Naomi – Author at Plaster & Disaster

The title of ugliest room in my house is a hotly contested one, or at least it was when we first got this place. But our garage easily takes the crown. It is a dark, graffiti-ed, pitted, holey mess… or, as we like to say, it is sure full of potential.

Why am I showing you this? Aren’t home improvement blogs supposed to be aspirational?

Well, now that we’ve finished some basic painting and updates to our library/guest room space, the garage is next on the list for a DIY transformation. And I’m terrified. So let’s take a look at what we’re dealing with!

The garage is long. If we cleared it out completely, we’d be able to park two cars end-to-end. However, it is also very narrow, such that it is hard to park the car so car doors can open on both sides. That makes the wide side shelf of splintery old wood and rusty metal particularly useful.

… if by useful you mean a great place to indefinitely put things that we should hurry up and take to the town hazardous waste disposal day, already. I can’t wait to take this thing down and add some thinner storage with designated uses.

The garage is where we store all of our gardening tools and supplies. The previous owner installed a board with rusty nails to hang rakes and shovels from, which is mostly functional if not attractive.

We also keep smaller items, like gardening gloves and clippers, on a little set of shelves toward the back.

We’re actually reasonably neat people, but this sort of set-up just doesn’t give the “everything in its place” vibe.

In the back, we have a huge workbench left by the previous owner, which is probably the single heaviest piece of furniture I have ever seen. It’s very handy but not super attractive. We’ve almost always got some project out here drying, curing, or off-gassing – like our side table made from a thrift store plastic cactus that we wrote about last week. I’d definitely like to keep this thing if I can figure out how to make it look a little better.

Just looking at that photo gives me anxiety. I’m sorry to put you through this. It is a very claustrophobic space because of the hose storage overhead. And I DON’T KNOW IF YOU NOTICED BUT NOTHING IS CENTERED. (The workbench is too heavy to move, and there are some wall outlets that get in the way of centering the cubbies.) We’ll be figuring out how to open this up and put in some good symmetrical shelving and other storage back here.

I am just dying to make some aesthetic upgrades, from hiding the exposed insulation, to painting over the graffiti, to fixing up the peeling wall and loose cords.

But before we can even think about that, we’ll have to fix the floor, which is cement, but has been worn down over time and is pitted and holey.

We’ll also have to figure out how to fill and patch the random holes that we have in the walls and ceiling, and to run electrical that doesn’t make me think my house will burn down. (We did have an electrician in to check it out, though, so don’t worry.)

I have to say I’m pretty nervous. This is definitely the worst space we’ve taken on with just our own DIY efforts, and we’ll need to learn a whole lot of new methods and materials to get it into shape. But we’ll be so glad when we’re done! We’re actually in here quite a bit all year round – doing and storing projects, getting garden/yard care supplies, parking the car, fetching wood for the fire, etc. It will be such a relief to have this be a ~~pleasant~~ non-anxiety-attack-inducing place to be.

Garage Inspiration

So now on to the fun part: inspiration! Because obviously the first step of any sound DIY project is spending a whole of of time on the internet.

That’s not sarcasm.

I would love to bring in some functional but attractive tool storage, like Shannon of AKA Design did in her garage makeover.

Tool organization inspiration from AKA Design - akadesign.ca - Plaster & Disaster

(via AKA Design)

I love how it is functional and still “garage,” but attractive and organized, with space for a lot of different types of tools.

Pegboards might be the way to go, or we might put up some track storage like this image from A Beautiful Mess.

Tool organization inspiration from A Beautiful Mess - abeautifulmess.com - Plaster & Disaster

(via A Beautiful Mess)

I also really love the painted half-wall, and the bright, clean colors. That would sure be an improvement on our current color palette…

Oh, wait, how did that ugly photo get in the middle of the inspiration section? Sorry. I’m a little fixated on getting rid of that graffiti.

I love the white, black, and yellow look, but am also considering something a little tamer, like this simple white, gray and blue look from I Heart Organizing.

Garage color scheme inspiration from I Heart Organizing - iheartorganizing.blogspot.com - Plaster & Disaster

(via I Heart Organizing)

I love how clean and calm it looks, and also how the black fixtures and hardware really stand out.

But I am most excited about taking on the floor. After we fix the surface, I would love to paint and seal it so it is bright, pretty, and shiny. We could go with just a solid, happy color, like a blue or turquoise, like this one from Dans le Lakehouse.

Floor inspirtation from Dans Le Townhouse - dans-le-townhouse.com - Plaster & Disaster

(via Dans le Lakehouse)

Or I could go all out and stencil a pattern on the floor as if it were beautiful tile, like Tasha at Designer Trapped in a Lawyers Body did in her kitchen.

Floor Stencil Inspiration from Designer Trapped in a Lawyers Body - designertrapped.com - Plaster & Disaster

(via Designer Trapped in a Lawyers Body)

Because obviously I should continue to play out my obsession with patterned tile by painting floors, designing shower curtains, and wallpapering my backsplash, rather than, you know, actually tiling something.

I am also considering painting a rug (like this one by Rebecca at You Are Talking Too Much) onto the floor right under where we park the car. I think that would be a super fun way to mark the parking spot!

Floor painted rug inspirtation from You Are Talking Too Much - youaretalkingtoomuch.com - Plaster & Disaster

(via You Are Talking Too Much)

Or that could be waaaay more work than anyone should ever put into a garage floor. OR, it could be the most awesome garage floor anyone has ever seen. What do you think?

