Meg vs. The Garage: New Automatic Door!

Ever since the guy came to put it in, all John and I keep saying is, "Why didn't we get this done sooner?!" I suppose the answer is just that we have too many projects on our list. But it is so nice to have, and nice that it forced us to clean out the garage before the installation =).

The night before--you can actually see the whole garage floor! And we let the contractor keep that awesome car poster.

Our pretty new door! It really highlights how badly the house needs painting.

No more old wooden door falling down. Lovely.

Friday: Organize shelves in the garage.

I did work on this, but not to the extent I was planning. I didn't have full access to the shelves, mostly because of this recent acquisition:

I am sure my father-in-law will be proud to know we got this sturdy wood dresser for free, and plan to re-do it. (Why do I keep giving myself more projects?!).

Here is what I did get done:

Food storage all together on one shelf.

Paint on two shelves by the work bench.

 Car stuff all on the shelf closest to the garage door.

I know, you are so impressed it has rendered you speechless. I am pretty impressed with myself, too =).

Meg vs. The Roof: Cleaning gutters

Friday:  Clean gutters, sweep the driveway.

You know your gutters need cleaning when plants start growing inside.

Luckily, the only ones that needed cleaning were under the nasty tree over the garage; all the rest were clear. Hooray!

But, true to form this week, I realized I am going to have to change tomorrow's goal. I need John's help with the shelves, and he has exams starting next week, so will be gone all day studying. Boo! So here's a new goal for tomorrow:

Saturday:  Go to nursery, get advice, and buy plants/supplies for square-foot gardens and fertilizer for fruit trees. Start putting planters out.

Meg vs. The Roof: Clearing the Debris

Saturday:  Sweep off the roof, clean gutters, look at potentially leaky spots.  [Trim tree over garage, install oven, get shelves put together]

Sorry, I neglected to take any pictures today; it has been pretty busy. As soon as John was available to watch the boys this morning, he helped me climb up on the roof and I got to sweeping. I decided that trimming the tree back was a higher priority right now than cleaning the gutters, since it is the tree that is clogging the gutters in the first place. So I cut back all of the branches within reach, some of which were sitting right on the roof and holding piles of poo-berry tree junk in place. There was already visible deterioration on the roof, so I'm glad I didn't wait too much longer.

Also, a friend of ours came over and helped us install our new (used) oven, which I had slated on my goals for next week. Then when I showed him what I was thinking for the shelves he took the materials home and whipped them up in an hour or so and then brought them back. We have awesome friends! So installing my awesome shelves will be added to next week. Even though I didn't do what I originally intended, I think it was a successful day!

Meg vs. The Garage: No more BOJ's!

Thursday:  Clean out at least 3 BOJ's in the garage.

I'd say I met that goal. In fact, I did my goal for tomorrow, too, because I got all of the boxes of junk sorted out. However, the work is not done; I decided the most efficient way for me to do it was to sort things into bins according to where they belong in the house (that is, the stuff I did not throw away or put in the give away pile). So now I just have a bin of junk for each room. Thus we have tomorrow's new goal:

Friday: Put away all items from the garage in their appropriate rooms.

Meg vs. The Garage: shelves, workbench, and junk!

Wednesday:  Put up new shelves in the garage, put work bench in place.

I am kind of (a lot) embarrassed to post this, but this is what our garage looked like this morning:

Serious. Part of the problem with moving multiple times without much time to organize is that we ended up with a whole bunch of what I call "BOJ" (boxes of junk). Random stuff thrown in boxes. And we have a dozen or more of them, all piled on top of each other, mingled with other random stuff that we don't use really often. It was overwhelming to go out there.

My mom got us these lovely shelves when she was last here, so I determined to put them to use at last.

She also gave us the work bench that my uncle made for my grandpa once-upon-a-time, and it has been sitting at the end of our garage for months going unused. And we have a perfect spot for it, right under the window looking out at the back yard.

My plan was to make space for one shelf, put it up, then put enough junk on it to make space for the next shelf, and repeat the process until the big things were more or less where I wanted them. I realize junk on a shelf is still junk, but it looks more manageable.

Here is my progress after nap time:

You can actually see [a small part of] the floor! So invigorating. And here it is at the end of the night.

I even have my project I had planned for tomorrow laid out. Only one small catch; I realized that the design I had in mind isn't going to work, and that buying the necessary equipment isn't going to be worth it. I am going to reconfigure, and a friend of ours is going to help me with the cutting when it's all figured out. So this one is getting transferred to the list for next week, and I am changing tomorrow's goal. I can do that, because it's Leap Day =).

Thursday:  Clean out at least 3 BOJ's in the garage.

By the end of the week, our garage might actually be functional! Imagine that!

Meg vs. The Garage: the missing panel

Saturday:   Buy plywood for the missing panel in the garage, nail it up. Buy a ladder.

Before:

After:

We actually bought the plywood and a ladder last night, so this should have been a super easy thing to check off. But (and there's always a but) I forgot to account in my measurements for the change in ceiling height and the fact that the other two panels were not quite straight. So I ended up hacking away at the thing with our dinky reciprocating saw until I was able to shove it haphazardly into place (sort of). Hubby had to intervene and kick me out of the garage at one point because I was getting pretty angry. Then later as I was trying to finish nailing it in, Mr. 3-year-old decided to come join in "going bang bang bang," but ended up taking a dive off the side of the garage steps and getting a splinter in his forehead and a few good scratches on his torso. Poor guy; he was so excited to help!

But in the end it is done, and I will put some stuff in front of it and ignore what a terrible job I did. Hey, I finished all the goals for the week! I will celebrate by never looking at this picture of my terrible paneling job again =).