More Moving

Today's post follows the last one, sort of. Today I focus on moving stuff basically from one storage location (the attached carriage-house-sized one-car garage) to another (the tool shed or the shop floor). In re-reading it, there is really a lot of history context with some moving stuff mixed in.

 

But First 

most empty since 2022

Before I get into it, I understand that a blog about fixing cars really ought to, you know, talk about fixing cars sometimes. I get it. I really do. I like working on cars, and when I have time, space and a car that needs fixing, that's how I prefer to spend time. Over the past 2 years, I have spent a great deal of time focusing on creating the space for that to happen. In light of that, I think it is worth noting that I understand the economic space many of us are in. Costs for everything seem to climb more every day while our respective salaries and wages are flat. Affordability may be a catch-phrase for politicians, but for the rest of us its a daily life reality.

 

When I look back on the last year of posts talking about getting a shop built, I recognize how tone-deaf much of that must feel to those in real financial difficulty. I totally understand that. Please consider that I started this before the election in November of 2024 and had committed to $22k of steel building before the tariff wars started in 2025 and had the concrete poured, building installed and the doors started before trump attacked Iran this year, sending our fragile economy skidding into the ditch. I had already started down a path which could not be easily changed before things got really bad.

 

Now, Boo and I are in the same financial binds as most of the US: income flat, outflow increasing. Accordingly, I will not be getting any new-to-me cars/projects nor really invest much in fancy new after-market parts to install on any of the ones I have. What does this mean for a blog about fixing cars? Well, it kinda means that I won't be posting as often and when I do it will be more about repairs than about some new thing except for the parts and bits I collected before we bought the farmhouse in 2022. I have boxes of interesting things that I never got to, like a 2-1/2" universal exhaust kit for the bus, a 3rd brake light idea for the bus (from junkyard parts), a trailer wiring package to go with the tow hitch, etc. So, there will be things. And, of course, I still have the locked up engine on Nina ('64/'65 Beetle) to free, a bunch of little things to finish on Oliver ('78 MGB) and a disassembled '79 280zx (Zed) to put together. Most of that work would require very little in terms of parts.

 

Garage

acquisition day 2022

This 1948 farmhouse has what I would call a carriage-house style attached garage. I say that because only the smallest of cars could possibly fit with the door closed. Oliver, the MGB, could fit. Astra and Nina could fit. That's the end of the list. Hapy is too tall and probably too long. The XRunner is definitely too long. I think even Zed is too long. Further complicating the garage is a fixed work bench along the rear wall that protrudes almost a full meter off the wall and the laundry machines near the front, narrowing at least the feel of the width of the space. I think Astra will still fit, but it will need to be mostly empty.

 

Shortly after we bought the house, before we had meaningfully cleaned anything, Boo and I scored a solid wood, full kitchen's worth of era-correct cabinets from the rebuilding center for $420US. The rebuilding center is not a store room; quite the opposite. Everything you buy must leave the store that day or it's theirs again. So, we lasso'd Boo's ex-husband (and his mini van) and some helpers (our local kids) and ran all of the cabinets over to the farmhouse. And slammed them into the garage on top of one another. The fate of that garage had been written the day we bought it: it would be the staging area for building supplies until the house was livable. Those cabinets were the first but far from the last. And then it continued to be the store room for all kinds of things. Until now.

 

farmhouse at winter solstice

With the shop taking all car-related stuff and car-related tools, almost a third of the stuff in the garage was moved. Over the last weekend in May, I moved everything home-repair related out to the now empty and clean tool shed. That represented almost another third of the stuff that used to be in the garage. As I cleared an area of things, I shop-vac'd all the dust bunnies and old cobwebby string-things. What remains in the garage are camping gear, ski gear, holiday decorations and household goods storage. The rafters are still full of lumber. So, I have to clear that to somewhere and then there is a bunch more vacuuming of ick. I have a couple of extra kitchen cabinets which need to move to the shop and I still have the big black rolling cabinet that needs to move too. Once those three big items move, we can park Astra in there. Boo had been gone for the weekend, baby-sitting our little grand-niece (A) while her mama was at a wedding. When she returned and saw the garage space, she immediately started envisioning a project space for herself. I love that, and if we do it right, we can still move things around and park her car in there between projects.

 

Car Stuff

There has been some car stuff, though. Hapy is my "daily driver" again, getting me to and from a show with Brenda on Sunday. Astra, now that her alternator is keeping her all charged and start-able has started complaining about her power steering. It is making a low hum most of the time and actual turning has gotten harder at the extreme edges of the range. I checked fluid (nothing on the stick: that's bad) and topped it off. I expect one of the rubber hoses is failing so I will need to do a deeper diagnosis this weekend. For now, though, the added fluid appeared to quiet the hum a little bit and the steering is better until the last bit. It could resolve as the air works its way out the hoses, but I think there is an active leak so it will only get worse before I find and fix. Work on Saturday! Yeay!

 

Wrap up

Yep, that was an unusual post. There is a considerable amount of economic uncertainty around us. For some, it is the loss of discretionary spending while others are dealing with food or even housing scarcity. We all can feel some foundational insecurity, maybe while filling your tank or grocery cart, paying utility bills or thinking about how to keep your kids safe this summer. I see it in faces. Fewer smiles, more worry-lines. It is a hard time for most of us. So please, let that person pull in front of you, give everyone a little grace. Grace is free. So are hugs and smiles and waves. Everything else seems to be more expensive than it was yesterday and the shorter-term future looks like it will be more of the same.

