Get to the nearest health food store for wheatberries, or big box store where you can find 'catgrass' seed(usually with the herb seeds). You might be able to find catnip plants if the nurseries are selling herbs already. Grow your kitty his own grass to chew on. Then get some chicken wire or hardware cloth and form a 'cage' that will set over your germination trays so they still get light and air. Make sure the holes are small so kitty doesn't get his foot caught. You could also spray the area with something he doesn't like to smell. One of our cats doesn't like my scented geraniums, so I rub the leaves where he's not supposed to be. None of our 3 cats like menthol(ie,icy hot, vicks vapo-rub)so that gets smeared in other places. I've always heard on pet shows that cats don't like Jean Nate spray due to its citrus scent, but I've never tried it. Maybe a citrus scented air freshener spray would work. I've got quite a few houseplants(all cat friendly)and the bratties are interested in them only when I am(watering, etc) or when there is something new. After a while they lose interest.Usually if I lose a plant it's because somebody got rambunctious and knocked a pot over while playing. I start tomatoes and peppers from seed every year. I sprout seeds in ziplock bags(in moist coffee filters) and then plant them in their starting pots. My grow light is placed very low over the seedlings and the cats don't even try to crawl under it. By the time I need to raise it, they've lost interest. Also once the toms develop essential oils in their leaves, the cats don't like them, so I keep the peppers and toms mixed together. Hope this helps(can you tell we've had cats for a while?)LOL!

I did not want to spend a lot of money on my garage, so I bought a nice USED kitchen from someone doing a remodel on their kitchen. Love all those cabinets for storage and counter tops for a work area. I hired two laborers to move the units... and had a carpenter install all the cabinets and counter tops in the garage with a new Formica sort of wood-look top. I might change out the doors later for a wood look. My laundry room shares a garage wall and I had a plumber connect a pipe into the garage and install the kitchen sink that came with the kitchen. :) Nice to have running water in the garage for my garden clean up... washing out my old pots or paint brushes I don't want to wash inside my home. I put rubber mats in the old stainless steel sink too. With all the counter space, I can do a lot of different things. It is fun to go to garage sales or thrift stores looking for the perfect old stool or high chair for the garage. :) A friend bought two of those big metal garage cabinets at Sam's (I forget the price) and installed in their garage to take care of a lot of things like tools. They also bought those big heavy garage mats at Sam's for one area of their garage if that is your taste. I have always done the "install old kitchen units" in my garages over the years, as most of these can be fixed up with cheap wood looking Formica tops from Home Depot or inexpensive new cabinet doors. Those old kitchen counters are a lot stronger than any of these units sold by companies. It will cost under $500. if you find the right kitchen to put in. One time I got a unit for free to haul away. No one realizes my garage storage was once a kitchen. They think I had the upper and lower cabinets built in etc. I use hooks on the wall for certain things and I have this medium size brown antique barrel where I put things like rakes and other long handled items upside down. We have 95 degree humid summers here but no really cold weather. I think kitchens are built for all kinds of weather. Anyway... that is what I do in a garage for storage and counter space.

We don't have ours covered and it hasn't been a problem. We have had ours about 4 years. I built a table to go along with the kitchen. I designed and built the structures and my husband helped me with the hardie board and securing, squaring the structures to the deck. We did all of it besides the granite and 90% of the stone work (only because we needed to meet a deadline). Sink is just a hose hookup for quickly rinsing hands and not for food prep. Not sure how to get the pictures smaller.

GreenDesigns, I have a few issues with your post, so I'm going to take the liberty of quoting parts of it below, to better respond to them individually. GreenDesigns: "A consumer grade electric range is not a gas range. Its very rare for any range, electric or gas, to have 0 as the clearance needs. RTFM." I read the 'F' manufacturer's installation instructions for my consumer grade GE electric range, as posted on the GE website, and quoted above and here: "Electric ranges require 0" side wall spacing above counter height... ...30 inches between the cooktop and bottom of the cabinet above. 0 inches for sides below the cooktop." GreenDesigns: "Placing tile, or stainless, or stone, directly over a wood studded wall without an insulating air gap, is violating the fire code, if it places that wood stud within the prohibited zone for combustibles." Come to think of it, the studs in that wall are metal. And here I aways thought the builders had just been cheaping out. GreenDesigns: "The reason that I mention an insulating air gap, is because that is how a manufacturer’s “suggested”( but required) backguard works to comply with code. There’s a small gap between it and the wall, so it doesn’t directly conduct heat into the wall assembly." While the 0" spacing mention in the manufacturers installation instructions appear to only require that I not somehow place the range inside the wall cavity, the shape of the range prevents me from placing the cooktop directly in contact with the wall. Space being at such a premium in my kitchen, it's not that I haven't (inadvisedly, as I now see) tried. The gap currently stands at 3/8 of an inch. GreenDesigns: "Plastic is extremely flammable." Well, yes and no. That's kind of like saying "Kitchens have extremely little counterspace." While you will seldom find anyone saying the their kitchen has too much counter space, thoughtfully designed mansions generally have more than improvisationally built tiny homes. As for the flammability of plastics, "Nitrate"-type celluloid filmstock fell out of use due to its nasty tendency to burst spontaneously into flame, while diallyl phthalate is suitable for high-temperature use in applications like jet fighter hydraulic systems. Polycarbonate, the polymer used in the greenhouse sheeting I mentioned, is a self-extinguishing material with a range of UL94 Flammability Ratings from V-0 to V-2, depending on the details of manufacture. Greenhouse sheeting can probably be assumed to be at the more flammable end of that range; but could generally be expected be substantially less flammable than, say, polypropylene or polymethylmethacrylate GreenDesigns: "Enthusiastic ignorance is still ignorance." Well, geez. Was it my vast oversimplification of the Glass-Transition Temperature of polycarbonate as the temperature that it "doesn't start melting until" that made me seem ignorant? Or that I did not fully research all my ideas elsewhere before seeking input and information on them here? GreenDesigns: "Please refrain from giving advice that will catch someone's Kitchen on fire and result in toxic fumes both. Do t guess. Either know the answer and answer. Or don’t answer. Don’t stick in a bunch of dangerous BS." It was not my intention to give advice, or to "answer" as if I were some all-knowing authority. I meant to put forward ideas and hoped to discuss their merits. (Admittedly, when directly challenged to "RTFM," I did answer that by quoting the best authority I could readily find.) GreenDesigns: "Stick with talking pretty colors and decor." It seems I may have to. I was looking forward to have a interesting discussion here. Instead, I mostly got responses saying that the problem could not be solved or that everything I had suggested was wrong, without saying why or giving much other information at all. And, while my problem has been solved, it was not any of the knowledgeable experts who were so quick with those responses who were actually able to help - it was the OP. I don't speak the language of didactic imperative very well, and that seems to be making it rather hard for me to converse. I don't take well to direct insults, either, and that's making it rather hard for me to want to converse with some of you.