Garage Makeover - August 2011

There is a very good reason why garage doors on a home should never be on the same side of your house as your front door.  I know it's a popular design, but trust me on this.  Because someday you may accidentally back into one of your garage doors, making it almost impossible to open and close.  And someday not one, but BOTH of your garage door openers may die, which may cause you to resort to propping your one working garage door open with a 2x4 (cause that's how we fix things around here).  And when your garage door is being help open by a 2x4, you may be too lazy to get out of the car to knock it out of place which means your garage door will probably remain open at all times.  And when your garage door is open at all times AND on the same side of your home as the front door, it is like a welcoming beacon for anyone and everyone to come directly to your back/garage door instead of the front one.  Seriously, it's probably only an extra 5 steps to the front door, but It's almost like a wide open garage is just BEGGING to be used by any an all visitors.  The worst part about this is that everyone chooses to walk through my nasty dirty garage which leads right into my almost always messy laundry room.  Not my almost always clean entry way, which my front door leads too.

You would think I would just stop being lazy and start knocking the 2x4 out of place to close the garage door, but that's just too much effort after I've loaded/unloaded all the kids from the car.  So instead, I decided if everyone was going to keep using my back door, I might as well give my garage a little TLC to make it a little more inviting.

 The classic BEFORE.  The back wall is the only wall in the garage that was sheetrocked, but that was 25 years ago and it was never textured.  It was not a pretty site!  And these steps were buggin me.  Besides that fact that they were hard to maneuver with full arms, our cats were hauling garbage under them and I was just TIRED of it.  So out they went.

FYI:  tearing things apart is very therapeutic.

 My wonderful mother (partner in crime) made a trip up for the day to help me build new steps.  For 2 non-carpenters, they turned out pretty snazzy.  They are also completely sealed off.  The cats were very disappointed.

 Next I stained the new steps black (because I like black) and painted the door and trim.  And then I did the one thing that I HATE doing...I textured the whole wall.

 A coat of primer and a pretty blue star on the door finished this project off.

and there you have it. 

So come on over!  My back door is ready and waiting for you.  Really though, even with all this work...I would rather you just use my front door.  My laundry room is still a mess.