I'm gonna be sore tomorrow....

teeka had finally convinced J to let us help her reorganize her garage so that she could work in it again, so I spent most of today installing outlets & redoing drywall in J's garage.

Several years ago, some friends of J's had convinced her to let them help her turn her garage into an artist's studio so that J could work on her projects out there. They helped her empty the garage out, but when it came to to actually fix it up, they all got busy and left J to do everything herself (or so the story goes). J pulled wire to where she wanted outlets and tacked up junction boxes and then started putting in the drywall. Never having done drywall by herself, none of the cuts are straight, and all of the pieces were only nailed in at the corners. Then it got rainy, and she had to put everything back before actually getting it finished. Then the squirrels found her garage, and it all became an overwhelming mess.

Friday Teeka and J started cleaning out the garage, and then I came over and drywalled the half of the one wall that J hadn't gotten to yet, and I started adding nails to all the panels I could get to. Friday after we left and this morning, J finished cleaning out the garage, and while she and Teeka were out selling on state street I started fixing the garage. 300 drywall nails later, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to move my right arm tomorrow. However, all of the drywall is properly nailed in, all the outlets work, all the missing/damaged insulation has been replaced, and four of the squirrel routes are closed off.

Three of these were easy - I screwed the windows shut (that way they aren't hanging loose in the openings anymore). The fourth took a bit more work. They were coming in through a gap in the siding at the bottom of one of the back corners, climbing the insulation to the top of the wall, and then entering the garage through a hole they chewed in the drywall. I found the route after renailing one side of the corner, so I had to tear out those two sheets, pull out the insulation, go outside and screw the trim down & patch the hole and then put the inside back together. I should have pulled those two sheets of drywall anyway, since it let me put extra blocking in to cover the fact that the sheets didn't end on studs (and if you haven't done it before, and all your help has deserted you, there's no sin in leaving one seam with the edges hanging out in space).

When they were done on State street, Teeka and J looked things over, agreed that it was a lot of work, and that it looked a lot better now, but were both a little concerned over the fact that I had finished the wiring by hot-tapping the new outlets into the existing wiring - I just plugged my wires into the back-wiring holes of the one existing outlet.

Then, before we left, I put a latch on the top of the blind leaf of the garage door (it uses two doors with the hinges on the sides) to keep it pulled in so that the squirrels can be blocked out of that route too.

Tomorrow I have to go back and pick up a few things, and then I think I'm going to do more work on the cutting boards I'm making.