Moving out of Michigan means I’ve had to say goodbye to my dirt-cheap rental house with a two-car garage, and welcome a one-bedroom apartment that costs over twice as much and has absolutely no wrenching space (there is a two-car tandem parking spot in a parking garage, but wrenching is strictly forbidden). This means all the crap I had in my garage (and there was lots) is going to have to go into a single office. Here, let me show you, and if you don’t mind, I’d love to see your setup, too.
The garage at my house (The House of Misfit Jeeps) on Rochester Road in Troy, Michigan was a legendary wrenching spot. Many rusty Jeeps went from zero to hero in that enclosed, oil-filled icebox; it’s where I pulled my first engine, it’s where I learned to weld, it’s where I shot one of my favorite video series (David Dissects), and it’s where I became an expert on dealing with rusty fasteners.
The real reason why it’s so legendary is that it’s always been a bit of a shitstorm. I mean, look at this place!:
That’s an engine hoist on the left; on the far side of it is a Jeep 4.0 inline-six. There’s a radiator on the right, a bunch of seats from Jeep XJs and ZJs there in the center, the rear section of a Jeep J10 cab, poles for a portable garage there in teh corner, a welder on the floor, and on and on. The place was a nightmare, which is why it took me a while to turn it into this:
Anyway, more on that later. What you need to know for now is that I have to fit all the tools and parts that I had in that garage into this space:
Yes, I did manage to sell/part with some of the stuff shown in that initial picture, but then there are also things that I need to store in this officer that aren’t in that photo — a dozen 31-inch tires, for example. I have no idea how I’m going to pull this off.
I’d love some ideas on garage storage solutions, so please show us in the comments!
I know, I know, our comments don’t allow images (yet!), so if you could, tweet or Instagram a photo of your garage setup. Tag @the_autopian on Twitter or @theautopian on Instagram, and paste the link to your post in the comments section.
I always love seeing garage setups, whether big or small, as they sometimes help me get ideas on how to best optimize my space. And they’re just cool to look at.
I live in a rental with street parking, so I don’t even have my uninsured project anywhere near me. A friend of mine and die hard VW family-member has a large farm just out of town, with space split pretty evenly between crops and classic VWs in.. various conditions. The family is super generous, and volunteered to store my Mk1 Rabbit Pickup for free, so any work I do on it is usually in an old greenhouse, with their dog Nicki acting as project supervisor
https://twitter.com/OccasionalLarry/status/1626268600079351808?t=geMVM3mfkSjdBAmoIBc2CQ&s=19
The contents of my three-car garage, left to right: horse tack/stuff, boxes of random papers/comix/crap, stacked firewood, table saw, six motorcycles, a few tons of hay.
I’ll have a workspace once I get around to paring down the motorcycle fleet and boxes of crap one of these [counts on fingers] …decades.
David – I ended io engaging a pro for free… call The Container Store and they’ll come design a layout for you without having to buy from them if you don’t want to. Thwy come to your place, measure, discuss your needs and build a plan/render of the space!
Happy to email you a pic of how my garage looks like, but I don’t use twitter or IG (I know I know). Also, it’s quite small at 8ft wide so my car can barely get and doors couldn’t open in there.
Nothing too exotic in my garage. It is a nice oversized 2-car with an additional nook just big enough for my motorcycle. Unfortunately, strollers and other kids’ junk takes up my side. I did gain a ton of space with a couple overhead racks from fleximount(?). They are 4X8 and pretty well built. If my garage ceiling was a little higher and I had more space above my garage door when it is up, I’d have a couple more..
Oooooooooooooof. So, welcome to Hell, and by Hell, I mean life in a place where garages are expensive and hard to find. There’s a reason why I’ve just kind of sprinkled hoopties throughout central Texas throughout the years and called it good.
Most of my spares collection is in portable tubs. This makes it easy to load and unload for race weekends. Look, I am *prepared* for Heroic Fix if I can just find the damn parts when the time comes. My main tools are in a portable box, too—everything’s portable because race cars. Plural. The dang things keep finding me.
Two cars now live at the same friend’s house along with some of their larger spares, one car lives in my carport at home. The other big spares are in the shed that’s attached to my carport. I have spare wheels and tires in there, plus in the kitchen (which I really should move under the way, and also in the living room (under glass, as a table). Current Friend Keeping My Cars has a lift, which is great. Also, he can drive them whenever, hence the continued push to get the 944 operational again. Stashing totally dead cars all over is not cool.
