It has been a while since my last post. As we look from the first photo to the second, you can see that the progress has come a long way. To me, it's been frustrating to think how long it has taken to get this far so I reflect as to what has gone on over the past 9 months. After my "recap", I'll also share some more activities that brought us to today.

Overall in this floor project, I underestimated how many side projects were connected to this project. Once the walls were accessible, I saw how the shelves needed updating and the ceiling needed covering and the walls needed paint and the shelving needed painting and the engines needed detailing and the doors needed painting. After all, once the garage floors are completed and the bay is filled, none of the other side projects would be accessible.

So for the highlights:

So as you saw, I have a white empty room. To get it that way, I had to empty a pretty packed garage. My first dilemma was where to store all the stuff. I set up 5 temporary garage storage tents only to have them all destroyed in a big windstorm. Eight more tents were put up in their place and the tents became populated with a few 1915 Oldsmobiles, 2 model T fords, a 1954 Oldsmobile and as much loose stuff from my garage as we could transport there. Even with all that stuff gone, the garage was still pretty full.

Next came the countless engines and transmissions that were stored along the back wall. As each engine came off of the storage rack, the parts were being cleaned painted and assembled as much as possible before going into storage in another section of the garage. It's hard to believe, but all of the engines, transmissions, and axles occupied another 2 bays of the garage.

The equipment that was stored in the bay needed to relocate while we prepared to do the floors, which included an engine hoist, transmission jack, brake lathes, tire changers and balancers, and more. Finally, there was enough room to hang ceilings and mud drywall.

In order to hang ceilings, all of the wired light fixtures needed to be removed from the ceiling, then the plywood went on the ceiling, and the fixtured needed to be reinstalled. Why did I use plywood and not drywall? Because I had it laying around, and it was taking up space. When the ceiling was up, then the lattice material was installed to cover the seams, giving a suspended ceiling appearance.

Then there was the drywall... There was a lot of damage repair that needed to be done to the drywall that was there, and there was new drywall that needed to be hung, taped and mudded. Unless you do drywall regularly, it is a time consuming and tedious job that creates a lot of dust very quickly.

While drywall was being done, there was more to get off of the floor of the garage, and I was running out of places to put all the stuff, so a more storage was built. New metal shelves were built to bolt to the walls, and a solid shed was built (8'x20') for long term cold storage!

Now the garage was almost emptied, but the engine rack and the slop sink were still in the way so my most recent project was to get those items broken down, disconnected and removed.

So what took so long to get this done?? Although I don't want to want to give excuses, I do want to add perspective. There was about a 12 car bay worth of stuff in a 6 car bay garage.(roughly a 24'x48' foot section of this 7000 square foot garage). Also, life gets in the way. A family vacation, building a car, buying a car, moving a car, crazy weather and crazy health issues slowed progress some, but I wouldn't change a thing!

So what's next??? I'll be scrubbing the floors, multiple times, to prepare for repairs and primer, then on to coating the floors.

Am I worried about the weather?? I will be looking for dry weather, but my garage is heated with radiant floor heating maintaining a 65 to 70 degree temperature in the garage during this entire process. I hope to go into more details in our next post. Stay Tuned!!

We're almost there!!! Here's some highlights and a brief recap...