Garage Restore, Phase 2

The former house owners had converted the garage into a game room in 2003.  It is my plan to return the room to a garage.  The first step in getting to that point was to fix the ceiling.  The ceiling had damage from a period where the A/C unit in the attic was poorly sloped and leaking into the ceiling.  The drywall had sagged and eventually fell apart.  Phase 2 is painting and the final phase will be installation of the garage door.

With the total fiasco of the complete ceiling replacement, which also included removal of two HVAC ducts and a HVAC air return, now I was ready to depersonalize the walls.  The former owners had spent probably a significant amount on a mural artist to come in and paint the walls in a Tampa Bay Buccaneers theme.  Since sports are not my thing, I really have no interest in keeping it around.  Early on, I thought it would be a great selling point for the house, but to live with it until I’m ready to sell is just too much.  Anyway, things like murals are not selling points.

For reference, this is what the room looked like before any work was started.  The tube lights have since been replaced with LED flat lights and a lot of the furniture is gone as well.

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The color scheme is going to be two-tone grey with a blue hue.  Since the outside of the house is going to be a stormy color of blue, the garage will carry that color in.  The laundry room is a bright aqua blue.

I began priming the upper part of the walls, since I also had the paint for the upper part.  Eliminating the bright red walls and artwork was more satisfying than I expected.  In one particular section, the names of the former homeowners were painted, along with the date the mural was completed.  Painting over that section felt the best, for many reasons.

See, I’m still more or less friends with the old homeowner.  I do computer work for him.  Recently, he got divorced.  Sometime later, he stopped by my house with his new girlfriend and wanted to show her my house (his old house).  It’s kind of hard to explain, and I just chalk it up to some southern thing where you can just walk through anyone’s house when you’re friends with them.  But he showed off the game room and talked about “how it was”.

Now that I have wiped all that away, he doesn’t have anything to show off.  He doesn’t have anything to remind him of his ex-wife or make his new GF think of his ex-wife.  I don’t have to think about him or his ex-wife or his family anymore either, or my previous life for that matter.  It’s a clean slate and a fresh start.