August 2013: Garage, August 17, 2013

I should probably pay attention to how blurry my camera is before I wrap the presents.  Here's the skirt I made for Dawn and Nick's little girl, called temporarily Bean.

Of note: next time, following directions the first time.  The first time, I just sewed the elastic as big as the skirt opening.  It was waaaaay too big, so I had to make a new one that was the proper waist size for a wee little girl.

August 2013: Garage, August 16, 2013

Carpal tunnel is killing me, so I spent some time making some baby gifts.  Charlie turns 1 this month, and he'll be a big sister next month, so I made him a baseball bib, and his little sister this onesie--the same one that I made my nephew in June.

Dawn and I used to e-mail each other at previous jobs because we were bored, and some days I'd declare haiku days, and only write in haiku, so this was special for us.  And she'll readily admit that she and her husband are nerds.  It was only fitting to make this for their new little girl.

August 2013: Garage, August 15, 2013

Today, I tried out my pressure washer again.  I hooked up my cheap hose--that's more prone to leaking--because my better hose leaks all sorts of water at the faucet, and it's just annoying to have water all over my patio.  Let me remind you what the garage looked like before this:

After 15 minutes of pressure-washing, it really wasn't working much better than scraping, it was damaging the wood a bit in places (that wood really needs to be replaced!), and it was bothering my carpal tunnel anyway.  This is what it looked like:

Not much different.  I got out my gloves and my putty knife/scraper and went to work.  This was done mostly with my left hand.  I think I just need to tone things down a bit.  No more working for hours per day.  Just 30 minutes.  Because after 30 minutes, this is what it looked like:

At least there was progress, if you look down towards the east side of the garage (the other side of the window).  But this scraping can go pretty fast.  It just peels off, literally.

This area came up just sticking the putty knife under it and wiggling it along, and then tore right off in that huge of a section.  Clearly, the paint didn't bond to the wood at all.  Probably half of the garage will peel off like this.  The problem will come with the other parts that don't peel off this nicely.  That will take more work scraping.  Slow progress.  I have a feeling it's not going to get done before winter, only because I can't work on it more than I already am.

August 2013: Garage, August 14, 2013

I didn't get around to posting this yesterday.  It has nothing to do with the garage--which is located at the rear of my property.  I continued to make the front of my property look better for my neighbor's that are selling their place.  (Why?  Because it's of great benefit to me if their place sells for a higher price; even though it is a completely different property from mine--a townhouse built in the 1980s versus a single-unit dwelling built in the 1950s--their property selling for more makes it a more desirable neighborhood, and should affect my house's price.)

But look at my front gardens!!

Eep.  That's not looking very good, overrun with weeds.  So, I spent some time weeding it.  I didn't get all of it, but the more visible parts look nicer!

Here you can see off more of the second hydrangea, and some of the side yard.  there's not a lot of room between my house and my neighbor's, but the small area that is there is overrun by weeds.  But I can't just spray weed killer all along it, because there are lily of the valley plants there and I loooove lily of the valley!  (There are also hostas, but I'm more indifferent towards those.  They're something, so I'll probably keep them, but I'm not in love with them.)

I pulled out a fair number of those weeds, cut down the baby trees growing there because I don't want a tree there, where it could affect my foundation.  I still need to dig up the root system, though, so it doesn't re-grow. 

I have huge plans for that side of the house, but it's a project for another day and another time, and really requires more money than I have right now.  Someone, please, hire me!

August 2013: Garage, August 13, 2013

My first project today wasn't in my garage, but shhhh!  It did need to be done.  I have a deep egress window in the front of my house.  When I first moved in it took me a while to realize that small animals were getting trapped in there.  Once I realized that, I had a board propped up in there for the animals to scurry out of, although it became quite clear that the frog couldn't quite manage to get all the way up the board by itself, so I had to crawl in there and get it out myself.  :shudder:  (Yep, squeamish girl.)  So I ended up buying a window well cover the second year I lived here.  The problem is that my window is actually above the height of the window well, so it never fit snug against the house.  I still had to take it off to rescue some small creatures from time to time.  Sigh.  Last fall I bought some foam that people put around their window air conditioner units to make them more weather-proof.  It wasn't quite long enough and was way too thick to work properly.  This morning I finally took the time to cut it in half and glue it to the window well.  The larger section (where the window is not) is super glued on, and the other part has construction adhesive.  I'll have to see what holds better.  At any rate, you can see my completed project here, where it's drying.

I but the cover back on and it turned out perfectly!  I also stuffed some of the extra bits up into the crevices at the end. Hopefully now no creatures will get caught in there.  It's a little harder now, because the cats used to alert me when there were creatures stuck because they'd be at the basement window, but now they're not allowed in that room (because of the cat with the littler box issue).  As an aside, I'm going to have to neaten up the front of my house.  The neighbors across the street are selling their townhouse, so I'm going to be polite and make the neighborhood look nicer, which will hopefully help them sell their place!

