Thursday, May 28, 2020

Spring Cleaning the Garage.....

Should probably call this one "Wake up, honey..."



Jammed up in the back, too....



And along the driver's side....



But after moving things around, rearranging things, and tossing some things away, we can see some progress....



I can walk through there again!



And finally, I can get to work on the ugly front bumper!


The tires that were in the bags taking up way too much room were the ones I had on the Jeep when I moved out here. They still have about 3/4 the tread depth on them, but I drive so few miles out here that I'm just going to leave the Blizzaks on the Jeep year-round. The "Summer Tires" are in the Jeep and will be going to Discount Tire for disposal, unless somebody wants them.

The small LED light fixture I had over the workbench went casters up, so I'm finally getting around to hanging the 48" LED fixture I bought last year.



This will get hung from the ceiling between the workbench and the front of the car. Should give me plenty of light on the front of the Supra, and some on the bench.

Sweet Little Wife has picked up a new hobby....refinishing furniture, of all things! She bought this really cool, very well made drop-leaf table at the ARC Thrift Store. It had some damage to the finish (it's 50+ years old), so she tried cleaning it. No joy....So she's gone down the rabbit-hole of learning to use stripper to get the finish off, then block sanding it with increasingly finer grit sand paper. She put one coat of finish on it, decided she didn't like the color, and stripped it all off again! She's learning very fast, and is getting an appreciation of what "Hand Made" means. In the meantime she's also picked-up an equally nice side table for $10, and an absolutely killer cedar chest made by Lane. We decoded the serial number and found out it was made in the Summer of 1941! So she now has a Pre-War, solid cedar with veneer, American-made classic piece of furniture. It has finish damage on the top veneer, and after realizing she had a real "heirloom", she decided to take it to a guy in town who does exquisite work.

Things are opening back up here, and life is slowly returning to normal. I'm sure the sheeple in town and the students will be talking of "The NEW Normal", but that's just something the chattering classes do. For the rest of us it means we can go back to living our lives pretty much as if nothing happened.

You know, kinda like "Global Warming"?

30 comments:

  1. How Cute!
    He thinks his garage was messy.
    LMAO!!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And compared to mine, yours is clean.....

      Leigh
      Whitehall, NY

      Delete
    2. Mine is somewhere between Dr. Jim's and Dr. Phil's.
      Somewhere.

      Delete
    3. Phil, without a doubt, you are the UNDISPUTED "King of Cluttered Garages" in all the world!

      Delete
  2. drjim, compared to Phil's garage, yours is a sterile operating suite...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Also, I resemble that Lane Cedar chest... last name is Cederquist.

      Delete
    2. I just remembered that I still have one of those in storage that belonged to the first wife who left it here 30 yrs ago.

      Delete
  3. You and Phil are in a contest now to see who can clean up the garage better :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Phil and I have different priorities, Irish.

      I have a hunch he could kick my ass in a garage cleaning contest if he wanted to.....

      Delete
  4. Flat areas equal temporary storage.

    We do a good job on our woodworking projects, but I don't think we really know what we are doing when it gets to the finish.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I can do the basic stuff like stripping and sanding, and even applying the finish, but I can't tell "Dark Pecan" from "Red Oak", from "Black Walnut" as far as stains and things go, and that's the real artistry behind doing primo quality refinishing.

      Delete
  5. Greeley Colorado! Love the place! My sister lives there and I was seriously considering moving there after retirement from the Marine Corps. ARC is awesome. Go there at least twice every time I visit!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We're in Fort Collins, Coffee Man, about 25 miles from Greeley.

      I greatly prefer ARC vs Goodwill. Their "mission" is better, and they're local. We prefer keeping our money in the community....

      Delete
  6. Your garage looks good, drjim. Congratulations!
    God on your wife with the furniture, too. That was something I never liked doing.
    God bless you all and have a great weekend!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I've been (patiently) waiting for the Supra to hit the highway. It's a very neat project car.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's a neat car, very advanced for it's day. Not fast, not quick, but a pleasure to drive. As my Old Jap Car friends and I always joke, we'd get our doors blown off by a new Camry who didn't even know he was "racing".....

      Delete
    2. I used to have an '84 Celica GT-S, so even slower than your Supra. But I used to regularly smoke my roommate's brand new Ford Probe, both in acceleration as well as handling. I can also attest that if you and your girl are young and flexible enough, you can get lucky in the back seat of a Celica! That was a long time ago...

      Delete
    3. I'm waaaaay past fogging the windows at the drive-in!

      The car weighs about 3000lbs, and has 142HP at the rear wheels.

      It's not "quick" as in acceleration, and it's not "fast" as in top speed.

      But with the current technology tires, current technology ceramic brake pads and vented rotors, and the modified suspension, it handles like a go-kart and stops so fast that I'm afraid I'll get rear-ended if I jump on the brakes in traffic.

      And it's an "Analog Car", with no safety nannies holding your hand and limiting what you can do.

      Delete
  8. I had all this lockdown time and re-arranged toolboxes and threw some stuff out.
    Still too much stuff.
    Your place looks like an O.R.
    nice job.
    Cracks me up when visitors comment on how well organized my garage/shop is.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Groan....tell me about it. The styrofoam was cut up with my hot-knife and bagged for disposal, the HUGE box full of bubble wrap went to the basement where it will be used to pack stuff I sell on eBay, which is helping to make a dent in the mess downstairs.

      I was just happy to have it open enough to sweep the floor. Had a lot of leaves and crud that had blown in over the winter,.

      Delete
  9. No garage, but a storage shed. Stuff in there I haven't touched in years but can't bring myself to throw away.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know the feeling. I finally sat myself down and had an nice internal talk with me about all the stuff I've collected that I'm most likely never going to use.

      Gave away some, stripped others for usable parts and tossed the rest, and sold a truckload of stuff over the winter. It cleaned up some space in the basement, and helped refill the coffers....

      Delete
  10. LOL, better hurry up and finish the Supra before it ends up outside while your wife takes over the garage! :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. HAH! You just made me blow coffee all over!

      She has "her side", and I have "my side", and as Cronkite used to say..."And that's the way it is!".....

      Delete
    2. Kind of like "her side" of the bed (being somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of the surface area of said bed)? :-)

      Good to see progress on a garage - mines not too bad but could use a cleaning. But a good friend just moved to NC from TX, and he has two double garages that are both chock full. I'm gonna show him pics from your and Phil's efforts to shown him it can be done!

      Delete
    3. She's pretty good about keeping her stuff on her side. I even put together some shelves *on her side* for her gardening stuff.

      The garage at the former house in Long Beach was an absolute disaster. Within an hour of cleaning it up it had all kinds of shit just dumped in it. Not stacked, not racked, not on the benches, just DUMPED in the clean area of the floor.

      It got so bad I just started dragging stuff to the curb, and man, you shoulda heard the howling!

      Delete
    4. I don't remember the details of the negotiation, but 40 years ago we agreed that her car would always be parked in the garage, and I would mostly be in charge of the rest of the garage. Our first house had a single garage as does the house we now have.
      It's amazing how much one can shoehorn into the space around the periphery of the garage walls.
      Over great resistance I got an agreement that if the car is soaking wet it stays outside.
      The tools are thankful for that.




      Delete
    5. Yep, her car gets priority on her side. If I have things over there and the weather turns nasty (HAIL!), I immediately move my stuff and get her little car in the garage.

      Delete

Keep it civil, please....

Gloomy, Gritty, Grey Day

 At 1700 local it's as described in the headline; 30*F, 88% RH, completely overcast, snowing like crazy (small flakes, but lots of them)...