How do you fit five cars into a three-car garage?

Stuffing five cars into a three-car garage isn’t exactly a practical storage option for most people, but it can be done. Here, we’re taking a look at this garage for inspiration. Even if you don’t need this kind of vehicle storage, it might give you some ideas for how to fix up and organize your garage. After all, if someone can put five cars into this one, surely the rest of us can find a way to keep our tools and cars in the same space in a way that they’re both accessible.

Car Lifts and Extra Headroom

The garage featured here belongs to an avid car collector.Before this makeover, his garage was too small for his car collection.

The solution to the lack of parking spaces was easy, even if it was expensive. Four-post car lifts provided space for two cars in the same stall. The lifts shown use an electric motor, a hydraulic cylinder, and a series of cables and pulleys to raise the cars. This setup cost thousands of dollars, but there are lifts available for less.

To gain an extra foot of headroom here, the homeowner hired a garage door company to modify the door tracks and replace the typical ceiling-mounted garage door openers with units that mount on the wall alongside the garage door. And an electrician relocated the overhead lights to fit between the garage door tracks.

Heating, Cooling and Ventilation for the Garage

Winters in this Midwest town are too cold to simply open the garage doors or open the windows a bit. Part of the garage remodeling project here was to install a heat recovery ventilator. This type of ventilation unit saves energy by using the heat from exhausted interior air to warm the cooler outside air as it’s being drawn in.

A unique feature of the garage heating and ventilating system is the round ducting along the back of the garage. It spreads out the warm air evenly across the garage for more consistent heat.

It’s Still a Functional Garage

Even though this garage has all the comforts of a palace, a lot of thought was given to practical garage functions. For help with this the homeowner enlisted professional garage designers. Their plan for garage cabinets included space for tools, storage and a computer station as well as unique floorless cabinets to house (and hide) rolling trash bins.

The base cabinets feature compartments for the central vacuum system, a large air compressor and a hose reel. The hose reel is connected to a wall faucet in the same cabinet. Beneath the desktop are two large tool cabinets with sturdy full-extension drawer slides.

The old garage floor was bare concrete, functional but ugly. The garage specialists recommended coating the floor with a “double-broadcast” quartz epoxy floor, a process they perfected on commercial buildings.

First, the installers blast the concrete with metal shot to clean and roughen the surface. Then, they spread a layer of epoxy over the floor and cover it with quartz dust. After applying the epoxy and dust coating a second time, they apply a clear coating to provide a seamless smooth surface that’s easy to sweep and mop.

Diamond-Plate Aluminum Decor

Since the garage was a social area, it needed attractive finishes and an entertainment system. Keeping with the car theme, racing stripes were painted over the diamond-plate wainscoting. Then the walls were covered with photos of collectible cars.

This garage-remodeling job was a success, but the homeowner does admit to a few design errors. He had to add another high-definition TV monitor because the view of the original corner-mounted unit was blocked by the car lift.