It didn't actually take three months to do this....

Click here for before

But we did finish the garage.

If you can really call it finished ever. There are plenty of somedays out there -- just as there are around the house. Someday we would like to do something snazzy with the garage floor. Someday we'd like to devise a better storage system for the seven (!) bikes out there. But for now we are done with an honestly massive overhaul of our car-storage area.... The proof that we've accomplished something amazing: We can now regularly store at least one car in our two-car garage.

Sooo.. If it didn't actually take three months to finish up - how long did it take? One more day. We were literally finished the night after my previous post and supremely happy with our results. We actually spent a good chunk of the next evening sitting in the garage in lawn chairs like complete lunatics just so we could enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Updating the blog is where we ran into problems.

Immediately following our garage-redo triumph I became sick again. Yes, again. I recall a couple of weeks of pain (and pain killers) and frantic trips to doctors offices and ultrasound technicians and labs - but the exact order and nature of all of that is lost to me now. I eventually ended up having a very hastily scheduled surgery to remove a chronically inflamed gall bladder and a wayward lymph node. The last few months have been recovery... not from the surgery as much as from the drama (not trauma) of the whole thing.

And now.. we're back.

Tiny, teeny, pathetic projects are on the horizon! A post with our updated to-do list is to follow.

In the meantime, hello DWSHKON readers! Nice to be back.

The Hutch

Not a very clever title, I know - but it's late and we just spent a couple hours putting boxed cabinets together.


It's been years since I've been prompt about posting follow-up pictures, but Dave insisted. Besides, it gives me yet another opportunity to post a gratuitous photo of my car.

Putting the hutch component together was a snap. Mounting it to the base cabinets as instructed was impossible. Somehow we were to line up the 3/4 inch wide boards (and the pre-drilled holes at the end of the boards) with pre-drilled holes in the base cabinet tops which are hidden beneath the rubber mat work surface of the base cabinets. We actually tried it a few times before we gave up and used the provided L-bracket to attach the top to the nearest stud -- and a couple of our own L-brackets to secure the hutch to the base cabinets.

Tomorrow we plan to mount the remaining base cabinets (the ones with the drawers on the left side in the above picture). Then we'll purchase two wall cabinets and (hopefully) mount those above the drawers. Considering our experience with the rest of the components in this line -- coupled with online reviews I've read regarding the mounting system provided with the wall cabinets -- I think we'll be doing a lot of improvising before we'll be ready to unpack boxes and actually put stuff in our new fancy cabinets.

We'll let you know how that turns out.

Attach side panel AB to front panel CF. (Note: You may need a friend for this step)

Throughout the blog silence we have been quietly working on the garden & the garage... Trying to plan our work around the weather. If you live in southern Mississippi you understand what a ridiculous endeavor that is.... Therefore - we have a little done on the garage and a little done on the garden -- and a lot more to do.


At least we're happy with the gray we picked for the garage walls -- at least it looks alright on the one wall we've painted so far.

How did we ever get so much done over the previous three years? We just don't seem to have it in us anymore. If the garage had been last spring's project we would have had the whole thing finished in under three weeks.... But this project has been dragging on since Christmas now. The only thing motivating us tonight is the fact that we've been driven certifiably insane by the mountain of boxes out there and have reached the breaking point.

By the way -- it's pretty hard to paint and install cabinets when all of your paint supplies and tools are packed in boxes somewhere in the garage. We really need to finish this so we can find our tools again... and we really need our tools so we can finish this. Bwahahaha! See? Insane.

Side note: About those cabinets... They look nice enough, yes. However, despite the Coleman name being used - they're actually Sauder cabinets. They're unbelievably heavy and awkward. The instructions are less clear than we'd like. But our big complaint so far is the adjustable legs on these things.... Made of plastic. Yes. Plastic. Little plastic legs to hold up this cabinetry that is almost too heavy for Dave and I to move while EMPTY. The same little plastic legs are expected to hold up when the shelves are full? Needless to say - we already snapped a dainty plastic leg off of one of the larger cabinets when moving it into place.... Therefore - we're foregoing the ease of installation promised on the box (with reference to those adjustable legs for leveling) and attaching all of our cabinets to the wall.

