Category: home improvement

Learning From The Elders

KarenLeave a comment

I asked my dad to pass on his electrical knowledge and help me get another outlet in the garage and some better lights … and by “help” I mean “end up doing all of it while I watched.” I had planned to be more hands-on but there was a lot of knowledge to be imparted and Dad had all the experience (and all of the tools), so I ended up asking questions more than anything else.

I felt bad watching my father, who will be 79 in five days, run up and down a ladder, but I think I did learn some things and now there’s an outlet right by the toolbox. Plus he did the groundwork for the lights I installed after I sent him home–when I vacuum my car out next, I’ll actually be able to SEE it!

 

As always, Dad, thanks for your knowledge and tools and supplies and labor. Remember, passing your skills on by doing things for your daughter is a way of living forever. 😇😆

 

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Tuesday Garage Roundup: Almost Done

Karen

I’m crossing so much off the Garage Beautification List! Shelves are hung, footings are painted, stair treads are glued down, and even posters that hung in my work office 10 years ago are up, because why not decorate your garage?

The left wall of a garage with white walls and beige floors. There is a line of high wire shelving at the ceiling. On the floor below are a pressure washer, orange tool chest, ladder, and two garbage cans.

The right wall of a garage with white walls and a tan floor. There is a line of hanging yard tools and a large poster of Carl Sagan and two smaller posters.

Two shallow stairs from the garage to the house door. They are covered in beige vinyl commerical treads and risers.
The shelves were from Costco and came with the hooks the hiking stuff is hanging from (I think they’re meant for bicycle storage). And I am inordinately pleased with the stair treads and risers. I found them at the amazingly-named AMERICAN STAIR TREADS DOT COM and they were easy to trim down and exactly the size promised (it’s not their fault the builders made the bottom step 36.5″ instead of the standard 36″).

There are some little things still on my list, of course: Paint the door, put up ladder hooks, and hang one of those fancy retractable extension cords from the ceiling. But the last major thing to do is new lights; I just need my dad to teach me and a weekend morning that’s cool, so we both don’t get heat exhaustion. (PS to Dad: I have a plan to get the conduit behind the shelves, don’t worry.)

One Month Later

Karen

The major parts of the garage are done and we were able to park on the epoxy with no problems yesterday–WHEW. There’s still a list of things to do (hang shelves on those pristine walls, add more lights and an outlet, install the stair treads, and paint the footings to match the floor [regular paint, not epoxy]) but the hardest work is over. ALSO WHEW.

I had fun doing this project (except the ceiling) but I didn’t truly realize how much work it would be. But I got ‘er done! And it looks pretty good, especially in photos.A corner of the garage with drywall mud applied

The same corner of the garage but with smooth painted white walls and a tan speckeld epoxy floor. The empty shelves are filled with tidy boxes and there is an orange tool chest against the wall.

When I pulled the car inside, I realized I painted the floor to match. Color coordinating custom garage!
Back view of a tan subaru parked in the garage with a tan floor

I Think It Worked!

Karen

I rolled epoxy on the thoroughly rinsed floor yesterday morning. Last year I tried to fill some low spots in the concrete with two-part epoxy (I was already planning the Great Garage Beautification) but one spot didn’t set up for months, so I was extremely anxious about putting it on an entire floor.

But this time I timed the mixing and set a timer for the pot life and generally followed the instructions as completely as only a person with generalized anxiety disorder can do, and I think it worked! It’s handling foot traffic just fine this morning; tomorrow I’ll try the tool chest on it and then Saturday night it will get the car test.

I understand now why the epoxy garage floor is so popular with suburban dads–it looks so good! Especially with the matching stair treads I found for the unfinished steps (not installed yet, I just had to preview them with the floor color). Maybe I too am a suburban dad…

A half-painted garage floor. The left side is covered in tan epoxy, the right side is bare concrete.

A woman's feet on a tan painted garage floor

Looking down on steps leading into the garage. The top step has a tan vinyl stair tread on it and the bottom step is raw wood.

