garage storage

Our house has four levels and the fourth/bottom is unfinished. We would like to finish this area into a large family room before the baby comes. One of the problems though, is all of our stuff in the way. Where do we put it during construction since we don't have storage anywhere else?

So Terry and his dad came up with this brilliant idea to utilize the upper portion of our garage (since it's incredibly tall) for a storage space. Here's what it looked like before, looking out from the kitchen to the garage - and actually, this was before we moved in. 

So Terry and his dad spent an afternoon last week measuring and imagining and came up with a plan. They got all their lumber from Menards, the most important of which was this large support beam. You can also see Jerry beginning to put the long 2x6's which will support the floor. By the end of that day last weekend they had all the 2x6's in place and had thrown up some particle board flooring just to cover the space.

Today they finished it! It's about tall enough for Noah to stand up, though if he wasn't careful he might hit his head on the rafters. It's a fantastic space. We'll be putting our storage stuff up there (and the kids when they're naughty ;) ). That way we'll have all our storage out of the way when we start the basement project.

Terry is starting the railing support for the half wall.

Beginning to screw down the particle board wall.

This was after the project was completely done. He added some more railing supports and more support in the back. 

Here's the view from the kitchen. They even made steps up to the space.

Yay! It looks so great. I'm proud of my husband and he feels like a man now.

Oh, and it was a snow day while they got all this done.