It has a concrete floor, a draughty door and humming fluorescent tubes. It smells of detergent, grease and the earthy tang of cut grass. It’s all yours. So what do you want to do in there? By Harry Sawyers

Workshop
MIG welders require a dedicated 30-amp circuit breaker. Unless you’re wired for serious metalworking, you’ll need to add a sub-panel. For small jobs, even a basic shop needs a bench, task lighting and a pegboard.

Hangout
A great garage recreation room never requires a trip indoors. Calendars, old licence plates, pin-ups and other aesthetic flourishes aside, you’ll need a beer fridge, a dartboard, comfortable seating and some tunes.

Storage
By stacking storage up high, you can fit a lot in a garage and still have room to park a car. Go with overhead bins, salvaged cabinets and capacious open shelves or plywood lockers.

The Competent man's laboratory

Cabinetry
At first, Olsen wanted the ease and access of open shelves. But when they got full of sawdust and random tools, he realised he had to build cabinets. “I kept trying carpentry until I wasn’t awful at it,” he says. In the end, he bought a used set at a substantial discount on the new price. You could do the same: ask around among friends who are upgrading, and make regular visits to sites such as Gumtree.

Peg board
Olsen organises tools by job. Carpentry, welding and metal fabrication have specific work areas. He uses standard pegboard and custom racks such as the one he designed to hang his clamps (above). He laid it out by arranging his clamps on the floor like a puzzle and outlining each one’s position in chalk. OCD? Maybe. “But if you don’t spend half your time looking for a misplaced tool, you’re more efficient,” he says.

Workbenches
After determining 94 cm to be his ideal working height, Olsen built eight benches at the same level so he could bridge long stock across the room. The metalworking bench has a thick steel top; welding occupies its own fireproof zone; a woodworking bench has a butcher block; and fold-down benches throughout save space and conceal tools. “Some tops are plywood; some are thinner steel,” he says. “I used whatever I was able to get secondhand.”

Lighting
Cake tins from a restaurant supply store became light fixtures with Olsen’s alteration: “I thought, light fixtures are expensive. If you just turn over this cake tin, it makes a good lamp.” He drilled a hole in the bottom, installed a socket and bulb kit, then ran wiring to the fixture. A reflective concave surface provides bright task lighting on the benches. Olsen welded cantilevered arms from the walls to hold the lamps. “They’re serviceable,” he says.

The allure of the garage

Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, dining room, den: in the pantheon of household floor plans, they are mere distractions – pretenders to the throne. It is the seemingly humble garage, after all, that reigns supreme in our dreams of a better, faster, more capable manifest destiny.

Let’s just cut the crap and admit that we live in a domesticated residential world in which mothers, girlfriends and wives ultimately decide what goes where. They determine the relative importance of, say, a new living-room credenza over a seasoned foosball table. Their dominion, however, falls short of the garage – the last resolutely unclaimed piece of household real estate.

Inhospitably raw, unapologetically uninsulated and categorically as much outside as in, the garage is our final frontier, a place where anything seems possible. Man cave, workshop, laboratory, gym, arcade, bar, rehearsal space, start-up incubator – it is an empty vessel easily converted to private retreat, adult playground and/or rugged workspace. The possibilities are endless, and the creation stories – HP, Apple, countless metal and jam bands alike – legendary.

There are no limits to what a man can achieve inside his garage and, equally important, no prying eyes to cast judgment. What happens in the garage stays in the garage – until it’s ready to race, rock or start a revolution. How many powder rooms can truly hope to match that? – Robert Moritz

Garage gear

Beer fridge deluxe
All due respect to the cooler, but it’s not a long-term beer plan. If you want something seriously masculine and reassuringly durable, think about bolting an aluminium plate to the door of your regular bar fridge, replicating (well, more or less) this 120-can model from US-based Summit Appliances.

Bulletproof boombox
Any old speakers suffice for a barebones garage jam. But the Bosch Radio Charger GML50 can charge batteries, power corded tools, dock an iPod, repel sawdust, fall off a truck bed and take a direct hit from a sack of cement.

Cadillac couch
Leaning up against the bumper just isn’t as relaxing as sinking right into it. This beauty was built by Josh Kreuder of US-based sweetsofas com, but you needn’t look that far afield. Your local scrapyard might just come up with the goods (after all, you only need a small piece of the car).

How to hang a dartboard
Low-impact sports release the garage hangout’s surplus competitive energy. Set up a proper duel according to World Darts Federation rules: Hang the bristle-type board with the centre of the bull’s-eye 173 cm from the floor, and mark the foul line at 237 cm from the board. Cross it and you forfeit the throw. Sharp steel projectiles are in play, so consider some crucial rules of play: no heckling, taunting or excessive talking. – HS

My plywood lockers

Once I figured out how to build a storage locker out of a single sheet of plywood, it wasn’t long before my custom power-tool cupboard was overwhelmed by the kids’ sports gear. Good thing making another was so easy. – Brett Martin

Rip wood
The single panel creates a 1 500 mm tall, 450 mm wide and 350 mm deep box with a back; panel scraps become shelves and dividers. Using a circular saw, rip the sides and back to width. Cover the parts in water-based satin polyurethane to get a durable finish. Give it 4 hours to dry, then cut the pieces to length. Save time by skipping the sanding – rough cuts work fine here.

Build a box
For simplicity, the box is built with butt joints. Assemble the top, sides and bottom by gluing the edges, drilling 3 mm pilot holes and driving three 75 mm screws per joint. Glue and attach the back panel, driving screws through the back, into the sides. To plan shelves, measure down from the locker top, mark a level line with a square, drill pilot holes and fasten screws through the locker sides and into the shelves’ ends. Add a 145 mm face along the bottom to conceal a 130 mm divider – it keeps rakes and brooms untangled.

Mount up Lifting the locker 300 mm off the floor gives room beneath to sweep or to store more stuff. Either use cleats to hang the locker or mount the cabinet directly on to the garage wall. Load up the locker, but don’t delay – before long, it’ll fill up with all manner of sporting equipment, some of it apparently from another generation.

5 Garage essentials

Vice -  Any serious grinding, tapping or filing begins with a firm grip in this bench-top clamp. Don’t stint on this essential workshop tool; buy the biggest and best-engineered vice you can afford, and bolt it to the workbench like you mean it.

Flooring - Modular tiles upgrade concrete’s look, comfort and ease of cleaning. You may not think so, but a floor covering in front of the workbench with even a small amount of “give” will make a big difference to your comfort. Your feet will thank you.

Hooks - Vinyl-coated bike hooks make open framing an asset. Mounted to joists, J-hooks hold string trimmers and circular saws, L-hooks hang ladders, and U-hooks coil hoses and ropes. If you can’t find these in yor local hardware store, make your own (hey, you’re a DIY guy).

Power - A 10-outlet power strip fastened under the workbench hooks up corded tools and battery chargers, and if you’re planning to plug in an arc welder, make sure the system can handle it. Use a ceiling- mounted reel to deliver a 30 m extension cord rated for outdoor use. Why so long? Trust us… you’ll use it.

Safety - Impact-rated glasses, a face shield, a respirator, goggles rated for chemical splash protection, leather gloves, disposable gloves, earplugs and a first-aid kit. (For the record, accidents happen.) – Stuart Deutsch