Take that tax refund and transform your garage space into something you’ll love coming home to
By Adam Cook
For many of us, the garage is our front door, and passing through on the way in and out can be a harrowing journey. Although it might be our home’s primary entrance, it’s the last thing on the list for spring cleaning.
“People feel frustrated when the time comes to clean out the ugly mess winter left because it usually means tackling more than a few months of buildup,” says Mike Padden, owner of Encore Garage Ohio. “Often, it’s years of neglect and accumulated junk as the garage turned into a domestic dumping ground. It’s enough to stress anyone out.”
Enough is enough. Bikes with flat tires, balls that don’t bounce, bags of golf clubs gathering dust, outgrown scooters and a Slip ’N Slide past its prime, tools, ladders, snow shovels, bulky bottled water stacks and unpacked moving boxes all need a new place to call home. If any of these usual culprits Mike and his crew uncover describe your own garage, it’s time for a transformation. Add making your garage into something worthy of the rest of your home to the top of your to-do list.
“Take a look at the garage floor, the unsightly stains and areas where salt has eaten away at the concrete,” Mike says. “We can restore it, sealing it with our Encore Flexcore polyaspartic coating system, so there’s no distracting eyesore every time you pass through the garage.”
The state-of-the-art coating makes concrete better than new and comes in various colors.
“The cost to put in another concrete floor is through the roof,” Mike says. “Our Encore Flexcore polyaspartic coating is economical and adds value to your home. Unlike concrete, it’s nonporous, repelling oil, grease, paint, salt and other chemicals so that these substances do not collect and get tracked inside the house. That’s the real beauty of it. On top of that, it’s low- maintenance. To clean it, simply mop it and squeegee it.”
The garage is no longer just the garage.
“The garage has become another room in the house that people proudly show off,” Mike says.
From floor to ceiling, Encore Garage uses its know-how and system of heavy-duty cabinets, spacious work surface, sturdy organization systems, and showroom-quality lighting to reclaim and redefine the space, reinvigorating garages to their rightful places as a natural extensions of the home.
“We match every job to the homeowner’s needs and personality—building a storage area and workbench for the resident gearhead or wrapping cabinets around a big- screen TV and emblazoning a Guardians logo on the wall for the sports fanatic,” Mike says. “If someone likes to garden, we can make a custom workstation to exercise a green thumb, rain or shine.”
All Encore Garage’s organizational systems are custom-made.
“Custom doesn’t mean costly,” Mike says. “It means we design with the homeowner to deliver the optimal organization system. We’re not pulling cabinets off the shelf like a big box store, and we mount—never hang—our cabinets 4 to 6 inches from the floor for easy cleaning. They’re what I call ‘garage-tuff’ and can withstand moisture and extreme swings in temperature. Doing the floor and remodeling the garage is usually less costly than remodeling a half-bath.”
As tax season coincides with spring cleaning, it bears mentioning that transferring the momentary joy of getting a return into a garage worthy of the rest of your home can turn a harrowing journey passing through on your way and in and out into many happy returns.
Top 10 Garage Clutter Culprits
The technicians from EncoreGarage have come up with an amusing checklist of common items you will often find in the average Northeast Ohio garage. How many do you have?
- Bikes with flat tires. (More bikes than people living in the home)
- Golf clubs, so many golf clubs!
- Water bottles in bulk. (Can anyone possibly be this thirsty?)
- A minimum of three ladders, all the same size.
- Deflated balls. Too many to count.
- Scooters, skateboards, and skates, oh my!
- Tools, tools, tools.
- A menagerie of defunct plastic water games, such as the Slip ’N Slide that has neither slipped nor slid for many years.
- 9. A plethora of snow shovels. (One for every member in the house)
- 10. Mystery moving boxes from your last move—13 years ago.
Set the stage for a clean, organized and aesthetically pleasing extension of your home with Encore Garage Ohio, based in Akron at 1570 Akron Peninsula Road, Suite 6. Get started and visit EncoreGarageOhio.com or call 330-922-4411 to schedule a free consultation.