Reworking the garage

This summer we had a huge project to undertake - helping Leslie and her husband Clint (and the two grandkids, Parker and Beckham!) remodel and renovate a 31' airstream.  Leslie and Clint wanted a change - they bought a vintage airstream and traveled to our place to remodel it. 

The whole procedure is outlined on their blog:  http://thereedfamilyadventure.com/airstream/  check it out - the outcome is fantastic.  In order to get ready to have the airstream in our backyard/garage, we had to get ready by clearing a bunch of stuff out, and remove the garage door (which was a pile of junk anyway, wobbly, heavy and ill-fitting).  So we spent the summer getting the airstream ready to go, and they successfully launched on August 4.

And we decided to take advantage of most of our garage being in dissaray, and emptied the rest of it out.  So we had a blank slate!



Our garage has never been empty - when we bought the house, there was a bunch of junk out there. We left some, sold some, and generally just packed more stuff in on top of it.  And I hated that minty green color - made it look old and funky.





Tearing down the built-ins created a huge junk pile in the backyard, which we worked on every week to cut up and dispose of.













 So we continued to empty things out of it, dismantled some of the built-ins and then painted the whole thing white. Which took gallons of paint!!




This whole process took weeks, because I was also teaching, and Dale had slipped yet another disk in his back.  So the going was slow, but we were persistent!













Once we got it all white, we added some new shelves in overhead, to match the ones on the left.  We used a lot of scrap that we had leftover from the airstream project, along with using new wood for the shelves under the overhang.







We painted the top shelves white and decided to create some sliding curtains to cover the shelves below, so they look neat even while we have a lot of things stashed on them.  This is a pic of the top after we painted it, but before we made the curtains.




I need to take a good picture of the new workbench, which we moved to the opposite side of the garage (swapping sides with the freezer).  We added in new electric on that side of the garage to accommodate our tools, and built an extensive shelf system above the space for the workbench.




We had an old red tool box that really was too small for all our tools, and we saw a great one on sale at Home Depot, so we used the two of them for the basis of our workbench.



We took the top toolbox off the red one, and created a new wooden top for that one, then added the black one to the right.  We can roll those out for extra worktops, and they finally hold all our tools well.  We also labeled all the drawers so we can remember where to put everything back. In this pic, you can see the curtains.  We made those out of Harbor Freight drop cloths, added grommets and a wire stretched to serve as a curtain rod.

         























Here's what they look like open and closed.  Most of the time they're open, but it's nice to neaten up and close them, especially when we are sawing or making some other kind of dust.




This is what the other side looks like. We still have several things we need to make some storage racks for:  the large scaffolding that we use, along with some of our beach gear.



We did make some overhead storage for our ladders and smaller scaffolding.

















We relocated the flourescent lights so they align with the rafters.  We might want to add some hanging fans, to get some ventilation.












We also build an extra large worktable - a full 4' x 8', on wheels, that we can roll out onto the drive if we need to work on something large.




This will come in handy for all kinds of projects! (if we can keep all the junk off it!).










But my absolute favorite part is the way we worked on the doors.  We had picked up several sets of french doors on craigslist, intending to use them to replace our sliding doors in the living room.  We've gone back and forth about that - on the one hand, the big sliders allow us a great view of the outside, and we don't really use the sliders often.  So they've been sitting in the garage forever.  So we decided we'd create a series of bifold doors with them.  We had to create two 1/2 size side panels, and attach the hanging rail.  I cleaned up the old doors, filling the doorknob holes, the hinge cutouts, and dings here and there, then sanded and hung them.  They took about 5 coats of paint each - the originals were a dark greyish green, so I primed them twice with Kilz and then 2-3 coats of exterior semi-gloss.



I still have some top and bottom trim to finish - I have some brush weatherstripping ordered, and I have wood trim to install it with, and the bottom vinyl seal to keep the water out, but we're happy with how they came out!  (I actually adjusted the two on the right after taking this picture, so they hang at the same height as the rest of them). We got the faux black hinges from Menards one winter, and they add a little nice touch!  The doors open and fold back all the way so we can work out in nice weather, and working inside is nice and bright!  And they look sooooo much better than the old rickety door that was impossible to lift, and it hung just at the right height for Dale to whack his head on about once a month.  The best part is, they look fabulous from the house!

