Cheap and Cheerful Garage Makeover - 2011

We are lucky enough to have a 1.5 car garage, which is a bit of a luxury for downtown Toronto. We had toyed with the idea of rebuilding it, because it was so crooked and ugly, but it actually functions and serves our needs quite well. And frankly who wants to pour a bunch of money into something that just stores your car and other junk. So instead i came up with a cheap and cheerful makeover. This makeover is going to extend into next summer, simply because i have lots else to do on the inside of the house and wont be getting around to finishing it before winter comes.

First lets take a look at a before pic. Prepare to be horrified...

Here's how the garage looked when we first moved in. Kind of looks like where someone might hide dead bodies:

Pretty scary looking, eh? So first i found a new home for the garbage can. And this past summer i scoured Kijiji for old windows. I was lucky enough to find a pair for $60. These windows actually came from an old mansion in Rosedale. There's a complete makeover happening in the rest of the back yard, which took care of burying that wire on the top left of the before picture. I also pulled all the pink Unilock paving out and found a happy person on Kijiji to take it all away. I put in planting beds on either side of the garage door, and i laid a square cut flagstone pathway from the garage to the new deck. Total cost of the stone was $180 from Rock Valley Natural Stone. I then bought 4 dwarf Burning Bushes from Sheridan Nurseries fall sale. Total cost for the four shrubs was $90. Small changes but dramatic results. I'd say it was a pretty good use of $330.

Here is the after:

Lots more still to go for next year:

- Buy more plantings to fill in the beds

- Replace that door with a cool antique one

- Add casings around the door and windows

- Install cedar shingles on the wall

- Paint and stain everything

- Build some window boxes, and fill them with perennials

- Add some landscape lighting.

All in, i want to keep the makeover under $1000. While it won't straighten out the structure, it will make it far nicer to look at, and will be much cheaper than a garage rebuild.

So that's it for the garage makeover for now. I'll show some of the other work going on in the rest of the backyard in future posts.