We're not going for a clean and shimmed kitchen cabinet installation here -- we just want to make sure nothing is going to collapse or fall over onto children or cars. (In other words: We're tired.)

We're installing the hutch component tonight. Pictures to follow.

At last!

We have managed to make our garage look even worse than it did when we started. I admit - I didn't think it could be done.

We've picked a nice gray for the walls to go with the cabinets that we will eventually purchase and install... and once we get past the minor sheetrock problems we'll be ready to paint the whole place.

Ah. Progress.

Garage Redo: The saga begins

After a couple of weeks of recovery - and a totally unrelated trip to the emergency room for me this past weekend... We are ready to officially begin making our garage less of an unholy mess.

In order to motivate (read: publicly humiliate) us to really roll up our sleeves on this one and get going... I present the following 'before' pictures:

The pictures only get worse from here. The patchwork look on the pictured wall represents where a pegboard once hung... where wire shelves were once anchored to the studs with thoroughly stripped 2" screws... and where the sheetrock was cut out and replaced at 4 feet following Hurricane Katrina. The clutter is just our life.

More sheer ugliness. The bench in the left-hand corner of the garage pictured here was removed by Dave just yesterday. There are no pictures of the gaping holes in the wall where said bench was once attached -- yet.

Somewhere under that pile of stuff you would find two neatly-stacked rows of packed moving boxes which represent our original plan to redo the garage in an orderly fashion.

(Yes. That is a Christmas reindeer. Yes. It's February. I know.)
This is our most-used entrance to our house. Luckily, we've grown so accustomed to conditions out in the garage that we barely notice it -- that is until we take pictures of it and publish it on the internet for all to see.

And just to lift the spirits a little -- here's a little progress. Dave has officially installed two Hyloft hanging shelves in the space above our garage door for storage. We have room for at least two more of these nifty units -- and intend to use it.

If you've ever read this blog before then you're probably aware that our first step in any project is to make an even bigger mess of the area than what we were originally trying to correct.... As you can see from these pictures -- we have completed step one.

I'm currently doing a little sheetrock repair here and there while we save up money and sell possessions so that we can afford some halfway decent cabinetry for the long (west) wall of the garage. We had originally planned on wall repairs and painting before we got started on storage - because of the budget constraints... However - the fact is that putting in the cabinets first will a) give us somewhere to store the unholy mess while we paint and b) considerably cut down on the amount of wall that needs to be painted.

As always -- more to come...

You mean you haven't missed us?!

Just in case anyone out there was wondering what happened to us ...

We survived Christmas. Not only that - it was fantastic.

But then - then - we decided we would do something ridiculous and started taking the garage completely apart in preparation for remodeling it. (We haven't touched the garage since Katrina other than to have some sheetrock hung where walls were removed. However, Dave's Christmas present to me was a major motivating factor in having a finished garage.) We bought U-Haul boxes and removed everything from the wire shelves on the east wall. We then packed all that stuff into said U-Haul boxes and stacked them against the west wall. The plan was to move everything to one side of the garage -- fix walls, install cabinets, and paint -- then move it all back to the other side -- repeat. That was the plan.

We got as far as removing the old wire shelves. We even managed to use those old shelves to install some much-needed shelving at Mom's house.

Since about that time we have been sick as proverbial dogs.

This morning - after days of sleep and rest and never feeling any better... after days of wondering where on earth we contracted this mystery illness - I finally realized what a truly STUPID thing we had done. Did you catch it?

"We haven't touched the garage since Katrina other than to have some sheetrock hung where walls were removed."

You don't think we were smart enough to wear masks while we were disturbing all that three- and-a-half-year-old Katrina dust do you? Ugh. We never learn.

We'll be back when our bodies stop draining green goo and we're able to stand up for at least 10 minutes at a time.

Happy home-improving in the meantime... Oh - and wear your dust masks, people.