Back at it

It snowed yesterday and it will be 80° by Friday. It must be spring, fall, or winter in NW Indiana! What this means is in the two or three minutes a week I have to do things I can start back on the home improvements. My goals are 1)storage, 2)water abatement, 3)energy efficiency,and 4)aesthetics. Those are mostly in order of importance but sometimes money takes precedence. The storage thing is challenging due to the sheer lack of it here. I new that going in however. We decided to buy a smaller house and live smarter rather than a huge house to fill with crap we really don't need. I've got a plan, however loose it may be, to get all the stuff stored away and in the process weed out all the crap I don't need. Well, it's almost all crap I don't need but everyone needs five bicycles in various states of disrepair, no? Perhaps not. I'm getting better, I swear. I have built some shelving but I need to build some more to use the valuable space in the car-hole above head high. What I mean is I can put shit way up high like the Christmas tree and what have you. To do this I am going to need a few more tools. Enter the saw.

My old buddy Bill, the one that gave me the Garagemobile, gave me a groovy old Craftsman table saw. This is going to be very handy to have around. It looks cool, too. Of course, I have to make room for it as well. Remember those sliding square puzzles? That has become my life. Move this here to make room for that, now where do I put this now? I got rid of my old table saw which was not much of a saw but the price was right. I'm not much of a woodworker but I've got to start somewhere. I want to build shelves and a closet for one wall of the car-hole.

The two rucksacks are our Bug-out bags. I'll get to that some other time. Anyway I need to make some space on that wall. If I gain a bit of confidence in building the closet/wall storage unit there, I will tackle the closet in our bedroom. It's a mess as well. I'm very confident I can make the space in this place much more efficient. I'd like to do something in the living room for entertainment center/library/desk type deal as well but I don't know if I'll be up to that. The shed in the backyard is FULL and I just build some shelves in there. I've almost got it sorted to where I can walk in.
As for the water abatement, well the driveway slopes toward the house. There is no apron in front of the garage door. The driveway allows the water to run right up to and under the door. Which has rotted as a result. The garage floor is also not flat so a new door will not seal if I put one on. I get water in the garage. Remember that part, there will be a quiz. The attached garage (car-hole) has drywall but has never been taped. For a fire stop, the drywall must be taped. I started doing this but it needs to go close to the floor. Why can't I finish the drywall close to the floor? Ding, Ding, Ding!!! You got it, I get water in the garage. I have to fix the driveway to get the water away from the door, I need to build an apron to aid in this, the water has to get away from the house so I need a drain from the apron to the yard. I don't want to flood my neighbors yard so I need a dry well. I have to fix the floor so a door will seal and then I can install a new door. Then I can finish the drywall. Simple, right? At two or three hours a week and two or three hundred dollars a month I should be done by the time my four year-old finishes college. The dude abides. At least I can ride the bike tomorrow.