Garage Conversion At Last!

Since buying our house back in April 2006, we've only done a few home improvements, but each one has had a huge impact on our quality of life around the house:

1. Shortly after moving in, we installed ceiling speakers in our dining room. You might laugh at this being in our "major home improvement" category, but for Ryan, it makes all the difference!
2. A year ago, we installed the much-talked-about custom-gate across our driveway that would turn our driveway/patio area into a contained play area for Spencer and Tyler. This relatively small change dramatically increased the usable space on our property, with Spencer and Tyler now spending countless hours out there on their ride-on cars and bicycles - best of all, we're able to see them from our computer desk, kitchen, and dining room.
3. This summer, we tackled the natural add-on to the gate project and converted our garage into a playroom for the boys. It's still technically a garage (in compliance with San Mateo building codes) that we can drive a car into, but it has been transformed by custom-french doors, carpet, dry wall, and a fresh coat of paint. The boys love it, and so do we.

Here's the "before" photo of our dark, dank, junk-filled garage...

And here's the "after" photo of Spencer & Tyler's new play space. Pretty cool, eh?

A lot of people have asked where all our junk went. After moving everything out to our patio (where it remained, unfortunately, for almost a month), we finally sorted through the riff-raff, recycling or giving away what we could, throwing away what we couldn't, and storing the rest up in the space above our garage, which is now easily accessible via a nifty pull-down ladder!