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.

August 2013: Garage, August 10, 2013

I learned something early this morning: the garage scraping has to end.  I can't do it.  I woke up with severe wrist pain from carpal tunnel syndrome.  Normally, when I wake up with that severe of pain, I can get it to calm down quickly (I found what works best for me is to let the arm dangle) and put my wrist brace on.  Yes, it's happened before (in fact, it happened Friday morning).  The difference this time is nothing was calming down the intense pain, and I already had the wrist brace on.  That's not good at all if my wrist pain is getting that severe.  I was at the Carver County Fair today (my cousin called and said they had an extra ticket) and my aunt and dad's cousin were putting on a quilting demonstration, and I really wanted to help, but I knew I'd get about two stitches in and not be able to feel my hand, so I declined.  It was sad.

So I knew when I got home, I couldn't scrape paint off my garage.  Do you know how frustrating this is?  So, I decided to take my rainy-day plan, and clean inside the garage.  It needs it.  I mean, this is more or less right in front of the door--I can still park in the other half of the garage, because I'm lucky enough to have a two-car garage.

Some time ago, I cut up a lot of cardboard in my garage, and piled it up here, but I never actually did anything about it, so it's sorta messily piled now, with stuff on top of it.  Ohhhh, and that's not even a true before picture, because I wrapped the extension cord (imagine 150' of extension cord all tangled up on the floor here!) before I remembered to take pictures and start my timer.  (And my timer got all messed up because I put my phone in my pocket without locking the screen, and it started pushing weird buttons.  But I'm pretty sure it was about a half-hour in total work.)

I piled up the cardboard and tied it with rope from re-doing my cats' scratching posts, threw away a lot of pots that my plants came in, folded the tarps, and in general took care of little things.  Now all I have to do is bring the cardboard out to the street next recycling day!

Further back in my garage was a lot cans and bottles I'd throw out of my car when I'd realize they were cluttering things up.  On the plus side, it keeps my car neater.  On the minus side, it doesn't do much for my garage!

I picked up the bottles and put them in the recycling bin, and I picked up the cans and immediately crushed them with my can crusher.  Ahhh...much better!

And there's a start to cleaning my garage.  We'll see what I get done in the near future.  I will be renting the pressure washer next week to remove the paint entirely, I guess.  It's really too bad.  There were areas of the garage I was looking forward to scraping because the paint scrapes nicely and it's fun to see progress like that.  But sometimes, you have to listen to your body, or you will pay for it.  In the wee hours of the morning.

August 2013: Garage, August 9. 2013

It's Friday, and after sending my resume off to be checked by my unemployment counselor (after working on it too long!), I decided it would be a good day to spend some time on the garage.  The south side of the garage.  The south side is harder to scrape than the north side.  On the north side, in many places the paint will peel off in large chunks--there would be no adhesion to the wall in large areas, so I can get quite a bit off in one go.  The south side has better adhesion, so I can only peel paint off in small section. 

This is what an hour and a half--or was it two hours?--of scraping looks like on the south side of my garage.  Yuck.  I've got a long way to go.  I think this side will be much easier to take care of using a power washer to blast the paint off.  But I'm going to try scraping for at least a little while.  It got warm being in the sun, though, even though the weather is not warm.

This evening I went back out and worked on the north side of the garage for an hour and a half.  Some of the boards are nearly done, which is very nice.  It's harder to work on here because of the shrubs.  Perhaps two summers ago I should've re-painted the garage before planting the shrubs!  (The shrubs were re-located from the front of my house.  I didn't like them, they reportedly are not plants that take sun well, and the front of my house faces west, getting the full brunt of the afternoon sun.  I planted Pinky Winky hydrangeas there, because I was told they were the only hydrangeas that could take the brunt of the sun.  This summer at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, I saw some snowball type hydrangeas in full sun and blooming beautiful.  Rats.  I'm not overly fond of the Pinky Winky with their cream-turns-to-dusty-pink cone blooms, because I love the large white snowball blooms.  But that's neither here nor there.)

