Garage Tetris
WARNING: There is some coarse language used in this article.
I always knew that, no matter what equipment I had, I would need to have everything on wheels in the workshop. This was for a couple of reasons. One for if/when I should ever want to change my shop layout around (I think it’s changed at least three or four times in three years). The second reason was if/when we ever needed to move one or both of our vehicles into the garage in case of an imminent hurricane threat.
Even though we have a three-car garage, the one-car bay is a bit tight. It’s not exceedingly wide and it’s not overly deep due to the heat pump unit on the back wall. The one-car section of the garage was only going to be useful for Lisa’s SUV.
The two-car section presents its own limitations as well. Given that I have a Toyota Tundra with a double-cab, my truck was a bit long. Even when the garage was completely empty, my truck would just barely fit with room to safely close the door. Now that I have the miter saw station (the only permanent workshop fixture) along the other half of the back wall, this did not allow my truck to fit anymore. This, needless to say, would be a big problem if there was a hurricane coming.
Well, That Didn’t Take Long
I put off figuring out a way to move the shop around to fit both vehicles in the garage for a while. We hadn’t had a storm go through the area since Irma did right before we closed on our new house in September 2017. I figured we’d have plenty of time to get things figured out before the next storm came. Well, that next time came along a lot sooner than expected.
Lisa was scheduled to travel back to Maryland for work a week before the end of August 2018. I normally drive up to Maryland the day before she leaves to get up there for when she flies in and to bring up her suitcase so she doesn’t have to struggle with it at the airport. Since this was a last minute trip, I didn’t have time to plan a trip up there and I had other things going on at the time at home, so I would be driving her to the airport instead.
A couple of days after she got to Maryland, I caught an update on The Weather Channel about a tropical storm named Dorian brewing near the Caribbean. This was nothing new for this time of year, but over the next couple of days the prognosis was not looking very favorable for Florida. A lot of the forecast models had this storm hitting Florida, and by this time the storm would be a very strong Category 4 or 5 storm. The time to figure out the puzzle in the garage had to begin immediately.
Let the Game Begin
I sat down at my computer and brought up my drawing of the garage layout. I’m so glad I already had these plans at the ready because it made what was to come so much easier. I needed to figure out a way to fit my big-ass truck in the garage, along with all of my tools and still have room to fit Lisa’s SUV. I downloaded some Sketchup plans of Toyota Tundras and Toyota RAV4s from the Sketchup 3D Warehouse. They weren’t exactly the same dimensions of our vehicles, but they were close enough. The first thing I tried was fitting my truck in the normal fashion with the tailgate as far back as it could go against the miter saw station. I long ago figured this would not work and I was correct. It was about a foot too long on the front end. I then tried to see if I could get my truck in on a diagonal and fit my tools around it that way. This was problematic as well. My truck could fit (barely), but I didn’t really have room for all of my tools. Things are not looking good at this point.
There was only one other orientation of my truck I had not yet tried. What if I could park it parallel with the back wall, where it would basically span the width of the two-car garage door? I moved the model around along with all of the shop equipment and, to my utter disbelief, it would actually work...at least in theory. I needed to get an accurate measurement of my truck’s dimensions first. I went outside with my 25’ tape measure and got the length and width of my truck. I went in the garage and laid down some blue painter’s tape to mark where the “corners” of my truck would sit, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say out loud, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!?! This might actually work!!!”
Austin Powers Ain’t Got Shit on Me
I had some hope now. However, I still needed to move all of my equipment around to make room in the front of the garage for my truck. Not only that, but I also had the riding lawnmower to somehow fit in there as well. I was now about to play the biggest game of Tetris in my life, and I didn’t have Lisa here to help me. She STILL plays Tetris, to this day, on her old Nintendo Gameboy (the original one with the yellow-green screen). Her eyes for this would have been extremely helpful. I did have my knack for spacial awareness that would definitely come in handy, however.
After moving things around for a little while in Sketchup, I figured out a way to move all of my workshop stuff back against the miter saw station. There would be two rows of equipment taking up the space from the miter saw station out to about the circuit breaker panel and as far over as the door to the house. This still left me enough room to move the riding lawnmower in position and leave the one-car section open for Lisa’s RAV4. My biggest issue was going to be how the hell am I going to maneuver my truck into this garage and not break anything or run into the walls.
I cleared out all of the space on the one car side and moved the riding lawnmower out of the garage to give me the most space possible. This was going to be the mother of all parallel parking jobs, and I never learned how to parallel park (yeah, that wasn’t taught or required when I got my license in Florida almost 25 years prior).
