Spiritual Woman: Book Review: Strong Mothers, Strong Sons

A review by my friend at Spiritual Woman: Book Review: Strong Mothers, Strong Sons: Strong Mothers, Strong Sons: Lessons Mothers Need to Raise Extraordinary Men by Meg Meeker, M.D. New York: Ballantine Books, 2014 ...



I hope to read this book soon as I'm mothering three sons, ages 8, 13, and 17!

Garage Project, Part Two

As I mentioned in my previous post, it would be very easy for me to go in the house, close the door, and ignore the garage without some specific deadlines and accountability. Two appointments this coming week have motivated us to keep moving!

On the back wall of the garage is a makeshift table from one of the wooden house doors we replaced 8 years ago. The door is on top of a couple sawhorses. As with any large flat surface, it is a great space for projects, but mostly it tends to be a place that accumulates clutter. The children leave toys, sweatshirts, paper, sidewalk chalk, and bubbles on the table. I tend to put gardening paraphernalia and painting supplies on the table, and admittedly not always in an orderly fashion. Consequently, when it comes time to start a project, I often spend the first 15 minutes finding the table under the clutter. On the adjacent wall is a three-tier shelf/workshop table that is partially inaccessible because it is partly behind the door table. During our Minimalism Game purge (I know, you're probably looking at the photos and thinking "What did you get rid of?"), we realized we could probably part with the cumbersome door table and rearrange a bit to streamline our storage, while reducing the flat surface invitation for clutter.

In order to make sure the door went away, I called our local building supply salvage store for a donation pick up. They are coming Thursday, so we cleared off the table this weekend. All we have to do now is put it outside on Wednesday evening.

Work surface? Nowhere to be found! 

See what I mean? Disaster. The items in the back corner
are inaccessible.

At least the floor is clear and I can fit the van in....

The next order of business was to figure out how we would deal with re-taping and mudding the ceiling to prepare for painting. A step ladder is not practical for this type of work. We asked a couple friends if they knew of anyone with scaffolding we could borrow. No luck. So I looked at the online catalog for the local construction rental place. I saw the perfect solution--a rolling work platform! I called and reserved the platform for Saturday morning. Since the store is closed on Sunday, we can get the platform for the whole weekend for the cost of 1.5 days!

One of the split seams on the ceiling.
My shoulders ache just thinking about this weekend!

You may not understand why these deadlines are so exciting to me. I will explain. Since we only have the platform for the weekend, the ceiling must be completed this weekend. No time to dilly-dally! That means by Monday morning, when I take the rolling platform back to the rental shop, the garage will have a fresh coat of paint and will look like a new place.

The project won't be done with the completed paint job, though. We still need to do some trim work around the windows. We also must make a decision on what to do with the floor (stain, paint, Racedeck, or simply clean what we have). Finally, when all the cleaning and painting is done, we will reorganize and possibly purchase a storage system to get things off the floor and orderly. The most overwhelming task, however, will be completed once the paint dries on the ceiling.

If you've done a garage makeover and have suggestions for tool and bike storage or floor treatments (pictures please, I'm a visual learner!), I'd love to see them!

Have a great week, and I hope to be sharing some great results, and maybe some interesting stories, next week!

Garage Project, Part One

When we bought our house back in 2005, we knew we would need to do some updating. We've done a little at a time, including a new roof and new doors, new faucets, lots of painting, a new garage door, and updating to the downstairs bathroom. We have a list of other updates we'd still like to make when they are in the budget. One of the worst spots in the house is the attached garage. It's "just a garage" so it was pretty been low on the priority list. Over the years, we have used the space for storing bikes, lawn and garden tools, and the van. I've also used it as a workshop for furniture and kitchen cabinet painting projects. My favorite use of the space is for practicing Irish Dance! Before our annual recital, sometimes alone and other years with my daughter or my friend, the van gets moved out and the floor swept, and then I practice my hard shoe dances. 

We are not planning to move any time in the foreseeable future, but since this is our third house, I've learned to remodel and update in terms of improving home value and sale-ability. An ugly garage space probably wouldn't be the main feature that would tank a home sale, but a fresh-looking garage could definitely be appealing to a buyer. The other thing I've learned after selling two homes is that it's smart to make the improvements for yourself, not for the next owner. I lived with dingy, ugly wall-to-wall carpet for several years at our previous house. I shampooed it, and it still looked bad. When we listed the house to sell, the realtor strongly suggested replacing the carpeting. I agreed, and the house looked so much better--for the next owner. This time, we're making the changes to make our home the way we like it.

House wall. See ugly paneling piece around the garage
door opener. The whole wall to the right of the house door
was pieced like that.

In spite of its usefulness, the interior of our garage is downright ugly. The wall attached to the house had some 1970s fake wood paneling, which would have been okay with a coat of paint, if the pieces weren't all smaller than 3' x 3'. They were oddly pieced in, and it looked super tacky. The lighting is poor and the windows are difficult to open, so it's stuffy in the middle of summer. In addition to the weird wall treatments, the sheet rock on the ceiling was taped and mudded, but never painted. As a result, the tape seams have cracked. Before his summer job started, my oldest son removed the fake wood paneling, revealing drywall like the ceiling and the other half of the house wall. The other walls are plywood. 

Attic access ladder is broken and tape seams are cracked.

My husband and I agreed last month that it's time to make some changes to the garage. Most of them are not expensive--just time consuming. We've already purged a lot of junk during June when I played the Minimalism Game, but then we had a couple weeks of not much progress. As any runner knows, having a race to train for is a great motivator. I am training for a half marathon 10 weeks from now. I started a couple months ago, and I'm starting to build up my mileage so that when race day rolls around, I'll be ready. A household project is easy to ignore and postpone, unless specific deadlines require accountability. The Minimalism Game helped because I knew we needed to purge 20+ items per day at the end of the month. Now that the game is over, it has been easy to focus on other things and ignore the garage. 

Enter...organized and hard-working husband. I had lots of other things I would have rather done last weekend, but my husband said he was planning to work on the garage. It wasn't necessarily the most romantic way to spend our anniversary, but we were working together, and that's a big motivator for me. If I have a partner and accountability, I have all the focus of a "normal" non-ADD person. I jumped into full-on work mode. We used the spackling compound we had on hand and finished patching and sanding the wall that had had the fake wood paneling. It's now nice and smooth and ready for priming and painting. Unfortunately, we ran out of supplies (we were using up what we had from other projects). So far, this project has cost "zero dollars"!

Tune in tomorrow for an update on this weekend's progress and the benefits of accountability!