The finished garage in this new home was one of the things that I was most excited about. After nearly 10 years in an unfinished space, I was eager to have a bright, insulated space to work on projects.

Days after moving in, I somehow managed to talk Sara into getting a heater for the garage. To me, it seemed like a no-brainer: The wall was already insulated and the floor had a drain, where melting snow from our vehicles could go. Several companies gave us estimates for installing a heater. We went with the lowest bid and the company installed a Reznor 45,000 BTU natural gas heater.

While the walls of the garage were insulated, previous owners overlooked the ceiling. I hired an insulation company to blow in the roughly 500 sq/ft. of insulation needed.

I’m so happy with the heater. On my first few tests, it had no trouble heating the space by about 20 degrees in a matter of minutes. I plan to leave it off during the summer, and keep it set to around 55 degrees during the cold months.

My next project in the garage was storage. I installed some shelving and found a home for my work bench and tools. Additionally, after we replaced the kitchen appliances, I put the older stainless steel fridge in the garage.

The final garage project I’ll discuss in this post is the updated staircase into the house. This upgrade came after I struggled to get into the house with an armful of groceries. I wanted a larger space to stand on when opening the door into the house and also wanted to build shelves for shoe storage.

We’re so happy with the steps and all of our improvements in the garage so far. Thanks for reading!

-Mike

This post is long overdue because it’s been a couple of years now since we completed this project. Moving the noisy air conditioner condenser had been something we wanted to do since moving in back in 2013. The noisy unit, located right outside the back sliding door and next to the patio, made it impossible to entertain or carry on a conversation with guests. Often on summer evenings, Sara and I would find ourselves shouting back and forth in our adirondack chairs until one of us got around to turning off the A/C.

Out with the old and in with the new!

The installers made a difficult job look easy!

We moved the air conditioner from the west side of the property to the south side (an area out of sight and where noise would not be an issue).

The installers ran the piping/wires through our shed, which is beneath the 4-season porch. We appreciated the extra attention to detail they took to make sure the pipes would not get in the way of any future storage needs.

With the condenser unit out of the way, all I needed to do was add a few more pavers from an earlier project and we could finally enjoy our backyard the way we always wanted.

Thanks for reading!
-Mike