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Hows Your Garagenous Zone The Original Garage Organizing Book Marks...

For many American homeowners, their garages reflect landfills attached to the house replete with clutter that over time forces the family'ss cars to remain outside on the driveway.

But Colorado REALTOR's174; Bill West took exception to his garage becoming a self-storage unit for unwanted junk. Most garages become Dumpsters filled to the brim with unused and forgotten items that homeowners want to forget about, West said. He should know. His real estate career now spans 32 years enabling him to have seen thousands of garages during his real estate sales career. West wrote the first book about garage remodeling and organizing in 1999 after he tricked out his garage in 1998 to become a multipurpose room. Your Garagenous Zone: The Complete Garage Organizer Guide became what West calls his 'stest-market edition's to determine consumer interest. The book resonated favorably among homeowners.

Published in 2004, his latest book Your Garagenous Zone: Innovative Ideas for the Garage (chapter highlights (http://www.garagez.com/home.asppage=garagenous_zone)), emerged as the primer for ideas to enhance the garage'ss appearance including built-in storage strategies, ideas for lighting, heating and cooling, floor coating and workbench designs to name a few concepts outlined in his book. And just to validate this home improvement category, six books by other authors have since hit the book stores on the topic.

Garages emerged with the invention of the automobile over 100 years ago. While garages have remained the same, the three-car garage trend began in 1992. That year is the first time the U. S. Census Bureau documented that statistic. This fact according to West suggests that simply because garage size expanded, it should not imply they'sve gotten better. Larger garages enable the homeowner to acquire more stuff, which often lead to self-defeating results. See West'ss Laws of Clutter (http://www.garagez.com/home.asppage=laws).

Dr. Gopal Ahluwalia, chief researcher and economist for the National Association of Home Builders estimated Americans spent $3 billion for garage remodeling in 2006.

Contributing to the garage remodeling industry'ss success reflects the growing desire among the American public to become organized. The National Association of Professional Organizers, a trade group, experienced its membership quadrupling to 4,300 since 2000. 44 percent of those members perform garage organizing as a sub-specialty, which skyrocketed from just a few hundred performing those duties eight years ago.

Homeowners reject the status quo when it comes to home improvement projects, and that includes garage improvement projects, too. While simplification and organization are measurable goals, the end result requires a sense of style. Good design, a palette of color, texture, and material selection play an important role to determine how a finished garage will look.

Savvy home builders employ garage remodeling companies to outfit and furnish high-end homes's garages because home buyers expect something to be done in the garage. Builders create the 'sWow's factor when furnishing the garage. In today'ss home-buying climate, builders look for ways to differentiate what they offer.

Choices abound for garage cabinets to satisfy the range of the consumers's pocketbooks. Heavy-duty gauged steel to particle board are materials used by garage cabinet manufacturers. Floor coatings include a variety of epoxy finishes that include solid colors, a granite look, enhanced with logos of favorite sports teams, or colorful patterns on the floor. Plastic snap-together tiles offer another flooring option. Then there are polyvinyl roll goods that cover the entire garage floor area that are available in a variety of colors. Wall organizers made with rows of grooved panels accommodate a variety of hooks and baskets store just about anything found in the garage. These plastic-extruded panels appear in a variety of colors or wood grain patterns.

In addition to the growing number of garage products, hundreds of startup companies formed during the decade that include the 'stwo-guys-with-a-truck's variety to the highly organized corporate structure offering to sell franchises.

Companies that are marginal operations who are short on working capital, lack in outstanding customer service, or basically have no business model can likely end up on the scrap heap, according to West. While the entrepreneurial spirit thrives in this new category, hope alone is no substitute for an effective business model, he said. West advises start-up hopefuls to seek out help to develop a business plan before launching a garage remodeling company into economic turbulent waters.

All in all seeing this category respond to the needs of homeowners over the last 10 years is very gratifying. After all, few people want to tolerate a dark, dirty, toxic garage, West concluded.

For additional information on the news that is the subject of this release, contact Bill West or visit www.GARAGEZ.com. The book, Your Garagenous Zone: Innovative Ideas for the Garage (ISBN #0-9675875-0-6) is available in all book stores or online. The book distributor is Independent Publishers Group, Chicago, Illinois. Visit www.ipgbook.com or call 1.800.888.4741 for book orders. Garagenous Zone's174; is a registered trademark by the Paragon Garage Company, Ltd.

Contact:

Bill West

1.866.8GARAGE

1.866.842.7243

bwest @ paragongarage.com

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