Getting this workspace space ready

One thing we really wanted was a boat that we could work on at home. First of all, not having to pay dock fees or storage fees is a great way to save money, but also, the amount of time we have to work on this is somewhat limited by sunlight, work and available time. So not having to haul tools somewhere else, and set things up just to waste time with all that, we wanted to work on it in our own back yard.  But we had a situation ---

The cypress trees. We actually had 3 of them there at one time (when we first bought the house), but when we built our little Stardust vardo, we cut one down.  These trees provide shade, which was nice, but every other quality about them was not good. They continually drop crap all over the yard and anything placed underneath, they restrict the light coming to our solar panels, and they are causing problems with the concrete. We didn't want to park our boat underneath them only to have to continuously clean the whole thing on a weekly basis. Dale's been campaigning to get rid of these trees ever since we bought the house, so now he's thrill they're gone.

This is how it looked when we bought the house ---

they were so overgrown!

Then we had the first one taken down about 7 years ago, and trimmed back the others.

So this was a VAST improvement.  But then we were left with 2 more.....

Before.......

During.......

and 

AFTER!

now it's ready for a boat!

It surprised me that Dale went ahead and backed the boat in right away, without waiting for me to "help" guide him in. Hmmm...probably on purpose.  But now, we have our boat pulled in, and all our tools at hand!

Sanded, holes plugged, primed and ready for a coat of paint!

Boat Project

So we have decided to embark on a new project - we bought a 1976 Fiberform flybridge, 26' long.  Here's our first pic as we drove it home from down by San Diego:

We decided we would like to learn more about boats and originally were going to look for a boat at around 15K - 25K, but knowing that it was going to be a money pit at any level, decided that if we stuck below 10K for a project, we would feel OK if we ended up ditching the project. So when we saw this one on CL for 5K, we wnet out to look at it.  What an ugly boat! all kinds of work to be done, but the engine appears good, and it's all workable. So we bargained and ended up with $4200 as a sales price, and we drove it off.

We have a LOT of work to do on this, but we're excited to learn and get things fixed. I've started with the hull - the previous owners had painted a rubbery, horrible paint over lots of bad bondo, with an attempt to make it look better than it was.  Which was fine, but first job is getting that nasty white rubbery paint off, sand, and repaint.  

. 

I have half done-- and primed, ready for a background coat:

I've got a plan for this boat:  essentially, if we "restore" this boat, we'll end up with a 45+ year old boat that won't be worth a lot, but if we give it a theme and make it more a novelty, we may get someone who really wants it as a party theme boat. So we're going for a tiki theme. This is one idea for the hull paint job:

So that's the plan!  We are going to pretty much update every single part of this boat, learning about processes as we go. What we'd love to do is get a larger boat after retirement, with plans to live aboard and do the Grand Loop, so this is a learning project for us!  We so far are considering this as the name:

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!

Working on the house....

It's been awhile since I posted anything!  And it's not that we haven't been busy, I just needed to sit down and write some stuff down.  So I'm going to just jump right in.

For the past few years, we've been living in a drought out here in sunny Southern California.  Which has resulted in a lot of challenges, but one of the ones that has becoming a bigger issue for us is the increased heat of the summers. When we move out here to Long Beach, we had that great experience of year round nice weather, not too chilly in the winter, not too hot in the summer.  But with the drought - and more likely, as part of climate change in general - it's been substantially hotter during the summer.  We went from having a summer that had maybe 2 weeks in the summer where we wished we had air conditioning, and managed through that with a window air conditioner in the bedroom, to a situation where it's unbearably warm for extended weeks, and last year, nearly the whole summer.  While that may lesson now that we seem to be out of the drought and back into a more "normal" cycle, realistically speaking, it's only going to be warmer, not cooler.  So we have been giving serious thought to installing central heating and air.

In the first 4 years here, we haven't had to really rely on our sub-par heating system. When we bought the house, the inspector told us that really the heater needed to be replaced, as it wasn't heating enough.  It's a radiant heater in the floor, in the wall between the hall and the living room.  Not attractive, not functional. This is what it looked like when we bought the house.

When I built the bookcases, I actually built around the heater and installed metal grates in the doors to let the (insubstantial) heat radiate out.   This is how it's looked for the last 3 years.

To get central air, we'd need to have ducts and a whole system installed.  So in the fall, we got an estimate from a couple of companies, and it was more than we wanted to pay.  So we thought about it, and this spring, we decided to see if we could do a little bargaining (use the lower estimate to get the company we liked better to price match, which they did, even going $500 below), and got it scheduled.



