August 8th, 2008 - The garage
Last weekend, we finally did the annual spring cleaning of the garage. I know, we’re a few months late. Oh well! We’re so delighted with how it looks that I want to share pictures. No, we don’t have the best looking garage in the world (far, far, far from it). But maybe it can inspire a few other folks to clean things up. In particular, after 6 years of being annoyed with the lack of places to put things other than leaning against the wall or hidden in a couple drawers (which mostly couldn’t open because of tools leaning on said walls), we bought a number of organizational tools. That’s mainly what’s in the pictures.
First, let me explain the layout. We have a detached garage which is technically for 2 cars, but only 2 compact cars. Which we don’t have. So we use about 1/3 of it for bikes and mower and such stuff, plus storing recyclables. This area generally gets pretty trashy in the winter as we don’t take time to store things properly. The previous owners built a “workshop” on the back that is a little shorter than the garage and about 8′ deep. There is electricity in the garage–one outlet and the garage door opener. Although it enters from the workshop, there is no electricity in the workshop itself. IE, it couldn’t actually function as a workshop, despite it’s name.
These first pix are in the workshop. The white wall is the former exterior back of the garage. Newly painted when all the lead paint abatement was going on. The tool hangars are just what I’ve always wanted–but it took Eric four stops to find them! We first got something at Menards, but it was all aluminum, and didn’t cinch, so it would have worked only for items with handles not just poles. He spent a couple hours the next evening running around to all the hardware stores to find the right item, finally at Lowe’s (which we avoid since it’s a new big box retailer in town). Woohoo! All these tools used to be a pile against the wall next to the door instead. In between the tools is the doorway to the garage (just barely visible in the first pic).
Just inside the workshop door (the one to the outside, not the one to the garage) is an old cabinet that I’ve used for gardening tools and supplies. The tools were in front of this cabinet before, meaning I could barely use the cabinet. Now it’s free and clear! And many of the hand tools are out of th drawer and hanging up. The fancy organizing tool for this job? A bunch of large nails! We also got a few hooks, which the green bag and whatever’s next to it are hanging on. We still need to find something for Maggie’s gardening tools, which don’t have holes in the handles, so they need some kind of double hook. Or to have a hole drilled in them; then I could loop some cord for hanging, just like some of my tools already have. You can see that we haven’t completely cleaned this area up yet.
And in the main garage, here’s a shot of the drying rack for the onions and garlic. It’s an old screen from our front porch when it had cool old windows (that didn’t work well and were covered with lead paint).
Last but not least, while I had the camera, I shot my bike and Maggie’s, plus her Trek bike trailer, since I’ve mentioned them before. You may be able to make out the lovely interior walls of the garage in the shot. If you can call them walls. That’s being generous. There are just various pieces of wood (mostly thin particle board) put up here and there, plus one nice section of peg board, except that it’s on the driver’s side where we park the car, so not very useful. And we can only part the car there, because the other side, the one with the bikes, has a beat up floor that includes some, for lack of a better term, potholes. Someday, we’ll replace the floor.
3 Responses to “The garage”
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August 11th, 2008 at 10:04 am EDT
“Although it enters from the workshop, there is no electricity in the workshop itself. IE, it couldn’t actually function as a workshop, despite it’s name.”
ContrarianBrother would like to point out that there are plenty of non-electrically-powered hand-tools that still work in this day and age. First and foremost is the hand-saw. But a rotary hand-crank drill is not hard to find nor use.
And if you’re REALLY hard-core, you can do it the opposite way — turn your power tools into hand-cranked generators!
August 11th, 2008 at 10:08 am EDT
[…] My sister likes to live simply, but sometimes she still msses the forest for the trees. “Although it enters from the workshop, there is no electricity in the workshop itself. IE, it couldn’t actually function as a workshop, despite it’s name.” […]
August 12th, 2008 at 8:08 am EDT
[…] My brother is correct, the workshop in the back of the garage doesn’t actually need electricity to function as a workshop. Perhaps I should have also added that there are no windows and hence no light except that which comes in from the doors. That, actually, is far worse than the lack of electricity for a workshop, to me. […]