There was going to be no way I could drive into the garage and be able to straighten my truck without doing the full-on Austin Powers. I did not want to even try that so I lined up my truck and starting backing it into the garage. I went in at as much of an angle as I could, stopping every foot or so to make sure I wasn’t going to hit anything. I kept going, little by little, until I had the truck mostly in the garage. I was still a bit crooked, but I was in the garage. I cranked the wheel all the way to the right and eased forward enough to start clearing the one-car section. I was still a bit off, so I did a mini Austin Powers and got my truck straight. I pulled forward as far as I could go and I had about 3”-4” to spare between my front bumper and the wall. I could get out of my truck through the driver’s side door with no problem, and I had plenty of room on that side to close the two-car garage door. I don’t mean to sound cocky, but I was impressed with myself. I had successfully gotten my truck parked SIDEWAYS in a three-car garage by backing it through the two-car door.
After taking a minute to admire my work, I still had to make sure I had enough room to put the riding mower back inside and still fit Lisa’s RAV4. I pushed the mower inside and slide it over a little bit, basically lining it up with the door to the house. I parked a couple of things in front of it and I was good there. I still had my vacuum cart, the router table stand, my old Ridgid shop-vac and some bins on the floor. I had space on the passenger side of my truck, but I didn’t want to fill that space as I wanted to leave access to the circuit breaker panel. I still had some space on the driver’s side, between my truck and the garage door, so I wheeled the vacuum cart and the router table stand over there...perfect fit. The other remaining items I simply put in my truck bed.
Just Kidding...Bwaa Ha Ha!!!
Now that everything was in its final place, there was only one thing left to do...try parking Lisa’s car in the one-car garage. I pulled her car into the garage long before I started moving things around to see where it would be sitting and how much space I needed to open the driver’s side door to get out of the car. I left some blue painter’s tape on the floor to give some reference for when I was maneuvering my truck around. After all of the jockeying for position, all of the tape marks still looked good. I got in her car, slowly pulled it forward and went as far forward as necessary to clear the garage door. I shut it off, got out and closed both garage doors. HOLY SHIT!!! Everything worked ALMOST EXACTLY as I had planned it. I took a few pictures, the ones that you see below, as proof of what I had accomplished.
I told Lisa that I figured out a way to get everything into the garage and sent her the pictures. She was shocked that I was able to park my truck sideways in the garage. She was going to be coming home in a couple of days, and the storm wasn’t going to be near us for over a week, so there was still ample time to get her from the airport and get some other things around the house ready for the coming storm.
The day after Lisa got back, we decided that we wanted to bring all of the potted plants we had in the front of the house inside the garage as well. Some are quite heavy, while others are pretty light, so we didn’t want any of them to be blown away or be possible projectiles so close to the front of the house. There was still the room on the floor along the driver’s side as well as behind and underneath my truck, so we moved all of them there, with the help of my dolly.
We were all set for the storm, or as best as could be expected, and got other things inside the house prepped. Over the coming days it become apparent that the storm wasn’t going to be hitting Florida after all. It stalled over the Bahamas for a good day or so, and was beginning to slowly make a turn towards the north. It turned out that all of the work that Lisa and I had done was for nothing. Well, nothing at that particular time.
After seeing the catastrophic damage it unleashed on the Bahamas, we were extremely fortunate that Hurricane Dorian did not directly hit Florida. I fully believe our neighborhood would have sustained horrific damage. Although all of my efforts to rearrange the garage were ultimately in vain at the time, I take solace in the fact that when, not if, a hurricane bears down on Florida, everything that’s in the garage can be moved around to accommodate our vehicles. Whenever I think about changing anything around in the shop or getting a new tool, I make sure I can still fit everything in the garage with my truck parked inside. The (Tetris) Force is STRONG with this one.
***UPDATE: September 2022***
I had to play Tetris again in preparation for another major hurricane coming our way. Given my workshop has gone through a NUMBER of changes since the first “game”, it was nice to see that all of my careful planning paid off.
Before Tetris…
After Tetris…
In the end, the storm took a turn in our favor, so we didn’t have to maneuver my truck around to fit in the garage sideways again. Moving things around wasn’t really too much effort, as I already had the layout (both before and after) at the ready with my Sketchup drawings and tape on the floor. I can’t recommend something like that enough…have a plan in place before you need it. It will make life so much easier.
