Getting 'er done {Part 1}
It's hard to believe, but we've been in our house for 14 years. It's been almost exactly 14 years- we moved in July 20 something (I remember it was late July but do not remember the exact date), 2005. Jacob and Abby hadn't had a lick of school days under their belts when we moved in- nary a mom's morning out or a preschool day for the two Rineer kids. Now Jacob is heading off to college and Abby will be a junior in high school. The youngest Rineer was in utero when we moved in and now she's a teenager.
This post is not about the ephemeral nature of childhood. Rather it's about something much more banal than that- our garage 😆
We really wanted a three car garage when we were looking for our new house 14+ years ago. It was on our list of "must haves." However, the lot we picked out on which to build our house could not accommodate a third garage bay so it was either forgo the lot or the third car garage. We decided we wanted the lot more than a third garage bay. We could really use a third garage and not just now that we have a third car. We could have used it for all the things that one stores in a garage when one has babies/ kids/ teens/ people of all ages- strollers, bikes, battery operated kids vehicles, lawn mowers, other lawn care stuff. etc. I would LOVE to have a third bay. But, I don't regret foregoing the third garage bay. I love the location of our house and many of our neighbors have become good friends of ours and the kids. So, I've made my peace (most days) with our small two car garage.
Before our family of four (almost five), moved into our new house all those years ago, Donnie applied a coat of epoxy paint to the garage floor. That improved the finish of the garage floor. Also, one of our friends bought a house close to the time that we moved into ours. Our friends gutted the kitchen of the house they bought to completely renovate it. They gave us a couple of their old kitchen cabinets for us to use in our garage. Donnie hung those in our garage either before we moved in or shortly after. They house our outdoor lights for Halloween and Christmas, all of our craft paint, and lots of other stuff.
Throughout the years, the epoxy on the garage floor had become faded and worn out. More "things" accumulated in the garage although we'd done partial purgings to get rid of some things over the years. (The kids' battery operated vehicles- girls' Barbie Jeep and Jacob's John Deere Gator were the first to go once the kids were too big for them since they took up soooooo much room in the garage!) We knew we needed to spend some time in the garage to get rid of more things. Donnie decided he wanted to reapply epoxy to the garage floor. He also wanted to reinforce the rail on the small staircase that leads to the house because it was wobbly and paint the rails/ staircase. And, we knew we should probably get rid of the several nests that hornets had constructed inside the garage. Oh, it was going to be a fun day that day of epoxying, painting, purging, and enraging hornets who called our garage their home.
We did the work on a Saturday in early July. Donnie went to Lowe's first thing to buy paint and the epoxy and then we went to work. By "we" I mean Donnie and I at first. The teens are in the throes of excessively sleeping in each morning and it seemed cruel to wake them up for the unpleasant tasks that lay (lie?) ahead of them. We knew they would get up eventually and join us in our sweat/ spider web fest.
We spent the day cleaning, epoxying, throwing out, painting, laughing, reminiscing, killing a multitude of hornets and spiders' habitats, sweating profusely and finally- about eight hours after we started, finishing up. Donnie did the bulk of the work- from all of the heavy lifting, to cleaning more than anyone, to making the hard decisions (lawyering even when he isn't on the clock, lol). He also stayed out longer than I did working (in my defense, I thought he was right behind me coming inside but he found about an hour's worth of work to do when I thought we were all done). He was the rock star of the garage project.
Here are some pictures that I took with my Nikon from before: you can't see all the detail of how bad the interior of the garage looked before but other pictures will show that...
WOW! These are not 14 years worth of leaves; we'd periodically removed everything from the garage and swept it out. But, it had been a while.
The cabinets- this shows the cabinets looking particularly bad- one of the doors wasn't always open with cords hanging out. But it was when I snapped this photo and decided to keep it as it was.
sad looking little staircase (but not for much longer!)
A few more befores
And now for the AFTER!!
Much better!
