Garage Roofed

I started this blog post last Friday, but I kept getting distracted and didn't post it. I wasted most of last Friday watching them put the new roof on the garage. 

The roof pieces really do all lock together and it was fascinating to watch them.  

I'm sort of torn about what I think of the crew. They appear to do good work, but they seem a little flaky. They work weird hours and took a four-day weekend. I'm ready for this to be finished.

This is a photo of the repair of the rotted roof tail up front. They actually replaced some of the wood because it was too far gone.

The foreman sent me some photos of the roofing in progress up on top of the house.

Hopefully they'll finish up sometime this week.

Railings Painted

For the past couple of weeks, I've been slowly plugging away at painting the railing for the back stairs. We didn't have enough sawhorses to paint everything at once so I've had to paint everything in two batches. It was a little painful to put paint on this beautiful clear cedar, but I've learned the hard way that it won't look so beautiful after a couple years of weathering.

First I did the batch of balusters inside the garage. I applied a coat of exterior primer on all four edges and then I did the same with a good quality exterior paint.

All finished and ready to be installed

Then, once we had the tablesaw moved into the garage, I set up the rails outside under the porte cochiere. They're getting their last edge painted later today, then Jeff will finally get his parking space back.

I had hoped to finish this stair railing project before summer arrived, but in March I decided I would rather finish my closet first because I was tired of the disarray in the bedrooms. Then, by the time that project was finished, it had started to rain. A lot. 

I figured it made the most sense to sand and finish the stair decking before we installed the rails which will require a week of clear weather when it's not-too-crazy hot. I'm crossing my fingers it will happen soon because I'm eager to get this wood out of the way in the garage. I have some other projects I would like to work on.

Garage Progress

So far this year I've been spending a lot of time sifting and getting rid of stuff, the garage is no exception. We had this old workbench that the prior owner left behind and it was piled high with junk; this is how it looked last September. We finally managed to clear it off and sold it on craigslist. 

Our goal was to make room for the table saw to fit in the garage. Once the workbench was gone, we rotated the rolling wood rack and pushed it against that back wall. 

As a reminder, this is how the garage looked in Aug 2019 when I originally posted about wanting to organize it.

This has been a bit of a slow-going project, but I am pleased overall with our progress. There is still some junk we need to deal with in front of the wall with the tubs, but the garage is much better and more useable now, especially since most of the tools in the photo are on mobile bases and can be rolled out of the way. 

I have some ideas for more woodworking projects I'd like to try this summer, but we are feeling strongly the pull to get in our car and go places, so we may not get much done this summer beyond keeping the plants watered.

Mason Bee Harvest

 Our friend Liesl came by this evening and helped us harvest our mason bee tubes. It was fascinating to see the process of unwrapping the tubes. There were quite a few pests that had invaded the tubes, but we still had a good number of cocoons for next year. We think we started with 75 cocoons this past spring and we ended up with 182 good ones for next year.

I'm hoping to make at least one more bee house for the front yard by next spring. We have so much scrap wood, we should be able to make at least one more.

Jeff installed the new shed step this weekend.

I finally finished sifting all our hardware and fasteners and the bins have moved out to the garage wall, at least temporarily until we build a better storage rack.

And we got nearly all the bulbs planted. There's just 10 more left. I'll likely get those done tomorrow.

Built Shed Steps

Jeff finally had time to work on our shed step project. These were built with pressure-treated plywood and 2x4s leftover from building our shed.

He built it much better than what I designed. The steps I designed probably would have fallen apart much more quickly because he would have been screwing it into the edge of plywood. He added blocking and screwed all the pieces into it. 

I am going to stain it with the green stain I used on the stools before we install it in front of the shed but I'd prefer to paint outside and the forecast is for rain until Thursday. I'll be hoping for some sun later this week so I can finish this project.

Hardware Sift

Our garage organization project continues. Today, my Harbor Freight parts storage boxes finally came. I wasn't too happy with Harbor Freight as I had to order them a second time and pay shipping twice, but I did finally manage to get them.

I spent several hours today sifting through the large crate of misc hardware and fasteners I set aside during my garage cleanup. This should make it much easier to find things for future projects,. I've got four more bins that I haven't opened yet, so we have some room to grow.

Garage Progress

I still have a couple of big piles that I'm trying to deal with but it's a struggle for me to just toss stuff when I no longer need it, so I end up with piles I need to rehome. I lost my nice clear panorama but this is where we're at.

This workbench is mostly covered with unsorted tools and hardware. I ordered hardware storage bins from Harbor Freight but they're backordered.