Previously, I’ve stored these same two hoopties at a friend’s rallycross track, a different friend’s house, a rented parking space under a different apartment building a few blocks away, and at a carport at Harris Hill. I had a storage unit near Harris Hill for a while for all the spares and other crap, but eventually all of those ended up back in my living room at home. I seem to keep ending up with L-shaped living room/dining room combos, and that bend in the L accumulates Porsche parts. The worst part of that was the fact that my last apartment was an upstairs unit, and it took two people to get a 944 transaxle up and down the stairs when I had to move. My current places is a single-story duplex half, though, and the temptation to rebuild an engine in the bend is real. If the landlord asks, it’s metal Legos.
This is a lot of hooptie juggling, and it’s not ideal, not going to lie. I desperately need more money for like, a frickin’ barn or garage or something. My current duplex-half is cool and I don’t want to move from it, but a separate Casa de Turdbox further out where turdbox storage is cheaper would be the dream, man. Too bad dreams only exist to get crushed by reality in the cruelest possible fashion, hope is dead, and optimism is nothing more than pure delusion.
Again: welcome to Hell.
*”(which I should really move out of the way)” for the tires in the kitchen. The other two that match the set that’s in use as a living room side table has just kinda been chillin’ there until I either find a second circular glass top or give up and move them to the shed, adn it’s annoying. Instead of doing either of those things, I’ve set another box I didn’t have time to deal with on top and it’s just kinda stayed there in the path next to the center island.
No Garage Hell is an inescapable fate.
Extra points for “Casa de Turdbox,” my house will be forever known a such.
The Shed that Project Cactus was built in has changed a little since we came back from Deni.
One huge clean-up, more shelves and bringing my horde of parts over has resulted in this: https://www.instagram.com/p/CoteNeUhwk9/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
The area on the other side of the dividing wall has some industrial shelving I was lucky to buy from a local automotive parts store that was renovating, and is completely loaded to the gills with labelled plastic tubs full of parts.
I found a bunch of parts we could have used on Cactus, like the three original manual brake pedal rubbers that we couldn’t find back then. I’m keeping the cut-down automatic pedal rubber on Cactus as it fits the build too well!
I wish I could show a pic of my 3 car garage, it was wonderful once, however now it is full of boxes of my life. One slot has a Vulcan 2000 that doesn’t run that my now wife raises hell about (plus a bike jack stand, an air compressor, and all my rolling tool boxes), and the other two slots are full of boxes holding pretty close to everything I owned inside the house that my now wife made me move out to make room for all her stuff, which of course can’t be in the garage. Of course! Do I argue? Do I want another divorce? You decide but I took the safe path, as I’ve been married enough to know I will lose in the end one way or the other.
It’s lined with cabinets on all sides (full of the wife’s stuff now), and was a fantastic work space; with heaters, windows for light, and two work benches. Even an exhaust fan. Maybe one day I can use it again, I hate the vehicles sitting in the driveway, but until I literally go through all my own junk (nothing is junk! I’ve got vinyl out there worth more than a car) and clean out, well, you live this way. Domestic harmony is more important than the space.
David, all I want to know is, do you have to live in the immediate LA vicinity? You could get a nice place north of there that would be so much more affordable and give you space to do your thing. Driving into LA metro area is never fun, but if it’s only a couple times a week or month, it’s manageable. Remote work is a wonderful thing.
I feel you on this, my wife and are still in that stage of merging our lives and belongings together. Fortunately we’ve already sorted through most of the house stuff, and the garage is entirely useable for vehicles, although it’s fairly disorganized for work yet. I’ve got a post awaiting moderation now where I go into it more, I’ll probably link a couple pics below it once it’s up.
I am not too sure remote works if you are one of the bosses.
I’m a bit envious of all y’all who have fully weather-sealed garages with flat, untracked floors. I rent another complete 2 1/2 car garage a couple of miles from home for two of my old cars and about 3/4 of my misc. car crap – spare SR20DE, hoist, bins of parts for the various cars, extra sets of wheels, etc. etc. I have half of my garage at home for one car and it’s old, cramped and rickety, like a lot of old Chicago garages.
