Garage

I always had wanted a detached garage and believe it or not this house had one.  We bought this place as the bay is a great place to kayak, sail and windsurf.  So immediately windsurfers and kayaks took over the middle part of the garage.  Yard equipment, barbeque grills and bicycles took over the left bay. A workbench, table-saw, lumber, boat parts and repair items took over the right bay.  There is also bonus room with sink that is attached to the garage. In 2005, we converted this into a guest room (no bathroom however) as there are only 2 bedrooms in the house.

Left Bay with garden items.  See sails and boards in middle!

Right garage bay with work bench and wood and kayak and other stuff.

This is the room attached to garage.  Right now it is a storage room and a place where I paint the utility room doors.









Goals for Garage:

• Get garden/yard tools and equipment out so we can get a car into it.
• Build a garden shed so there is a place to put the tools and equipment.
• Get the shop/woodworking area organized
• Add bathroom onto guest room (Carl calls it "The Love Shack")
•  Replace the garage doors.
• Repair door jamb around garage doors
• Repair or replace rotted exterior facia.
• Caulk and paint exterior siding of garage

Accomplishments: 

• A garden shed.  The saga about that is on a future posting

• Garden/yard items moved out and the car moved in
• Garage doors were replaced

In July the springs to the overhead doors broke and Carl had to nail a board to the door before we left on a 2 week trip.  He  also used Bondo to patch the lower door panels about 6 years ago. It wasn't pretty but it put off the door replacement for a few years.





 

Utility Room

We have an awesome utility room! One whole wall is 18 inch deep cabinetry.  There is a sink, washer and dryer, mini-freezer,  window and even a half bath. It is the entry from the back of the house into the kitchen, so it serves as a rear entry and mudroom as well.

Now the however!  HOWEVER, it was not plumbed for a gas dryer (Above photo shows wall cut into to put in gas lines.) and the paint on the cabinets was peeling off in huge pieces.  Someone had repainted them, ALL 23 DOORS, with latex over the existing oil-based enamel. Before retirement, I would try to take 2 doors at a time home to Austin with intentions of repainting them there and bringing them back.  Well it took over 2 years to scrape with a razor blade, sand, prime and paint just 4 doors. In the last 2 months I was able to complete 9 more, so now I have a rhythm going. Two doors a week is my goal.

 The hinges and knobs were all black and had paint dripped onto them.  It looked rather boring.  So I am keeping all the doors white but am painting all the hinges this crazy green and all the  pairs of knobs are different but all have to have green on them (my favorite color).  It has been fun being on the look-out for green knobs. Even our friends, Roger and Sheila, got us some knobs on their travels throughout the world.

 

Retirement-Spring 2014

Well, we did it.  We retired, sold the home we raised our 2 girls in and moved into our 2nd house that was 3 hours away and on the coast.  We are living our dream.  In our 36 years of marriage  when we had extra money we didn't have time and when we had extra time we didn't have extra money. Well we now have extra time, but our funds for remodeling are definitely limited.   Did I tell you that our 1st home was completely updated and our 2nd home is not!  Also, the 2nd home was built in 1970 so it is older than our first home and has never been updated, except for some poor paint jobs.

So the purpose of this blog is to share with you our remodeling progress and the ways we are trying to keep costs down.  This means doing as much as possible by ourselves, finding affordable subcontractors, appliances, and other materials when needed.

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This view from the driveway and being able to get to the bay,  are what entiiced us to buy this house back in 2005.