Donnie picked out the paint color for the cabinets and staircase at Lowe's the morning of the project. He did a great job... Also, when he first hung the cabinets in the garage all those years ago, he claims that he didn't hang them 100% correctly- they were slightly not level. I couldn't see the problem with them but it had been bugging Donnie for some time so he decided to do something about it. So, before we painted the cabinets, we took the cabinets off of the wall and reattached them, this time making sure they were hung precisely level. It was a sweaty, tiring task but Donnie is mollified about them so that's all that counts (and he did the vast majority of the lifting and all of the power tool requiring tasks so it was really his project- I helped a very little bit). Donnie also added the unpainted strip of wood seen at the bottom to help reinforce the cabinets. However, he may remove it as he isn't convinced the cabinets need the reinforcement.
Here are some before/ after pictures that I took with my iphone:
A before pic, obviously. This one shows one rectangular area where the epoxy from 14 years ago still looked good. We had a cabinet in the exact same spot for 14 years so the area under it retained its freshly applied looking state. The area around it shows what dirt and time will do to the finish...
One lemon BMW X5 left its oil leak mark on the garage floor...
Not sure what the lifespan of do it yourself epoxy coating is- suffice it to say that it is less than fourteen years...
We got rid of the Barbie Jeep probably eight or nine years ago (we bought it for Abby and then when she outgrew it, Alyssa drove it- not sure when Alyssa became too big for it) but I found the owner's manual in one of the cabinets in the garage when we were cleaning out the cabinets. Had to take a picture of it before we tossed it in the trash...
Speaking of trash and throwing things out, my motto is more of, "If in doubt, keep it. Maybe we'll use it/ need it later." Donnie's is more of, "If in doubt, toss it in the trash." We definitely utilized his approach more with regard to clearing out the garage and I'm glad that we did.
We took every item out of every storage place in the garage and threw out a lot of old and/ or unused items. We also cleaned each storage case.
Let the epoxying begin... Such a pretty sight (the new epoxy). We cleaned the floors as well as we could before applying the new layer of epoxy.
Abby helped to toss the little pieces of... whatever the little pieces were. You didn't have to add the pieces but we (obvisously) did.
Starting to look good...
And that concludes our garage project for now. We didn't have time that Saturday to repaint the walls but Donnie has plans to do so in near future.
This post is not about the ephemeral nature of childhood. Rather it's about something much more banal than that- our garage 😆
We really wanted a three car garage when we were looking for our new house 14+ years ago. It was on our list of "must haves." However, the lot we picked out on which to build our house could not accommodate a third garage bay so it was either forgo the lot or the third car garage. We decided we wanted the lot more than a third garage bay. We could really use a third garage and not just now that we have a third car. We could have used it for all the things that one stores in a garage when one has babies/ kids/ teens/ people of all ages- strollers, bikes, battery operated kids vehicles, lawn mowers, other lawn care stuff. etc. I would LOVE to have a third bay. But, I don't regret foregoing the third garage bay. I love the location of our house and many of our neighbors have become good friends of ours and the kids. So, I've made my peace (most days) with our small two car garage.
Before our family of four (almost five), moved into our new house all those years ago, Donnie applied a coat of epoxy paint to the garage floor. That improved the finish of the garage floor. Also, one of our friends bought a house close to the time that we moved into ours. Our friends gutted the kitchen of the house they bought to completely renovate it. They gave us a couple of their old kitchen cabinets for us to use in our garage. Donnie hung those in our garage either before we moved in or shortly after. They house our outdoor lights for Halloween and Christmas, all of our craft paint, and lots of other stuff.
Throughout the years, the epoxy on the garage floor had become faded and worn out. More "things" accumulated in the garage although we'd done partial purgings to get rid of some things over the years. (The kids' battery operated vehicles- girls' Barbie Jeep and Jacob's John Deere Gator were the first to go once the kids were too big for them since they took up soooooo much room in the garage!) We knew we needed to spend some time in the garage to get rid of more things. Donnie decided he wanted to reapply epoxy to the garage floor. He also wanted to reinforce the rail on the small staircase that leads to the house because it was wobbly and paint the rails/ staircase. And, we knew we should probably get rid of the several nests that hornets had constructed inside the garage. Oh, it was going to be a fun day that day of epoxying, painting, purging, and enraging hornets who called our garage their home.
