1 is totally awesome, kid 2 will be awesome, too.

More progress! The day after tomorrow we are heading out to New York where i won't have my computer, so i'd like to catch the thread up before i leave and forget what all the pictures are of. yes, they are of junk in a garage, but i forget things. also i'm dumb.

I did a bit of organization during the day before the photos began:

That's right, i moved the majority of the beer that wasn't in the fridge into one spot on the floor. It cleared up a surprisingly large amount of floor space! Fun fact, today i found out a friend at church with a rocking S2000 enjoys a fine beer. Guess who has all this beer and doesn't like beer. Me, that's who. I see a perfect solution to both of our issues. More on that later...

Time to tackle this mess now and look for treasure:

First up on the treasure hunt, two brand new blades for the barely used miter saw! hooray!:

Next up, a new grill spatula and some wooden shims:

The metal shelves i got earlier are leaning a bit due to the non-level floor. I'm thinking either leave it because it's almost level and is sitting on solid concrete, or shim it a bit to lean back for no reason i can think of. Thoughts?

Holy Star Wars mugs! I think these belong to my nephews. I'll ask if they still want them. If not, i'm going to be drinking a storm trooper mug of Mountain Dew after these take a trip through the washer.

Next up...

Sidewalk chalk! I HAD to test it out a bit, it's like a law or something.

Before I knew it, the bench was clean!... underneath...

Underneath is probably the least interesting part of a work bench, but a good sweeping cleaned it up a bit. The top of the bench was by far the most productive:

Do you see what I see? That's right, fluorescent lights. One small fixture with 2 lights that didn't work, 2 new 4' bulbs, and one larger fixture...

That does work! I could light up this work bench or some other area with just stuff I find in piles! It's almost like if DIY network did a show where they fixed up a messy house using stuff found in the piles of crap! I can't think of anything more GRM than that. There's also a good amount of molding for the house, but that's probably going to live with the other molding in the basement. Lots of unfinished DIY projects in the house...

The middle shelf contained some stuff (mostly junk) but also a picture of a famous american:

I'm probably not going to hang this one on the wall. As much as i respect Franklin, especially his game with the ladies, i'm not a big enough fan to take up wall space with his image. Besides, if i'm going to hang a picture of a mythologized super-patriotic ultra-american, it's going to be this guy:

Also, i found 2 of these giant wall scrolls. for scale, those 2 bottles are 2 liter:

I don't have a chevy truck, and i don't want to take up wall space with advertisements. My brother might buy a truck soon, but the fact that he left these means he probably doen'st want them. Anybody here have a chevy truck? is tuna's GMC close enough?

And now i present.... a visible work surface!! on the shelf underneath i put the lights on the right, and some tools on the left, to be organized later.

Is that what i think it is?

It is indeed! proof that miata is the answer, even to "what badge should i put in my garage?" My brother had an NC very briefly, but is more a fan of giant trucks and mustangs. Still, i was happy to find it.

and that's Wednesday's progress. I still have the other half of the bench and a lot of more junk to get through. Just looking at the pictures makes my back hurt all over again, but there is light at the end of the tunnel! And if there isn't, there is enough beer here to make me think there is light!

oops..change the privacy settings on that last post. We can't see any except Ron.

In reply to Grtechguy:

Oops! It should be fixed now. Somehow, if only one photo was going to show up, i'm glad it was Ron.

Hey that's a great space to start with! A couple of quick ideas:

If you haven't noticed already, the pulse frequency of LED bulbs will mess with your garage door opener remote. I suggest going to an instant on fluorescent like the LimoStudio LMS 121 from Amazon. They put out a lot of light.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FJ1ITQ2/ref=s9_simh_gw_g60_i2_r?ie=UTF8&fpl=fresh&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=desktop-1&pf_rd_r=0WMPW0GSKNHW9BB7GM41&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2437869742&pf_rd_i=desktop

If you ever wish for a lift, the DanMar MaxJax was designed for standard height garages and doesn't have to be left in place.

http://www.maxjaxusa.com/

That's it for now - Good Luck!

Where are you located? I'm sure some GRMers would be willing to help dispose of that beer for ya!

Being that you're back in Wisconsin, getting others to help you clean up your garage should be easy with all of those microbrews.

