Garage Reveal Part 1 

Ahh I don’t even know where to begin! I’ve been dreaming up this blog post in my mind for close to 10 months now. When we bought our farmhouse last October, it was a flip. The entire house had been redone. New kitchen, bathrooms, carpet you name it. We soon discovered it wasn’t a complete flip. It was pretty to look at but major things like the windows, boiler, exterior etc were all original. We knew when we first saw this house, we would need to either finish the basement or turn the garage into living space. We were downsizing considerably moving here…about 800 finished sq feet! We were okay with that knowing we gained much desired acreage.

Fast forward to January of this year. We finally decided to start the enormous undertaking of a garage renovation. This is our lovely garage when we moved in.

Amist the cobwebs and distictively unpleasant smell, I saw 500 sq feet of potential! Our house is 3 bedroom and I wanted a 4th bedroom since we have company frequently. I also wanted a space to watch TV and a place for our office. We began designing the layout. Over the early days of the reno, our layout change a bit but in the end we were able to fit all our wishes into this rectangular box! 

My ingenious husband decided to build the floor of the garage higher to match the rest of the house. The garage floor was a couple steps lower then the entry way. At the time I didn’t think this amount of lumber and work was worth it, but I’m so happy he insisted on it! Our #1 goal was to make this area look like had always been, and have it flow seamlessly with the rest of the house. I should add my sweet hubby is NOT a house builder. He actually owns an auto repair shop so he’s used to fixing things, just on a smaller scale.  Most of this reno consisted of him researching and learning along the way. After 10 months of hard work, I think he could tackle pretty much anything house related!

This is the new entry way into what used to be our garage! His floor building abilities are top notch!

On my last blog post you can get the details of our DIY fireplace. I love our new family room! The color scheme turned out a bit warmer than I had imagined but the homey feel of the natural wood and jute rug make me happy.

Originally we planned to have the office take up one corner of the living room. Then I realized my computer desk fit the area I planned for our pantry! Once you enter that little area there is a bump out to the left that’s quite large. We are going to build shelves for that space so we will be able to use this little closet for storage as well as an office!

These barn doors are killing me! I’m so in love. We used a popular $40 barn door tutorial on YouTube to make them. Fair warning: they do NOT cost $40 to make. We bought inexpensive wood and the total cost around $260 for both doors. Granted, that’s cheaper then buying barn doors and we were able to customize the height to fit our space.
If you noticed, I left out the bedroom part of this reno. We still have a few small touches to add in there so I will save it for another post. It would be too lengthily to write about the specifics of the renovation on this post but I would be happy to answer any of your questions! Also a HUGE shout out to my wonderful husband. I dream up these crazy ideas and he makes them happen! I can’t believe how talented he is.