Over the past few months (November & December), we have been working on the inside of the garage. We started in the far left corner where the workbench will be.
The garage was pretty much just a structure with very little wiring and plumbing completed. This allowed Zac to put wiring and utilities where he wanted. First, all the wiring and outlets went in place along the wall where the workbench will be.
Along with the wiring, the plumbing for compressed (shop) air was installed. Currently there is no place to connect the shop air up to, as the compressed air tank will be housed in a new West Wing of the garage (to be built later). For now, all the air is getting routed and will be connected when that wing is built.
The shop air lines are being routed overhead, and there will be several drops throughout the garage. 
Once the wiring and air lines were installed, insulation could go up.
On this wall will be two air conditioning units, one above the workbench and one above another work area further down the wall. Zac started by framing where the AC unit would be and routing the electrical for the unit.
Four holes were drilled in each corner so that the frame could be located on the outside wall. Zac then cut the hole in the stucco.
With the outside stucco removed, the wood was cut and removed so that the through-wall AC unit could be installed.
Next, drywall was installed, taped, and mudded. Once the wall was dry, cabinets were installed. These cabinets were from the kitchen. Some were in too poor of shape to even be used in the garage, so we only used the good cabinets. Zac built wood frames around each cabinet to support the workbench. This way, the workbench load would be supported on the frame and not the cabinets.
Originally, Zac was planning on running base cabinets all the way to the wall. I suggested leaving a gap as a workspace so that one can work seated at the bench with their legs under the bench. This is also the area where the bar chairs can be stored.
After framing, Zac closed in the area to give it a more finished look. A shop air drop is located on the left.
The three beams nailed across the top of the frames are to give the workbench structural rigidity. We tend to work on heavy things on the bench such as motorcycle engines, and this will prevent the benchtop from flexing and breaking.
After the frame was complete, the benchtop was installed. This was a pre-fabbed counter top from Home Depot. The entire workbench is 14 feet long.
With the workbench in place, this gave Zac a higher area to set his ladder for installing the upper pieces of drywall.
2 x 4 wood beams were lag bolted to the studs in the wall, and the upper cabinets were screwed into those. Most likely the cabinets will fall apart before falling down.
Cabinet doors were installed. This is almost a complete kitchen's worth of cabinets. There are still a few base cabinets left over that will be used as individual work stands for tools such as the drill press, chop saw, etc.
This is the reason we need so many cabinets. We have our old 3-car garage worth of stuff all over the floor of the new 6-car garage while the storage areas are getting built.
The walls were primed and painted with a standard white garage paint. We have a lot of surface area to cover in the 6-car garage, so we chose white as it comes cheap in 5 gallon containers.
A close-up of the AC unit, an 18,000 BTU unit. The second will be the same unit purchased later to go in the spot further down the wall. The gap in cabinets above the workbench will also work well for working on tall items that don't fit under the cabinets, such as truing bicycle wheels.
Attic
There was no attic, only exposed beams. So with the clearance and amount of room up in the ceiling, Zac decided to floor in a section to use as storage space for items that don't get used often, but take up a lot of room (motorcycle fairings, bike flight cases, etc). From the floor to the ceiling in the attic is 6 feet, so one can walk around up there comfortably.
The start of the floor:
A view of where the floor will be extended to.
Another view of the start of the floor. Once completed, there will be 800 square feet of storage space in the garage attic. We also purchased a drop-down attic ladder kit, which will be installed soon (and documented in a future post).
Lighting
The existing garage lighting is severely limited. There are two 8 foot fluorescent lights that are on the left side of the garage. The bulbs are a pain to change, store, and transport because they are so long. Zac decided to install 2 rows of 6 lights that are each 4 feet long (and contain 2 bulbs). This will put out a total of 816 watts, for 0.6 watts per square foot. Task lighting will also be installed under the upper workbench cabinets for detailed work, such as working on engines.
A few months ago, we had also installed lights on the outside of the garage. There are 4 lights, one between each garage door and one on the very end of the garage.
The lights are controlled by a photo cell that turns the lights on when the sun goes down. (The area around the cell will be painted to match the rest of the garage).
This shows the finished re-inforcement. We also installed a new Pegasus faucet in oil-rubbed bronze.
This was the old plastic plumbing that was under the sink:
Here is the new sink installed. The drain is also oil-rubbed bronze. The black finish matches the kitchen sink.
The new sink compared to the old sink.
The center cabinet had the same unfinished bottom:
A thin piece of oak was trimmed, glued, and nailed to the bottom and sides. The sides had fake veneer that couldn't be stained, so I roughed that surface with the sander and glued the real wood to it, followed by nails. Oh, and I found that vacuuming the cabinets with the soft brush attachment (for curtains) works well for getting the majority of the sawdust off of the surfaces. After vacuuming I followed up with a tack cloth.
The yellow Post-Its are status notes for each door and cabinet so that I can keep track of where each one is at in the process.
Now the upper cabinets match the base cabinet that was finished, oh, forever ago.
The next step was to install hardware. I found some drawer pulls in oil rubbed bronze at Home Depot that matched the new doorknobs well. And it was the 10 pack, so I saved a ton. Do you know how expensive some drawer knobs can be? Yeah, look them up sometime. I've found some that are $50 EACH! I have 18 knobs to put on between the two rooms, so that's not happening.