I did a little research on peeling paint.  Paint can peel for many reasons, including improper preparation (dirty walls), moist surfaces, the wrong type of paint used, or too many layers.  I really don't know the problem here is, but it doesn't matter.  It's important for me that the wood be clean, dry, and scraped before I prime before painting.  And that the primer is dry before I attempt to paint!  You can see the green of my house (half of the front is still wood, and painted) on the trim around the door, above.  I have seen pictures of my house blue, and have seen blue on the house, so I know it was blue previous to this green.  As I'm scraping, I'm seeing evidence of a darker green color (forest green), so I have a feeling that was another previous color.  It's a little research!  And while I'll be painting the garage white again, I am starting to think of what color I want to paint the front of the house and the trim.  Since it's not a whole house, I'm wondering if I can go a little bold with the color--maybe a bright blue or even yellow.  Some of it will depend on my front door situation--and what color I decide to paint that!

August 2013: Garage, August 8, 2013

I spent an hour today outside scraping my garage.  It didn't bother my carpal tunnel (which was really bad last night; I woke up from the pain), and was a very serene time.  The next door neighbor mowed his lawn and did other work (there's a fence between our properties, so I didn't actually see him. He had a radio on--it was on my favorite station as a kid (he's probably my age, but has two young daughters, who may have set the station), but it was playing music I like today.  I think they play more adult-friendly music during the day--still trendy, but not the really popular teen music.  It was cool.  The neighbor behind me was pulling out his fence posts.  I talked to him a bit.  He said he's replacing his fence with a vinyl fence that has a transferable lifetime warranty.  This will help his property value, PLUS my property value, because that's something valuable to my property, as well.  We talked about my being laid off (I'd like to put vinyl siding on the garage, but it's expensive!), and how he's actually NOW retired, but had been laid off from his previous job about five years ago (but got a good severance package) because the entire company moved to NYC.  It's a tough world.

He also said that indeed he had cleaned behind the garage.  As he was cleaning around his fence, he figured he might as well go all the way.  He found the nicely laid bricks behind there--he said it was under a few inches of dirt.  I knew there were a few back there, but I didn't realize it was almost a fully done project.  Nice!  I need to dig them all out, and level them all with good sand and landscaping cloth (and put in some nice landscaping cloth to keep weed from growing again!).  But it's nice to have all of the weeks cleaned out!  That's one step closer to a finished project.  Plus I'll have a beautiful fence back there!  I'm pretty excited about that, but alas, I don't think that will get done in August.  It's too bad, because I'm really inspired!

But after another hour of work, this is what it looks like.  What you can't see from this picture, but when you get down and look at it, the pipe that brings the electrical in (bottom right) shows how much the cement foundation for the garage has sunk.  This is what prompted gutters being put on my house and garage (all my friends/family said I didn't need gutters on the garage, but really, the garage needed gutters more than the house!  The only problem with water in the house is under the front steps, but that problem isn't solved by gutters--it's just a temporary solution).  Hopefully the gutters keep the cement from sinking more--or at least slows it down.  But really, that's something I need to take care of, because the pipe should go into the garage, but it no longer lines up with the hole into the garage.  I'm not sure whether I should drill a new hole, or shorten the pipe a little, but one of those two needs to happen.  Any ideas?

 

 

I really need to get moving on this scraping, or August will be over and I'll only have a half-complete garage, and that's just not acceptable.

I just realized that I don't have pictures posted of the area behind my garage.  I had sprayed weed killer before my neighbor cleaned out the area, but it hadn't killed all the weeds.  I need to keep up on that to keep the weeds down!  But let me try to find some pictures!

I don't have any before pictures.  But where those fence posts are, imagine a wooden fence.  (It was 20 years old, and I thought it looked okay, but the guy said when it got damaged in the storm, the insurance company said it was too old to repair anymore, so they gave him a check to replace it.  They okayed going with the vinyl.)  Also, imagine it completely covered in weeds, so much that you couldn't walk through there.  I had seen a few of those bricks the few times I sprayed weeds, but I had no idea there was such a large area of them.  You can see it dips down on the far side.  That needs to be fixed.

