The June Haps

After a lovely, though somewhat chilly, last weekend at the lake with family, we’re busy catching up on life before we head off again this weekend to help with a big garage sale at my mom’s house.

Luckily, despite our lack of weekend time lately, Nick has some time off work this week, so he thought it would be a prime time to tackle our uninsulated garage.

I grew up with an insulated, drywalled, and even textured/painted garage interior, so I was surprised when we moved into this house and it had a mostly unfinished garage.  The areas of the garage which touch other areas of the house are drywalled (no doubt a minimum requirement) but the outside and front walls, plus a vaulted ceiling area right over the door, were all just 2x4s and funky black plywood stuff (or regular plywood).

No big deal, right?  It gave us plenty of joist-space to stash random bits of crap, like the I-totally-need-to-keep-this piece of downspout recently chopped off to make room for the rain barrel. 

Right????  Right…..

Well, really, it wasn’t a big deal as long as we didn’t really need the two bedrooms over the garage.  In the summer they are blisteringly hot, and in the winter, guests shiver through the night even with extra blankets.  But…we kept the doors shut most of the time and endured when we needed to go in there(and my computer kept me warm enough while working in the office on those cold winter days.)

But now…. a wee someone will be living in one of these bedrooms full time come November.  Ergo….insulating the garage weaseled its way to the top of the to-do list.


Turns out it’s a pretty easy job.  Nick got half done yesterday and he’s working on the other half today.  Sounds like the hardest parts are cutting the insulation to go in the long narrow spaces, as well as cutting it lengthwise to sandwich various electrical cords, pipes, etc.  Apparently, you can’t just squish insulation in, or it loses its effectiveness (good thing I’m not in charge!).  It has to be cut to size for each cavity.

For the vaulted portion of the ceiling (hidden whenever the garage door is open), we *were* going to rent a scaffold for the staggering sum of $24 a day. 

Fort Knox, watch out!

Anyone else surprised scaffold is that cheap? 

Eh, too bad it didn’t fit in our car. We’ll have to figure out another option.

Insulating is an easy one-man job, but when we get to the drywall portion of the project, it looks like Nick’s dad and/or I (you know, all “two” of me) will help out.  We’ve never drywalled before, but a garage seems like the best place to start!

Meanwhile, I FINALLY got my butt in gear and got annual flowers in all the planters.  (There were 10+ different planters….took me forever!)

Don’t mind the ankle-deep grass.  We figure the neighbors appreciate our savannah because it makes their yards look better, so in the name of neighborly relations, we decided to roll with it.  After two weeks, it’s finally getting the overgrown mullet look we wanted.

Or the mower is in the shop. 

Take your pick.

Despite the grass looking less than awesome, all the summer veg seeds etc are also finally sown and growing nicely….

And the flowers are just generally pretty happy, especially with all the rain we’ve been getting.  Folks around these parts are so used to complaining about “the drought” that we’re all still in shock at our current precipitation and water table levels.  Give us all another month or so, and we’ll start complaining again.

When we get back from our string of weekend engagements….we’ll start painting and decorating the nursery!  I threw out the black/white/teal idea to Nick and he loved it, so that’s the plan. 

Thanks for reading and staying tuned….the project pipeline will begin to flow again soon.