When homes are designed, the garage usually receives the least amount of thought, planning and consideration.
We’ll labour over kitchens, entertaining areas and front facades but the garage will be a simple square box which consumes about 30 seconds of our attention. If you’re anything like us, your garage will be home to bikes, scooters, shoes, garden equipment, thousands of pieces of junk and finally the cars. Most modern households run with two vehicles but usually 1 vehicle lives in the garage while the other is parked outside. Why? Half the garage is used for storage because there simply isn’t room for much while 2 cars are parked inside.
What makes the garage even more cramped is a modern day reluctance to include sufficient storage within the home. You see, storage isn’t ‘pretty’ so it’s neglected on the average plan and when there isn’t enough space in the house, where does your stuff go? The garage! Suitcases, random cleaning equipment and every silly impulse purchase made over the past 20 years… it all lives in the garage until you either commit to a ‘garage sale’ or utilise council’s coupons and take a few trips to the tip. To avoid this storage chaos, all you have to do is create a slightly larger space. The standard size for a double car garage is 5.8m x 5.8m which will comfortably house 2 vehicles but not much more. To create a more usable space, try to make it 6.5m by 6.0m which gives you the ability to put shelving down one entire side or the back without getting in the way of the vehicles. The other handy idea is a storage nook where you can either have shelving or a work bench.
Now that we’ve given sufficient attention to space, another consideration should be the finish. Why is it that we’ll spend thousands on imported hardwoods for our living areas and go weak at the knees when someone talks about marble benches or Italian porcelain tiles but a dirty slab of plain concrete is a suitable finish for the garage floor? I know it’s where the cars live but does it have to be ugly? In our opinion, the garage floor should be finished with something… painted concrete, tiles, or our personal preference which is an epoxy floor covering from Proflek Coatings.
Now isn’t this nicer than plain concrete?
With size and finish given a tiny bit of consideration, you’ll have a lovely garage that is both functional and deserving of being part of your brand new home.