Finishing the studio - new cabinets!

Where does the year go?  I just realized I left blogging last April, as if nothing else had been going on  in our lives.  We actually have completed multiple projects since then, and I am going to work on them one at a time.  So since I left off after we started our central heating/air project (and we have loved our central air!), I am going to go through the rebuild there first.






This is what the original closets looked like. We took those out, so we could better utilize the space.

We listed the doors and drawers on Craigslist for free, and someone came and took them away.  I hate it when people throw things away, when someone else can use them!
















So now we had a big open space. I knew I wanted to put a lot of my fabric bins in there, so we measured and figured out the size opening, and framed it in.  We also painted the interior after repairing all the cracks/dents/crud.

We framed it out, installed the shelves, and .......

took off a year.  LOL.  We did other things, but nothing here.  All my studio stuff sat in the garage in boxes, which gathered sawdust and other dust. We did this and that, and then my daughter said that they would be coming out in June of 2018, so in April (because we don't plan ahead so good), we started working on the plan that we had earlier, but now had a reason to get it don.  We scraped the ceiling (which had water damage from when we put a new roof on - it RAINED during a drought  on the ONE DAY we had no roof on, and some of the paint in this room bubbled.

So we scraped the old paint, fixed the bumpy ceiling, and Dale did a skim coat over the whole thing, which made it look FABULOUS.  Then we installed a ceiling fan.  Then we began work on the murphy bed:

I think I must have snap-chatted most of these pics, because this is all I have!  We created a box, put in the murphy bed hardware, installed the box to the wall, then built shelves around it.


Then we applied 12,398 coats of white paint. Seriously, it felt like I was painting and painting and painting.....but finally got the wall all done, and it was awesome.  Then we painted the walls a lovely shade of lavender.



In this picture, everything looks scrunched down by the one side of the room, because my daughter and her husband were coming to spend a couple of months while we all worked on renovating an airstream with them.  So I pushed everything to one side since they'd have the bed down all the time for awhile.  I don't know what those weird dark splotches are on the picture....hmmm.  Anyway, here's a weird pano of the room:




I need to take some good pics of the room - I've added a couple of shelves for paints, etc over the desk, and a shelf for Dale's Smokey Bear collection.  But right now it's not all that organized because I still need one more shelf but that got pushed to the side for some other projects....which I'll write about soon!

Boy, are we tired!

Well, we worked our butts off today, trying to get the living room near completion.  We actually hit almost all of our goals today, which is great.  We finished the coffered ceiling trim, we got the ceiling re-painted (we had done it in semi-gloss, and I hated it, so another coat of Swiss Coffee, this time flat), caulked, Dale skim coated the wall of the sliding glass window and I finished painting the shelves!  woo hoo!

The only thing we were thinking we might get to today was to install the TV/electronics, but we decided to go out for dinner and take a hot shower instead.  We figure we'll be ready to do something in the morning. 

I do love it with the pocket door closed!  We still have a stupid place holder light fixture in the middle of the room -- we want to put a ceiling fan in, but we have so many other things to worry about that we are going to wait on that for a bit.  Oh, and the recessed lights we had to pull down to paint around, I want to check out paint job in the morning.  Painting a flat coat on top of a gloss coat - hard to tell what's been painted and what got missed, especially with the lights glaring right in our eyes!























I am so ready to get my boxes of books unpacked and fill the shelves, but I want to let the paint cure for a week or so.  Books are heavy and I don't want them to mess up the paint job.  That was 1 coat of primer and 3 coats of topcoat -- I do NOT want to paint that again. 


I do still have some touch ups of the ceiling trim- I got 2 coats on today, but they could use a third.  So in the morning, we'll touch up and then get some stuff moved back in, although we still have walls to work on.

The biggest project in here that we still have left is doing something with this fireplace.  We are actually going to skim coat the top half and then plaster it so it is smooth, and then retile the bottom half with some ledger stone.  I would LOVE to find a really nice set of fireplace doors that fit the opening -- I'll have to keep my eyes out for those.  I've seen beautiful cast iron ones, but they're probably way outside what I'd like to pay.  Once we decide on what kind of stone to put on the fireplace, I'm also going to tile over the brick hearth.  Probably travertine or slate, but we'll see how that goes.

