My First-Ever Three Car Garage
My wife Mustang Sally and I are among the folks who are fleeing Southern California due to the high cost of living, rising taxes and the general ass-whipping that living here entails. We are moving to Tucson. We may be leaving Automotive Heaven for Hot as Hell Arizona but one of my long standing car nut dreams has come true: three bays, no waiting.
My wife tells me the triple garage we just purchased comes standard with a house attached to it, one with a fireplace and two or three bathrooms or something. I haven’t really noticed; I have a giant new garage to organize and I need your advise.
It is nice to see that three car garages are becoming more common. We saw them in homes priced as low as $175,000. This particular one has two other features mandatory in my book: no windows in the walls or doors so no sunlight beats down upon the vehicles, and plenty of leftover room once filled with our fleet.
Parked in the stalls from left to right will be our S2000, GLK350 and 1968 Mustang, the latter of which would warm the heart of TTAC mega-commenter PrincipalDan. My company ride will swelter in the driveway but as we say in the business: it’s not my car. I will spare you the logistics of how we shuffle four vehicles with our current tiny two car garage and no street parking but will say it involves orange airport marshalling paddles.
Here are my thoughts so far as how to outfit this garage. First and foremost, I have always wanted a refrigerator. Mustang Sally says she does not like the one that came with the house and wants a new one so I have my icebox. I have room for a chair so I can sit and have a beer and admire my rides. (Admit it, you do that too, don’t you?) For the first time in years, I have enough wall space to hang my eclectic collection of mobilia signs (My favorite: “Bardahl Stops Valve Lift Clatter”) and my Nicola Wood print of a 1964 Ferrari GTO at Big Sur.
Throw in a lighted workbench with a stool and a metal tool pegboard and I am done with the easy stuff. What is becoming a challenge is choosing storage cabinets and racks without breaking the bank. The prior owner stripped the garage of its cupboards so I am starting with a blank canvas. I am tired of crap strewn everywhere; I want everything in or on top of cabinets. How do I find a happy medium between the pricey custom cabinets and the white wood ones from Home Depot?
And don’t get me started on the subject of car lifts, checkerboard epoxy floors, and laser-guided parking systems.
What has worked for you in your garage?
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I live on the coast of CA halfway between Santa Barbara and LA, a area with arguably the worlds best weather.....sorry AZ and TX residents, my house is worth a lot more but I'll bet my utilities and a fraction of yours and I can enjoy being outdoors all 12 months. Anyway I think my three car garage is set up as nice as any Ive seen. I use two bays for cars, period. The third bay I partitioned off and built my shop. Along one wall the tools are in a double stack tool box and three used Steelcase filing cabinets. Every drawer is labeled making it a snap to find tools and put them away. Along the other wall is a table saw, and a workbench with chop saws for wood and metal and bench grinder on top, drain cleaner, plasma cutter and welder under it. In one corner of the two bays is a 50 gal air compressor with 100' of hose on a reel and copper pipe with air connections in four locations. With this setup my cars stay nice, and I can cut grind, and weld all I want without damaging them.
Congrats! I just got my first 3-car garage too, it was my only requested priority when we were house shopping. I can tell from the picture you attached that you will have the same problem as me: there is not a lot of width in your garage. The spots on either end will end up close to the doors. This is important when planning workbenches and storage, you don't really have room on the sides. Luckily my garage is extra deep so I can put stuff like that on the back wall, hopefully you can too. Only suggestion I have is to mount cabinets and shelves off the floor, you are going to want to be able to clean underneath things easily. Leaves and dirt goes everywhere in a garage. My biggest decision and concern is the flooring. Epoxy is nice, but to do it properly it gets quite expensive and time consuming, and if you prep it wrong it will not last anyway. The plastic tiles are easy and nice too, but extremely expensive for a 3cg. I have been looking at commercial porcelain tile, commercial vinyl tile, and believe it or not, carpet. If you can lay tile the the porcelain is probably the best and can be had for about 60 cents a sf, the vinyl is good too, same price but easy to lay yourself, problem is it needs to be waxed, or covered with some kind of epoxy which adds to the cost. The carpet is appealing because its cheapest, and nice to work outside with... has to be commercial indoor/outdoor of course, many are certified for garage use. Since we don't live in snow areas (you are in AZ, I am in FL) no worry about that. And I was going to pair it with probably vinyl tile under the cars for drips and using jacks and stuff. Oh and also they make low-rise lifts for about $2k that do not need 10-ft ceiling height, they are portable but can be anchored permanently. I am getting one of those as well to make working on cars either. I am VERY jealous of your collection as well!