Come see my etchings or how to survive a garage project!

The garage — walls painted, floor cleaned and etched — ready for the final floor job.

The beloved husband and I have been cleaning out the garage so we can paint it. We have lived here nine years. They must have been good years from the looks of the junk we have collected. Our conversations went something like this:

Me: I was looking for this but couldn’t find it so I bought another one. Do you think we need two?

Husband: I don’t think we need one. Throw it out.

Me: But we may need it next week! (As I throw it out)

Me: What is this? I think it’s yours.

Husband: I have no idea. It must be yours. Maybe it’s part of the little refrigerator.

Me (not recognizing it as part of the small refrigerator at all): Well we haven’t missed it so out it goes.

It went on and on as we found unidentifiable stuff, stuff that was old, rusty and unusable and just plain junk. There were duplicates and triplicates! How many rakes do you need?? Our trash men probably got a hernia from the pick up!

The really cool thing about our area is that we have people who drive around in pick-up trucks collecting stuff that is out for the trash men. They must make money on it somehow either through recycling metals or maybe from flea markets. In any case, I can feel good about that.

Then we painted the walls. Painting a garage is a pain because you still have things you couldn’t throw out like lawnmowers, snow blowers, rakes, garden tools and stuff you couldn’t bear to part with. You put it all in the middle and paint around it. You have to keep moving it so it took a couple of days to paint the walls.

Then came the BIG project. I wanted the floor painted with epoxy paint. Visiting friends always want to come in through our garage which was gross – cluttered and dirty. We have a lovely front porch with a lovely RED door that goes unused. The garage is a terrible way to enter someone’s house and I don’t know anyone else who allows it. With a nice clean garage, maybe….just maybe if the weather is rainy, we will let visitors come in through the garage…maybe.

The really lovely but hardly every used front door.

The first thing you need to do is clean and etch the cement floor. The house isn’t old so we didn’t expect it to be such a big job. However, that turned out NOT to be the case. We used a strong detergent cleaner. Then we bought an environmentally friendly cement etcher so we wouldn’t kill the plants or us.

The first one didn’t work at all so we bought a slightly stronger but still environmentally friendly etcher. That sucker didn’t work either. Now I am getting really annoyed. Scrubbing this crap on the floor is work – more work than painting the walls and moving stuff. We went out and bought the industrial acid that is guaranteed to kill everything within 10 miles. It’s very similar to a nuclear holocaust.

We spent hours on the computer watching YouTube videos. We researched how to neutralize it; bought respirators; and did some proactive things with the shrubs and plantings. Amazingly we are here to talk about it and our green plants are still happy. You don’t want to be casual about strong chemicals but those label warnings really freak me out.

We are now ready for the paint. That’s scheduled for the end of this week. I am very excited to have a clean and semi-attractive garage. Rereading that last sentence, perhaps I need a life!

25 thoughts on “Come see my etchings or how to survive a garage project!”

You and your husband sure do get a lot of projects done. The garage looks very uncluttered. Too bad you can’t get more use out of that beautiful red door.

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25 thoughts on “Come see my etchings or how to survive a garage project!”