The garage is finished! Yes, that’s right. I said finished. As in there is nothing else to do. I honestly never thought I would live to see this day.
And the best part is, with a completion date of August 1, they finished on September 28. Does anybody else see a tiny discrepancy there? Not that I found the whole process infuriating or anything like that.
So here it is, in all it’s glory:
Finally!
The side view
My beautiful garage door opener
Now if only the landscaper would finish…
Look we have grass now.
After about two weeks of living in mud we finally have grass. The turf guys came yesterday and put down all this sod. It looks nice, don’t you think?
Of course now I have to baby-sit it. You have to water sod so this is what I do. I have no idea how much you are supposed to water sod, and the landscape guys did not leave any instructions. I looked online and the general consensus seems to be “water it a lot”. So I am watering like a madwoman moving the sprinkler from place to place to place across the lawn.
Constantly turning the faucet off and on has grown tiresome, so I have become an expert at moving the sprinkler while it is still sprinkling. You can probably predict the results of this process. So I spend a lot of time changing my clothes. Somehow I find this less annoying than turning off the hose. Go figure.
I shudder to think what our water bill will be like next month.
Meanwhile, I have been assured that we will indeed have a garage door. Someday.
I swear I wasn’t sure I would live this long, but the garage is just about done. I say just about because we don’t have a garage door yet, and the landscaping is still pending. However, none of that matters much (okay the mud matters a little bit) because I am parking in my driveway. And not only in my driveway, in my garage. Although I suppose it is still technically just a very fancy carport, considering the lack of door and all.
So here are some photos:
Ooooh
Tom architected the crap out of this.
Did you notice the fancy racing stripe along the top of the door? (It’s important for your garage to be fast – or at least as fast as your house).
Aaahhhh
Also take note of the backboard painted to match the garage color scheme.
Ohhhh
A window for helpful natural light inside, and a place for me to put a window box outside. A window box full of dead flowers no doubt.
Hooray!
Handy storage cabinets on the back with racing stripe attached. The perfect place to put our collection of sleds and other miscellany.
Oh if only there were anything to update. Frankly, progress is so slow that you can only see it with time-lapse photography. I am just a little cheesed off about this.
And I just found out that they won’t even pour the apron for the driveway until tomorrow. Or maybe the day after tomorrow. Well, the day after tomorrow is a Saturday so I find that hard to believe. I told Tom to ask them if we can drive on the apron to get to the cured and ready part of the driveway once it’s poured. We’ll see if he actually does.
If not that means we can’t park in our own driveway in front of our own house for another week after they pour the apron, let’s call that a week from Saturday. That will be almost three weeks from the date they pulled the old driveway out.
Does this seem ridiculous to anybody else?
and the garage STILL isn’t done. They started before school got out, and at this rate they will finish after school starts again. I will let you do the math.
They tore the driveway out last monday and the new one still isn’t done. I can tell I am not supposed to be angry about this but I am. We can’t use the driveway until seven days after they finish pouring it. And it doesn’t sound like they will finish pouring it until friday. Which means Stupid Street Parking until August 21. A full 18 days after they tore out the old one.
There will be daily updates from now on.
So here are some new garage photos. As you can see we no longer have a driveway.
It’s kind of a big mess around here right now. I am seriously considering abandoning ship for a while, but I am not sure where we would go.
They have been working on the garage again. Now we have roof rafters.
Halfway there (more or less)
All the way done
Well, obviously not all the way done. We don’t have an actual roof yet. Of course we don’t have actual walls yet either. I suppose both will arrive eventually.
Up close and personal
Inside looking up
I’m not sure I should have been standing inside it. It feels unlucky to do that, like walking under a ladder. Besides, at the moment the whole thing feels rather insubstantial, like it could all fall over at any minute. Sort of like Lincoln Logs. (I should note here that I know it won’t fall down, I trust our contractor implicitly, but I am an irrational being.)
I can’t decide if it looks bigger or smaller now. Tom has measured the garage and my car and has assured me yet again that it will fit.
I haven’t updated you in a while, because nothing has happened for a while. Then suddenly this week it did.
New Garage (some assembly required)
A stud wall in soft focus
Actually, there was nothing soft focus about it. There was condensation on my camera lens because it was so muggy outside. (Muggy means humid – it’s a Chicago thing).
One and a half walls!
Four walls!
Four walls are good. You really need four walls to hold up the roof. I assume that will the The Next Thing, but what do I know about building a garage? Not much.
I continue to have lingering doubts that it isn’t big enough, despite Tom’s assurances to the contrary. I just keep telling myself it will all be fine.
There was a tree inconveniently located where we want to put the new driveway, so yesterday some nice people came with their big trucks and their chainsaws and cut it down.
I have to tell you this has not been good for my health and well-being. My allergies have launched a full-scale, full-on attack and I spent most of today feeling like garbage. Of course it probably doesn’t help that they are also resufacing the street one house over from ours, so there is lots of good dust and whatnot in the air too. Yummy.
So here are some photos:
Before
Guy with a chainsaw
The Chipper
Ever since the movie Fargo, I have never been able to look at a wood chipper without thinking of this:
“I guess that’s your partner there in the chipper.”
Tree bits in the driveway
Later some guys came and ground the stump out too, but I didn’t take any pictures of that.
Here are the latest photos.
The hole where the new garage will live
As you can see we have a floor for the new garage now. It’s very gray.
Pouring the slab (isn't this exciting?)
I don’t think they can do anything else until the cement is dry (or in architect-speak until the “concrete cures”).
The finished product
There is a bird who keeps landing on the slab. I hope he doesn’t get stuck.
