Teen tackling a home project.

Hey guys, I've lurked on this board for a few months now whenever I feel like procrastinating my work. I'm a student in Saint Louis University and am back in NJ for the summer so I finally have the time to start working on a project.

I'm a big BMW fan and have started to dive into fixing and detailing family cars. The garage I work in, a 20x25 two-car garage, is big but hopelessly cluttered. The flooring is also in bad condition as the 1 year old floor paint has started peeling in high activity areas. Since the garage is in such a bad state, my parents have given me the green light to fix it up.

To start off, I have bought three Rustoleum EpoxyShield Garage Floor Coating kits (should cover up to 750 sq. ft.) and some paint stripper. My plan is to attack the floor paint with a pressure washer to see what I can remove, and use the paint stripper to remove what the washer can't. Once the floor is coated, I'll start to work on shelving and then I hope to have a presentable garage.

No pictures yet, but I'm sure I'll start a worklog when the time comes. I first need to get my M5 working so I can move it out of the garage.

Welcome to the GJ.

Welcome aboard. What are your plans after college?

Unemployment.


But really, I'm on a pre-med track and majoring in Bio-Medical Engineering. No clue where my major will take me but hopefully I get into medical school.

MINIz guy said:

Unemployment.


But really, I'm on a pre-med track and majoring in Bio-Medical Engineering. No clue where my major will take me but hopefully I get into medical school.

Click to expand...

Lots of options there. You will hopefully get into med school, but if not into an MD program, there's DO (osteopath physician -- almost same as MD and can specialize or go into surgery), dental school, podiatry, etc.. Or you can become an engineer or scientist.

Well, we started the project today.

Cleaned out the whole garage by noon and started to remove the old paint after lunch. There were two layers of bad paint that had to be removed. We first tried the paint remover gels from Home Depot and after going through 2 gallons and many hours, we gave up and rented a floor sander with the Diamabrush disk. Around 10PM (2 hours and ~500 sq. ft later) we called it a wrap with 95% of the paint gone. The driveway is a mess with slushy concrete and old paint muck.

Tomorrow, we're gonna touch up where we missed and clean the floor once more. Monday night is when we're going to epoxy. Man I hope this stuff lasts.

Eventually we'll install shelves but that will be in a few weeks.

Welcome to the GJ from VA!
Don't forget about the pharmacy aspects of that degree, seems to be quite a bit of a demand for them.
Good luck with the rest of the floor, and the rest of the garage/driveway as well.

Well, it was degreased and etched yesterday.

However, the weather isn't playing nice. It was hot and humid today, and it just started raining. You can still see damp spots on the concrete. Time to wait until tomorrow to see if it's good to go. My poor car has to sit outside for this whole week.

Ta-daa! Not much of a build thread at all, so I won't start anything. But this is a picture of the before and after. Left a biig apron before the door as that was the only line to stop the epoxy, or have it go to the door.







It isn't organized yet as we still have finish some plumbing (source of my water issue initially). The copper water pipe is exposed on the right wall and cracks every after every winter. We did build a shelf rack, with modular shelves, on July 4th on the left side. Sunday is going to be the organization day, more shelf building and possibly cleaning the driveway and patching it after all the abuse of the chemicals we used for the garage floor.

Man I really wish I had Saturday too but I have had work every Saturday. I'm pooped after every 8-5 day, so working in a 90 degree, 90% humidity garage, doesn't sound very appealing.

Once that is done, I get to diagnose what is wrong with my M5 (temporarily parked on the left as we do plumbing this weekend). Now I finally get why people take their cars to mechanics as my job leaves me no time to work on the car.

I live in a hot humid area too, I bought a nice 18K window A/C unit, plugged it in, an hour later it's 70* and comfy - easy peasy.

Under that stair case would be a great place to store your tool box and build some shelves for stuff you don't use often.

Put some pipe insulation on that pipe and it won't freeze. it comes in sticks that are split down the side, slip it over the pipe, tape the split - no more frozen pipe.

I've got some ideas on cooling. The garage is too shallow for me to work on cars and close the door, so A/C won't be installed. Instead, I plan to install a ceiling fan or two to keep air circulating. One question though. since I'm not experienced with electrical. There is an extra power outlet on the ceiling, so could I plug in my ceiling fans into it assuming I wire it correctly? Or is this method too dangerous?

The stairs are crazy low. I'm 5' 7" and I can't even fit under it without ducking. We basically did what we did before and place some storage bins underneath.

And for the pipes, we just cut the 18' length and put the spicket 2' after it exits the wall. The red bucket is where the spicket now exits. We will run a short hose out to the garage door in the summer and connect hoses to that when we use it. Should cause no more issues. We're going to need to patch the concrete and paint it again.







There's still a lot of free space on the right side so I'll have to figure out shelving or racks to fill it in. We got some stuff from the basement that we have to move back out to the garage.