Replacing an old garage door with a wall

Our garage door to wall transformation is nearly complete. Complete enough to show you some progress shots anyway.

We initially planned to hire this job out, but after asking my dad what kind of contractor I should call, he sort of just took the job on himself. Yes, he's great. No, I'm not sharing him.

He started by ripping out the old door, door frame and the flimsy insulation, leaving a giant hole in the house. That hanging plastic was there just to block the wind some and keep the debris outside.

The end of day one was looking a lot like this.

We decided to do a wood frame wall rather than a stone or masonry wall for one main reason: weight. The weight of cinder blocks or poured concrete would have demanded busting up the floor plus part of the driveway and pouring deep concrete footings to support it all. More work, more money, more trouble. Nope, a stud frame wall will do just fine.

But one thing we could not do without was adding a window. It's what I wanted most out of this project: natural light in a dark and dingy basement. I'm hoping to turn this space into a work area, so it was a necessity. The long and skinny 2 x 6 foot window was special order from Lowe's for $160; I was surprised it didn't cost more.

I wasn't completely sold on the idea of having a small patch of siding on the house, but there are not a lot of options for weatherproof exterior materials. Plus introducing a fourth material to the existing stone/brick/siding combo would probably have looked just as weird. So we used the same approximate color and style as the top and the back of our house.

The clay color also blends into the stone foundation color so from far away, it doesn't really draw attention to itself.

After some calling around to various to-the-trade siding distributors, I finally located the same(ish) siding in stock at Home Depot. Imagine that. (FYI, not all Home Depots carry the same siding color or profile in-stock, so if you can't find what you're looking for at one location, try another or check stock online. There's a good chance it's different.)

We still have to add some trim around the edges of the opening and then paint the wood the same tone as the siding, but with everything already weatherproof enough for winter, those jobs will probably have to wait until next spring.

And the inside?

The inside is still not complete, but that's OK. It tells you how bad it was that I can look at this unfinished wall and think it looks great.

If this photo is looking a bit wonky to you: the window is level, and the floor is not. The floor is actually far far from level. But that's an issue for another day (or never).

The view is nothing amazing, but look at that light! It's not a dungeon anymore! The natural light still catches me off guard when I go down the steps.

I mentally budgeted between $1000 and $2000 for this project, so I'm excited it only added up to about $420 with DIY labor. More money to spend on something else!

See the before pics >>

Next up: Closing up a garage door

Introducing our next renovation project: closing in this ugly and useless garage door.

If it were functional, this door would open up directly into our basement. That is, if you were to you walk down the basement steps, boom: you see where the car would be parked. Even if we wanted to use this space to park a car, I don't think it would be safe or up to modern code (i.e. exhaust could get into the living areas too easily).

We actually had a pair of these metal doors when we moved in, but we replaced the left one (that opens into the actual garage) with a modern thermal door and opener. But back to the door on the right...

It's old and thin aluminum. Somewhere along the line, someone tried to seal up the door on the inside to shut out the cold, but did a crap job of it all.

A couple of sheets of insulation board and a can of spray foam insulation isn't enough to keep anything warm. Not only is it not airtight, it is so thin, you can easily talk with someone outside through the door.

So after four and a half years of living with this makeshift scenario, we're finally going to replace the door with a real wall. A radical idea, I know! More details to come as we figure this whole thing out.

Ugh. Sometimes I feel like all we do around here is fix the weird and poor choices made by previous owners of our house. Anyone else in the same boat?

Update: Project complete! See the new wall here >>

I organized the garage in two hours and lived to tell the tale.

Everyday, I would walk through our garage and think, "hmm, I really should clean this up sometime." And I've been thinking that for, oh, maybe a year.

There's never a good time to clean the garage. Summer's too hot and winter's too cold. Plus, you know, not exactly a fun task. So as soon as the temperature dropped from this summer's crazy heat wave, I put the garage on my short list.

From a distance, it may not look super disorganized. But close up, another story.

Junk and dirt from old projects. Trash. Stuff we don't need anymore. Stuff that I didn't even know was in here. It was so so much dirtier than I thought. Lots of dust and spiderwebs.

I needed motivation, so I challenged myself to get it done while Elise was at preschool one morning. I set the stopwatch and hoped I could get it all done before pick up time.

I started by making piles of stuff that didn't need to be in the garage anymore, whether it needed to be moved or moved to the trash. I went to throw out this can of roofing tar (which hasn't been touched in probably three years) and found that it had rusted through the bottom of the can. Nice!

Also trashed (well, recycled): glass shards dug up from the backyard.

These lovely vintage tile installation guides that I found with some leftover tile for our upstairs bathroom. (Still have to decide if the extra tile is worth keeping.)

Oh and that leaky tar can? It left a small puddle for me to deal with.

I covered it up with an old car floor mat. I was going to throw that out too, but this was the most logical solution for dealing with that sticky tar.

I also removed a few things added by a prior owner of the house like this paper towel holder (never going to use it) and some random screws (subbing for hooks, I presume).

And this homemade pencil cup. I guess it's fine if you're working a lot in the garage with pencils, but in recent years, it was just serving as a haven for spiders. Bye bye!

After about an hour and a half, I was a sweaty mess. It was time to get cleaned up and pick up Elise from preschool. (I swear, preschool time goes about twice as fast as normal time. Is this a documented phenomenon?) I wasn't completely finished, but I was so close! Challenge fail. Sort of.

Later that afternoon, I spent another 20 minutes taking out the trash and sweeping the floor. And finally, my work here was done. Look! Clear surfaces!