Are you using your garage to its full potential?

Your garage is full of potential. Right off the bat it has the potential as a warm and protected place to park your car. This is generally considered the primary role of a garage. Of course, a garage also has the potential as a storage area.

Unfortunately, as a storage area, garages often get out of hand. Rather than neatly, optimized storage, ‘stuff’ runs amok in many garages. Garages will have so much ‘stuff’ haphazardly dumped across the floor that there often isn’t any room left for the car.

Garages are often the haven for lawn and snow-removal equipment. Once again, this can challenge the car for space in the garage.

There are two, or three, solutions for a garage that has turned into a magnet for ‘stuff’ until the garage is overflowing. One solution is to create an orderly system of storing ‘stuff’ in the garage. This usually includes solid and well-thought-out shelving. Another solution is to build a shed.

A shed is a great place to keep the lawn and snow-removal equipment, as well as gardening and other equipment. But some people have such a problem with random ‘stuff’ that the ‘stuff’ in the garage soon finds its way into the shed, too. Next thing they know, the shed is bulging with ‘stuff’ too.

The final solution is to simply accept the ‘stuff’ as victorious over the car in its battle for use of space in the garage.

Assuming someone doesn’t want to surrender the garage to the ‘stuff,’ they may want to explore the potential of the garage further. Once the ‘stuff’ is cleared away into orderly storage, they can turn the garage into a ‘man-cave’ or a ‘she-shed.’ Here, the options are almost endless.

If they want to use the garage in these capacities year round, they’ll probably want to heat and cool the garage. They can connect heating/cooling vents to the garage, assuming the heating/cooling system has the capacity for the garage (they should check with an HVAC contractor first). However, if the car or other gasoline-fired engines will run in the garage, or they’ll use the garage for painting or other processes where fumes are present, they probably don’t want a return vent that will carry the odors and gasses through the house.

If heating/cooling the garage, and even if they don’t, they may want to drywall the garage. If doing so, they should consider insulating the walls prior to applying the drywall. Once the drywall is installed and finished, it’s time to decorate.

Paint and/or paneling can be applied to the walls and ceiling. You can even paint the floor with special heavy-duty latex- or oil-based paints. Another option is specialized tile that can be applied to the garage floor.

From this point, the options are too many to list here. It’s really up to someone’s imagination.

Leave that crooked garage door to the professionals

Garage doors aren’t supposed to be crooked. It’s a bad sign when they are. But it’s a greater concern when the garage door is crooked in the up position than when closed.

If the door is crooked, there’s a good chance the door hit something causing the problem. Maybe a basketball was sitting in the door’s path when it came down. Something stopped one side of the door and, in the process, caused slack in the cable. With slack, the cable jumped over the cable drum.

A broken spring can also cause the garage door to go all crooked on you. You don’t want to trifle with a garage door spring. It’s a powerful spring that can cause serious injury, even death, if it gets away from you. Obviously, if there’s a problem with the

garage spring, you want to call in a professional.

When the cable comes off the cable drum you also want to call in a professional. It’s easier if the door is crooked down low but you still want a professional to fix the problem. That way it will be done right and safely.

If the door is crooked in its lowered position, a professional can probably get the cable back over the drum without too much trouble. But if the door is crooked in the open position, the professional will have to take the garage door apart, piece by piece.

If you try to fix a cable that has jumped over the cable drum while the door is in the open position, you’re liable to drop the door. It could fall on you. It could also fall on your car. In either case, when it falls, beyond the damage it could do to you or the car, it will probably do damage to itself.

The lesson is that, if your garage door is crooked, up or down, call a professional. They’ll fix it right and no one will get hurt in the process.