Summer Project #1: the garage

I thought about getting a job this summer, but ultimately I decided not to. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with my summer--I've spent the last 3 summers working on college classes or getting ready to move, and I wasn't sure I could totally "relax" the entire summer and enjoy it. I know it sounds weird, but I needed something to "do", so I came up with some projects I've been wanting to do for sometime, and I focused on accomplishing them whenever I started feeling on the bored side. 

The first project I tackled was the garage during the second week of June. Our garage was built 2 years ago, and ever since then, I've been wanting to install some kind of an organizational system. We'd debated about installing electricity and insulation first, which is why I've waited, but I realized that those won't probably happen for some time due to necessity/monetary reasons, and I decided I'd had enough of the piles of stuff on the floor of the garage that were preventing us from parking 2 cars easily inside. 

The first phase of the project was to get rid of the metal storage shed that we've had for about 15 years. We've moved it 3 times--we set it up just to the south of our singlewide trailer, then when we were getting ready to install our manufactured home, we had to move it across the driveway area to the west, then when we got the new garage, we moved it to the south in the pasture area located next to our house. It's been there the last 2 years, and was becoming a giant mouse nest in its location, so I knew it was time to clean out its contents and sell it. I threw some things away, sold some items, and moved the rest to the garage. Before I could start organizing things in the garage, I had to know exactly HOW many things I had altogether to make room for! It took a day to clean out the whole shed, then we sold it and moved it to a person's house in town a few days later. 

The next phase was hanging up some of the seasonal items that were just resting on the ground in the garage. I'd thought about it several days, trying to figure out the best way to hang up the items in the cheapest way possible. I looked at buying some specialized hooks for skis, but then I realized if I just bought some large, heavy duty nails, I could hammer two on either side of the skis and snowboards, and they'd hang on the wall from their most narrow parts. It was genius and worked super well!  

I've had some shelves for a few years that haven't been used since we broke down our home addition/makeshift storage shop when we built the garage. I'd been thinking about how I could hang up the shelves on the 2x4 cross beams in the garage when there wasn't any vertical studs to affix the shelf brackets to. I came up with a solution using pieces of old 2x4's that were left over from the garage construction. I measured the distance in between each of the horizontal beams, and cut the 2x4's in that length. Then I drilled some diagonal holes, and screwed the vertical studs into the horizontal crossbeams! Ta-dah!! I was so proud of myself! I bought some extra brackets at the hardware store, and completed one section in a day. It took a while to screw in all the beams, level each shelf, screw in the brackets, then screw in the shelves, but I got them all done totally by myself! I absolutely loved the finished product! I was able to fit all of our outdoor water supplies on that section of newly-installed shelves.

Top shelf: noodles and oars
Middle shelf: inflatable kayaks and air pumps
Bottom shelf: inflatable canoe and life jackets

I needed a place to store all of our sleds (I hung up some of the awkward shaped ones on large nails on the wall by the skis, but there was about 10 more that I knew wouldn't fit there very well). After taking a day off the garage project, I thought about how I could store them, and finally decided on putting them in the ceiling beams. I had a piece of plywood leftover from the pumpkin patch that I no longer needed, and it was almost the exact width that could fit in between two of the roof's support beams. I got some 1x4 pieces of wood that I already had, and screwed them into the support beams, then screwed the plywood in on top of them. It was rather tricky, because I was on the ladder and did it by myself, and had to keep moving the ladder for every screw, but I got it done. Then I stacked most of the flat sleds on top of it, and a few of the plastic sleds I just placed on the support beams themselves. See the sleds at the top of the photo:

The last part of the project was installing some shelves for storage boxes that hold different items of Josh's and Mine-- memorabilia from our youth, and files from previous jobs and church callings. However, Josh had stuff in boxes that were too big, so I had to sort them into matching boxes that would fit on the shelf. It was kind of fun to go through old pictures and memories. It didn't take long to hang those shelves, since there was only one row of them, and I already had a system down from when I installed the shelves in the section next to them the few days prior. (The blue boxes on the left in the photo were the last part of the project--I already had the shelving unit below them):

Now we can fit ALL the motorcycles, four wheelers, 2 cars, and ALL of the extra junk in the garage!! What a good feeling! 

I forgot to take a BEFORE shot, but I found this one from a couple years ago that works (it just doesn't show all the clutter that's accumulated on the ground since then): 

The "storage" side of the garage where cars don't park...the back part holds
my seasonal decorations and children's grow boxes, and the front part holds
all of Josh's extra automobile and hardware parts. My next goal for the garage
is installing a work bench for Josh and organizing this section...but since it
holds so much of Josh's things, I think I'll wait to do that a while longer!

Funny story about that stop sign: I was inspired by all the street signs around
Geb Gebhardt's home. He told me if a sign is on public ground for over 24 hours,
then it's public property! So...after the Shoup Bridge construction was complete,
they installed new signage, and just left that one laying down in the borrow
pit. It was there for over a week, and finally I decided to take action. I picked
it up, put it in the back of my car (it didn't quite fit, so the hatch door was open)
and brought it home. I unscrewed it from the post, and hung it above the bench.
I thought I would love it--but at first I wasn't so sure about it. However, it's
grown on me! I like the red accent and I'm hoping to put some kind of light
feature in or around it, too. 

Yay! It fits all our stuff, PLUS 3 cars!