If you’ve been following along you know that we’re currently financing the renovation of our garage. You’ll also know that I’ve managed to keep it all under budget - somehow.

But when I was surfing online for ideas and inspiration there were a few ‘extras’ I’d hoped to pick up to make that garage even better. It’s probably no surprise to you then that I enjoy shopping in the country store - for the cheapest deals.

Sally - my expert on garage renos and excellent friend - asked me how I was paying for it all, since she’s never seen me actually work. Which brought me to an hour long discussion on what I actually do for a living - since there’s little chance farming is bringing in the extra money!

Making Money from Home

I started, hmmm, over 10 years ago now, freelancing online. Back when the internet was still a relative infant and before a person could pick up a lot of jobs here and there, just by surfing for them. By the way there’s an excellent guide to freelancing selling for just $7 here. Read the rest »

Our garage is nearly done now (except for the new doors - we’re still waiting on home delivery from HomeDepot) - but while I was checking on my order I decided to do a little online window shopping for fun stuff for the garage…

There are so many add-on features that can be picked up quite cheap that will make your renovation extra special. For example if you’re short on wall space (because you’re using every available inch for storage) you can buy a mounting device for your opener that attaches to the ceiling.

Another nice, and cheap extra, is the stop light for your interior. This helps with backing-in, and parking within the garage - especially at night. Easy to install and helps with parking cars and trucks - comes one when motion sensors are triggered.

Although we had originally planned on storiing our bicycles on the peg boards, hooks specifically made for bicycles are much nicer and easier on your bikes.

Finally, I found a number of ‘overhead’ options for storage. Which - even though we ended throwing out/donating a lot of our seldom used items - we might be looking into as an option to reduce clutter.

Darn if renovations don’t end up costing more than your budget no matter how hard you try!

If you’ve been here before you know that we’re remodeling the inside of our garage (after a short tantrum about not being able to get the bikes out on our one day off this summer!)

And we’d managed to stay within a reasonable budget, until…

I started looking at our nearly, neatly, organized garage space with pride. Then I saw the doors and realized there was no sense putting all that work into the inside when the outside was so frightful! Did we have the money? Well we could, if we re-allocated next month’s budget ‘creatively’.

The garage doors on this old farmhouse aren’t exactly matching the rest of the house exterior - which is why they’re bothering me so much. Almost an eyesore, the entire thing looks like it was an afterthought - or a “make-do until” jobs.

Considering that garage doors are full frontal view of the rest of the house, they really do make a difference in the entire appearance. What’s the use in working so hard on the rest of the frontage but having cheap and generic garage doors? Read the rest »