Your Garage: Not Just For Cars Anymore
Jennifer and Jason Johnson of Garage Innovations shared tips for turning your garage into the ultimate hang-out space.
Do you see many garages that are used at least some of the time for a hang-out space for homeowners?
Garages have become an extension of the home. They’re not just for parking cars. We see more and more garages being used for hobbies, a make-shift game room, or a designated workout area.
If someone wants to get organized or convert their garage to a multi-purpose room, what’s a good first step?
Start with a clean slate. Remove everything from your garage. We suggest using the popular “three pile” system. The first pile is the items you want to keep. The second is for the items you want to sell, give away, or donate. The third pile is items you want to trash. The first pile is the only pile that gets to come back into your garage. It’s helpful to organize the ‘keep’ pile. Separate it into categories – for example, lawn equipment or supplies, cleaning products, tools, keepsakes, labeled totes, pool equipment or supplies.
Do you custom design the cabinetry configuration for each garage?
Yes, when we meet with potential customers at their home for their
free consultation we take all the measurements we need to prepare a computerized 3D drawing of their garage so they have a visual of what their finished garage will look like with the storage systems we propose. Determining dimensions of parked vehicles and how much room they require for opening car doors is important. These questions help determine where would be the best placement for the storage solutions.
What are the different types of flooring used in garages?
The Terra Chip epoxy flooring is the most popular and what we apply for customers most often. Grey seems to be trending in new construction and remodels, but a wide variety of other colors are available. Epoxy is a great flooring option because it is easy to keep clean and it doesn’t stain like concrete does. Epoxy flooring cleans up with just a water hose. Another popular flooring option is interlocking floor tiles.
What are the most popular cabinet styles and finishes?
The most popular cabinets we sell and manufacture are the Melamine Cabinets. These cabinets have a laminate coating that protects the high- density wood structures against moisture and allows for easy cleaning. Melamine Cabinets are custom made and come in a variety of depths, widths, heights and color choices. These cabinets are permanently hung on the wall off the floor 6-8” for easier cleaning of your garage. Metal cabinets are also a popular choice. We offer styles from several different manufacturers.
What about slatwall systems?
Slatwall has become very popular and is a great solution for getting items that may be too big for cabinets off the garage floor onto the wall for easy access, flexibility and space efficiency.
What types of organization systems do you offer?
It varies depending on the customer’s wants or needs. Some only want suggestions and prefer to do it themselves, but others take advantage of us doing the organizing for them by placing their ‘keep’ pile items in the cabinets once we have installed them or hanging their items on the slatwall we have installed on their wall for them. We offer a wide variety of slatwall accessories to hang their items on and most of them can be seen on display in our showroom along with our cabinet and flooring options.
For more information visit www.mycustomgarage.com
