How to clean out garage

In general, the best way to clean up a garage is from top to bottom. Start by dusting off and wiping down the tops of your cabinets, shelves and refrigerator if you have one. Then, wipe down your garage walls and the doors of your fridge and cabinets with a warm, damp cloth and a mild household detergent.

Clean it out.

Set aside a day or weekend to get your garage properly decluttered. Go through absolutely everything you have in your garage and sort your stuff into three piles: keep, donate/sell, and throw out. Organize your “keep” pile into categories like camping gear, sports equipment, etc.

Divide and conquer

This is your garage cleaning mantra: Keep, sell, donate, toss, and reorganize. Pull the cars (or car) out of the garage so you’ve got room to work. You are going to make keep, sell, donate, and toss piles. Then you re-organize the ‘keep’ items to make the space useable and the items accessible.

More often than not, you can expect to pay a minimum of $100. But if you have a full truckload to cart away, expect to pay at least $500. Professional organizers typically charge by the hour ($30 to $150, on average), although some bill by the project or offer a day rate.

Hanging tools is another way to store power tools and save space at the same time. Simply hang pegboards on the wall in your garage or basement to keep tools clean and organized.

Fiberglass reinforced panels (FRP) or plastic wall panels offer the ultimate in low-maintenance wall finishes for garages. These panels resist mold, pests, mildew and moisture, and are easy to clean if exposed to grease or other contaminants.

Whether the garage for your new home is attached to the house or detached from the house, it is wise to put the garage on the “high side” of the lot. So, if when looking at your lot face-on, it slopes down from left to right, the garage would go on the left side of the house.

26 feet from the front of the garage to the home. The MINIMUM distance in front of a garage, so that you can easily manuever a vehicle into and out, would be 24 feet in my opinion.

Placement is Paramount

The placement of the garage should take into consideration the relationship to the house and to the street. In general, it’s best to recess a detached garage from the street to de-emphasize its prominence on the site and to reinforce the perception that the garage is a secondary structure.

You can build a garage or outbuilding on your property without planning permission as long as it’s of a reasonable size – no higher than 4 metres. Do bear in mind though that outbuildings cannot take up more than half of the land around the original property.

Adding a garage to your home is one of your best options for adding to the property’s resale value through improvements or additions. In comparison, a bathroom remodel recoups 54 percent of the project cost on average. However, a few improvements or additions create statistically better returns than a garage addition.

In practically any case, building a garage can and will increase the resale value of your home. According to Pocket Sense, the average attached garage will cost around $27,000 to build. Most homeowners see about an 81% return on their investment or an increase in the resale value of $21,000.