Garages Go Upscale: More Space For Storage and Maybe Your Cars

Aiming for the high-end homeowner with a glut of stuff, design specialists are urging customers to invest in accouterments as refined as the rest of their house.
By: Amir Efrati: The Wall Street Journal Online
The latest addition to Leigh and Carrie Munsell's home in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif., has granite-like flooring, cedar-lined cabinets and pricey recessed lighting. An elegant new pantry? A library? No - a $20,000-plus bespoke storage space in the couple's two-car garage.

With everything from fly-fishing gear to clothes now arranged in an orderly way, the garage is "pristine," says Mrs. Munsell, 41, a stay-at-home mom. "No cars are allowed."

Aiming for the high-end homeowner with a glut of stuff, garage specialists around the country are urging customers to invest in storage space as refined as the rest of their home. Ranging up to 500 square feet, the spaces are typically created along garage walls, often with weatherproof cabinetry in woods like maple and birch. In some cases, cabinets are hung on slatwalls, or storage platforms are installed above the cars.

Marble Flooring

Garage Envy, a three-year-old garage-storage company in Pasadena, Calif., offers features like retractable benches ($650 apiece) and marble flooring and granite tops for work tables for $35 per square foot. Business has been so good the firm just opened branches in northern California, Arizona and Oregon. In Houston, a typical custom job by Advantage Garage Cabinets is about $2,700, or double the amount a year ago. In all, there are about 500 custom garage shops across the country, up from about 50 in 2001, according to Peachtree Consulting Group, an Atlanta firm that tracks garage storage.

The boutique garage shops are banking on growth in two areas - super-sized garages and clutter. According to the National Association of Home Builders, 19% of single-family homes constructed in 2004 had room for three or more cars, up from 11% in 1992. Because a third of two-car garages have so much stuff in them that there's room for only one car, according to a 1994 survey by the Department of Energy, garage shops are betting that, with more space, homeowners will stockpile more stuff - and need more organized storage. "I look at people's garages and most are disasters," says Steve Shorten, owner of The Garage Makeover Group.

There are downsides. Even pricey cabinets can fill up fast or get messy. And when some homeowners don't return items back to the storage spaces, their garage can easily revert to its previous state.

Customers like Kevin Maley say they overbuy. After paying $8,000 for 68 feet of custom garage cabinets, the Houston oil-equipment executive's Christmas lights and dog kennels are all neatly stored - but he's got a surplus of empty shelves, just in case more space is needed later. "I love my cars," he says. "And it would be a shame to keep them in a shabby garage."