This is the last table of junk I am trying to deal with. Probably most will end up in the trash or charity pile.

I still have some empty spots on the wall, luckily.

I don't really want to fill it all up because we're planning to bring our stuff back from Prineville in a few weeks. (We're selling the house to the renters.) To be honest, that prompted the clean-up effort. We have a trailer-full of stuff in Prineville that we need to move back in. I think I did pretty well this summer sifting and downsizing.

Rolling Lumber Cart Finished

 And it is done!

We're really happy with the finished project. We actually paid $10 for the Roll-Away Lumber Cart plan from the Woodsmith website so we could get the construction instructions and the complimentary Panel Cutting Guide (which we haven't built yet), but for more advanced woodworkers, you can get the Sketchup file for free here.

More Garage Progress

 We are so happy to have breathable air again. SO HAPPY. This afternoon we were able to venture outside and work in the garage again. We made progress on our Wood Rolling Rack.

We bought the wheels and three sheets of the cheapest plywood, but all the rest is leftover wood. All the pieces are cut so we should be able to finish it in our next session.

Garage Almost Finished

We have spent more than a week on the garage project and we are nearly finished.

We emptied out the big workbench and sifted the wood in it then put back what we were keeping.

We removed all the tools from the pegboard and installed spacers under it to give us more space where we could install the hooks. And Jeff installed magnets over the wood strips. Then I reorganized the tools and hung them back up.

This afternoon, we started cutting out the plywood pieces for the rolling lumber cart, but when this huge branch blew down off the roof, we decided we'd better redirect our efforts toward cleaning up the wood leaning up against the house.

This branch actually broke off the tree a couple of weeks ago,
but the wind blew it down off the roof into our work area.

The forecast calls for winds up to 50 mph. While we were cleaning up, two smaller branches also fell. I'm going to be really pissed off at the city if this damn tree damages the house.

So Much Sifting....

I have spent at least 20 hours the last few days sifting boxes and piles. If I see a box that clearly has stuff in it and isn't labeled, I bring it to my sorting area and go through it. We have a large pile of stuff to go away, some to the landfill and some to various charities. I also made a lot of progress at cleaning out the front storage area in the basement.

Here is where we are now.

Most of the boxes still kicking around on the floor are empty or staged to go to the Rebuilding Center (an architectural salvage place in Portland). The table has the last pile of stuff I need to deal with. And I still need to organize the tools and repopulate the pegboard.

There is still some remaining wood leaning against the house.

Although we probably won't keep all of it, I do want to sift through and keep the best pieces, especially the beautiful wide douglas fir we bought several years ago. Most of the wood has already been stowed in the garage on top of the new rack and on wall brackets; this is what is left outside.

After this recent success, we're feeling brave and we're going to try and build this mobile wood rack.

Garage Shelves Finished

And it's finished!! There is still a bunch of stuff out in the driveway we have to sift, but I'm really excited to get this part of the project checked off.

The original plan called for 7-foot uprights but the 2x4s came in 8-foot and rather than cut them down we changed the spacing on the shelves to accommodate taller items.

It's really hot again so we're struggling to work much past 3PM. This is where we left it for the day. We'll get back to work tomorrow morning doing some sifting.

Update a few hours later. Found tubs at Target.

Garage Progress Finally

Now that the end of summer is rapidly approaching, I finally kickstarted my garage organization effort. As a reminder, this is the plan for two free-standing garage racks. They're going to be installed along the left wall.

It's too bad I didn't buy the wood last year because it was quite a bit more expensive this summer. I ended up buying framing lumber because it was the least expensive real wood option. I did buy sanded plywood because the lowest grade of plywood was so rough I was worried it would tear up the bottoms of my plastic tubs.

When I made the plan, I had expected to paint the wood before we assembled it because we have lots of leftover paint in the garage, but the wood is so rough I don't think it will look very good, even after I've spent a few hours sanding the boards. They're still not great, but they're better.

Last week, while I was sifting my closet I found a nearly-full gallon of really old shellac—I think I bought it in 2013 when we put in the closets. I should have used it to finish the sewing room, but I forgot about it and bought a new can. I opened it up this morning and tested it out on a scrap, expecting to have to trash it, but it actually dried surprisingly quickly so I decided I may as well brush it onto this wood.

I've finished one coat on the 2x4s today. I'd like to finish the 2x2s and plywood tomorrow. I doubt I'll get more than one coat out of the single gallon of shellac so I'm just putting one coat on all the pieces to start. It makes the wood look nicer so I think it's worth the effort.

