Category Bullnose Garage

Hey folks, Ed here from Bullnose Garage. Welcome to the inaugural episode of Bullnose Garage right here in my brand new garage, which I finished like literally just a few days ago. Um, so that’s what this episode’s going to be about. Since it’s the first episode and it’s a channel called Bullnose Garage, let’s talk about the garage, um, what I did to it, how I got where I’m at, uh, why I’m super thrilled with how it turned out, and, uh, why I did the things that I did. So maybe if you ever want to do your own garage renovation, uh, you can get some ideas. So away we go! Let’s get this truck out of here so I can show you what we did.

Okay, so here we are in the garage. It’s about 18 wide by like 22 deep and about, uh, eight to nine feet high depending on which side of the room you’re on. I got a flat roof; it’s a little bit sloped. It looks like a sieve. Flat roofs suck. Welcome here, Mexico! Anyway, um, when I started working on my truck, I figured I’d need a nice space to do it in, so this is what I came up with. The first thing that I had to do was actually tear back all the walls to the studs all the way around this hall back over here. So this garage wasn’t original; they added it onto the house and they just built it right up next to the house, right on top of the stucco. So there was actually a layer of drywall, then stucco, then drywall, then the studs. So that was a lot of fun. Had to pour some concrete, do some other stuff. Basically, it was a whole lot of work. But let me give you a tour and I’ll tell you exactly some of the stuff that I’ve added to make this garage my own.

Okay, so starting off in one of the more busy corners of the garage, uh, I’ll show up in the corner. I got my security camera; that’s an IP camera. It’s power over Ethernet. I added that because a lot of plastic car insurance companies ask that you, uh, store the car or vehicle area secured, your garage or storage facility, and they give you discounts and stuff if you have cameras. And when the walls are down, it’s much easier to run Cat5 cable, so I went ahead and did that. I also put cameras all around the perimeter on the outside and have them hooked up to a computer with, uh, camera software on it. So there’s that.

You’ll also notice all the way around the garage that I have a whole lot of outlets. You can never have too many electrical outlets to support that. I had an electrician come in and set me up with a power panel just for the garage. Uh, this house wasn’t 200 amp service; it was only 100 amp service, so we had to upgrade to 200 amp service. That was a significant chunk of change that went into the renovation budget, but had to be done. Um, and now I also, down here, I don’t know if you can see it because I’ve got this in the way here, um, but I’ve got a spot here for 220. So if I ever wanted to have a welder or a very large air compressor or anything over there, I could do that. Of course, got the air compressor, engine tools, lift, voice, all that fun stuff, air hose, power wheel, the works over here.

Now here’s a very important part of the garage: my AC unit. That’s a mini split from Mr. Cool. I was going to do a Mr. Cool DIY, um, but I decided to go ahead and get one of their regular units that’s installed by an HVAC technician because I’m not an HVAC guy, and when it comes to being comfortable, uh, I want to make sure it’s done right, so I’ll let him do that. Other than that, over here, the only thing that’s significant is all the cabinets and stuff. Believe it or not, I got all of these cabinets from a local university for basically like 15 bucks apiece. This is from Public Surplus. If you go to publicsurplus.com and register, look for your area. A lot of times, government agencies, universities, cities, that kind of stuff are auctioning off things just like this, uh, for dirt cheap. So it’s a whole lot cheaper than going out and buying, you know, fancy cabinets or toolboxes, that kind of stuff, and it works great, you know? There we go. And these actually happen to have a little workshop that I can use, so it works out great.

This cord over here, pretty basic stuff, a couple of toolboxes, um, another great big cabinet from a local university. These things are great; they’re awesome. Like, I can’t get over just, uh, how well they work and how cheap they were. So one of the things that you’ll notice if you’re paying attention is that all of my outlets at this level in the garage have USB ports, and that’s so that I can plug in USB things like my phone or these awesome lights from Harbor Freight. These things are great; I love them. I can just keep that plugged in and I don’t have to worry about whether or not it’s going to be charged when I need it. All of the outlets at the same level in the garage have USB ports, just like that.

One of my favorite parts about this garage, believe it or not, is this window. Now, that’s probably stupid, but I just love this thing. I love these blinds that are inside the windows like this. You don’t have to worry about cleaning them or nothing. Like here in New Mexico, everything gets dusty and dirty after just a matter of minutes, really. It’s crazy. And so, yeah, inside the window, you don’t have to worry about that. It’s up and down so nice. Yeah, so my old door was just a plain Jane door with no window. You know, I wanted to be able to look out and see a bird or something every now and then, so it’s pretty neat. I’m probably more excited about it than I should be, but I can’t help myself.

