{"id":91,"date":"2006-12-04T01:22:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-04T05:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jwardell.com\/mini\/2006\/12\/04\/pimp-my-garage\/"},"modified":"2006-12-04T01:26:46","modified_gmt":"2006-12-04T05:26:46","slug":"pimp-my-garage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jwardell.com\/mini\/2006\/12\/04\/pimp-my-garage\/","title":{"rendered":"Pimp My Garage"},"content":{"rendered":"

This weekend I finished one of the many projects with my new home: upgrading my garage. The garage isn’t much more than a metal shack, and wasn’t very nice inside:<\/p>\n

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\nOnce the winter months arrived, I quickly realized that I could not get any work done on the MINI. It was already dark out when I got home from work, and of course the temperatures were dropping. I decided to make a few simple improvements to the garage to make it a better place to work on the car, and even wash it in the winter.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis first step was lighting and electrical:\n<\/p>\n

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\nRunning power to the garage would not be easy as it would mean destroying asphalt. Instead I made it an appliance…everything plugs in when needed to my house’s outside outlet via an extension cord. I installed two fluorescent light fixtures which really light things up, as well as an outlet on each side. There I can plug in any tools, additional clip-on lights, or a space heater in the winter months. (You may also notice some solar powered LED garden lights as well; I installed them when I first moved in, they provide just enough light to see your way in and out of the car at night)\n<\/p>\n

\nNext was some insulation:\n<\/p>\n

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\nThough the garage certainly keeps snow, rain, and wind away, it is still freezing inside, especially considering its walls are metal. I figured at least a small amount of insulation would help the plug-in space heater to keep temperatures inside more reasonable. After some research on price and ease of insulation (as well as what would fit in the MINI’s boot!), I settled on Reflectix<\/a> Double Bubble Foil insulation, basically a roll of bubble wrap with foil on the outside. A side benefit is it can handle getting wet if I wash the car. I simply rolled out the insulation and used binder clips to clip it to the vertical metal support beams. And I noticed the temperature get more comfortable inside as I was installing it!\n<\/p>\n

\nThe final step was the floor. My floor is uneven, and slopes toward the back, in fact heavy rain often seeps in a runs across it. The popular epoxy coating was not an option for me as it requires a perfect floor and a lot of labor or money. I then found out about Race Deck<\/a> Free-Flow tile, which is a snap-together plastic tile that is perforated so water flows through and underneath. However it was out of my budget when I called for a quote. After some extensive internet research, I found a very similar BigFoot Perforated<\/a> tile from Greg Smith Equipment at almost half the price, $1.89 per 1\/3-meter tile. Installation was simple, taking about an hour, and the added design really dresses things up!\n<\/p>\n

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\nA nice benefit for us New Engladers is melting snow will just drip through the tile and not create puddles to step in. Just in time for tomorrow’s forecast snow! I still have some pink styrofoam sheet insulation to glue up to the underside of the roof, but I’ve already accomplished the goal of making the garage a better place to work in. A big thanks goes out to all those contributing to the Detailing ideas for your garage<\/a> thread on NAM who helped discuss the details and have similar garage improvement stores and photos of their own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend I finished one of the many projects with my new home: upgrading my garage. The garage isn’t much more than a metal shack, and wasn’t very nice inside: Once the winter months arrived, I quickly realized that I could not get any work done on the MINI. It was already dark out when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jwardell.com\/mini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jwardell.com\/mini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jwardell.com\/mini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jwardell.com\/mini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jwardell.com\/mini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.jwardell.com\/mini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jwardell.com\/mini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jwardell.com\/mini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jwardell.com\/mini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}