Garage Goals: 6 Must Haves for Your Luxury Garage Renovation

A garage is not something you typically associate with being sexy. When it comes to beautifying your home, we all go straight to a kitchen reno, or a decked out bathroom with marble tile. The garage is often forgotten. It’s not considered a ‘room’ in the house, so it’s not properly celebrated and decorated. It’s so common that we just pour some concrete, throw up some doors and a hanging tennis ball and call it a day…but we didn’t want to do that. We wanted a garage worthy of Runge’s handbuilt Porsche powered Frankfurt Flyer, something for our Triumphs to live in that felt luxurious. A place to get greasy and have a beer in a Herman Miller inspired Knut chair.

We started, very literally, at the beginning. The first thing that makes a structure a structure, which is the floor it all rests on. This was a full on restoration Chip & JoJo inspired sort of project, working with what was in place for the modular home built 25 years prior. A typical bare bones space with pretty unsightly floors and exposed walls.

1. FLOORING GOOD ENOUGH FOR FERRARI

A little drywall and paint can go a long way, but how on earth do you make concrete beautiful, short of jack hammering it all up or a paint job that looks great at first and peels after a season?

We wanted something from Swisstrax that looked car show worthy, that was good enough for Ferrari (it’s been known to frequent their showrooms) but not so showy that it didn’t fit into a colonial style house in the Hudson Valley of New York. Garage floor tiles are the crazy easy solution for an instant makeover that you never knew existed. They fit together, lego style, and snap in one huge puzzle piece of perfection for a flooring installation that is pretty DIY friendly and can happen in a matter of hours. SwissTrax lets you design the floor online, so you pick out the exact pattern and just like paint by numbers style install. Self draining, super durable, and pretty, the RibTrax shifted our perspective on what a garage floor could be.

2. MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF ORGANIZED STORAGE

The thing that seems to escape us all is storage. Whether walking into a new space or trying to reimagine a pre-existing room, smart storage is the key for continued organization and efficiency. Especially in a garage, a room that is sort of the garbage disposal of the household, a place where mismatched screws and nuts and bolts and backpacks and ice picks and who knows what else gets thrown in when the teenagers take over the basements and the bedrooms ar bursting at the seams.

ORG Home creates garage storage systems that transforms the untidy garage benches of worn wood and grease and takes a cleaner more modern approach, giving you an Ikea like feel. Most people don’t think to put cabinets here—that seems like an expense reserved for the kitchen, but it’s amazing how having a space to throw those items in and shelves to store them properly on can totally transform a space.

3. GORGEOUS ZERO MAINTENANCE CARRIAGE HOUSE DOORS

Perhaps the most important element of your renovation, since they can add serious curb appeal from afar but also protect all of your precious toys on the inside. You know those cranky, creaky, steel monster looking doors from your childhood? They no longer exist.

Garage door brands started taking cues from the world of the entry door industry and now they can be just as inviting as the door that opens to your foyer. Amarr makes really beautiful Carriage Court doors that we fell in love with, built with durable composite overlay trim and insulated steel-backed sections. As silent as a Tesla engine, they are super energy efficient and add some serious noise reduction to the space. The quieter the doors are, the louder your engines can rev.

4. WHISPER SILENT GARAGE DOOR MOTORS CONTROLLED FROM YOUR SMARTPHONE

That whisper silence of the doors is amplified by super smart openers, powered by Chamberlain. The MyQ Smartphone Controlled systems have built-in Wi-Fi, giving you complete peace of mind by allowing you to make sure you closed the garage door while polishing off a margarita and not rushing home to double check. It’s silence without the sacrifice. All of the power, none of the noise, all of the control from your iPhone.

5. FIREPROOF DOORS THAT AREN’T HIDEOUS

Fireproof doors are required for most garages to be up to code, and for good reason—if that moonshine project goes awry or you get a little too carried away wrenching on the Flyer, it keeps the rest of the house safe and sound. But for years fireproof doors have just been slabs of steel with barely a detail, none of the beautiful mouldings or wood door detailing we’ve had available for entry doors for years. Pella Doors changed all that with the creation of premium wood-grain fiberglass doors, giving the door a rich, realistic wood-grain appearance that’s low maintenance and up to code—also dent-resistant and won’t rust or corrode. With Pella’s branded Baldwin partnership for stunning locks and handles, you really can’t find a sexier fireproof door anywhere else. Go crazy with a pop of color, and add a matching exterior door for perfect symmetry.

6. FAUX STONE WALL ACCENTS

We love real stone. In a perfect world all houses are still stone and mortar, deep boulder walls surrounding a dwelling with that earthy scent, and that incredible century long durability. Alas, that’s not always an option in today’s world of standardized building materials, but at the very least, we still long for that look. Stone veneer gives you that super rustic luxe look from real stone, but the ability to retrofit and hide any previously existing eyesores—like the cement lollycolumn we decided to breathe new life into.

Antico Elements makes super lightweight columns, wraps, backsplashes, and anything else you could possibly dream of in faux stone veneer. With dedicated artists they add custom details of natural imperfection so nothing looks too ‘prefab.’ Embrace the space. Don’t make it a junk graveyard. Let all of your toys and wrenching and guitar playing and chilling out all co-exist in the most relaxing spot in the house.