Just puttering

Okay, I admit it: I am still feeling the physical effects of the garage project from my last post, so I am loath to take on another big project this weekend even though the list of Stuff I Need To Do Really Soon is long and growing.

Not only do the lawns need mowing again, oh yes they do, but also the flower beds need weeding, the roses need pruning, the windows and screens still need washing, and the seasonal wardrobe needs to be rotated (winter clothes into the house, summer clothes out to the garage).

The weather today was lovely and perfect for outdoor projects such as washing the windows (or the car, which is another thing on the list, dang). But even though I suited up in my work duds this morning with every good intention, I ended up just puttering around the house and garage all day, doing nothing more strenuous than vacuuming out my car. Otherwise, I went through boxes and rearranged things and did a little cleaning and added stuff to the pegboards in the garage, various sizes of which the previous owner installed on all four walls and that I have just started using after ignoring them for years.

This is one of my boards, which the previous owner marked for his own tools.

I’m happy to have all these random little things all in one place where I can see them now. I am also using pegs to hang up garden tools, buckets, and various other objects that used to just be tossed on the floor. If I had a bigger garage and/or more tools, this is a vision I’d love to manifest:

Or this, for the small stuff:

But sadly, I just don’t use my tools often enough to merit this level of organization. I am just handy enough to do what I need to do with them, such as adjustments and minor repairs. I’d have to get to the next level of actually building things with my bare hands to merit a workbench like the one above.

And that was my exciting day! Tomorrow I might actually mow the lawn, or wash my car, which will be even more exciting! This is my wild and crazy life!

---

to the person who has anonymously and unkindly commented on several of my recent posts: please do us both a favor and go find a blog that actually interests you and read it instead. Quit trolling mine because 1) I am never going to publish your hateful comments and 2) I’m going to keep writing about whatever I want to write about.

 

The garage project

Getting racking up in my garage turned out to be every bit as big a job as I expected. About six hours’ worth of work, in fact, and considerable physical strain. It came out pretty well, but I will be very glad not to have to do this again for at least several years.

Here is a picture taken right after I moved here in 2008 that shows the overhead cabinets that I removed last weekend.

Everything I have stored out there was just piled on the floor, with a few short wooden shelves buried under the piles somewhere. This is how it looked this morning, in the rain.

I got three 48″ x 24″ x 72″ metal racks with particle board shelves that weigh about 50 pounds each, and assembled them. Then I moved everything away from the walls and cleaned up five years’ worth of spider webs, spider egg sacks, dead insect bodies, garden detritus and dust. That part seemed to take forever because as soon as I cleaned one section, it seemed that the wind would kick up and send another drift of dust and old leaves and whatnot right over the area I’d just swept and shop-vacced. I don’t think, right now, that it actually is physically possible to get a garage 100% clean. I just knocked the dirty down to a dull roar.

Anyway, I didn’t quite manage to manifest my vision of perfect organization with the racking, but I think there’s an improvement. Here’s how it looks tonight.

Almost everything is off the floor and facing out, at least, and the current spider population is a tiny fraction of what it was this morning.

Did I mention the physical strain part? I dropped one of those incredibly heavy boxed shelves on my foot, which is always a treat.

Haha, just kidding … that is not actually my foot. Yes, I did drop the box on my toe and my toe definitely hurts, but no, it looks nothing at all like that. 😉

The weekend has been seized

I seem to be in a contest with myself lately to see just how much physical labor I can cram into one weekend before my body goes on strike. So far, it’s holding up pretty well, all things considered, even though my activity level is outta sight (at least for me).

Last weekend, it was furniture moving, carpet cleaning, dog walking and putting furniture back on Saturday followed by lawn edging/weeding/mowing on Sunday. This weekend, it was hedge-and-shrub trimming on Friday, lawn mowing yesterday, and today, more walking plus some pretty exciting domestic demolition.

My friend G and I went out this morning for a long walk along the river, and refreshed ourselves midway with lunch at a neat little riverside restaurant that served one of the best chicken sandwiches I’ve had in many a moon. She said it was a four-mile round trip, but our legs were telling us it was rather longer than that by the time we got back! No matter, it was a lovely way to spend a perfect fall day.

When I got home from walking, my infinitely handy neighbor David came over with his cordless impact driver and his massive framing hammer and demolished all the cabinets in my garage. They were a bad DIY job by the previous owner that were hideously ugly and that I never used. I prefer to have open racking so I can see what I have rather than hiding things in overhead cabinets with doors, and I’ve been looking forward to getting rid of these for a long time so that I can put in nice tall Gorilla racks instead. My idea of a perfect garage looks something like this:

Or maybe this:

I just want everything off the floor and facing out so that I can find it. Chaos and clutter make me craaaaazy.

David had everything torn down in less than half an hour, and he kindly left his driver and hammer with me for the afternoon because I wanted to remove all the screws and nails from the surprisingly large pile of dusty wood now sitting in the middle of my garage where my car usually parks.

I spent the next four hours hammering and yanking and twisting (and cursing) and making tidy piles of lumber by size until all the pieces were free of visible metal and lined up along the walls out of the way of the car. The full afternoon sun flooded through the garage to help me make sure I got every last nail and screw off the floor, then I cleaned up everything I could reach and called it a good day’s work. I wish I’d taken some pictures to illustrate, but I got all caught up in the job and just wanted to get it done.

Thanks to the power driver and a sturdy pair of leather gloves, I neither injured nor completely exhausted myself, although I am tired enough now that sleeping for a week is not an unappealing prospect!

I’m going to try to take it maybe a little bit easier with the domestic projects this week and save my strength so I can go big again next weekend.