This spring we hope to get the french doors put in to replace the slider.  We removed most of the trim from the slider before Dale redid the wall, so it should be a pretty simple affair to take the slider out.  We are going to go ahead and trim out the doorway so it looks finished, it'll be pretty simple to take the trim down to replace the door when we're ready to do that.

Well, hot showers and putting our feet up.  I think tonight's the last night we'll have our giant TV at the foot of the bed!  I look forward to getting my bedroom back!

Bookshelves/cabinets

We've had floor to ceiling bookshelves in the past, and one thing that bugged me about them is that sometimes we have books or magazines that we want to keep, but they look messy and terrible.  So I knew I wanted some closed shelves as well as open bookshelves.  I've been looking on Pinterest a lot to see what it is I really like, and I tend to like traditional shelves over cabinets:

I seriously thought about building he lower cabinets, then came to my senses and decided to buy unfinished ones from Lowe's -- Home Depot has the same ones, they're unfinished oak and I've used them before in a previous house and was happy enough with them.  Mostly, they just need to hide my mess!

Because the walls have all kinds of issues, including the door not being centered, a tv will need to be wired on one, and there's a floor heater that we aren't going to replace for a few years -- I had to buy several sizes, but I know that when I paint them all they will read as one unit. 

The first cabinets I worked on went over the floor vents.  I had to cut out the backs and centers to fit around the vent, and replace the panels on the doors with open metal grating so the heat can come out.  First, altering the cabinet boxes:

I took the horizontal shelves and cut them to fit vertically, to keep the heat confined to the center section.  I also had to move an outlet from behind the one on the left to the side of the base.







So far so good.  I got the other boxes in, moving one outlet, and running a connection between the wall and the base so we could hide our electronics and television wires.  We hung the bracket as well -- I really like this one we got from IKEA, minimal moving parts, nice and sturdy attached to the studs.

This week, I went to Home Depot and had them cut some 3/4 plywood to size for the top of the cabinets, then ran 3/4" screen mold along the edges, filling and sanding. 

The one on the right has a coat of primer, and you can see the outlet box.  Well, you could if Persephone did not want to get into every picture.

Another thing I was really glad to do was change out the pocket door and trim it out.  I've positively hated the previous door - it had a layer of painted paneling glued over the beautiful panels, and it was hideous.  After all the work I had done restoring the one from the hall, I decided to use that one and so Dale took out the old door, and put in the nice, refinished one in.  But we also had to remove all the old paneling "trim" they put around the door.  So I had to cut all new trim, but I got that done this week, and have added a couple of coats of primer and paint, so it looks great.

This is before I got the paint on it.  But Mercury wants equal time in the photos.













I've painted the doors and the cabinets and the door trim, and meanwhile, Dale has skim coated the walls, so they look a thousand percent better now.

He fixed the plaster problems on this side, and leveled out the wall.  I still have to do some more sanding, priming and adding baseboard before I can paint and call this wall finished, but it looks SO much better.






He still has the sliding glass wall to plaster - he added in the drywall but needs to give it a few coats of plaster to fill the cracks and gaps.  And wouldn't you know it, we are about a 12 x 20" piece of drywall short. I hope I can pick up a scrap somewhere this week.











So here is where it stands right now -- got the base cabinets in, painted with primer + 3 coats of semi-gloss, they may need one more coat or just touch ups, and I'm ready to tackle the shelves this weekend.

I'm ready to add baseboard and get the walls primed and the shelves put up!  We've also decided on an approach to the fireplace, something to hopefully minimize it's weird placement that's given us all kinds of trouble as far as arranging furniture.  But that'll be a little further down the line! 

And now we're working on the pantry...

We spent this week getting a big old hole cut in the side of the house so we could build a bump-out for our pantry.  We used a grinder to cut the stucco, then knocked all of that out, and then built a block foundation --

and then framed it out --



Ok, that foundation isn't the prettiest thing ever, but it is strong and does the trick.  Besides, it'll be covered with stucco soon enough!

Then we slid the pantry cabinet box in place and leveled and secured it.   The cats of course, were interested:









 They will always take advantage of a new place to view the world.

