Jack Olsen
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- Joined
- Oct 14, 2009
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I posted a thread about my garage back in 2007. I called it the ‘Poor Man’s Retro Retreat’ back then because my budget for it had been low ($500) and I’d used a kind of old-fashioned color scheme when I painted it. It’s a garage I’ve liked a lot. It’s had everything I’ve needed. I’ve gotten a lot of work done in it.
So naturally, I had to go through and re-do pretty much every component in the place.
The garage can’t really be called the ‘Poor Man’s Retro Retreat’ anymore because I’ve spent too much money on it. It’s still pretty modest, by the standards of many of the garages on this board. It’s pretty humble, still -- a suburban two-car garage tucked around behind the house on my tiny 1/8-acre lot.
But by my own personal standards (I’m very cheap), it’s now a pretty expensive operation. I would guess that I’ve now put another $2,000 into the place. (It kind of blows my mind that the cost of a place like ‘The Bunker” -- which is awesome, don’t get me wrong -- would pay for my re-do and 399 other garages just like mine. But you do what you can with whatever you’ve got -- and this is what I did.)
THE HISTORY
During the 2007 Writers Guild strike, I went through my completely useless junk bin of a garage and tried to get a little organized for the first time in my then 43-year-old life. Both my wife and I write for a living, so we were both out of work for the duration -- I was understandably cautious with spending money. But on the other hand, I couldn’t work -- so I had all the time in the world. I gave myself a $500 budget and attempted to re-use or re-purpose as much of the crap filling my garage as possible, while moving most of what was left to a dumpster. Every day, after a shift spent pounding the pavement on a picket line, I’d work on it. The last touch was to paint it in sort-of-early-1960s shades of green, yellow and tan.
I was pretty happy with it.
I also built a shed for the stuff that would normally clutter up a garage as small as mine. I’d never done much carpentry, but having a garage that I could actually move around in made it easier to get a little creative with the roof lines.
And then one day I saw a sale on ceramic tile at Home Depot and I jumped into a .68/sf scheme to both tile my garage and teach myself how to set tile. It worked out all right, considering how unlevel my 84-year-old garage floor was. I ended up with a nicer-to-use and nicer-to-look-at garage for another $400 invested. (I also ended up with bigger shoulders, since grouting that much tile is a pretty serious amount of work.)
Then, well, it didn’t happen overnight, but -- slowly, steadily, you can’t fight it forever -- I started to no longer see my finished garage as finished anymore.
It was just getting started.
So naturally, I had to go through and re-do pretty much every component in the place.
The garage can’t really be called the ‘Poor Man’s Retro Retreat’ anymore because I’ve spent too much money on it. It’s still pretty modest, by the standards of many of the garages on this board. It’s pretty humble, still -- a suburban two-car garage tucked around behind the house on my tiny 1/8-acre lot.
But by my own personal standards (I’m very cheap), it’s now a pretty expensive operation. I would guess that I’ve now put another $2,000 into the place. (It kind of blows my mind that the cost of a place like ‘The Bunker” -- which is awesome, don’t get me wrong -- would pay for my re-do and 399 other garages just like mine. But you do what you can with whatever you’ve got -- and this is what I did.)
THE HISTORY
During the 2007 Writers Guild strike, I went through my completely useless junk bin of a garage and tried to get a little organized for the first time in my then 43-year-old life. Both my wife and I write for a living, so we were both out of work for the duration -- I was understandably cautious with spending money. But on the other hand, I couldn’t work -- so I had all the time in the world. I gave myself a $500 budget and attempted to re-use or re-purpose as much of the crap filling my garage as possible, while moving most of what was left to a dumpster. Every day, after a shift spent pounding the pavement on a picket line, I’d work on it. The last touch was to paint it in sort-of-early-1960s shades of green, yellow and tan.
I was pretty happy with it.
I also built a shed for the stuff that would normally clutter up a garage as small as mine. I’d never done much carpentry, but having a garage that I could actually move around in made it easier to get a little creative with the roof lines.
And then one day I saw a sale on ceramic tile at Home Depot and I jumped into a .68/sf scheme to both tile my garage and teach myself how to set tile. It worked out all right, considering how unlevel my 84-year-old garage floor was. I ended up with a nicer-to-use and nicer-to-look-at garage for another $400 invested. (I also ended up with bigger shoulders, since grouting that much tile is a pretty serious amount of work.)
Then, well, it didn’t happen overnight, but -- slowly, steadily, you can’t fight it forever -- I started to no longer see my finished garage as finished anymore.
It was just getting started.