Interested in a garage makeover? I’m sure many of you might be interested in this since spending so much more time at home the past 2 years, we wanted to make sure we were using all our spaces to their full potential! If you follow along on Instagram Stories, you might have seen some of the BTS from this project – that took QUITE a few months! Well, today is the day to share the big reveal with you!
Living in Southern California, we don’t have a basement, so the garage is where you throw everything and it was such a mess (see the before photo below!). After spending so many months at home, we decided we wanted to try and make some updates to our garage. We had a few goals:
- Make a work/storage/photoshoot space for GWS….we need it!
- Create new space for a home gym
- Organize our boxes of decorations, suitcases, and other random things in the garage better
- Make a space for our girls to do crafts as well as space for small product photoshoots when we’re not doing them for work
- Create a space where the parents could hang while our girls where doing crafts
Ok, so this is an embarrassing photo, but here is the before photo…
Yikes, right?! …pretty much looks like a typical messy garage – maybe even a bit worse! Ha. Our girls would do a lot of painting + crafts out here, lots of supplies for photoshoots, random toys for our kids…and just a space where we would throw stuff we didn’t want to see in the house!
But it was time for an upgrade…with all the time at home the past year, this was the perfect time to make our garage better.
Garage Floor Tiles
Our first step was to find a good solution for our floors. As you can see in the before photo, our floor is concrete and it had cracks, was not level and just looked bad. It had been painted by a previous owner, but it wasn’t sealed so it didn’t look great. Since we planned to have our gym out here and would have GWS partners over for shoots, we wanted something that looked much better and was durable….plus we didn’t want the feel of the space being “just a garage”. We wanted a floor that brought in a warmer, more modern/cozy feel, while also being easy to maintain.
After much searching around, we found and decided to use LifeTiles® from Haven Floors. LifeTiles® is a modular floor covering product designed for ease of maintenance, durability, and aesthetic superiority. They are great for garages and/or home gyms, so this was the perfect solution for us. The pics that follow were actually taken after we had pallets of tile sitting on the floors for months and you can’t even tell, these tiles are tough!
The installation was so easy! They leveled our floor and installed it in about 4 hours for our 3 car garage. I love that they are easy to vacuum and clean (we did have one accident with our pup we rescued while she was potty training, it was easy to clean up!). After having the tiles in our garage for almost a year now, they still look as good as they did the day they were installed! These Haven Floors and LifeTiles® were a great find.
Garage Walls
Next, we patched a bunch of holes and painted the walls and ceiling. Well, we hired a team, this was a bigger job than we expected. It was a bit expensive, but they did a really great job. We used the color Dunn Edwards DEW 385 Lighthouse in eggshell on the walls. We wanted a super light grey color – it looks white, but it’s a very pale grey. This new paint on the walls and ceiling REALLY made a difference. It was looking like a real room now and not so much just a garage!
Garage Makeover – The Gym
Ok, the gym part of the garage! We were all over the place about what we wanted, we considered Peleton, Tonal, rowing machines, boxing machines, and a full set of free weights. After doing our research, we visited Nordstroms to test Tonal….we bought it the very next day. Tonal is amazing and tasks up so little space, it never gets in the way of any of our GWS activities.
You can do HIIT training, pilates, cardio, dance, and more on the machine. We had the Tonal installed last fall and it’s been one of the BEST purchases we made last year. Jason used to workout at Equinox and I worked out at several gyms with ClassPass. With Tonal we’re actually saving money on gym memberships AND we don’t need to drive to/from the gym anymore. I just to spend 20 minutes driving to classes, then an hour at a class, then 20 minutes back…so as a working mom this is a lifesaver! It’s so great to just walk out to the garage for a workout to start the day.
If you are thinking about it, I would highly recommend it. Both Jason and I are BIG fans. I just LOVE LOVE how it saves so much time.
The Tonal comes with a few different bars to attach to the machine, so we bought this floating shelf for Tonal to hang the accessories on the wall.
Design of the Space
We wanted a clean minimal, black and white vibe for the space but also wanted to bring in some fun elements as well. The Stevie Nicks Wall Tapestry is not only super rad (and if you love Stevie as I do, did you catch this wedding we shared for her goddaughter that she sang at??!!) but it also covers some utility boxes on the wall. We added in the And You Don’t Stop wall decal for some motivation in the form of song lyrics and hung a yoga mat wall mount for yoga mat storage. The bench comes with Tonal.
In the corner is our water heater which isn’t the prettiest and we were trying to figure out an easy way to hide that a bit and this beaded bamboo curtain (similar curtain here) works pretty well for that!
The dresser on the back wall was an old baby dresser but now stores craft supplies for GWS and our girls’ crafts. I added some dried flowers (with one of my DIY terracotta vases) to give the area a chic vibe.
Garage Makeover – Storage Tips
Let’s talk storage! This was important since we don’t really have anywhere else to store our GWS materials and styling supplies, holiday decorations, suitcases and tools.
The tall storage unit to the right was there already but was looking tired and dingy. For an easy way to update on a budget, I bought this wood grain wallpaper. We covered those with that and then spray-painted the handles black. Such an easy way to update for a much cleaner and modern look!
Next, we wanted to have bins that looked nice (and hide what was inside), so we used these black storage containers along with this industrial metal shelf. I love that everything looks clean and nice. Sometimes people like to look in and see what’s in their bins, but this way just feels much cleaner. I used this chalkboard label tape along with this chalk ink marker to label all our bins. Now everything feels much more organized and easy to find!
This is where we store all those garage things – the shop vac, ladders, brooms, rakes, shovels, etc. We hung some hooks on the top. It is still a garage after all! But at least this is all in one corner and not too much of an eyesore. :)
Storage on the top of the garage? YES! This overhead storage rack is GENIUS. I will say it’s not the easiest to get to, but perfect for a fake Christmas tree (if you need a storage bag for your tree, we have this one that I love) or holiday decor you only need to get to once a year.
This is the GWS workstation, craft and sewing area. We bought this industrial table which is really great. My daughter loves sewing so we placed her sewing machine out here and there is space for other crafts. The storage above was already there.
We also painted that door to the house inFreshly Cut Stems from Magnolia Home by Joanna Gaines to add a small, fresh pop of color.
We originally brought our extra couch to the garage to store it while we were remodeling our bedroom, but we all ended up loving it out here – it makes it feel more like another room, so we’re keeping that out here for us to chill on while someone is on Tonal, while the girls craft or if GWS partners are over to work on a project.
Do you have any questions about any of this? Let me know in the comments, more than happy to share any tips or advice we learned!
