Ever dream of having that place you can call your own, it doesn't have to be huge either just enough space to have a few friends over or a place for you to work on your hobbies. Well I'm going to take you on my journey making my Man Cave/Workshop. The thought behind the man cave I'm going to make is being functional and flexible. It starts with a two car sized garage, it will be a place for gathering friends, a functional workshop for my hobbies, and occasionally park a car in.
First I have to know how much space I have to work with. Once I know the space, I can make the most out of that space; so we are literally off to the drawing board!
Establishing the use or purpose of the Man Cave helps me decide what I need to put in it. But before I start getting all that I do want a little design and style too! So I want the feel of an old Tavern something like an English pub almost. I also want a southern twist to it too. So I looked up design ideas to get the brain going.
After some long thought and balancing it with a low budget I come up with a rough idea of what I want. Then I draw up a sketch of what and where everything will go.
This sketch helps me organize everything and stay on track, the dotted lines are over head shelves for storage and solid lines are on the ground. The exception is if I store something under a workbench then I will use dotted lines. The size of this two car garage is barely up to the code size. The car door openings barely fit the width of a full size sedan, I have to fold in the side mirrors for the car to fit.
Also there is not much space from the garage doors to the side of the garage walls, there is just enough room to open the car door to get out of the car. This is why I have to keep some things flexible to be able to move things to get the car in on severe weather days. So you might be asking "Are you going to put a Epoxy floor coating or decking?" I want to but I can't if I'm going to weld in my garage. Weld spatter will ruin any kind of floor coating so bare it will stay.
As you can see, I have my priorities... beer fridge! I brought a couple cases of home with me. Tennessee has the whisky down but they need to catch up to the beer scene in San Diego. There are some good beers in Tennessee, but they are far and few between. Black Abbey IPA is pretty good, some of the other local beers have been bland.
OK... back to the garage. The walls are unfinished drywall so I have to paint them and I might as well paint them to help achieve the look I want. I decided on red with a wainscotting with corrugated galvanized steel for that southern twist.
Next it off to get the paint and equipment I'll need.....
I went to Home Depot and I went to Lowe's, bounced back and forth between Valspar at Lowe's and BEHR at Home Depot. I was looking for the right color red that was pre-made and not some custom color. The reason for this was if later I have to make a wall repair for whatever reason I can get the same color again. Now I know that they can optically color match paint but it is still usually off just a little and if it's available off the shelf it's also faster to grab a can and go.
I found the color l liked and bought a sample jar, I then painted it on the wall to see how it painted on. The color is Valspar's Heirloom Red 1010-3 and it went on as I expected. So now to calculate how much paint I will need and buy supplies. There plenty of online sources that can help you calculate how much paint you'll need. All you need to do is do measuring and math to find surface area you are painting in square feet. So it looks like about 2 gallons per coat, that depends oh how thirsty the dry wall is and how one coat looks. So it could could take 4 to 5 gallons of paint total, now will be off to the store. Please check back as this will updated as we progress with the project.