I don’t talk too much about our garage because, as with most basement storage type areas, there’s no way to get them looking “my kinda perfect” – i.e. color on the walls, pillows and lamps atop vintage consoles, etc. But we are making a few improvements just to make it more organized and functional as a space. I didn’t talk about it here on the blog, but one thing John did a couple months ago that made a pretty big impact was paint the once-gray concrete walls a bright white. It helped make the space feel more open and definitely cleaner overall (you can see the original color of the walls above the shelving unit on the far left of the photo below where he stopped).
While the walls were feeling much better, and dare I say a little stylish in their bright white garb, the floor area needed a little TLC. The main point of contention lay in our bike collection. The three sets of wheels we call ours were cluttering up the side of the garage in a big bad way. Two out of the three don’t even have kick stands, so they were LITERALLY leaning on one another in a heap of rubber and metal, making it quite a hassle to access the seasonal storage in that nook to the left.
We had been talking about hanging the bikes from the ceiling for ages – See below for a tall shot of all that wasted ceiling space to the side of the garage door mechanics. It was just one of those things we kept putting off because (1) we don’t own a tall enough ladder, and (2) because of sheer laziness. But my needing to break into those boxed up Christmas decorations lit the fire under my bum, and I called in the troops to get this to-do list item checked off once and for all.
My father-in-law graciously offered to come by with his ladder one recent Saturday, so I hopped over to the hardware store for six heavy duty, rubber-coated hooks meant to hang bikes (I bought six so that we had one per wheel on our three bikes). At less than $2 each, I was kicking myself for not having done the project a looooong time ago.
Once John’s dad arrived with his ladder (and a stud finder), we got to work. He found the stud to make sure the hook would hold the weight of the bike, and then using a power drill made a hole for the screw part of the hook to twist into. Remember how I had initially planned on hanging the bikes by BOTH wheels? Well we hung the first hook closest to the storage unit on the left and put the bike up to test the strength. The strength was a-okay, but we kind of LIKED it hanging there by the one hook. First of all, it was a little less work to just hang three hooks instead of six, and second of all, even with the bike hanging down a little more than anticipated, the space savings was significant! We decided to go for it and hung each bike from just one hook.
The biggest improvement is being able to access that storage nook without having to wheel three big bikes out of the way. Now, I have more than enough room to get boxes out and go through them on the ground nearby. I can breathe easy.
Now, about ORGANZING said storage nook…That’s another day.
As is life, this beautiful scene below has been altered a bit in the last day or two. I went down to the basement JUST this morning to take the trash out and found that John had purchased and put together a brand new Black Friday work bench. The only place to put it was on the same wall as the bikes. To make room, he took one of the bikes down (the far right one) and looped the back wheel of the middle bike onto the far right now-empty hook. I guess we’ll be using those extra hooks afterall to hang the displaced bike high enough above the new workbench. Ahhhh, life…
At least it looked like this for a LITTLE while.
No matter what, I’m just pleased as punch to have a way to get these speed demons up off the floor and OUT. OF. THE. WAY. Hooray!
Have a great weekend!
