Some garages get to relax and be messy, but not this garage!! I made the garage the first thing on my to-do list this morning, starting with sorting the pile of stuff stacked along the pictured wall. Most of it was Goodwill donations that haven’t been donated yet (into the car they went!) and Christmas stuff (onto the shelves it went!), and tools. So many tools. Our garage runneth over with tools.
20 minutes later the wall was unblocked and looking like this:
And that’s when the madness hit. INSPIRATION!
Out of nowhere, a tub of Spackle and a painting roller appeared in my hands and before you could say “what a filthy wall!”, it was GONE – coated in Oat Cakey goodness (still got 2 gallons!).
Next, I hauled the black wire shelves that have been blocking the kitchen slider into the garage (I think we’re fully weaned off them… we’d better be fully weaned off them!) and presto, our dumpy wall suddenly became AWESOME:
The Ryobies finally have a place to call their own, too. They’d been slumming it on the carpet patch. The hooks that were uselessly high on the pegboard were moved down low so the weed whacker and blower hang like neon bats. The saw and hedge trimmer snuggle together on the middle shelf. The dishpan that we use as a “sort me later” tool bin sits atop the shelf for easy access.
While waiting on drying times, I put the blower and shop vac to good use on the garage floor, in the ongoing effort against the invading pine needle army, tidied the pantry shelves, and organized more shelving spaces. On a side note, there’s a weird cut in the wall behind the thin wood door that covers the under-the-stairs storage:
I love a mystery, so I pulled off the drywall cover and behold…nothing but a crappy old glass bottle!
Seriously bummed – I was hoping to find someone’s secret stash of something embarrassing. I guess I can pretend the bottle contains someone’s soul, or something… I poked the camera into the hole and took a photo to see what’s further in. Oooh, scandalous: a cigarette and three marbles.
I’ll seal up the hole once I find my wall repair supplies. It might be fun to stick a small “time capsule” or letter to future owners in here!
The “Free Corner” also saw some action today. The corner of our property is fairly well-traveled, and everything I’ve put out here (from old lawn mowers to a giant storage container intended for a vehicle’s luggage rack) has disappeared within a day or so. Today I’ll try my luck with this stuff:
The wood cart was gone by the time I turned around. Must have been worth something, lol. (Update: someone with big projects in mind, or maybe just some serious hording tenancies, took the rest by the next day! WOOT!)
My last project of the afternoon was to dig out some dirt around the gate to the backyard so the gate can swing free. It used to open only about two feet wide before it got stopped by dirt, which was annoying anytime we had to walk through it (sideways, generally). Digging out a track for it turned into trying my hand at amateur brick laying, and 3 hours later, I had this:
We have these white bricks in abundance because the shed was sitting on a foundation made of ’em. The broken ones were handy for getting the ends of the path decently flush and for working around the cement blob around the fence post base. I used a shovel to dig down deep enough to fit the bricks under the gate, and made a smooth foundation for them to sit on with the gravel the shed was sitting on. Sure, it’s a cob job, but it is SO much nicer to use this gate now!!
Here it is with the gate open:
I have a ton of bricks left over, too, so I’m thinking of “paving” the side yard in a similar manner if this platform holds up well. If it melts away in the first rain we get, oh well – at least it was one helluva workout!