This is a follow-up to the posts on Cedar Planking our garage and Installing the Lack Shelves over the washer and dryer.

When we last showed y’all our garage a few months ago, it looked like this…

We had hung our old kitchen cabinets along the left side wall and started planking cedar over the unpainted drywall.

I continued planking the cedar and floating the drywall seams in the ceiling…

and Jamie installed the cabinet doors (including the Ikea Tyda handles that we would have used in the kitchen if they were available in other sizes) and painted the cabinets sparkling white…

Over the hottest of the Texas months, working a little at a time, we slowly got to this….

After a little more detail work we reached this point…

“Pure Coolness” in a garage, am I right?

We topped the cabinets the cheapest way that we could think of, with framing lumber. Total cost was about $12. This was the only way we could get a 14 inch deep counter that was 10 feet long. It’s not a super efficient workspace, but it is just the right size to drop paint cans and open tool boxes. Besides, there is a decent sized work table in the middle of the garage that is always covered in “assorted important stuff”.

Here are a couple of “steal-able” ideas to make a garage workspace a little more efficient.

Ikea, I know another plug for Ikea, sells knife magnets for the kitchen. Why not use them in the garage too? Now we have a perfect place to hang the things we usually have to rummage through several toolboxes, or drawers, to find. Needle nose pliers, sharp scissors, paint-can opener…..Yepp, right there. There is also no better way to dry paint brushes.

Tomato soup cans hung on the magnet strip are the perfect place to put pens, pencils, and paint brushes. They don’t really take up that much counter space, but they are just easier to find at eye-level. And yes, I choose the cans for the red color….and a slight nod to Andy Warhol.

We built open shelves to lengthen the counter top space because we only have about 7 feet of cabinets. Cool, red baskets wrangle extension cords, shop towels,  rubber gloves, and assorted electrical supplies. If we can see it, we can find it faster. The minute I saw those baskets I knew I’d find a home for them somewhere.

Our friend Jimmy was getting rid of these “C- Shaped” metal medicine cabinets. We have other plans for the bathrooms, but they work great here…..

All those little things have a home now. Upcycled salsa and baby food jars are unmatched for holding screws, nails, thumb-tacks, jingle bells…….pretty much anything. The baby food jars filled with metal fasteners always remind me of my grandfather’s tool shed. It was shaped like a red barn with an American eagle plaque over the doors.

I still need to get in there with a label maker, (Lord knows that I LOVE a label maker), but I’m pretty confident that everything is easy to find now.

There are more uses for plumbing pipe then just making shelf fixtures, firewood holders…..or for actual plumbing I suppose. Try strapping one across a wall with toggle bolts and using hooks to hang necessities.

We used kitchen pot hooks (from, you guessed it, Ikea) to hang all those odd-ball things. They are only about 1$ each.

Now that the garage is clean-ER, we can hang all those things that haven’t quite found a place in the house yet. Like this “longhorn-less” longhorn hanging over the old Coke machine. Wouldn’t y’all just expect there to be extra horns just laying in the streets of Dallas? Well, there aren’t. But someday I’ll find a replacement set for him.

We have barely even started planking the right side of the garage…but we do have a few more projects out here to show off.

I don’t want to ruin any surprises…but we found a few unexpected places for storage.

Just wait……