 This morning, I test fit the microwave and got the hinges put on so I could be sure things will all fit correctly. When we did the narrow cabinet next to the refrigerator, we changed the drawers several times because we didn't pay attention to the hinges.  So we're trying to learn from our errors.

I've decided to put the microwave in this cabinet, so we will need to install an outlet, which we are going to do before getting the stucco done.  We are also going to take advantage of all this wiring work and put in an exterior outlet as well, since we've already run the wiring.









I did the "crawl under the house" duties this morning before I went to work --





I figured it was my turn. Dale's done it often enough.

So tomorrow we'd like to finish the wiring and get the exterior framing complete.  After that, I can get the draws built and in, and maybe we can empty the rest of these boxes.  We have plenty of storage once this gets done.

We also picked up some more drywall, now that this is in, we can finish dry-walling the beam and supports (we wanted to be sure everything fit first).  Also, I am going to take out the pocket door so we can frame that part of the wall in on the table side.  I've got plans to rework the entry since we'll have enough space to put a bench as well as the bookshelf we've got in that area.  Always something to do!

Kitchen island

We've been working on the island this week -- got the cabinet boxes installed, the additional framing for the dishwasher built, and a temporary plywood counter top installed.  This counter top may have to be here for a couple of months, so we got some nice smooth 3/4" plywood.

After we got the dishwasher in, I remembered how much I hated the look of it.  We've decided to hold off on getting a new stainless one, since it's not very visible and the one we have is working and free.  But it's white and cheap looking.

 

(Oh yea, we also got the faucet installed.  I've wanted a bridge style faucet, and I got a good deal on one on amazon.com.)

Building the surround required that we drill into our newly installed marble floor - but that went a lot easier than I had anticipated.  And that damned ugly dishwasher -- I opened it up and saw that the front was attached by a few screws, so I took it off --

 

I was inspired by my daughter, who spray painted the doors on her washer and dryer -- so I used some silver hammerite finish spray on the panel, and used satin black on the plastic top part and kick plate.  I used Rustoleum satin - it bonds to anything and the finish is great.

After putting it all back together, it isn't perfect (I had to leave the instruction part of the controls white, and I totally forgot to spray the latch, but after I put it back together, I realized it looks OK).  Anyway, it'll do until we get our  new one down the line.  It sure beats the ugly white.  Maybe I can figure out a way to spray the rest of it black and add some decals or something for the controls.  That purple wall in the background is where our pantry cabinet will go in the near future ---

sink inspected and approved by resident help

I've been working on getting the molding all cut to size, and stained and finished and ready to attach.  This is a longer process - applying stain, using steel wool to smooth the finish, more layers of stain, then a coat of poly -- all with 5-6 hours of drying in between, but now it's ready to go --

It's a nice shade and matches the cabinets very closely.

So since then, we've been working on cutting the panels to fit the outside of all the boxes.  This turned out to be a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.  Some of the panels we had were 3/4" thick and some were 1/2" thick - and we had to piece them for the longer sides and the center of the seating area.  It was a pain, but we like the way they came out:

 The seams are not horribly noticeable -- I did have to mix a custom fill to match the finish, but it's nearly invisible --

We added an outlet to one side of the island for any appliances we might want to use (mixer or blender).  You can see the faint seam here, before I've filled and cleaned it.  It's pretty slight, and it nearly disappears when I get the filler in.

I'm looking forward to working on getting the molding around the base done - that will help enormously in tying the whole thing together.  We've had all kinds of second thoughts about the layout of interior space in this island -- we ended up returning the shelves we had originally thought to put on the sink side, and instead went with three drawers.  Right now everything is pretty full because we still have a major pantry cabinet to install, but since that takes some exterior work (we're bumping out one of the back walls to enclose the pantry cabinet), we're just using what we've got at hand.  One of the things I really like about these IKEA cabinets is the versatility - if we decide to return to shelves and a door, it's just a matter of pulling out the drawers and putting in a new configuration.  We've been taking off the doors when we go to add the side panels -- click click and the hinges click off.  So easy!

Anyway -- it's getting closer to looking somewhat like a real kitchen.  Not that we don't have a ton of work left, but at least it's functional now.  I made actual dinner twice this week! Love having my sink back.