Are we there yet?

With all the chaos in our lives right now, I'm amazed that we've been able to get anything done. Shayne's still plugging away on the garage project I haven't even mentioned yet, and I've been trying very hard to keep the house in some semblance of order. He's having much more success than I am.

The garage project is to create a workshop for Shayne out of the original garage. So far he's cleaned, sealed, and painted the floor, insulated, framed in a wall to divide the workshop from the "new" garage, added an air conditioner, and began putting up drywall. It's really going to be nice when he's done. Unfortunately, the rest of the garage is now an utter disaster. We barely have room to park the cars, and I occasionally bash into some stacked woodwork while trying to park.

With the hot weather I haven't made any progress on the sanding (surprise...). I did start working on the wallpaper stripping again, though. It's going so much faster upstairs than it seemed to downstairs. I got a 2.5' by 6' area done inside an hour yesterday. I've decided that I was being too careful before. There's no way I'm going to hurt the plaster with a plastic putty knife. Now that I'm not afraid to be a little more aggressive, it goes much faster. And the sooner I get the office done, the sooner I can have the ductowkr re-run, and the sooner we'll have a decent amount of air conditioning upstairs (yay!). It's probably 8 degrees hotter upstairs than downstairs, which isn't terrible, but it gets a little stuffy up here.

Today's chores include more wallpaper stripping and attempting to organize some of the garage.

Coming clean

Lest you think I've fallen off the planet, rest assured that I'm still here. Not so productive, but here. And, in case you think I'm a complete putz and never accomplish anything, I do have something of an excuse. In February, I was promoted from corrections officer to police officer. At the end of that month, I moved out of the jail and into dispatch to begin my training. At the beginning of April, I began my field training, which I'm still working on. I should be done by the end of May, and then I'll ride double with another officer until I go to the police academy in July. I'll graduate in October, and then my life will hopefully return to some semblance of normalcy.

Since being promoted, I've been pretty stressed out. Most of it is good stress, but when I come home, I just don't feel like doing anything. I went through about a 6 week period where I was lucky if I could get 6 hours of sleep per night. I've been so wound up and excited and nervous... I think now it's starting to pass, and I've been getting more sleep and feeling a little more normal. Just in time for me to start getting nervous about the academy. The part I'm most nervous about is the physical agility test, which is on June 26. I know I can pass, but if for some reason I don't, my career is over. No pressure there...!

Bue enough excuses... Here's what else we've been up to. Shayne decided to make the back part of the garage his workshop. Over the past few days, he's cleared it out, cleaned it up, and painted the floor with an oil-based primer/sealer. Today he put on the final coat of paint, making the floor a nice, clean gray. Next up is insulation and drywall...

I've been busy pruning our trees and shrubs, along with weeding our flower beds in preparation for making them into raised beds like we did in the front. We're also going to install a brick patio behind the parking pad next to the garage. It's currently a flower bed, but a rather unsuccessful one. I can't keep it weeded long enough to make it look nice, and I haven't come up with any other ideas for it. We have been planning to add a patio, but were unsure where we wanted it. This area is already grass-free, reasonably sized, and convenient to the house and garage for storage. Shayne's uncle has a roto-tiller, which we'll be using to get rid of the weeds, and we can hopefully get started on that within a few weeks.

No more leaky garage roof!

When the second owner of our home took on a project, he never, ever did it right. I haven't found a single addition, repair, or remodel that wasn't screwed up in some way. The third owners told Shayne and I that they had fixed some of Owner #2's weirder additions to the home, but I have my doubts. From what I can tell, they painted the paneling in the dining room, put down Pergo over the hardwood, covered the floors in two of the upstairs bedrooms with polyurethane without stripping first, and skimcoated the walls in the master bedroom and little front bedroom (Hey! One out of four ain't bad!). In 5 years, I don't consider that a whole lot, especially considering the really obvious weirdness and damage they left unfixed. In their defense, I'm pretty sure that they updated the electrical and HVAC, so I don't suppose I can complain too much.

One of the biggest unfixed items was the addition connecting the "new" 1950s garage to the original garage. The connector had a flat, shingled roof, and looked to have leaked for about 10 years. At some point, that special second owner had realized that a flat shingled roof was an invitation for leaking, especially since he hadn't bothered with any flashing, and had tarred over the whole thing. It began to leak again, probably in the mid 1990s. The third owners must not have been too bothered about a leaking roof, and simply let the water damage and rot continue unimpeded. We spent the winter with a tarp jury-rigged between the three roof pitches, and probably prevented the roof from collapsing under a heavy snow or ice load. Now that summer had come, it was time to fix the roof once and for all.

Shayne started off Friday afternoon by demolishing the old roof. The whole process, including cleanup, took mayber 3 hours. The wood was so rotten, it basically just fell down in defeat when he threatened it with the crowbar.

Saturday morning, our friend Randy came by and helped Shayne sister the framing around the doorways and in the connector walls, frame a new roof, and shingle it. Our new connector roof has about a 6" drop over 2.5 feet, which is shallow, but water flows down without pooling. The reason they had to keep the pitch so low is because they had to work under the 24" overhang from the original garage but still make it high enough to walk through on the inside. Three people can stand on it, so it's plenty sturdy.

I don't have any pictures, since I was busy shellacking the floor while they were working, but I'll post some soon.