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Ask any car guy and he will tell you the most important room in the house is the garage.  My main reason for buying a house was to have a nice place to work on my cars.  Before that, I was an apartment dweller most of my life. 

I bought a house with enough property to build my "dream garage" but certain realities set in first.  I was a first-time home buyer.  After I moved in, I realized that it did not make much sense to add a new garage when the existing structure was badly in need of a ceiling to floor  remodel.  So I spent my time, energy and DOLLARS remodeling the entire house and this existing two-car attached garage first.  

This was my starting point for the attached garage.  The boxy structure with the buckets on top is a coal bin.  I did not see myself as the coal shoveling type, so I bartered my coal stove in the basement to one of my contractors, and got rid of the coal bin to for the extra space.  

I am pretty good and destruction, but not construction.  This pic shows half the garage.  

Looked like a clean job but I was covered in black coal dust after I ripped out the coal bin.  About a thousand screws later, I was down to the bare walls.

Filled in any insulation gaps.  The Andersen windows were in great shape.

The single-most useful addition I made to the enitre house so far was new Clopay electric steel garage doors. Sure beats getting out of the car just to open a garage door. I didn’t even notice when I bought the house that the old garage doors were manually operated. I also added a keyless entry.  The new doors were about 60 pounds lighter each than my old ones. 

This pic also shows the new fluorescent lighting and the drywall I had installed. 

Make sure to use cold weather ballasts with the fluorescent lights, or they will flicker when the outside temp drops.  

New steel attic ladder. The old wood ladder felt like an accident waiting to happen every time I climbed onto it.  

I wanted to get rid of this eyesore, an old bent basketball pole next to the garage entrance.  Although I generally do not recommend using a Z car like this, alls I know is that the car can pull a lot harder than I can alone.  I did not own my truck yet. 

Just make sure your rope is long enough so the pole doesn't land on the car, lol.   There was a yellow jacket nest inside the pole that I found out about the hard way.

This pic  drives some of my Z buddies crazy.  The land in the background is where the new garage will eventually be built.  

I replaced the cracked concrete slab outside the garage entrance door with these Bradstone pavers, and added flagstone steps that go down my  hill to the first floor.  Backbreaking work that kept a softy like me sore for a week.  Don't go by the brown crap exterior color.  I am gradually switching over the color of the house to slate gray, to match the pavers and my deck.   

The yellow arrow is where I pulled out the old basket ball pole. 

Added phone, cable, and extra electrical outlets.  That's an old z31 tranny sticking up in the corner.

Four of these motion detectors, one on each outside wall and one on the inside, in addition ot the IDT house alarm and Internet camera.

My garage was broken into before this  remodel and I lost all my tools, so I went overboard with the security this time.   

This "Atomic Clock" is pretty cool.  Sets itself automatically from a longwave radio transmitter coming out of Fort Collins, Colorado, which is about 1500 miles from here.  I could not pick up a signal with this clock at my old high-rise apartment.

Here is another  "before" picture of the other half of the garage.  New steel entrance door to house, waiting for paint.      

LOL, we planned for and got about 1/16" clearance between the new entrance door and the overhead garage door railing.

Got rid of all the old shelves and crappy cabinets on the walls. 

Bought six feet of pipe insulation (ID 1 7/8 inch) at Home Depot for $1.18, and carefully cut a straight line down the length.

This easily slipped over the edges of the shelves in the picture, and stayed in place without any adhesive or ties.  Now the paint on the door edge of my new truck will not get chipped on the metal shelves in my garage.