Garage almost finished...still

Got lots done in the garage this week, but also came up with more ideas of things to do. I think I should just go ahead and accept that the garage will never actually be totally done, but at least it's fully usable & more or less tidy at this point.

I just about finished using The Stuff I Saved on the other half of the wall in the DuserHaus:

Here's the full wall:

I also cut down some more of the wood left over from construction into quarter-inch-thick strips and added them to the outside of the DuserHaus, to mimic a Japanese shoji screen:

The edges of the paper are still exposed along the vertical lines in the picture. I don't think I want to use more wood to finish them off like an actual shoji would have, because it seems like it's going to be too square-ish, so I'm trying out some narrow black paper strips:

You can see in those pictures that there is one panel on the wall that is a map -- that allowed me to tie in to the maps inside the DuserHaus, while cleanly dealing with the one gap between the studs that was too wide for my roll of rice paper.

Over Labor Day weekend, I may go back to the black paper strips. Or, if we're feeling ambitious, we may actually attempt to replace a couple shingles on the (flat part) of the roof...

Garage almost finished

Got some neat stuff done in the garage this week, and I am happy to say that I'm almost finished in there.

First, I got the rice paper hung on the outside of the DuserHaus wall:

It's a little more opaque than I was hoping, but it still looks pretty good. 

Next, I took some x-rays that were done of AJ and Pickles recently, and printed them on transparencies. Then, I put them up on one of the DuserHaus windows, which I had covered with some translucent moisture barrier material left over from laying the floor in AJ's office a couple years ago:

The illumination is from the garage door windows across the room.

After that, I spread out the rest of The Stuff I Saved. Recall that there was a bunch of stuff left in the "rooms" under the kitchen by the previous owner (who moved in in 1963 or so, and lived here until she passed away in 2011) and the owner previous to her. To refresh your memory, look here and here. Some of it was just trash, but some of it was kind of interesting -- old jars of nuts & bolts, electrical parts that someone used to tinker with, etc. Before construction began, I filled about six 12" cube boxes worth of it, with the idea of using some/all of it in the DuserHaus later. Here's what six boxes of old stuff looks like (remember that this table is 5'x5'):

Here's what was left when I was finished on Sunday:

Here's what I did with all that stuff (click on the photo to make it bigger):

The "Let It Snow" neon sign is from our friend Jon, from a lighting job he did several years ago. The calendar, dated 1955, was hanging in that same spot when we moved in, so I just put it back there. The white light bulb sockets used to be in the garage, before the construction guys broke them & we had to replace them. The fuse box between the calendar and "Snow" is the fuse box that was still live and powering the lights in the garage when we moved in, & that we were happy to have removed during the construction project. The rest are various fixtures, cords, and jars left by whoever used to tinker in the "rooms" under the house.

I also made this pool cue rack out of some old copper and iron pipes:

There are a couple more things I want to do with that stuff next weekend, and then anything not used is going to the dump (again feeling the need to prove that I'm not a hoarder).

The last thing I did was set up some colored lights that Jon had given AJ years ago:

The orange one behind the rice paper is especially nice.

Well, my days of summer fun in the garage are just about over. School starts on Thursday, and I will have to prioritize that over puttering around. Next weekend, I will wrap up using up/tossing out that pile on the pool table, and then see what little projects I can squeeze in around schoolwork for the next 16 weeks.

More work in the garage

This weekend, I continued organizing the garage. I decided that it is more important to finish getting the garage in order while I'm still on summer break than to restart the mural -- I can just about get the garage set up & fully usable in the time I have left, plus, life goal: stop starting/restarting projects before I have finished the previous one(s).

Now that we have our bikes finished, job number one this weekend was to find a place to park them. Ideally, I wanted a spot that is both convenient and isn't visible from the open garage door or any windows, so that people won't get any fancy ideas about breaking in to steal our bikes later if they happen to get a peek. I settled on this spot under the concrete front steps:

It is a small area with a low ceiling and an awkwardly placed post supporting the steps and porch above, so I haven't been sure exactly what I wanted to do with it. Happily, it turned out that the bikes fit perfectly there, so all I had to do was outfit the space a little. I used a door and two windows left from the part of the house that was redone during construction to build a dividing wall:

It's a little hard to get a photo of because the pool table is in the way, so here it is from another angle:

What I like best about this, besides the fact that I found a way to reuse materials that have been part of the house for sixty years and more, is that the glass allows the bikes themselves to become design elements in the larger room. 

Next, I made a tool board in the workshop part of the garage to free up shelf space and make it easier to have the tools we need ready at hand while we're working:

Again, a reused piece of plywood from the construction project. And again, to keep anyone passing by the open garage door from getting any fancy ideas about breaking in to poke around for expensive tools later (not that we have anything particularly expensive, but a peeker wouldn't necessarily know that), I hung a small curtain above it that I can let down to conceal the tools (& also keep dust off them) while we're not working on something:

Yes, there is a theme here: having our bikes stolen off the front porch has made me even more aware of not advertising the stuff we have to passersby. I admit it. But this is a city. It's not crazy to be more careful. 

