In this post: Garages can get really messy, really quickly. Take a tour of our garage makeover to get some garage organization ideas for your own garage!
Whenever we’ve had a garage, it’s been Dean’s love and his nemesis. His tools and other favorite things are there, but they get messy so easily. For Father’s Day this year, we completed a garage makeover and came up with all sorts of garage organization ideas to share with you!
Table of Contents
The Garage Before
Just for reference here’s what our garage looked before. Take a moment to let all the ugly sink in…
Way too much stuff, brown and green walls and zero organization.
SCARY!
Garage Makeover & Garage Organization Ideas
So the idea was to lighten and brighten the whole garage so it was less dungeon like. We also needed to organize Dean’s tools so that future projects would be easier to work on.
Garage Organization Idea #1 – Get Some Storage Cabinets
The first thing we did to whip the garage in to shape was to choose a few Husky storage pieces from The Home Depot. Dean wanted hidden storage for unsightly things like random tools, car washing supplies, a wet saw, etc. Here’s specifically what worked for our space (there are other options if this combo doesn’t work in your space):
- Husky 2 Door Base Cabinet
- Husky 4 Drawer Base Cabinet
- Husky 48 Inch Floor Cabinet
These three pieces = loads of storage!
Once we had the large Husky pieces in the garage, it was obvious we needed to paint. Remember the aforementioned brown and green walls? Well they looked REALLY bad next to the nice shiny new cabinets!
So painting was added to our to-do list.
Garage Organization Idea #2 – Brighten the Space
Initially we thought we’d go with all white from floor to ceiling to brighten the space. But we quickly realized that white would scuff and look dirty and dingy very quickly. Instead we chose to use Behr’s paint and primer in one, Premium Plus Ultra in Bleached Linen for the upper drywall and Asphalt Gray for the wood and trim on the lower half of the walls. Perfect compromise.
We moved everything to the middle of the garage one very drizzly Saturday and worked our way around the walls painting. Dean painted up high and I painted the lower walls and trim. Home Made Lovely teamwork at its finest!
To lighten things up even further – there was previously only a single bare bulb for lighting – we chose customizable track lighting. We used this, this and 5 of these all in black. It’s actually a really fabulous system to use if your ceiling light box isn’t located in the ideal location or you need more light than a single fixture can provide (and an electrician isn’t in your budget).
Garage Organization Idea #3 – Install a Trackwall
After painting the walls and installing the new lighting, we began to install Husky Trackwall and hooks for things like yard tools and Dean’s smaller power tools.
Garage Organization Idea #4 – Add a Pegboard & Hooks
We also added classic pegboard between two runs of Trackwall to house and organize all the smaller tools.
As well as all the gardening paraphernalia that we were previously storing willy-nilly in the basement of all places.
Garage Organization Idea #5 – Move Up the Recycling & Ladders
The final piece of this project was to store all the bulky items vertically – like the recycling bins with these handy brackets made to fit perfectly.
And the ladders using a couple of utility brackets.
There are a few more things to do like build some sort of organizer for our leftover project wood scraps. But we’ll get to that.
Right now Dean is enjoying showing off his “new” Father’s Day garage to anyone who will look!