I haven't noticed problems with the remotes, but I leave the lights off and the ones on the door opener are off unless something trips the motion sensor. I'll look into those fluorescents, though. I will need lots more lights before the house is done. One thing I noticed with the LEDs us that it messes with my eyes far more than the incandescent bulbs did. Do fluorescents flash like the LEDs?

That lift looks awesome, I'll have to keep that in mind. The ability to take it down is super tempting, but I'd have to come up with a good reason to justify $2k.

In reply to Enyar & Ross:

I'm in Janesville. A friend is coming to get some of the beer (s2000 man) but I already have the place cleaned up. He IS going to help unload the moving truck when I get back and hopefully show me how to mig weld when the projects shift from the garage itself to stuff IN the garage.

Ross, you're in Appleton? Small world, I went to Lawrence. I'm the one who bought the RX8 R3 that was at the Mazda place there for a while.

Also did the pics stop showin up again? They are no longer working on my phone.

More progress time! Thursday night, i think. here's an attempted panoramic shot of where the garage is at:

I rode another bike home from work today, so now both of my bikes are here. This basically ends the portion of cleanup that was easy and fun, and moves onto the portion where literally everything is sitting in mouse crap. See the bucket on the far right lower corner? Yeah, that's where i found the dead mouse. Progress basically goes as follows:

1: grab something, figure out what it is
2: realize it's covered in mouse crap and what i assume are little mouse urine stains
3: throw in garbage
4: sweep up mounds of mouse turds
5: repeat

I didn't take any pictures of mouse turds. Well, not on purpose, though they make a cameo appearance in basically every shot if you look hard enough.

First from the pile, some very useful looking buckets:

That's right, bright flat white paint! guess what color the peg board, and literally everything else, will be painted. Orange! Just kidding. To top it off, i think i'm seeing signs of painting equipment showing up:

And then...

I unearthed a tile cutter. What you don't see (and i haven't told you) is that the kitchen was getting a new backsplash. It's all in, and it looks nice. Well, not ALL in. All the tiles that don't need to be cut are in. also there's no grout. Guess what i'll be doing soon? yeah, kitchen projects.

Next followed lots of throwing out, sweeping mouse poop, discovering an entire mouse mansion (like a next, but HUGE) in the work bench, cleanup, shoving more crap into the pile, and viola!

Doesn't look half bad.

Just kidding. this pile keeps shrinking, but half of that is because i keep shoving it all closer together... Time to get digging some more:

Cooool! I actually like this poster dealy. i have 2 of them, btw. anyone want truck month posters? I'll check with my brother but he left them so he probably doesn't want them. His new Chevy truck might change things, though... It's worth asking him. Later. i'm cleaning now, so they get moved to an unspecified location...

I found another box. A heavy box. I opened it and found...

A new-in-box fluorescent light fixture! I now have 2 matching big ones, and new bulbs for this one. That makes 2 complete likely working light fixtures, and 2 sections of work bench with no lights above them. Hmmm... I think i know what i'm going to do with these. I'll have to reserve judgement because i don't know if i want these work benches to stay here. I might move/modify them. Either way, i'm keeping these lights, and they WILL be put somewhere at some point.

Does anyone need garage shoes?

Size 11, grass stained, and full of mouse crap. i think these were the mouse's summer residence. To the ever-filling garbage they go.

Is there any use for a giant floor fan like this in a garage? My parents have claimed ownership, but have not claimed the fan, and you know what they say about possession... It's only good until my parents come and take the fan. they know the garage code.

Hold the 'flaming log' jokes. I have lots of flaming logs, however...

These, as well as the wood featured earlier, were used by my brother in a wood burning fireplace. We likely wont use that fireplace. My parents can use the wood camping, so that's probably where this is all going. I don't exactly feel like putting a wood burning heater in the garage, but if i find one somewhere in the pile of crap maybe i'll reconsider.

More DIY stuff!

Remnants of projects long passed... or in progress when they decided to buy a new house and stick some chump with the finishing work! HA! what an idiot! oh wait... well, i like finishing work.

Ooo look, attack of the particle board!

Looks as solid as it was new, which is to say not very, but still, this is technically the only table we have here that we aren't borrowing until after the move.

Also, tarps!

Don't know what i'll use 2 tarps for, but these are solid and rip-free. I'm sure i'll find something for them to do at some point in life.

Time to class up the joint!

