What do I want? What am I doing?

TLDR: I built the Dreamer Den!

How do I reinvigorate life into my garage?

Why do I want to to do this? Well my current standings in the wide world are not one where I can freely splurge on current interests, I decided to take the back of my garage and convert it into a work / chill spot. I want it to be known as the “Dreamer Den“ from here on forth lol. I have wanted an area of the house where I can invite friends over to smoke some dub, shoot the shit, talk about life, listen to music, and most importantly just let loose and relax. So lets begin the process of building the Dreamer Den.

Before the magic

Below is how my setup was right before I began the process. It wasn’t terrible to start with as I had already started to jazz the place up from its original depressing state.

I had originally brought my pc setup down to the garage in the height of COVID. I had left the desk and monitor mounts up because I was lazy and kept making excuses to not do it. I had a hard wired ethernet cable that comes directly from our Modem installed then as well.

About two years ago I had enough of gaming in the garage when a mouse problem exploded in our garage. I went nuclear and tore everything out of the corner, sanitized and cleaned. I put all of my keepsakes and our holiday decorations into rubber bins and left it to sit unused for a couple years.

A couple of weeks ago, I got bored of the clutter and decided to make the desk area useable. For what? Who knew? I then went through all of my keepsakes and rediscovered all of my car models, hot wheels, sports memorabilia, sports medals, recovery keepsakes, and school keepsakes. Wow that is a lot when I type that out and realize that my entire childhood memories that I hold near and dear to me are kept in a corner.

If you haven’t guessed it, I love cars lol. I have aspirations to modify my current vehicle, that is something planned for a future post.

Knowing that I had cherished these keepsakes and left them to sit in a box in the dark, just didn’t sit right with me…. AH HA!

I had shelves and brackets collecting dust, I put them up and displayed the cars as shown below. With the new space in the bins, I condensed what I could. I also threw away things that shouldn’t have been kept in the first place

The receiver and speakers were collecting dust in the cabinet also. I connected the ethernet cable to the receiver and connected the speakers and boom! WIFI stereo connected to my phone! 😎

I took a couple of keepsakes, organized a bit more and then left it as is below and went to California to visit my sister.

Below is my work / weed bench. In the corner is a bunch of shit that hasn’t been properly dealt, same as the storage cabinet and above. I was using the space but I was just half ass using it and not taking care of it.

It was time for a change, I knew I needed to organize the space but how?

We have identified the want, now how do we….do?

While I was away I was pondering new ways to bring life to the space, without spending any money. I also need to be able to do this without destroying my already fucked up spine. I will dive into that side of my life in a future post.

Want – An area to do all my weed stuff, properly utilize workbench, hang out with friends, brainstorm ideas.

How – I knew what I wanted, just not how to get the final result. I figured to start I would just take everything out of the bench, corner, and cabinet. I needed to see what I had, what I could get rid of, what I could condense, and how to properly utilize the space.

Do – Now is time to show you the good stuff 👌

Money spent = $0.00

Remove it all!

Now that everything has been carefully removed, condensed, cleaned, sanitized, and organized we can begin the part of moving shit around.

I envisioned the workbench along the back wall, beside the cabinet. To do this I would have to move the cabinet over about 20 – 30cm’s to the right.

With a little help from my neighbor, weed break, and profanity we got it moved to a good spot. I have added a before and after below.

I have a lot of shit!

If anything has been learned from this, it’s that I have a lot of equipment for many different interests. I do what I have always done, start something and not finish it. I have a tendency to get into something, spend money on it, then never utilize the equipment properly. Rinse and Repeat!

Golf, Fishing, Snowboarding, Motorcycling, magnet fishing, camping, computers, and any other West coast activity could be found.

Lets organize!

I started filling the cabinet and work bench up with the contents that I had sorted earlier. During the move of the cabinet, the left side door broke off. I thought that it looked better so I left it off. The door would later come into play. I moved all of my weed stuff over to the desk, and called it a day…..

What now?

The task was done, it just didn’t feel complete. The space as a whole was at the back of the garage and it still had a dark and depressing feel to it. What could I do to elevate this chill spot into the ultimate budget garage paradise.

As I mentioned before, I have a lot of stuff that isn’t being utilized to its potential. One of those things is…. LIGHTS! I had bought a pair of LED track lights a couple of years ago and it has just sat in the box, until now.

LET THERE BE LIGHT!!!

We wanted it, We did it!

Money spent = $0.00

I wanted a organized, functional, and inviting area to use that can also be smoked in. The Dreamer Den was born!

I didn’t just create a newly refurbished area, I also learned a valuable lesson from doing this. I learned that with ingenuity, patience, and follow through you are able to take things in your life and change them for the better. You just have to have the want and drive to make things happen.

I did all of this without any investment at the current point of time. If you don’t know what you want, simplify your problem to the initial part of resistance to your current problem. I had a space that served a purpose that I was not happy with. I wanted to change, and I started at a place where there wasn’t any resistance “empty everything, and take inventory”.

The Finish

Adding the lights really finished the space off and personalized the area immensely. The same can be applied to any area of your life. Anyone can solve a problem, its how you build on the success and add your own finishing touches that separates what you do from the rest.

Why should we be happy with just solving a problem?

We shouldn’t, I won’t.

Take care,

Adam H. 07

Want this? Do This.