To get ready, Dale and I had to do 3 things: remove the old heater, and remove the water heater from its cabinet outside the house, so we could put the new furnace in there, and remove the catio so they could put the condenser unit.  All these things needed follow up, and that's what I'm going to show here.


First, removing the heater.  That was a chore! It involved Dale crawling under the house and disconnecting the gas, and removing some of the elements that he could reach from there, and then us removing the screws and parts and dragging it out.  No pictures of this process, it was loud, exhausting and filthy - but at the end, we had our old heater all taken apart and ripped out.



Here it is, sitting on the curb waiting to be picked up by metal scrappers.  It sat there for about an hour before someone loaded it up and took it away.




Then we were left with a hole to patch.  Dale was cracking up because I was sure some critter was going to come up the hole, and every noise I heard I was sure was a raccoon or feral cat or squirrel or something coming up.


That's the dirt under the house, y'all.  Gross.  We actually put the grates back over it but they were just sitting there and I've seen raccoons in our neighborhood.  Anyways....




Then we had to build this up, both in the hall here, but also within the cabinets.





I built new shelves inside, and replaced the metal grate panels with the original panels, which I had saved.  Then I repainted and got everything all installed.  That side looks good ---

Then we had to build out the other side, and patch the floors:

We had bought some flooring (unfinished) to match the original flooring, so I had to blend that in with the existing planks, after putting in a plywood subfloor.  We insulated the space, and then added some cement board, and now Dale has to build out the wall and plaster it over, and you'll never even know it was there.

So -- the other thing we had to do was take out the water heater from it's closet:

and install a tankless water heater on the outside. This was so they could put the furnace unit in that space. We ordered a tankless heater, and got started on the project, building a panel, getting the unit put on the wall -- and then......


We ran across 2 problems, just as the HVAC people came to get installation going.  We were going to pull the water heater, we had it drained, ready to pull out, and the HVAC people looked at the cabinet and said, "we can't put the furnace in there."  Not enough room in the attic for the plenum (air handler), and no route for an air return.  Great.  So we turned the water heater back on and refilled it, thinking, we can do the tankless thing in a day or two anyway, and then while we were looking at the tankless, it requires 3/4" gas lines, and we have 1/2".  We call the gas company, who comes out and says, "you need an upgraded meter."  Yay.


So we are STILL waiting on that (which is why the picture shows unconnected pipe), and using our old water heater.  We'll get this connected as soon as we get our meter upgrade (any day now!).

The other problem needed more thought.  We were not happy, our sales person had contacted the company and had done measurements before we signed our contract, and now they're saying, we have to put it elsewhere. They looked in the attic (too low, we have a low angled roof), maybe we'd have to use the guest room closet and move the closet into the water heater space (they are back to back), but they have to send a carpenter out to frame out the space and get it ready.  And that should be in a week or so. So we were pretty frustrated. But, it gave us time to think, and we decided we'd rather put the furnace in a different space - right off the entry where we have a door to the bedroom that we use as a studio.  This space, that open door (this is from a long time ago before I added a glass panel to the front door) :

Here's the space from inside the room.  It was a little jog and the only purpose of it is to have a place for the door.  it's about a 2.5 x 2.5 foot space that can't be used for anything, and if we close it off, it still leaves us one door into the room, from the hall.

It's kind of odd that this bedroom actually has two doors, one of them off the front hall.  We'd talked about extending the hall closet to use more storage space there - we'd been to an open house in the neighborhood, and that's what had been done there, so it was something we'd thought of before.  One of the problems with that room is that we always treat it as a hallway, and it was awkward, so closing off that space was a good use of the space.  So by the time the HVAC carpenter came out, we had a new idea, and they thought it was ideal.  So now it looks like this:

They moved the door forward, the door swings the other way, and the space has been insulated so it's quiet.  The intake is on the living room side behind the small tables, not even noticeable.






The inside of the room now looks like this.  we didn't ask them to smooth it out any further because we are building a bookcase unit over it.  this room now has a closet (that we are removing) on the left side of the wall, and on the right side is what you see here, the closed off space.  We are going to build a full wall of bookshelves and include a door to the closet and a murphy bed for our visitors.  On the other wall, across from it, I used to have two bookshelves, which I just sold this morning. This is where I am going to move my desks.









So next, we are going to demo the old closet. We've removed the doors and drawers, and we'll clear it out and get shelves built in for storing fabric and larger items.  Then we'll continue to build the walls out and then get some shelves and a bed built in.  Next post, I'll outline the plans!