Lastly, I continued working on the design of the DuserHaus. I stripped the paint off of one of the windows that was originally on the little room in the garage and rehung it in the same spot (except on the opposite side of the wall, so that it will open out):

Then I took one that was originally in the "rooms" under the kitchen, and hung it on the other end of the DuserHaus wall:

Aside from a few pieces of lumber, this is officially the last piece of the pre-construction house that I saved for reuse. I actually tried to get rid of that door a couple weeks ago, because I still couldn't think of a project for it and I have a rule about not keeping things around indefinitely if I don't have a specific plan for them (this is what I tell AJ to convince her that I'm not a hoarder). The two people I offered it to couldn't use it, and I just hadn't gotten around to putting it on Craigslist. I'm very satisfied that these pieces all came together so well this weekend.

Next weekend -- the last one of my summer vacation -- I'm going to put rice paper on the outside of the DuserHaus to create the sense of a wall, but still allow light to come through, and do some more storage reorganization to get the rest of the space ship shape.

Decking: Done!

Got a big project checked off the list this week: sanding and sealing the decking outside the new room. I wasn't able to do it when the decking was new because the overnight temperatures were too low, so unfortunately, the wood got weathered while I waited for things to warm up. The decking is only about 16 feet by 4 feet, but it took me three hours to sand down past the weathered layer and expose clean(ish) redwood:

Every muscle in both legs is sore today. But it's done and it came out pretty ok, for my first time:

In other news, we don't have any chairs or stools that are the right height for the pool/game table I mentioned last week, so I am making some out of leftover lumber we still have lying around in the garage. Here is attempt number one:

It's not as rickety as it looks (it's only about 2 feet high), and somehow I managed to get it all more or less square. Those metal pieces are aluminum ties that the foundation/excavator contractors left here last spring.

Lastly, my bike is done: 

I had a mechanic at a bike shop down the street take a look at it to make sure everything is safe -- just in case... -- and now I'm back on the road. It takes me half the time to get to & from work on the bike,  compared to taking the bus, so I'm happy as a clam. AJ's needs one last adjustment, & then she will be done, too.

I have two weeks left before school starts. I'm hoping to get a couple more stools done, put some shelves up in the garage, and get the bamboo mural restarted.

Week 73

Back from vacation, & back to projects!

In construction project news, we got a date for the next milestone in the paperwork odyssey (essentially a big meeting), & it's not for another six months. In light of that news, I have decided that this will be the last numbered week on the blog -- I want to get out of the "still in progress/how damn long will this drag out" mindset, and get on with life. 

And life is good down in the basement/workshop/Duserhaus brewery! This week, we got this fine table for $125 in the classifieds:

What's so special about this table? If you take off the top, this is inside:

For the uninitiated, this is a bumper pool table. Similar to the regular game you see in bars, the goal is to shoot the balls into the pockets, but there are fourteen little round bumpers inconveniently placed in the middle of the table and on either side of the pockets to make it harder. It's super fun, and importantly for Mars, it takes up a ton less room than a regular pool table (this is about 5'x5'). Also, the reverse side of the table top has padded felt on it for card games. Usually these go for $900 & up new, so $125 is a great deal. Amanda & Susie helped us test it out this weekend -- a good time was had by all.

In related news, we sold the car this week. It needed a ton of expensive work, & we're not using it as often now that construction is done, so we did the math, & figured out that now was the time to sell it & join a carshare program again. So, we're saving money & now have the spot where the car was to work on bikes:

We both expect to be back on the road with our self-built bikes this week! 

Lastly, I rehung a door. If you recall, the part of the basement that is now the Duserhaus (& now also the game room), used to be a strange little room with a false floor -- click here for the original photos. There used to be a door in there that was useful for keeping Pickles from getting access to the vents in the garage door to sniff & bark at everyone that goes by:

The false floor was put there, presumably, to get around the slope of the garage floor & get a level surface. That floor reduced the head room in there to about 7 feet or so, which required that door to have about 8 inches cut off the bottom -- look closely at the photo above, and compare the bottom of the door to the top, and you'll see what I mean.

When we took out the sheet rock and flooring, I saved the door, hoping to be able to put it back later. That's what I did today (ending the era of blocking access to the vents with lawn chairs):

I added the 8 inches back with a thin piece of board, and gave it a fresh coat of paint.

Sorry, Pickles.

I also finished a bunch of waterproofing odds & ends. All told, four things came off my to-do list (which has about two dozen things on it, big & small). Very satisfying!