2019 Garage Makeover Contest Winner

Stephanie Piszkiewicz

Stephanie Piszkiewicz is enjoying a totally renovated garage at her Arlington Heights home thanks to an annual contest sponsored by Garage Store in East Dundee and The Daily Herald.

Piszkiewicz, a project controls specialist with Burns & McDonnell, a construction engineering firm, won the coveted home improvement from a field of more than 3,000 entries. The improvements she received were valued at $5,000, said Jim Melchert, owner of Garage Store.

“The job that Garage Store did in my garage was a drastic improvement” said Piszkiewicz. “This house was built in 1963 and I bought it from my parents last spring. They had lived here for decades and the garage needed work.”

Piszkiewicz loves to garden and needs her garage to store not only her car, but also lots of gardening tools and supplies.

The prize allowed her to have her garage floor coated with a textured gray flake system with a UV-stable top coat finish. After the walls were painted, a Gladiator Gearwalls storage system with hooks and baskets was installed, along with a large powder-coated steel cabinet for storing gardening chemicals, automotive items and so forth.

“I’m really excited about this opportunity to organize and improve my garage. I’m an avid gardener with all the associated rakes, shovels, sheers, hand tools, sprinklers, chemicals and more — some of which aren’t stored in my garage anymore because I can’t get to them quickly enough when working in the yard.” Piszkiewicz wrote in her entry letter.

“My old, warped peg board currently holds some of my tools, but not nearly all of them can fit on the board,” she continued. “And as a shorter person, I have greater difficulty reaching the permanent shelves in my garage, so I tend to leave things where I can quickly reach them: the floor. Cabinets like yours would elevate my driveway salt and windshield washer fluid, lower my WD-40 and marking spray paint, and contain my odds and ends while putting everything within easy reach. No more lugging around a step stool to reach the shelves in my garage.”

Piszkiewicz wrote, however, that what she really needed was a repair of her 56-year-old concrete garage floor. “Decades of wear and salt damage have taken their toll on the floor. I can sweep leaves and debris from my garage, but fine particulates just stick around. Blowing out the debris only makes the dust airborne. Getting a smooth, sealed surface to sweep out would make me so happy.”

Piszkiewicz admits that she was thrilled when she won. Not only did she win a fabulous prize, but it gave her a reason to clear out decades of accumulation left behind by her parents. .

“I had a choice of several colors for the floor and chose flake gray. Then they did pretty significant grinding of the floor; filled some divots and did the several-step coating, which includes a vapor barrier. The process took about three days and it is gorgeous,” she said. “To win the floor alone would have been worth entering the contest. I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

Garage Store staff members also painted the walls, spray painted the rusty I-beam and center post of the garage and installed new vinyl baseboard trim in place of the old, beaten-up wood baseboards.

Then they installed the Gearwalls with plug-in hooks for hanging multiple tools and the two door, solid-weld cabinet, which is suspended from the Gearwall to prevent damage from water.

“It is so gorgeous in here now that I could hold a party here,” Piszkiewicz said.

Garage Store has been helping homeowners like Stephanie reclaim their garages and transform them into another “room” of their house since 2007.

Garage Store is the place to go when a homeowner wants either a full garage makeover or a minor tweak. Solutions range from $300 for an overhead storage rack to $10,000 for a total garage makeover with a polymer floor, wall system, cabinet system, etc.

“We can custom design your garage to meet your needs and budget. As our T-shirts state, ‘It’s not just a garage. We create it. You enjoy it,’” Melchert said.

Garage Store is the Chicago regional designer and installer of Gladiator GarageWorks powder-coated steel cabinets, made by Whirlpool, which come in silver, red or white. They also carry hooks, baskets and shelves for the Gladiator Gearwall system, as well as ceiling-mounted bike pulley systems, custom overhead storage racks, and car lifts for stacking and storing vehicles.

Melchert’s crews can also re-claim unused attic space above garages, adding pull-down ladders and flooring the space above the garage to add as much as 250 to 300 square feet of storage space to the home, Melchert said.

But the application of polymer floors like the one given to Stephanie is one of the Garage Store’s most popular services.

Melchert gives credit to his staff for their years of experience in applying commercial flooring systems to manufacturing facilities, automotive centers and restaurants. “They transfer those skill sets to our residential work,” he said. “We also use the same commercial-grade polymer floor products with our residential customers, adding superior strength and performance.”