We did the work on a Saturday in early July. Donnie went to Lowe's first thing to buy paint and the epoxy and then we went to work. By "we" I mean Donnie and I at first. The teens are in the throes of excessively sleeping in each morning and it seemed cruel to wake them up for the unpleasant tasks that lay (lie?) ahead of them. We knew they would get up eventually and join us in our sweat/ spider web fest.
We spent the day cleaning, epoxying, throwing out, painting, laughing, reminiscing, killing a multitude of hornets and spiders' habitats, sweating profusely and finally- about eight hours after we started, finishing up. Donnie did the bulk of the work- from all of the heavy lifting, to cleaning more than anyone, to making the hard decisions (lawyering even when he isn't on the clock, lol). He also stayed out longer than I did working (in my defense, I thought he was right behind me coming inside but he found about an hour's worth of work to do when I thought we were all done). He was the rock star of the garage project.
Here are some pictures that I took with my Nikon from before: you can't see all the detail of how bad the interior of the garage looked before but other pictures will show that...
WOW! These are not 14 years worth of leaves; we'd periodically removed everything from the garage and swept it out. But, it had been a while.
The cabinets- this shows the cabinets looking particularly bad- one of the doors wasn't always open with cords hanging out. But it was when I snapped this photo and decided to keep it as it was.
sad looking little staircase (but not for much longer!)
A few more befores
And now for the AFTER!!
Much better!
Donnie picked out the paint color for the cabinets and staircase at Lowe's the morning of the project. He did a great job... Also, when he first hung the cabinets in the garage all those years ago, he claims that he didn't hang them 100% correctly- they were slightly not level. I couldn't see the problem with them but it had been bugging Donnie for some time so he decided to do something about it. So, before we painted the cabinets, we took the cabinets off of the wall and reattached them, this time making sure they were hung precisely level. It was a sweaty, tiring task but Donnie is mollified about them so that's all that counts (and he did the vast majority of the lifting and all of the power tool requiring tasks so it was really his project- I helped a very little bit). Donnie also added the unpainted strip of wood seen at the bottom to help reinforce the cabinets. However, he may remove it as he isn't convinced the cabinets need the reinforcement.
Here are some before/ after pictures that I took with my iphone:
A before pic, obviously. This one shows one rectangular area where the epoxy from 14 years ago still looked good. We had a cabinet in the exact same spot for 14 years so the area under it retained its freshly applied looking state. The area around it shows what dirt and time will do to the finish...
One lemon BMW X5 left its oil leak mark on the garage floor...
Not sure what the lifespan of do it yourself epoxy coating is- suffice it to say that it is less than fourteen years...
We got rid of the Barbie Jeep probably eight or nine years ago (we bought it for Abby and then when she outgrew it, Alyssa drove it- not sure when Alyssa became too big for it) but I found the owner's manual in one of the cabinets in the garage when we were cleaning out the cabinets. Had to take a picture of it before we tossed it in the trash...
Speaking of trash and throwing things out, my motto is more of, "If in doubt, keep it. Maybe we'll use it/ need it later." Donnie's is more of, "If in doubt, toss it in the trash." We definitely utilized his approach more with regard to clearing out the garage and I'm glad that we did.
We took every item out of every storage place in the garage and threw out a lot of old and/ or unused items. We also cleaned each storage case.
Let the epoxying begin... Such a pretty sight (the new epoxy). We cleaned the floors as well as we could before applying the new layer of epoxy.
Abby helped to toss the little pieces of... whatever the little pieces were. You didn't have to add the pieces but we (obvisously) did.
Starting to look good...
And that concludes our garage project for now. We didn't have time that Saturday to repaint the walls but Donnie has plans to do so in near future.
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