Garage Remodeling: How to Create a Multi-Functional Space

Most homeowners treat the garage as a throwaway room. Many garages are not even used to store cars anymore because they are so cluttered that the car won't fit.

Following are three tips for creating the garage of your dream - a storage space that's a beautiful, functional extension of your home:

1. The "Floor" of the Garage: When most think of garage floors, a non-descript slab of concrete littered with oil and grease stains, grass clippings and other debris come to mind. But, it doesn't have to be this way.

Concrete epoxy can give any garage floor a designer look quickly and easily. What is concrete epoxy? The technical definition, as described on ChemCoSystems.com is as follows: "Shell Oil Company developed Epoxy Asphalt in the late 1950's as a jet fuel and jet blast resistant specialty pavement for airfield applications. Epoxy Asphalt concrete is applied and compacted with conventional asphalt concrete paving equipment. The pavement is quickly ready for traffic in its partially cured state once it has cooled to ambient temperature."

One can easily surmise that if it's good enough for an airfield, it will withstand any use the average family may put on it.

Because concrete is simply a mixture of water, sand and stone, color can easily be added to the mix to create a "designer garage floor, if you will.

2. The Walls: Once the base, the floor, has been taken care of, it's time to focus on the walls of the garage.

Paint is a simple, quick, affordable option. Many find it hard to choose a color for the garage because most don't think of the garage as room of the house. Some easy ways to choose color:

(a) Bring the outside in: Hunter green is an obvious choice because it "extends the lawn" inward. This color is easy to keep clean because fingerprints don't easily show up.

(b) Brighten it up: Butter yellow lightens any space and also doesn't clash with the outside when the garage door is up.

(c) Keep it industrial: If your garage is used as a workshop and want to highlight this theme, steel greys and wood-tone browns are options to consider.