It’s taken six months, but we’ve finally broken the back of my Man Cave Monday project. Just in time for Father’s Day, the hardest part of the job (which began as a New Years resolution) is complete!

Those desiring the full blow-by-blow of the transformation of my horrid garage into a comics collecting and reading space can take a look at my past posts … for everyone else, suffice to say this job has been a bear-and-a-half. But ultimately, it was worth it.

In my last update we’d gotten the garage emptied out and the floors freshly painted with epoxy. The next task was to install cabinets and start moving stuff back into the space. A previous comment here at Longbox Graveyard warned that sometimes putting stuff back can undo all the effort of cleaning stuff out — and I admit that dire prophecy was ringing in my ears as we restocked and reorganized the garage — but after hauling some of the detritus to the dump or the local charity, the “garage” side of the garage looked great …

… and the “Longbox Graveyard” side of the garage was coming along nicely too, with paint on the walls and cabinets installed to hold my voluminous board game collection.

Those cabinets were a bit more expensive than I’d intended, but they have bevelled doors that look better than the standard-issue low-end garage cabinet, and the added benefit of feet that elevate them from the floor in the event of a flood (such as from a broken water heater). They also have little pistons in the hinges that let them close softly and automatically with a nudge.

The greatest benefit of these cabinets are that I can close my game collection away behind doors and not have to look at the riot of colors and sizes the boxes present. I’m not the gamer that I used to be, and I am still in the process of trimming down the collection (about a quarter of which — everything in that cabinet above — I hope to sell off), but with everything behind closed doors, I can reduce my collection at leisure, instead of having to look at THIS every time I walk into my garage …

Paint on the walls, floors all cleaned and painted, cabinets installed, and all our stuff put back into place … which meant it was time to turn this garage from a storage space into a living space.

First came the critical assembly of a reading chair.

In the background you can see my graveyard of longboxes, which still need some attention, but time enough for that later.

That chair anchors the main reading corner of the new space …

… which is a heck of a lot better-looking than the disaster I had at the start of the year …

And so the back has been broken on this massive project, something I could never have accomplished without good friends breaking their backs on my behalf (Andrew, Tom, and Gretchen — I owe you big time). Special thanks are also due my wife, Rita, for her indefatigable support throughout this project, and for her own back-breaking labor every step of the way.

I am pleased to report that the space has proven comfortable enough that it has attracted not only your humble narrator, but also my cats, who find the new seating options intriguing, and also my wife and kids, who have all snuck out there at various times this weekend to read, or steal a few minutes to write on some portable device, or just to soak up the ambiance of the new and improved headquarters of the Longbox Graveyard!

This marks the conclusion of the major portion of this remodeling project, but Man Cave Mondays will continue as an irregular feature here at the blog. There’s still plenty of little jobs to do — baseboards and crown moldings and windows to tend to, and also more than a bit of decorating ahead — and I intend to bring it all to you with the mind-numbing attention to detail that has characterized this series of posts (and for a photo record of this project — past, present, and future — check out my “Secret Headquarters” Pinterest board).

But that’s all for another time! Now it’s time to get back to reading … and thank YOU for reading as Longbox Graveyard continues boldly into the future!

(Or is it the past?)

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• Give Dad The Ultimate Father’s Day Gift – A Man Cave! (adamsdesignconstruction.wordpress.com)
• Man Cave Monday: Floor Show (longboxgraveyard.com)
• Garage Storage and Organization (planitdiy.com)
• Father’s Day Gift Ideas for Man Caves (ext.homedepot.com)
• Creating the perfect Man-Cave. (HappyFather’s Day!) (steveperoff.wordpress.com)
• Create the ultimate “Man Cave” for Father’s Day (dreamblueblog.wordpress.com)
• Longbox Soapbox (Summer 2013) (longboxgraveyard.com)
• Norm’s Corner: Building the Man Cave (naplesnews.com)
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