Prepping For Winter

Jeff and I have spent the past two weekends prepping our home for winter. Even though last weekend the temperature was in the mid-70's, this weekend the temperature is in the mid-50's so we know that winter weather is coming our way. Our main goal was to clean up the yard and ensure we can fit two cars in the garage.

Here is a before picture of our garage. Since we moved in we have not bothered going through the boxes and containers of stuff that didn't make it into the house. We knew that we would need a lot of shelving to fit all of these containers. Jeff drew up some plans for sixteen feet of shelving (four shelves high) and thirteen feet of workbench with storage space underneath. While I was at work, Jeff went to Home Depot and bought all supplies we needed for this project.

It started very slow while we planned out the best way to build each shelf; however, after the first three shelves we were off and running. Jeff even created a helpful little caddy that worked like a car jack to lift the shelves to the exact height and level so I did not have to try to hold up such a heavy shelf while he drilled it into place. The caddy was an amazing invention and really helped speed up the process.

We were very surprised to find, while disassembling the old workbench in the garage, what looked like a quarter-barrel keg cemented into our garage floor. It is very strange, but we assume the former home-owner used this space to hide something.

You couldn't see the barrel until after you lifted up what looked like the bottom shelf of the former workbench. But for all you treasure-hunters out there, don't bother questioning what we are doing with it, the bottom shelf of our workbench covered it up and not even we can access it anymore.

After one weekend we had all the shelving up and the workbench started. This weekend we completed the workbench and peg board and started organizing our containers. We have a bit more organizing of tools to do, but our goal has been met - we can now fit two cars in the garage.

The yard has also been a lot of work for us. After we moved in this summer, we really did not do much work on the yard besides fertilizing and mowing. Therefore, we had a lot of big plants and plenty of weeds to sort through. Since we plan on planting a bunch of new plants next year, we were not concerned about keeping any plants that did not look healthy. After much pulling, digging, raking and sifting we now have clean looking mulch around our entire house and around the flagpole. Jeff even trimmed down the hedge plants. The yard looks great!

After a very successful two weekends we are now taking the afternoon off to relax, eat Mexican hotdish and watch the Packers kick some Indianapolis butt!