This past year for David's birthday, I had a huge surprise for him. He was still commuting to Connecticut during the week, and I managed to convince him to stay up there for one of the weekends (normally, either he would come home or I would go up there). As soon as he left the Sunday night of the weekend before he was staying up there, I immediately went into our mess of a garage and moved everything into the basement. During the week, our friend Thomas came and patched up the ceiling where the plumbers had taken down the sheet rock to re-plumb the house. He patched that up, and I washed down walls and swept the floor area.
That weekend, I had a painting party at the house with some of our good friends. We painted the garage walls and ceiling white, and I painted the back wall of the little nook red (D's favorite color). I had gotten him a nice Husky tool chest...his parents and I got wheels for his car, and his mom got him a carbon fiber bumper. So, once the garage had been cleaned out and painted, I set all of those things out for him.
The following weekend, I managed to keep him out of the garage by telling him I was working on a craft in there that was too big to bring inside, and he couldn't peek (at the last minute, I remembered to tape up the garage door windows!). We had a nice birthday dinner out with friends, and everyone came back to the house for cake & ice cream. Then, everyone crowded in the garage and I let him loose. He was so surprised! He loved his new toys and was so excited and thankful for the paint job (we had been planning on doing it for a while, but were both dreading having to get it done).
The next day, we painted the garage floor. We had to scrub the floor super clean, fill in any cracks, and then roll paint on the floor in sections. We then threw down paint chips in the sections. It is awesome.
My only complaint about it is that because the concrete is sealed, when we park wet cars in there, the floor puddles up (doesn't just soak into the concrete). So in some spots where the floor is uneven (where the tires from our cars have worn down the floor), there are puddles for a couple of days. Of course, the painted floor has certainly come in handy. When we had to repair David's car recently, any oil and coolant spills that landed on the floor were very easily wiped up.
After the paint had cured for about a week, we moved everything back into the garage. We anchored shelving units to the walls, bought plastic tubs for storing various things (painting supplies, baking supplies, canning stuff, beer brewing stuff), hung hooks for our bikes and lawn chairs, and hung up a tool storage thing that our friends JJ and Wayne got for us. And, of course, moved David's drafting table and tool chest into place in the nook. Next on our list: painting and hanging up cabinets in the nook that we got for super cheap at the Habitat Re-Store. And maybe trying to keep tools organized!
