Although the weather was still really good – September had turned out to be a real Indian summer – we had been discussIng how warm the garage would be in December. With the doors shut it was easy to see the light coming through the large gaps round them. Any warmth we might be able to generate from heaters would undoubtedly be sucked straight through them to the cold outdoors. Continue reading Preparation #10 →

TudorEv had come over for the weekend and was really impressed with the transformation that had taken place in the garage. Continue reading Preparation #9 →

Last night Jan and I put the third and final coat of FloorShield down. We only did the exposed areas of the floor as these would get the highest level of traffic. Continue reading Final Floor Work →

This weekend I put the finishing touches to the bar stools although miscalculated the number of screws I needed for the mending plates. Cue another trip to B & Q.  An early morning trip to the tip with yet more rubbish including all the cardboard packaging from the IKEA stuff and whiteboard. Continue reading Preparation #8 →

The first weekend where I had two whole days to focus on the workshop. Also some help in the form of my sister, who provided an invaluable extra pair of hands. We managed to complete everything that had been on my target list. The workbench was installed and promptly came immediately into use. Continue reading Preparation #7 →

This week I have really been seeing see how the space might work, I also turned my mind to how I was going to install a workbench and plus somewhere for reading the manual, internet searches and the all important tea making! Although there were some amazing benches from the likes of Draper or Machine Mart, the budget was only so big, so I settled on some IKEA Besta units and a length of kitchen worktop for the workbench. The tea making bar would be made from melamine faced chipboard to match the IKEA units. Having bought the requisite bits during the week, the weekend was spent finalising how they would all fit together and starting to fix them in place.

Another weekend with only limited time for working on the garage. Saturday was a trip to Brands Hatch for the British GT qualifying plus a few other jobs to do on Sunday. I managed to reorganise the ladders and bikes on the wall, but decided to get some better quality hooks to replace the random rusty nails that many of them hang from. I also decided to fill all of the smaller cracks in the floor on this first painted half. I had originally only done the more sizeable ones, but was much more diligent on the second half, and it really paid dividends.

I had a week off work last week and we got stuck into a series of jobs round the house. At one point we seemed to have every room with some job started it it, and by the Thursday we decided we had to concentrate on finishing what we’d started, rather than beginning yet more projects. By Sunday we had most things completed, so today was all about the garage. At least the floor had had a good seven days to harden completely.

I spent a fair while working out the best way to reconstruct the shelving. My plan was to try and accommodate all the previous garage contents into one half of the storage area, leaving the other half for the numerous boxes of parts which would arrive with the kit. After a good deal of reorganisation, plus some ruthless decisions to consign certain stuff to the tip, I managed to achieve my goal. The garage was really beginning to resemble what I had hoped for. The floor looked great and had elicited envious looks from certain of the neighbours.

I collected a new tin of floor paint on Tuesday and managed to finish the final small area of the first coat. It made such a difference to be able to see the whole floor done. We were going away at the weekend, but not leaving until Saturday lunchtime, so there was time to put a second coat on before leaving. I thinned the paint by 10% with white spirit which took a long time get thoroughly mixed in. It didn’t help that every potential stirring implement I had was circular in section; square things stir much better apparently.

The new strip light tubes also arrived this week. I couldn’t get any more brightness (wattage) without changing the complete light unit, so decided to try new tubes as the existing ones had been in for over ten years. I ordered the new ones in “cool white” rather than the traditional, warmer shade. Once they had warmed up, or should that be cooled down? They were definitely brighter, especially with the freshly painted white ceiling.