A good, sturdy workbench with room for tire storage is a necessity.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/4u1wFrci4Bv3H87J9
Some drawers for storage are quite helpful, as are the pull-out boards to give a little bit of extra work space when needed
https://photos.app.goo.gl/oUG5EBRKheAYEYdeA
Lots of good lighting helps, and use all the space available. I actually built a lot space up there above the garage door tracks with an elevator platform on pulleys to get heavy or bulky things up there, then built down from the underside of that platform to store extra roofing, raw materials, yard tools etc.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/2womSf1H1wmvNSf99
Lots of cabinet reuse, more tires on the ceiling
https://photos.app.goo.gl/5Kn8MkHcrjD87jWYA
And trying to use as much wall space as possible for bikes to keep them off the floor over the winter when one of the projects lives in the garage too, plus the other “responsible homeowner” stuff like a lawnmower, snow shovels etc
https://photos.app.goo.gl/162ZHWws9hgrpiuTA
Hopefully those photos work
Second the comment on good lighting. I know it’s not storage-related, but it’s importance cannot be overstated.
Here it is in all it’s glory:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CotHtxFo4JE/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
The one workbench is full of brand new microfiber and I am awaiting a rolling tool cart I ordered to be my new detail cart where they all will go. Normally that’s the clean workbench and the other one is absolutely crowded.
The fantastic thing about this garage that has spoiled me is there is three feet of extra depth compared to a standard two car garage. It also helps that the two vehicles in there are of the shorter variety.
Looking forward to ideas. I do have a double garage. A VX on the side with the door. On the other a bench, riding mower, push mower, rototiller, snow blower. and assorted tools so pretty full. So i am doing the only reasonable thing. I am picking up a 1978 Fiat 124 Spider needing lots of work. I am pretty sure this crew is the only group who would agree it is the only answer.
It looks like quite a transformation of your old place! I’ll see if I can locate a picture of my new garage, although I’m currently in full swing with a renovation/upgrade, finally getting electrical run so I can get some sheetrock over the exposed insulation, hopefully decreasing the chance I burn the place down while welding/grinding and doing other flame and spark related tasks.
As for storage solutions I know there are several heavy duty overhead storage racks available which could be helpful, although probably not in an office! I’m kind of in a similar boat looking to innovate storage. Although I have a sizable 3 car space to work with now, I’m downsizing from what amounted to a large 5 car space with many shop amenities like parts washer, blast cabinet, engine hoist, air compressor etc.
My other dilemma; among all this work on the garage I’ve had two project car opportunities present themselves and I’m having a hard time not pulling the trigger on one before I have space to work on it. Not to reveal too much but both are nearly 70 year old sedans in pretty rough shape but desirable if fixed up, one arguably should be fully restored, the other would give some leeway to play around a bit. Both of them would be challenging, and just enough out of my comfort zone to be a fun learning opportunity.
My kingdom for an edit button! Sorry for the mess that post is, I clearly did something funky with the paragraph breaks.
Here’s a pic of my garage from a few months back, it’s much more cluttered now with the work going on but it’s got some decent storage built in already which will be utilized in some form when the renovations are done.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1inyxxOSHikDUk25_YLNzyXzwvQpueo_f
First link had problems, we’ll try one more time
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j8D2KaEs82Ri9DyBaydFl7YmAtvIWAvh/view?usp=drivesdk
My garage is a f’ing mess.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CotAvjLOZ2N/
Hey, at least I have a lathe…
Did I mention I keep it in a trailer?
I think nearly anytime there is an engine on a stand, any garage starts to trend more towards mess than clean.
That explains a lot. I’ve got one automotive engine on a stand near-permanently, and half a dozen outboards on stands.
Glad to hear you made it to California! 🙂
One recommendation is to purchase large pieces of vinyl flooring to prevent stains on the carpet and other surfaces – including countertops, if you think they will become workbenches. Do it now, while everything is still clean. I picked up a roughly 10′ x 18′ vinyl remnant at Home Depot for very little money; it was mostly rectangular so I put the crooked end against the far wall of the main workshop and parked a motorcycle on it.
It has stood up to dropped tools and parts and to spilled oil: I just keep some wipes or Simple Green and shop rags handy. I realize you are expense-averse, but think of it in comparison to your security deposit. 🙂
I don’t believe those cabinets will be robust enough for parts storage. Can you move them elsewhere in the apartment or are they attached to the wall?
Vinyl flooring is an excellent idea.
It looks like it can fit. I’d recommend stacking the tires floor to ceiling in a back corner, and then putting the engine in the far back, to start. This will help maximize the floorspace available for items that cannot be stacked.
