House Project: Storage

We've been living in our house now for about 6 months. Wow! And with spring right around the corner, I have been itching to get some house projects done. Unfortunately, while it is lovely here already, it's not quite "yard work" weather. So a few weeks ago I decided to organize the garage. It turned into a bigger job than I'd anticipated...as always.

Now that we're settled in, and actually living in our house, I've noticed that the storage is severely lacking. I think I feel this way because at the condo we used our one-car garage as storage (since our cars wouldn't fit in it). Now we have a two-car garage that houses Joe's weight set, the laundry, an extra refrigerator, the mini van, and my extra food and house supplies....along with all the extra odds and ends stuffed in boxes that we continue to haul all over creation. It really adds up. So I had a brilliant, if not late, idea. Make storage in the crawl space! I called my dad and told him and he said, "Yeah, of course we can do that. I wondered why you didn't in the first place." Gee, thanks dad. Live and learn, I guess. :) I don't think Joe was quite on board with it, but being the awesome husband that he is, he realized I wasn't going to let this one go, rolled his eyes, and went to work.

Because we live in a tri-level, the "crawl space" is very spacious. The kids can almost stand up in it. AND it has a very large leveled area. Obviously we aren't the first residents to see the potential.

A shot from the door in the basement.

The kids thought it was great fun to crawl under the house and help daddy and papa. I tried not to think about all the insulation they could be touching... maybe that's a live and learn lesson too?

Here's what dad and Joe built. They put down plastic and cinder blocks, then built a platform on some 2x4's. In all, we added about 70 sq. feet, and there's room for more expansion if we really need it!

All the stuff that was being stored in the garage was moved down here. I don't have a picture of the garage storage. But what we did is free up the space in there for things we use more frequently (i.e. sewing stuff, suitcases, toys, etc.). It is absolutely amazing how much space we made!!

One house project done, 560 to go (not really.....well....sort of)