Hot Times In The Summer

Karen

The wall paint in the garage is now 90% finished! (I’m waiting on the door wall/behind the shelves because I didn’t want to move everything off and then back on again to do the floor.)

AND the concrete is etched and rinsed! (And rinsed, and rinsed, and rinsed again, and rinsed one more time in the afternoon because this is the step I’m the most nervous about. Hence the dropcloth runway.)
An empty garage with built in shelving. The walls are freshly painted white.If everything dries over the next few days (it should; it’s going to be 100 degrees today) then I’m going to roll on the floor epoxy Wednesday morning and hope for the best.

 

In between concrete rinses yesterday we went up to play in the stream, because wow does that garage get hot when you’re working in it. Am I mostly posting this because the light is making me look swole? Yes I am. A woman sitting on a rock in a river. She's wearing short shorts , a tank top, and a baseball hat.

Home Improvement Weekend

Karen

Lots of garage progress this weekend: I finished priming and then my brother and nephew came up with the 4,000 psi! gas!! pressure washer!!! to get the floor clean prior to painting that.

I can’t get over how nice and clean it looks now. This week I’ll do actual wall paint (with lots of drop cloths) and hopefully I can do the floors next weekend, so we can all start parking inside again.

The Dusty And The Scenic

Karen

I made a lot of progress on the garage over the long weekend! I finished mudding and then sanded and even started with primer in one corner. My dad told me about “dust control” drywall compound and it was definitely worth the extra money: It’s still dusty but the particulates want to fall to the ground faster, so at least it’s not floating in the air.

My walls aren’t the smoothest in the world but they’re also not the most textured either. I can tell I got better!
Wet mud on all the drywall seams in a long garage wall

A close up of mudded and sanded walls in a corner of a garage

A built in shelf in a corner of a garage. The walls are covered with primer.

 

I took a little break from everything to go on a hike Friday afternoon up Big Cottonwood. The clouds were doing the most and it was just lovely.

Big white clouds above a mountain lake, reflected in the water

An alpine meadow with white flowers, with mountains in the background and white clouds above

Mountains seen through a grove of aspen trees, with a blue sky and whtie puffy clouds

Tuesday House Project

Karen

All of my house projects follow the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie  model: If the second storage shelf doesn’t fit back in the new basement closet and barely fits in the garage, you think about wall shelving. If you’re going to put wall shelving in the garage, you think you should probably paint the walls first. If you want to paint the walls, you’re going to need to mud and sand and prime them. And before you can do any of that, you have to take everything OFF the shelves so you can get to the walls.

So here we are:
A garage interior with raw drywall and piles of stuff covered by drop cloths

I roped my dad into coming up and giving me a lesson in applying mud over the weekend. Turns out there are a lot of similar skills between finishing drywall and getting a smooth layer of frosting on a cake, and I’m not great at either!A corner of the garage with drywall mud applied

 

But I’m done watering my friend’s garden after today so I can get in the garage and spend some time very gradually improving for the rest of the week. Because as we all know, “Sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.”

Doing Things In Rooms

Karen

I got a long weekend and did all sorts of house things: Painted the old office, visualized what a 6-foot felt board would look like in my new office, and even did some sewing in the new basement (!). Who needs to leave the house?

A bare white room with a dropcloth-covered table of painting supplies in it

A desk and filing cabinet against a white wall with an orange coach along the other wall. Above the desk a 6x3 foot rectangle is taped out in blue tape.

A white fluffy rug has a cutting mat, pieces of fabric, and pillow forms on it.

Tuesday Project Roundup: A Paper Project

Karen

I pulled out the book board and papers and made a tissue box cover for the new bathroom over the weekend:
a paper covered square tissue box cover. The paper has botanical-illustration style oranges and leaves on it in rows.

It had been a while since I worked with the thinner Italian papers vs. the forgiving Japanese ones but we made it work. And we have some nice pops of orange in there now:
A green bathroom vanity with the tissue box cover and a piece of orange art glass on it.

And! We finally got shower glass last week, so everything is DONE-done now:
A tiled shower with a black stool in it and a solid glass door