Now we come to the brains of the garage. You see behind me this ginormous television, which is hooked up to a computer system up there. Um, what you see above the computer is actually my POE switch for my cameras. They go into the computer so I can actually look at my cameras on the television or I can surf the web or Fire TV, any of that kind of stuff that I want. Now this is here because I’m not an expert when it comes to working on vehicles. Um, this truck is pretty much the only endeavor that I have when it comes to working on engines or even digging into some of the more technical stuff when it comes to how things run. So because of that, I rely a lot on YouTube and forums and a lot of online resources. So I set this up in such a way so that if I’m over here working on the truck with the hood open, I can just look over at the TV and look at, you know, whatever video I’m needing to get information from or if it’s, like I said, a schematic or a drawing or any of that kind of stuff. So that’s what that’s there for.

Now eventually, right here behind me, I’m going to put a workbench. Um, I haven’t got it built yet, but that’s one of my next projects. And of course, I’ve got my desk, which also serves this sort of work area and a sound system so I can listen to some music while I work. You can see here one of the speakers that’s in my ceiling. I’ve got four of them for the garage. The speaker system also extends out to the patio, and we have a pool that’s got a couple of rock speakers out there. Um, I mean rock like, you know, Van Halen. I mean rock like they’re shaped like a rock so that they don’t look like speakers. Uh, anyway, those are out by the pool so when we’re out at the pool swimming, we can get some tunage, um, and I can also listen in here. And that’s all controlled from the receiver that you see down in the lower left corner of your screen. In this image, you can also see the LED lights that I have set up in the ceiling of the garage. I have also added a little bit of mood lighting just in case I don’t want the stark bright and white of every piece. This was more for fun than anything else, but I’m pretty happy how it turned out.

Here you can see a little bit better my layout for the LED lights. Now these are just super cheap, simple LED lights you can get them from Amazon. The brand name is Barina, and they’re meant to replace the old fluorescents. And I gotta tell you, these things are amazing. They light up this garage like it’s daytime even when it’s nighttime. Uh, so I love them; they’re fantastic. And finally, over here, I’ve got right now what I’m calling my general purpose workbench. Um, it’s probably going to end up being an electrical workbench. I have a 12-volt tester and some other things coming in that I’ll use for, uh, moaning. I may go so far as to rebuild the harness in that truck. I’m not quite sure what I’m gonna do yet, but, uh, yeah, this gives me a space to do all that. Might get myself a drill press, make myself a belt sander or a tabletop sander and grinder, fill this place out so I’ve got some, you know, place to do some real work.

Another one of my favorite things in this garage is the jack shaft garage door opener that sits up there in the corner. So that door opener actually connects right to the torsion bar of the garage door and rolls it open from there without having to have this big clunky overhead chain and garage door opener system with the rail and everything. I wanted everything sort of above my head to be nice and clear just in case I ever wanted to paint, you know, paint a vehicle. That way I can get up and get tall, and especially with the truck, you know, spray paint down. So I didn’t want all that garage opener hardware in the way, and this jack shaft builder solves that problem.

Now the final thing that I’ll talk about here in the garage today is the floor. Now this floor is an epoxy floor; it’s from Armor Epoxy, and it consists of three parts. There’s an epoxy primer, the actual epoxy color itself called racing blue, and then there’s a top coat. In my case, I got what they call a military grade top coat and, of course, the flakes and everything else that goes with it. And I have this mat down here to drive the truck on because the truck does leak just a little bit of oil, and I don’t want all that oil getting on my brand new floor. Now it is a garage floor, and it will get messy and dirty, but for right now, it’s so pristine that I just can’t bring myself to drip anything on it. I do have a review of the Armor Epoxy product coming up where I talk about how it went down and what I think of it, how easy it was or how hard it was to put in, so look forward to that.

So there you go, that’s the Bullnose Garage as it sits today. Like I said, I just finished it probably about last week, so I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of new things going in and a lot of changes being made over time. But if you have any questions about anything that you see, any questions about how I did something or why I did something, or comments, criticisms, you know, it’s the internet, so I’m sure there’s those. But yeah, have any of that stuff, uh, drop it down in the comments, and, uh, we’ll see you next time.