I did spend some time in the garage.  I cleaned off my workbench.  It was piled with random stuff, and piled randomly.  And, frankly, until I get around to selling the table on Craigslist or something, it will be hard to get to.  I should clean the table and chairs up and get that sold.  It would help my garage immensely!

All of the old door knobs and some other leftover construction stuff that the previous owner left behind.  My house was a flip, so they had a lot of random stuff they didn't finish using.  (They also did a mediocre job of flipping it.  Apparently it had been stripped of all the copper wiring and stuff like that, so they certainly worked hard to make it liveable again, but they did a lot of finish work that looked pretty but was cheaply done.  It's frustrating to me.)

So that's my workbench now.  The table cloth was initially from holding my sister's wedding shower in my garage (because we had no where else to hold it, since she still lived at home and I didn't want to make my mom have to clean her house for a party).  And also the workbench is dirty and greasy and I was once working on a woodworking project and had to protect my project from the workbench.  I should clean that, but not this month.

I also walked around and peeled off large section of paint from the outside.  I didn't use a scraper or anything--just peeled it.  Sad, but true.

August 2013: Garage, August 12, 2013

I'm still trying to take it easy on the wrists because while they're feeling better, they're still not quite right yet.  So today I just did lots of random little things.  For example, look at the tree in this before picture.

A little time spent with the trimmer snips, and there aren't any little pieces down below that could reach out and touch the side of the garage.

 

Look up above! There are all sorts of branches touching the roof of the garage.

A bit of time with the snips and a saw, and there are less branches on the garage.  I'll need to get ahold of Karen or Darcy to come stand below with their phones to call 911 when I fall after climbing on the roof of the garage.  Plus, I'll need to call Baby Brother to borrow his pole saw to get some of the branches that are just too high up to reach.  I don't want to just trim it off the garage; I want to trim it high enough up so I don't have to make an annual trek onto the garage.

I also got out some old weed killer and sprayed all the areas of my property that shouldn't have any plants growing.  I'm not sure it will work, so I may have to make another trip around the property, but at least it's a start.  The garage has weeds all over in the cracks that simply must go away.  The area behind the garage that the neighbor so kindly cleaned already has weeds starting to grow again, so I want to get them now when they're teeny.  

But the biggest surprise was the egress window well.  I knew there were small trees growing in there, but when I took the cover off, the tops sprung up--they were already taller than the window well!  I sprayed them down, too, because I want them dead.  I need to figure out how to keep stuff from growing down there.  I can't just put landscaping plastic under the rocks, because that will just cause the water to pool, and perhaps run into the house, which would be less pleasant than having plants in my window well!

Tomorrow I may try the pressure washer to get paint off my garage.  Ohhh, I need to get a new hose for that, because mine doesn't seal nicely around the faucet, so water is spraying out all over the house and patio!

August 2013: Garage, August 11, 2013

I had a busy day at my parents, where I got to see all four of my nephews together for the first time (three of them live locally, but the fourth lives a state away).  That made for a long day.  Add to that the fact that my carpal tunnel wrists are still quite painful, and I really couldn't think of a lot I could do.  I did what I could, and while it wasn't a full half-hour, it was getting buggy out there, and my wrists were kinda done for. 

I have bags of soda cans (or, pop cans, depending on where you live).  I used to drink a lot of caffeine.  I cut myself off entirely, but a friend pointed out that I didn't seem too focused, so I figured I'd give caffeine a try again, although I'm trying it with liquid enhancers (MIO and the ilk), which I hope is better for my teeth than pop...  But nonetheless, I still had bags of pop cans sitting on my garage from my pop-drinking days.  I have a can crusher, but I just don't use it like I should. 

So I spent approximately 20 minutes crushing cans.  After the first ten or so, I had to do it left-handed because my right wrist immediately protested the activity.  To be honest, my left shoulder--which has always been weak--wasn't too happy with the change, but my left wrist handled the crushing a little better for a while.  I very much fear I will pay for this tonight.  But, two whole bags of cans are now crushed!

I'm really not sure where I'm going to go from here.  I'm just so defeated not being able to do this like I want to; and looking at renting pressure washers, they don't seem to have any greater PSI than mine already reportedly has, and I just can't bring myself to buy a bigger one for one use--I mean, besides the fact that I'm unemployed and can't actually pay for one!  I might have using mine, although I've moved that to Tuesday (I have something going on Monday night, so I'd rather not be wet and dirty then).  It's just so frustrating.