Playing With SketchUp

Our garage is a disaster. It seems like it has more rotted boards than good boards. You can see light through the walls and it leaks. There has been a squirrel living out there the last couple of winters and it does no good to keep the doors closed up, because the squirrel fits through the gaps in the siding (and Sharon is too much of a softy to kill it). Finally, the garage has no electrical outlets so no power tools can be plugged in, making it a lot less useful as a workshop space. Right now, we're mostly using it to store salvage and garden supplies.

We've been putting off dealing with remodeling it because of the expense, but we ran across an under-employed carpenter who can help us. We're a little hazy on what permits we need to remodel our garage; we think only electrical. However, besides fixing the bad wood, we're also planning to add a gable roof to replace the flat roof. So today we spent several hours trying to learn how to use SketchUp so we can go to the city and see what permits we need to pull. This is Sharon's first attempt at drawing out the existing garage.

Sharon is still working on drawing the post-remodel garage design. It's nearly done, but we're still trying to add all the fidgety details like roof brackets and door and window trim. SketchUp is a pretty fun tool.

We are rather overwhelmed with projects right now, so we aren't going to rush this one, but we did want to get the permit process started, if there is one. And our weather has not been cooperating with our plans to finish the staining. We've got another storm front coming in and possibly more snow tomorrow. It's too cold to pull the windows—rain or not!