Garage — Part 10 (the inside)

It's been four months since my last post.  Sigh.  My old goal was to do two posts per month, so obviously slow going.  I've been doing a lot of work, but finishing off the inside of the garage was a lot of the same thing, so not conducive to several installments.  And there is still the matter of the high-maintenance puppies—now eight months old—interfering with remodeling time.

When last I reported, I was waiting for a delivery of drywall.  So this post will cover putting up drywall, joint compound, window trim, painting, and cabinets.  At the same time I added one of the sheets of drywall to finish off the back-side of the garage wall, in the adjacent work room.  I ended up finishing off that room, which will be a separate post (also written today).

As I reviewed my photos for this project, I found I had few of hanging drywall and applying joint compound (and sanding).  Likewise painting all that.  I've had previous posts going into more detail on those mundane chores, so for this post, there will be just a few photos (and few words).  Most will be about the workbench cabinet I built to house tools (14 drawers), and provide a benchtop for miter saw, dovetail jig, vise, etc.

The house remodel has been something of a musical chair evolution, with my stuff being shuffled around from room to room, waiting until everything finds its permanent place (or sold or trashed).  So, clear out a room (moving everything someplace else), remodel the room, and then find space for the stuff inhabiting the next room.

So the "beauty shots" of the garage will have to wait until it gets its new floor and drawers made for the new cabinets.  Otherwise, there will be clutter.

On with the show.

Drywall starts to go up.  You can see what had been a closet in the back room, that space now reclaimed for the garage.  On the upper right, I've screwed a sheet of 5/8" plywood to the wall where solar system/battery storage electrics will be attached later this year—there will be a post for that.

In the next photo, the west wall has been covered with drywall and painted.  There are three pairs of large dowels inserted into the wall (into holes drilled into two 4x4s used in lieu of 2x4s when that wall was framed as part of the bedroom expansion—wall moved 21" into old garage space).  My three ladders will be hung on the dowels.

On the right side of the above photo, there is a recess in the new garage extension.  I built shelves in this space, with a drawer unit.  Drawer slides were installed before this drawer unit was assembled; drawers not yet built.  This:

I also installed the drawer slides in the six-foot wide workbench cabinet for the garage, while it was still in pieces.  It's very difficult to install the slides after the cabinet has been put together (something learned the hard way), and accuracy also suffers.  If you install the slides while the cabinet is still in pieces, everything can be open and flat on a workbench.

The base for the cabinet was made from 2x6s cut down to a 5" width.  Construction lumber often is of variable width, depending on how dry it was when cut, and how dry it is when you get it.  Make sure all pieces are uniformly dry, or each piece could end up a different width after a couple of months, after shrinkage—with poor results.

This is the cabinet carcass assembled, without the top and front trim.

Trim on the front plywood edges is just 3/4" x 3/4" pine, attached with some glue and finish nails.  I used a pneumatic nailer, which ordinarily gives excellent results, but if the nail gun is not aimed at right angles, the nail can veer out.  In this case, I was holding the trim in place with my hand, negligently, just where the nail was being placed, and the nail went through my finger.  Actually very little pain, and with immediate washing, antibiotic ointment and bandaging for a few days, it healed well.  Could have been a different story had the nail hit a bone or something else important.

For the cabinet top, I elected to use plain kiln-dried 2x4s, run through my jointer and thickness planer (to 1.25" thick), and glued together with biscuits.  I did that in three separate sections, then ran each section through the planer and trued each edge in the jointer, and then glued the three sections together.  I used a couple of pieces of mahogany I had for visual interest, and coated top and bottom with epoxy.  Nothing fancy.  It will have things screwed and bolted into it, and get dinged up.  The glue-up:

Below is a photo of the cabinet, minus the fourteen drawers—six heavy duty use with full extension drawers slides, and eight more without slides.  I'll be doing a separate post on a marathon drawer building session (for garage, kitchen, bathroom, pottery studio), hopefully soon.

This will give you an idea of what the cabinet will look like, as well as a couple of the new windows trimmed out.

I'm going to do the post on the back room remodel later today.  It's going to be the music room/instrument-building workshop.  The floor is covered with Weather Tech plastic floor tiles, which I had considered for the garage, but not heavy-duty enough.

I will be doing a separate post on the garage floor, which will use thick Swiss Trax plastic floor tiles, bought from Home Depot.  I will post more photos of the completed garage when all that happens.

There is also now a new Tesla Model Y in my garage, so that will be another "garage" post, hopefully with a demo video explaining features, including magnetic braking and one-pedal driving.