These shoes are not only green with grass stains, but horrifically uncomfortable. Garbage.

I also found a scrabble problem:

2 of every letter. My assumption is these were the remains of something that spelled out 'harley davidson' on a pickup truck. There's a complete "harley davidson" attached to out kitchen fridge. What can i spell with these letters? any suggestions?

Also, i keep finding super balls:

No idea why there are so many, but super balls are awesome and i'm keeping them.

For some reason, this:

reminded me of this:

Yeah, i'm not spraying my face with that crap. I mean, Imortan Valhalla is probably pretty awesome with all the supercharged everything, but I can't see myself worshiping a fat guy who can't keep track of a few women.

So anyway, back to the garage:

Here's some glass tile for the backsplash! I'll finish that later. maybe. someday.

And thus concludes that night of cleanup. The pile is getting ever smaller:

It's almost like i have a complete floor! I may have spilled the beans earlier but i'm done with clean up in real life, but digging through piles of crap is fun. If it wasn't, storage wars wouldn't have made it as a show!

as i'm posting this i'm T-minus 12 hours until we take off for new york. i'm way not looking forward to moving. like, way way not looking forward. As per suggestions by GRMers in an earlier thread, we will be getting a giant Penske truck, and anything that doens't fit will be set on fire in a celebratory way. I mean, thrown out or given away. The one thing that i'm bummed about is possibly leaving my RX8 there for now and only bringing back the GTX. That way i'd have a car out there to use if we have to make more trips during the selling process, and then i could drive it back. As awesome as a GTX road trip would be, i don't know if the AC works (never tried it) and i'm a little more confident nothing unexpected will break in the RX8, being much, MUCH newer and all...

OK i'm heading out really soon and i don't hvae time to post the rest of the cleanup. Maybe i will when i get back in like 2 weeks, but until then I made a Sketchup model of the garage:

It's not perfect, but it includes a compressor model i squished until it looked about the right size, and RX8 model i downloaded, and an Econoline model i downloaded (and lowered because it was a monster truck). If I did it right, you can download the model by searching for "GRM humble garage" in the 3d warehouse. I'm going to stare at this a bit and try to figure it out while i'm packing and moving. I'm not married to anything you see in the model, i wouldn't mind moving the bench, altering it, moving the shelves or fridge, etc... if you want to play with it post up what you think would work! i'm open to ideas.

I now realize i didn't include the shelf i got from menards... It's just 6' tall, 3' wide, and 18" deep. This is a pretty quick and dirty model for me, i think the shelves and fridge are components but the bench is not, so altering it may be fiddly and annoying. sorry about that, i usually take many hours building models, i just didn't have hours.

Hey mind pming pics of all the truck signs? Dad just bought a 2015 chevy z71 so he might like them.

Those are Silverado badges.

Well-done on the organizing so far.

In reply to Mad_Ratel:

I'll PM them when I get back next week. I have another large poster I haven't uploaded pics of yet, too. We're currently on the road to New York and it's raining. Oh joy. At least we found a place for food.

We're driving a borrowed fully loaded suburban, and I have to say it drives nice but there needs to be a "gimmicks off" switch. I never realized why people like all the adaptive vibrating everything on new vehicles, and now I'm convinced my hatred is just.

In reply to Powar:

Good call on the Silverado, don't know why I didn't think if that. Silverado pictures are literally staring me in the face everywhere. It's so obvious now. And thanks, the cleanup went pretty well, just wait until I catch up! A lot of stuff got removed over the weekend, too. Most of the beer is moved to storage or given to S2000 man who is totally on board to teach me welding, so that's beer well spent. I still have the fridge full, but the people who help me unload the truck when I get moved will need something to drink!

Watching with interest... My garage is currently a static disaster. And I will have to clean it out after I win that fancy flooring...

Hope this works, i'm on the road back to NY at a hotel for the night, but i uploaded the next day of photos to google before i left. mayyybe i can keep posting the backlog of stuff before i'm back and fill the garage with boxes of crap for unpacking.

I think we're up to Friday night? I don't know. It doesn't matter anyway, i posted them in the wrong order (i can't keep track of days. also, i'm dumb). i'll post what i have uploaded so far. Here's a quick list of swag i uncovered:

One assortment of alcoholic beverage drinking glasses, containing many days worth of mouse poop. Don't know if I even want to wash these and use them... maybe recycle. Except for the poop-free porsche mug and the iron wood cup, which i wouldn't fill with water anyway.

