I renovated my garage... again!

Obligatory finished shot! This is actually my second time (first one: https://imgur.com/gallery/4VDsShJ) posting a garage build to r/diy, my last was in the UK but since then I moved to France and have had to do it all over again! This one was a bit easier, as it is a smaller garage, a less ambitious design... and I already had all the tools!

The start. A small garage 460x340cm, not in too bad shape but some water damage to the walls and the only ceiling was actual cardboard. At least it proved that it was water tight!

The electical system was... well, adequate for the original purpose to be fair. But I was looking to snazz that up a bit. (The new electrical work was done professionally)

The important thing was to check whether my car would fit...

...which it does... just! Not too much room for much else though

Close-up of the small 'attic' area over half of the garage, and the cardboard 'ceiling tiles'. Improving on this was the first project.

Underside of the 'ceiling' area.

For the ceiling I found some very cheap pvc 'wall' slats, as you can see I didn't do a tremendous job of this but it looks ok, and better than before at least. I went for white for everything as far as possible to try to maximise brightness in this small space.

Ceiling done! Next up is rendering the walls...

I really didn't have much width to play with, so studding out the walls like last time was a non-starter. I wanted a way to make the walls as nice as possible for as thin as possible, so went with sanding and rendering straight onto the breeze block, then painting. This is after the render...

...and after the sand and paint. Not 100% but a lot nicer than before.

Next up was the soffit gap - I wanted to close this off because I had an idea to add some led strip lighting along this, for a cool ambient effect. It's just a garage I know but it was a bit of fun. I started with this cork board...

...and then covered it with insulation tape that I had lying around. Shiny!

Next was adding some similar pvc slats to the underside of the 'attic' - this is largely pointless because with the garage door open it's almost completely covered. But I'll know it's there.

Tool wall time! From my last project I developed a fondness for slatwall, and although I didn't cover the whole garage in the stuff this time I couldn't resist one board, to re-mount my powered tool shelves.

Retrieving the slatwall. My little mx5 helping out with the refurbishment of its new home, and proving once again that Miata is always the answer...

The flooring arrives! Recycled tire rubber tiles, ironic given that I have a bunch of old tires that I have to get rid of. Net even?

The tiles went down very easily... the gap on the left is the entrance of an electrical line, which I left like that temporarily as the electrician would be coming soon

I put some nice vinyl flooring down in the attic area. Yes that is white electrical tape - sue me. :-) Ugly lighting wire, your days are numbered!

Tada! Lights! New attic spots doing a great job highlighting a couple of dead bodies / car seats.

More lighting... a big central led tube, and spots for over the workbench area. There were also a bunch more plugs added, and a decent fuse box for it all.

Finishing touches from botttom up - 1. baseboard trim; 2. a squishy panel to avoid dings when opening car doors too close to the wall, or when backing into the wall like a doofus; 3. hooks for things like the car's hard top, bike rack, etc, and then 4. the cool led lights running inside the soffit! (I went with Philips Hue as I already had a couple of those, and I had a pir sensor for it lying around)

And with the addition of some frosted transparent panels in front of the soffit to give the leds a nice diffuse glow, it's done!

I hope you enjoyed my re-renovation of a garage, and I hope I stay in this place to enjoy it a bit longer than the last time! Next project... a decent workbench!