I’m quite nervous about the scale of this project, but so excited to jump in. With this space, there is no where to go but up!

(Sharing at Tip Me Tuesday, Two Uses Tuesday, Link Party Palooza, and Think and Make Thursday.)

So by now you probably all know that we were mailed a sawdust-covered plastic cactus which we transformed into a table and used to win the most prestigious competition that we’ve ever competed in. To say this made our life is an understatement.

If you’re a little fuzzy (hahaha, like our cactus) on the details, here is a quick re-cap: We were selected to be one of 12 competitors in the inaugural Mystery Thrift Off, run by the beautiful, hilarious, ~~sadistic,~~ creative Lindsey of Better After. Lindsey went shopping at Goodwill and found 12 strange and hopeless items, which she shipped out to be transformed. If you haven’t been following along (Why not? This has been the most fun EVER!) you can check out all of the items and creative transformations here, here, and here.

Our item was a 16″ plastic cactus, coated in some sort of glue-and-sawdust combination.

Beautiful!

We were stumped. Our initial brainstorming process yielded such gems as “bury it in the yard” and “encase it in cement.” We also seriously considered transforming it into a sculpture of a drunken cowboy.

After polling our readers, it became clear that we needed to come up with a new, better idea FAST.

So we got together for a day of collaborative brainstorming. As we were talking about it, we realized that we hated almost everything about this cactus. Or, rather, everything except for the shape, which was actually pretty cool. We also wanted our final item to be practical and have a real use/purpose. So we came up with an idea to retain the shape as a quirky base for a side table.

We took our cactus on a road-trip to Home Depot (where we did not stand out as crazy people carrying around a plastic cactus) to pick up supplies and take our plan from idea to execution.

We could tell that the cactus was at least mostly hollow, so our plan was to build a table structure that would run through the cactus once we cut it open. We picked up two circular pieces of wood to form the top and the base of the table, a metal pipe slightly taller than the cactus to be the support, pipe-fittings to attach it securely to the wood, and paint/primer.

The first step was to see if we could remove the glue and sawdust from the exterior to give us a nice surface to work with. We were absolutely counting on this working. Fortunately, the glue scratched right off with just a little effort.

We actually found that paint can openers (who doesn’t have like 50 of these in their basement?) were the perfect tool to get into each crevasse to remove the glue.

It took us about 45 minutes to get it fully clean, working together. Most of it came off pretty easily, but there was definitely a lot of detailed clean up. By the way, scraping glue and sawdust off of a plastic cactus is probably one of the strangest things one can do with another person. It is an experience that we will probably never have the occasion to repeat.

We rinsed it off and washed it down with a sponge, and were thrilled to have a nice, smooth surface to work with.

Next, we turned our attention to cutting it open. Using a 1″ drill bit, we drilled a hole in the top, which we cut to size with clippers.

We then sawed off the base, doing our best to end up with a nice straight edge at the bottom.

The table construction was very easy. We sanded and washed the base and table top to remove rough patches, and washed the pipe down in soapy water to remove the oily residue so that the paint would adhere better. We then screwed the pipe fittings into each piece of wood, being careful to hit in exactly the center.

We screwed the pipe into the base, popped the cactus over the top, and screwed in the top. Magic! A table!

… an ugly table.

To help keep the cactus in place (it wanted to wiggle around quite a bit) and seal the edges, we used some pretty intense glue to create a seal around the top and the bottom. It served the same purpose as caulking the edges would, but we hoped that using glue would give a little more hold.

After that dried, it was time for our favorite step: paint! We started with primer.

Oh, wait, did we forget to mention that we were not alone? As if this project wasn’t weird enough, partway through our construction, we were joined by a whole bunch of Sage’s friends and family for a BBQ. So while we were working enthusiastically and with abandon dismantling a cactus and turning it into a table, we had this going on:

Yes, they ARE all sitting around a dinner table and staring at us.

They were very supportive, but we’re not positive that they really “bought into” our vision. There was a lot of, “wait, that’s a table…?” going on.

Trust us, guys. We’re bloggers.

Once the table was primed, we needed to let it dry, so we set a chair up to block it from the very dangerous and irresponsible badminton game going on.

We then spent the rest of the evening yelling at people not to hit our masterpiece with their rackets. Because we’re fun.

The next weekend, we sanded the primer to get a smooth surface and completed the project with many light coats of spray paint in high-gloss white.

It was pretty tricky to get the paint into each crevasse. The edge of the raw wood was also very thirsty and took a lot of coats and some additional rounds of sanding to get a nice finish.

But we were thrilled with the result: a little side table!

It is quirky and fun, and really adds a lot of character to the room. Because it is in white rather than a funky color, the cool shape is allowed to shine without being overwhelming.

It is definitely still weird, but we like it.

The glossy finish is also a total improvement over the fuzzy sawdust and glue. (Do we even need to type that sentence? Isn’t it obvious?)

It has come so far from that scraggly, fuzzy, strange little cactus that we got in the mail!

It is also really handy to have a side table. You know, for normal side table uses, like decorative stacks of books and glasses of water.

We’re so glad that our readers pushed us beyond the original drunken cowboy vision, and we’re SO GRATEFUL to Lindsey for including us in this illustrious, hilarious competition.

All of the contestants came up with such extraordinary transformations, we were blown away. You should totally check out all of the entries here, here, and here.