I don't follow college football, but i have these guys' autographs. Cool i guess.

Pin for a trailer hitch. I guess that's handy.

I found a notebook:

and wrote the first 2 things I need to get to maximize clean up time. Tunes, and WD-40. the WD40 is to stop the door from squeaking (SWMBO doens't like it).

Speaking of music...

Now if only I had any method of playing music other than my phone! I'll grab my stereo when I move. It has a CD changer and two, count 'em, two cassette decks. Yeah, it's pretty rad.

Behold!

Assorted magazine stack! My brother isn't much for GRM (gasp!) but he has many other car mags stole...er, salvaged from some dealership's maintenance waiting room.

I organized them...

into piles based on which car magazine they were. Non-car magazines were all thrown into a bucket of lava. I mean, recycling. They were not deemed worthy of photography.

Any idea what this is for?

It says charcoal companion on it, is it for sandwiches on a grill or something? It's definitely got a date with some evaporust or a wire wheel coming, that's for sure.

More DIY stuff!:

And now, a ball bag!

Or more accurately, a ball in a bag. don't know why it's here, but if there's one thing i got plenty of here, it's balls:

Hey, what's in this bag?

Oh, just some illegal fireworks.

Many things going on in this exquisitely terribly framed shot:

My brother's old ninja turtles lunch box (matching thermos inside), floormats for an F150 of unknown age, and what appears to be a retractable parcel shelf for ?????? any ideas?

Opened a shoe box expecting to find more uncomfortable mowing shoes, and instead found:

Weaponry! i can use it to defend my property! Ron would be proud. and of course I tested it, who do you think I am, some kind of eucalyptus loving pacifist?

Another bouncy ball and a filthy mop:

a somehow filthy-er mop:

And some kind of cool ancient coin!

Any coin experts out there? what's the value on a 1944 copper penny that was spray painted this gold color for some reason? a million bucks? two million? I looked it up, in good condition it's 15 cents, so this one is probably worth a whole penny.

I moved the ikea beds and found... more leaves!

See the particle board behind the poster there? well it appears to be covering something:

loooks like a window frame maybe. I'm told the owner before my brother covered up the window outside when he re-sided the house, i guess he phoned it in a bit more on the inside. It's a north facing window, so it's not like i lost a lot of light because of this.

2 dog cages:

Story time, for some reason they kept getting dogs. after a short time, they remembered why they can't have dogs (sister in law is allergic, one of the kids cant handle the barking, both work long hours and the dogs dont get trained...) and when they give the dogs away, they don't give away the cages for some reason. So here are 2 cages that i can't use. Oh well, off to the storage unit until i find someone who needs them.

What's this for?:

Some kind of squeegee?

Free oil!:

very old, but still usable. probably. my mower burns oil so fast it will be gone QUICK

I organized all the molding:

and BAM

I present to you, the very last corner of the garage swept clean. Yes, the place still has a bunch of junk in it, but now i know every single thing in here and I have a plan for all of it. Mostly to remove it, which has since happened, just no pics uploaded. So there, step 1 of the garage build thread is done. I now have an inventory and a plan for everything inside. Now the real fun begins...

I've never been more interested in someones' garage trash before. I must be befuddled.

Well the squeegee would be for the floor when you wash it. Makes drying a whole lot faster as well as getting rid of any puddles. I'd hang the bed from the rafters just incase the wife gets sour then you have a place to sleep.

Even facing north you would be pretty surprised how much light will come into the garage from it. I have one facing north as well and when I blocked it from the outside I was shocked how much darker it was inside.

Mouse poo and glasses = recycle for me unless you have a dishwasher that gets above 190 degree's to sanitize them.

I'm thinking of recycling simply because I don't need booze glasses and I don't hate anyone enough to give them poop in a cup. The squeegee is nice, but I assume it would work best on a non-pockmarked floor how does one fix that? Any fillers that work? Or just new concrete?

I know a couple guys that swear by self leveling epoxy. They use this stuff, but there are other companies making it as well.

watching with interest. In a couple months I'll be moving from something larger to something around this size, trying to come up with ways to maximize space and functionality.

Thanks for the reminder about sketchup, downloaded, going to play with that over the weekend for sure.