My garage is the opposite of David’s. Everything is very well organized, labeled, and clean. I am not sure how else to do this without being able to post pictures directly into the comments, but here are 2 pics.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EmT7a87WOASQplLPPTGBqG-RjL1VcKY-?usp=sharing
2 cars on rollers, built in shelves with totes full of parts and family storage. Built in work-bench with storage for all of my power tools in the cabinets and more parts storage. All of my specialty tools are stored on the workbench and I have a stand up tool box to house all my hand tools. Fridge, gas heater, TV, Sega Genesis, big assed stereo. If I added a toilet I would probably never go in the house…
and you can find me on IG with the same user name.
Come on edit button!!!
I don’t have Twitter and my Instagram is private, so I’ll use my words. I have an attached two car garage. Thankfully, it’s extra deep and extra wide (24 x 24) with very high ceilings compared to what you find in a typical tract home. It’s big enough that my two enthusiast cars (2005 Wrangler and 1997 Buick Riviera) and foldable stand-up Harbor Freight utility trailer can comfortably fit year-round while still having room to move around, work and store things. The modern DD econobox lives outside, but that’s ok.
The entire right wall of the garage has sturdy, triple decker built in wood shelving that’s absolutely vital to staying organized and keep things off the floor. I also have two workbenches, one equipped with a vise and both surrounded by peg boards and hooks to store tools and little odds and ends. Speaking of tools, I’m now up to TWO chest toolboxes that make it easier than over to organize wrenches, sockets and anything else. I also have plenty of hooks on the trusses/rafters to store things like my bike and Kayak above. Again, keeping clutter off the work bench and off the floor is key.
As far as aesthetics and comfort go, it’s not too bad. I have a portable Kerosene Heater I can run if things get unbearably cold. There’s two full sized windows that can be opened for ventilation and provide natural light in warmer weather. I just replaced the dingy fluorescent light fixtures with two new LEDs (now it’s almost TOO bright), and I hope to have the floor professionally sealed with Epoxy this spring. I’m not a hardcore wrencher at all, but I’m proud of my little setup and it more than suits my needs.
Good luck, DT – looking forward to seeing how you make this work!
I don’t have a recent photo of the interior of my garage and I’m not a positive role model for the proper use of space anyway, so instead I’ll go in an unrelated direction:
I’m taking off tomorrow morning for this weekend’s 24 Hours of Lemons race at Thunderhill. If anyone else will be there, please feel free to say hi. I’ll be in an orange staff t-shirt, mostly trying to ride herd on various things. The secret password is Prioraiiusesodes, pronounced “Prioraiiusesodes.”
Come to think of it, I do have a photo available of the garage from about nine years ago, when I was moving in, just before I put way too much stuff in it. Mostly it looks like a featureless void with a couple of windows and some random contents. This will be of no help to David whatsoever:
https://live.staticflickr.com/7560/15716476087_8f5d6a84f9_c.jpg
I’m so sorry. As soon as you said, “..a dozen 31 inch tires,” my internal circuit breaker tripped.
Um… Isn’t one of your business partners president of one of the largest car dealers and restoration shops in the world? Seems like Beau could find the Autopian a little space if you promised not to, uh, how to say this, you know, do what you did to your last place….
I think that picture David posted if where it has to fit *is* The Autopian office. It looks more office than “office that is actually in my apartment.”
Save yourself the anguish – rent a space. For now, just a storage spot to dump all of the cr*p. Later, look into a wrenching space once you’ve gotten a better handle on stuff there.
This. Some kind of storage unit or something.
This is a great idea…I’m looking forward to seeing what people have.
I’m less helpful here…I live in an apartment building with a garage that’s a parking garage. So my repair garage comprises a large rolling tote box, multiple tool bags/rolls, the trunk of my Focus, and a mechanic’s tool box that takes up a fair amount of my hall coat closet (but still with enough room for some coats).
Good luck! No witticisms whatsoever.
I have no garage setup because I live in a multi-generational home with a bunch of clean freaks that share various amounts of DNA with me.
What I have is a plastic tool box in the back of my jeep, a couple of Rhino ramps, a socket set, and a few rubbermaid plastic bins with various bits of stuff and odd tools. And there’s a spare tire in my shed.
Where there is a will, there is a way. But this seems impossible. Please give us an after picture when it’s all done.