August 2013: Garage, August 7, 2013

As it rained yesterday, I realized that I needed to clean the gutters on the front of my house, plus if you look at my previous garage pictures, you can see the twigs from the glass trees next door are sticking up from my gutters (I don't know what kind of trees they are, but they will find any excuse to drop branches, as if they were made of glass.  Actually, it might be better to call them German trees, because the Germans will find any excuse to invade Poland.  Thunderstorm on Tuesday?  Invade Poland!).  So, today I did it.  I apologize for the lack of "after" pictures, but you must understand that even with gloves on, my hands were kinda icky and gross, and I didn't bring my phone up on the ladder with me, because I was afraid of breaking it if I fell.  Let's look at the garage gutters:

 

Eww!  I filled two five gallon buckets between the two gutters (South and North sides).  It was disgusting.   I was not looking forward to cleaning the gutters on the house, because I had a reasonable level of comfort on the step ladder.  (It's not my real ladder, but I treat it like my own.  Thanks, I'll be here all night!)  Well, as much comfort as someone scared of heights can have standing on a ladder.  But the house is taller, so it required my extension ladder.  And was scary.  The front of the house, I had to lean the ladder against the house and kinda reach over and grab the goo.  Ick.  The back side, I could only read the lower of the two gutters.  As pictured below, the ladder was too short for the bent gutter area.  On the other hand, I did realize as I went to put my ladder away that I may not have had the gutter fully extended.  Oops. 

 

 On the plus side, the shorter gutter (on the edge of the picture above) was mostly cleaned out when the tree branches fell on my house in June and my dad was up on the roof cutting it up (which is when that gutter got bent).  There was only a little bit of "junk" by the spout.  (Oh, I think I forgot to reattach that spout.  I'll have to remember that tomorrow.)  The front of the house--which was overflowing with the rain yesterday!--was almost completely empty.  It was only a pile-up of junk by the spout that I needed to clean out.  WIN!  And there's no tree there, so hopefully there will be less leaves falling into it this fall!  :fingers crossed:

Tomorrow, I'm going to head back out to scrape more paint off the garage.  Because that's how I roll.

August 2013: Garage, August 6, 2013

I spent probably two hours scraping my garage today.  Plus an hour or so power washing it.  (Oh, I forgot to take a picture of the South side of the garage.  Hold that thought.  Okay, I'm back.  I had to go out barefoot because my cats are suddenly in love with my sandals.  My youngest male cat is *licking* my shoes.  Ooookay.)

Here's probably an hour of power washing plus another two hours of scraping.  Yeah, I'm tired.  But there's very clear progress made.  I'm really debating renting a good powerful power washer (mine is electric and only 2000 psi.  A lot for electric, but according to the internet, 2500 is the minimum for removing paint).  It's something I'm thinking about, because if I could get this all done in a day or two, that would be FANTASTIC.  This is hard on my arms, hands (carpal tunnel), back, and neck (I definitely need the ladder for the top two rows here.  I can reach the second to the top row, but I have to be looking up, and my neck has been wrecked too much for that).  But on the rows that have most of the paint removed, the stuff left on doesn't scrape off easily.  The bare parts the paint just peeled off--in large chunks, usually.  It simply is not stuck to the wood at all.  It was kinda like a piece of plastic covering the garage than paint adhered to the garage.

 

I also power-washed the South side of the garage for a few minutes.  It's harder to do because I need to have tarps there to catch the paint, since the garage is right on the property line, and the paint flies all over my neighbors lawn.  I really need more tarps put up next time.  It would just be nicer to have a nice powerful pressure washer that would take the paint off easily.  Because this represents, I dunno, twenty minutes of power washing?

And not a lot of progress.  I didn't do any scraping on this side today.

I'm thinking I also need to get up and clean these gutters, and actually crawl on the garage and trim that tree there, because it's resting on the garage, and that's not good for the shingles, and frankly, I'd rather wait to shingle.

 

August 2013: Garage, August 5, 2013

After a couple of days working on the North side of the garage, I moved to the South side of the garage.  I picked the North and South sides first because they're at least somewhat protected from the rain by the eaves.  There's no hangover on the East and West sides.

So, here's what it looked like before:

And after a half-hour, it looked like this:

The progress isn't quite as dramatic as yesterday.  Partially because the paint stuck better on the South side of the garage, I think, so it doesn't want to come off as easily as the North side of the garage.  But I can tell you I'm going to need more than a half-hour each day to get this project done this month.  I have no other plans for tomorrow, so I'll be getting out the pressure washer and seeing what it can do with this project.  I really really really hope it works well and I can just get rid of most of the paint with pressure washer, with just some scraping in the end.  We'll find out, I guess. Keep your fingers and toes crossed.