A Colossal Garage Upgrade (and $100!)

It's been a busy year, full of projects and...boxes, apparently. Last month, my mom and I tackled our garage that has been holding a lot of evidence of the past few months--all of which had been haunting me.

It only took a few hours, if you can believe that!, and the next day, my dad came over and helped Chris install our new garage door opener they got us for Christmas. Ha! It all truly felt like Christmas morning.

As good as a clean (and working!) garage felt, we still felt wanting for more storage. There just wasn't a place for everything, which I knew meant things could get out of control again. The weakest link was definitely that squatty shelf in the nook by the stairs. It was there when we moved in and has been okay for stashing things, but it was shallow and not very sturdy.

This past weekend, we emptied the small case, moved it into the shed for now, and upgraded to these Colossal Rack shelves from Ace Hardware.

Ta-da!!! As I was organizing and loading up the shelves, I might have pretended we now had our own little hardware store. You need gold spraypaint? That will be on the middle shelf on the right. I loooooove these new shelves. We went for the 48x24x72 size, (which is under $100!) and the shelves are nice and deep, but not so deep we can't find things. The distance between the shelves help, too, because I can easily reach for things in the back without unloading everything. 5 stars from us.

The shelves took Chris about 25 minutes to put together (easy!) and then I took over the organizing just by grouping like things together. Gallon paint buckets got their own shelf. Spray paint, quarts and painting supplies are next to wall fixers (technical term) like joint compound, seam tape, and an array of caulks and silicon. The bottom shelf holds our car washing supplies all in one bucket, the miter saw and our steamer.

We had a few miscellaneous items that I corralled in these colorful and sturdy egg crates I picked up at Walmart for $3 each. Knee pads, work gloves and protective eyewear in one. Rope and cables in another and then really really miscellaneous stuff in the other--drywall screws, a tile puck...etc.

But maybe my favorite part is the top shelf that holds all of our tool cases, tool box and power tools. Chris ran an extension cord and set up a little charging station right on the end which makes me ridiculously excited. (Sidenote: We are obviously equal-opportunity drillers). No more wondering where the driver is and where the charger is. No more excuses for a dead battery. I'm thrilled about this setup. The whole shelving system is 6 feet tall, which is perfect for us from the ground level. But, BUT, it is also extremely nice to walk out the garage door and have things handy at the stair level as well.

Oh man. This whole thing has us very excited. You can see how our fellow Ace blogger, Kelly at The Lily Pad Cottage, used the same shelves in her garage here. And if you want to get your own, Ace actually is giving one of our readers $100 gift card. Just enter through the Rafflecopter widget below. We'll announce the winner on Friday. I'm gonna go check out my power tool charging station...again.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

We’re excited to be collaborating with Ace Hardware as a part of their Ace Blogger Panel! Ace has provided us with compensation and the materials necessary to complete this project (and something for you, too!). All opinions are our own.