I scheduled time with Jeff starting next Wednesday to start disgorging the garage so we can put these together and put them into place and do a better sift and organize, so that's my deadline to finish preparing the wood.

Fall is Here!

It's not just a clever name. There are so many leaves in our yard right now. I hope we have another couple dry days so we can clean up the yard. As the outdoor season draws to a close, I thought it would be fun to look back at the progress we made in the yard this summer.

In May/June, Jeff planted the parking strip.

This is how it looked when initially planted

This is how it looks today. The plants that lived seem really happy.

It Rained :(

Jeff and Aaron managed to fill all the nail holes and do more priming on Friday. I painted the first coat of paint on the door.

Since it started raining on Saturday, we didn't get to start putting the paint on. Instead, we did a bit of garage organizing.

I managed to clear off the big workbench and sanded off all the marks and sealed it with two coats of the Daly's Seafin' Ship'N Shore leftover from the planting table.

I've spent several hours now sifting misc. boxes into the large sterilite tubs and the piles of loose stuff are diminishing. Here is how the garage looks at the end of day today.

We obviously still have a lot of work ahead of us. LOL

Operation Organize Garage

Building all of these salvage projects has given us the confidence to take on a bigger project: Garage De-Disastering. There is so much stuff in there right now it is impossible to work inside. This is what it looks like today (and shockingly this is actually better than it was a few weeks ago before Aaron and Jeff put a bunch of shingles up in the rafters.)

I'd really like to take everything out and organize all the smaller stuff into tubs. And we'll also finally get rid of the remaining SCA gear we no longer use. Some of it is crammed into the back corner so we haven't been able to get to it to rehome it all.

I looked around for some easy-to-build tub storage shelves and I decided to go with the garage storage wall design from the Family Handyman website. As usual, though, I'm not going to use their exact design; I needed to change some of the dimensions to better fit the 56- and 28-quart Sterilite tubs.

This is two racks, side-by-side. The white boxes
represent the dimensions of the tubs we're going to use.

This design requires almost no cutting; we only have to cut 5 sheets of plywood in half the long way. All the rest of the pieces are 8'. This is a 16' run of shelves and we should be able to fit it along the left-side wall.

This is not our next project. First, we have to finish painting the shed. And then we have to finish prepping the soil and planting all the plants in the Hidden Garden behind the garage. After those tasks are finished, we can hopefully turn our attention to this project.

Selling the Cherry Wood

It's been 3.5 years and we haven't done anything with this huge pile of cherry wood. We need to dig some space out of the garage so we've decided to sell this wood. Do any of our followers have any clue what kind of price we should ask on craigslist?

We have finally almost unburied ourselves of the huge pile of tile we bought in 2015. We used the subway tile in the bathroom and after months of listings, we've managed to sell most of the colored trim tiles. Whatever is left at this point will probably get donated to The Rebuilding Center or I'll put a free ad on craigslist.

We have too much stuff. We have so much stuff to get rid of. I pretty much have ads on craigslist all the time. We definitely have to participate in the Laurelhurst garage sale this year. (Yes, we could donate a lot of stuff, but it turns out when you have almost no income a tax write-off is worthless.)

Closet Progress

Despite my lack of posts since last Friday, we are still working on the house. I don't tend to wear my little camera anymore and I've been too busy/lazy to take pictures of our current projects in progress.

Eric came again on Monday and helped Jeff cut the rest of the wood for the closet built-ins. The plan is to finish both sides of Jeff's closet and just the hanging side of mine. We'll come back to the cubes in my closet after the chicken coop is finished.

Rather than installing it all and then staining in place, we decided to cut the wood then stain outside or in the garage. I was prepping the wood for that project today, but then I asked Jeff to reach me a tub of shellac on top of the workbench that was way out of my reach. Anyway, the lid was not properly on the tub and it spilled everywhere: down Jeff's front, all over the workbench, all over the fir propped up against the wall, etc., etc. Let's just say, Jeff was not pleased.

So, it turns out today was the day we finally found motivation to work on cleaning the garage. We restacked the cherry tree boards along the back wall and pulled out the last bits of the salvaged douglas fir to take to Willow Classic Woodworking for planing and now we're working on figuring out how to arrange the rest of the stuff so that we can get to it when we need it without having to move everything else around it.

We were planning to have the closet boards stained by Friday so we could have Eric back to help us install them, but with this garage cleaning detour, we might have to push it a day or two. I hope not.

This is approximately what that side of the garage looked like, but it was a bit worse when we started today.

Here is the back corner this evening. We still have lots more cleaning to do, but there is a lot more space in there to work now.