Ever want to turn you den into a ‘man cave’ but either the wife wouldn’t have it or you use the den as a spare guest room? Don’t have a basement, or if you do, either unfinished or it is filled to the brim with stuff? Well, buck up! There is still one room of the house that you can still claim as your own with little chance of having it shanghaied and turned into a sewing room or extra bedroom…the garage! With the help of tin signs and a little imagination, you can have your cake and eat it too. Two car garages offer more available space to work with, although space can be found in a single car garage.

The first step is to organize your garage. Most garages have a healthy mixture of tools, parts, and automobile related materials (such as oil, washer fluid, etc.) spread though out the space. Either build or purchase (plastic shelving is best if you buy) enough shelving to be able to place everything you currently have on them.

Tin signs can be used to help organize the garage. For example: You can place all your oil, car wax, and gas additives on shelves located beneath a corresponding tin sign of Pennzoil, Turtle Wax, and ‘Marvel Mystery Oil’.

After organizing your garage, pull the car(s) into the area making sure that the garage door will easily and safely close and look at the clearance space you have between the front of the car and the back wall of the garage. In the typical garage, it is the back wall where you will be doing most of your remodeling work.

Find or buy a full sized (or a mini if space is an issue) used refrigerator for your beers (or any other beverage) and place it along the wall or in a corner. You can use a tin sign of your favorite brew, (whether it be Budweiser, Miller, Coors Light or whatever) and place it above the fridge proclaiming it your beer stash. Find a couple of old overstuffed chairs to place in the corner and you have your ‘man-cave’!

If you live where the weather changes from hot summers to cold winters (and your garage is not air conditioned), make sure you obtain both a fan and an area heater so you can always be comfortable.

To give the area a racing tone, attach tin signs of your favorite stock car to plywood backing and mount them along one side wall. On the other wall, do the same things except, use tin signs of your favorite sport for the walls. You can even find round tin signs of your favorite baseball team and mount them on a circular piece of plywood and suspend them from the ceiling by thin chains. Replica tin signs come in such a huge variety of shapes, sizes, and subjects that it is almost impossible not to find your favorite subject, cars or sports. They add just the right touch of nostalgia and practicality needed for use in a garage.

Because tin signs were designed to be in harsh weather conditions, car and paint fumes won’t affect them like they would ordinary decorations. Splash a little oil on one? No problem; one wipe with a cloth and it is as good a new. Most garages are not insulated which can cause problems with paper posters and pictures which are sensitive to temperature extremes. Not so with tin signs. Since they are made of metal, they won’t fade, crack or tear like posters.

If you want to personalize your garage to reflect you loyalty to a particular model or brand tin signs are the perfect choice! No matter what make or model of domestic automobile that you favor, from Ford to Chevrolet, from Mustang to Corvette, there is a sign for your car. There is even a sign that proclaims that you can get your ‘Woody Serviced Here’ (Yup, that’s an actual tin sign)!

Once you have your garage organized and customized to you liking, you can go further by carving out a corner for a mini bar with Tin Signs placed all around that extol the virtues of Budweiser, Miller High Life, Southern Comfort and Jack Daniel’s ‘Old No. 7’.

Just take an appropriately sized piece of ¾” plywood, cut it into a horseshoe shape (making sure that the ‘ends’ of the horseshoe meet where there are wall studs), and attach a sturdy hinge to each end and a wall stud. Make sure that when you are finished, you can stand inside the horseshoe shape and lift the entire surface up against the wall.

Next cut two 2 x 4 so they can serve as the legs to this table, hinge these legs to the underneath of the table so that when you lift the entire counter up against the back wall of the garage, the legs fold back underneath the table. Cover the entire surface of the plywood counter with a cut sheet of Formica counter top material and…viola...you now you have a ‘fold away’ bar. Place a few bar stools around and an extra chair or two and it will be just the place to have the boys over for a poker game or to just sit around and talk.

With tin signs you can transform your garage from a place to put your car; into your own private combination ‘pit row’ and ‘fortress of solitude’.