A Cluttered Garage Becomes a Real Family Room
We’d worked with this family before, so we knew the score – two high-pressure careers, two growing kids and two dogs. And we’d gotten a gander at their garage on our last round. It was doing double duty – wait, make that quadruple duty – as storage for skis, surfboards, fishing tackle and bikes, and all their accoutrement. The garage also subbed in as WFH office, tutoring space and laundry. This was not going well. The house was boxy, crammed up against a hill with no room for expansion. Although it seemed large enough when the kids were tiny, with two tweens and their pals in residence, not so much. The request: Could you take this dank, dark garage in which we have never parked a car, and make it feel like a real family room?
Wanted: A place for kids to hang out and have sleep-overs with friends. A TV room suitable for family bonding. A private, adult WFH “save our sanity” space, easily converted to afternoon tutoring sessions. A laundry area with an ironing board. Oh, and what to do with five surfboards, four bikes, four sets of skis and boots and four wetsuits, and boxes and boxes of books?
The demolition and first phase of rebuilding took place during a two-week period while the family was on vacation. My crews came in swinging – and we removed all existing cabinets (tiny, broken, useless), taking much of the structure down to the studs. Insulation was next – who wants to hang out in a freezing garage? The floor – broken concrete – was a problem, so we built a new one over it. The lighting was…very garage, so we brought in our electrician and improved it. We painted. We built a laundry closet and re-oriented the washer/dryer, so that it was in its own zone, while chanting our mantra…. “Make it feel like a real room…” We added a six-foot wide glass slider, banishing the grim garage feel. But…whoops – that slider needed a deck for an exit. Summon the carpenters.
FFD drew floorplans (so many), measured and remeasured and haunted the Ikea website and Ikea itself for a few weeks, until we were sure we’d maximized storage opportunities. A scary number of Ikea flatpacks were delivered, and our Chief of Ikea Assembly went to work. We assembled a bike shed outside, and added some nifty dedicated storage hardware from Store Your Board (yes, that exists) for the surfboards and we pretty much nailed it.
Our clients wanted to keep the decor simple, so we chose a beautiful synthetic (cleans up easily) area rug and a cozy sofa sleeper, a cool looking chair off Amazon and a coffee table. The TV fit perfectly (phew) and remarkably, all the gear found its allotted location.Even before we finished, the kids were having sleepovers, tutoring sessions had found a home with no distractions, parents had a daytime place to work and best of all, wetsuits and ski gear, fishing tackle and bike helmets were so accessible that they could decide on the sport de jour and get out the door in ten minutes.
Where we began!
Useless, tiny cabinets
Out with the old!
Insulation!
Bye, concrete — hello, LVP
Laundry Room bliss
When we wanted to convert our garage, on a budget, into a recreation and study space for our teenagers, we needed Cathryn – again. She’d already helped us remodel our kitchen,so we knew she could keep us on schedule, help us make decisions, stay within our budget, and schedule and manage a myriad of workers, from plumbers and electricians to carpenters, a demolition crew – you name it.
There were plenty of hurdles to overcome. We had drainage issues and a drastically uneven floor. The space was full of bikes, surfboards, ski gear for four and “storage,” i.e. things we didn’t have a place for or actually no longer needed. With Cathryn, we hired the help we needed for the installation of a new drainage system, leveled the floor, built a highly functional laundry zone and planned for all kinds of behind-doors organized storage. Oh – and it had to be light and airy and beautiful.
We could not be happier with the result. It’s a space that our family uses every single day. Our kids have a space to relax and be with their friends, we have storage galore that is organized, finally, and a laundry/work space for us to do our thing. Cathryn is always very responsive, detail oriented and empathetic. She knows what it means to manage the many requirements of a young family – because she’s done it herself. We are extremely thankful for all her help and plan to use her again for future projects!
— A.C.
Tons of storage
Even more storage
Voila! A new room!
And finally, a work-study area