Thanks, as always, for following along-

Moving Into Shop

It has been a busy couple of weeks spent mostly moving stuff from the tool shed into a big heap at the front of the shop. I did get to wrench on Boo's car, Astra, though. Today's post is mostly about Astra, but the pictures show the move of stuff as I didn't get my phone out to take pictures of Astra's alternator replacement.

 

Weather the Weather

shop heap

One of the best parts about living in the Pacific Northwest are these incredible spring days. When I first moved here decades ago, we would enjoy what I called "the weather donut hole" in April. It was a short, maybe 2 week period, when the rains stopped and we got these just gorgeous sunny days. Then, we would descend into another 2-1/2 months of rain until July 5th. Through the wonder of climate change, our spring weather donut hole has grown. Maybe 10 years ago, it would last most of April. As recently as 2 years ago, the donut hole never closed, and we did not get much more than 2 or 3 days of rain a few times before the summer dry season hit. This year is looking more like 2 years ago did, with mostly clear and dry days with a few passing rains to knock the pollen out of the air. While I worry about summer fire season, we make the most of these below 25*C (80*F) sunny days with daylight lasting until 9PM.

 

So, with that backdrop, I had a meaningful car repair to get after.

 

Astra's Backstory

Boo replacing Dude's starter

Well before I met her, Boo used to drive an Opel Kadett. Always generous, she let some friend use it and never saw it again. Years later, when I met her, she was driving a gold Saturn sedan (named "Dude"). She loved that car, doing everything she could to keep it on the road. Again, a friend of my dad needed a car for a while. This friend was running errands for the less-physically able in my parent's building, so she loaned him Dude. It was stolen, and when it was recovered by the police, the ignition and steering column were destroyed. With considerable sadness, she let the car go to police impound auction. She had owned Dude for 18 years.

 

Fast forward a few years and I'm driving along and find myself behind a 4 door hatchback with a Saturn symbol on it. At the next red light, I snapped a picture of it and sent it to her. We were in the market for a new car after the GoRo disaster and had been talking about a Mazda3 or maybe a small SUV. The Saturn appeared to be an intersection of her appreciation of the looks, lines, mileage and size of the Mazda3 with her love for Saturn. I started investigating and learned that the Astra was built with Stellantis/Vauxhall, owner of Opel and original manufacturer of the Kadett. In fact, the Kadett evolved into the Astra. So, the Astra was really an intersection of her beloved Saturn, her equally beloved Opel Kadett and her appreciation of the Mazda3. Of course, now I had to find one. The Saturn Astra was only available in the states for 2 years (2008 and 2009), and not many were sold. We lucked into one outside Salem for literally $2kUS and after applying another $1k of repairs and tires, it has been a fantastic family member.

 

tool shed "empty"

She is not without her issues, though. Sometimes she does not want to downshift and just groans in a too-high gear. This is reset with a restart, but that's not easy in traffic. Over the last 18 months, though, the battery had been not charging enough on shorter drives to start again. She priced having someone replace the alternator, after having it checked, and the $800 price tag lead us instead to get a jump pack to jump start her when she didn't want to start on her own. This lasted over a year until a couple of weeks ago I took on the task of replacing the alternator. By the time I got to step 3 or 4 in reading the online "how to", I understood why shops were giving her a "go away" price.

 

Alternating Astra

In January, Boo and I planned for a trip to the east coast the week before Memorial Day. We were going to visit my sister and her family and then see our son K2 (currently serving in the US Navy at Quantico). Then the trump administration decided to pick a war with Iran, airline prices spiked and our plan was scrapped. Thanks trump. Nature hates a vacuum, so what would have been a trip to the east coast became an opportunity for me to spend up to a week fixing her car with no drive-to-work pressure.

 

shelving starts

The challenge with removing and re-installing an alternator on the Astra is that the alternator only fits out the left front (passenger-side) tire well. Even then, it doesn't fit easily. So, the process is you get the car up on a jack, remove the wheel and the inner wheel well just so you can approach the serpentine belt and alternator. Disconnect the battery. I put the battery onto a charger while I did the rest of the job. I found removing tension on the belt tensioner especially difficult because of the required body positioning to access it and the steel supports blocking direct access. I used a spanner-on-a-spanner (yes, it's cringe-y) for sufficient leverage. If you reuse the belt, mark the belt direction. With the belt off, you can get at the 2 alternator bolts. With the alternator loose, reach around the rear and unplug the 2-pin socket. It has a latch holding it on. I palmed a small bladed screwdriver around everything and got the latch to release without breaking it. Then, remove the nut holding the main cable to the rear of the alternator. At this point, some folks have posted that they have been able to worm the alternator through the wheelwell. They must have a different engine than we do (2.0L). I needed to remove the air box and then the engine mount bolts underneath it, so the engine on the left side was no longer attached. I did set up the TravisJack under the engine so it didn't lower at all. Then, the engine itself needs to move as far forward as you can manage it. I just grabbed onto it from over the radiator and pulled. The alternator drops down and out behind the engine and out the rearward end of the wheelwell opening. I found that if the alternator is in the same orientation as it was when installed, it does come right out. Any other orientation and it will get stuck. Yes, this happened to me many times until I figured it out.

 

end of day 1

With the old alternator out, the install is mostly the reverse. Alternator enters the wheelwell oriented as it will be installed. I plugged in the socket and nutted on the thick cable before then attaching the alternator to the engine. Next, I put the serpentine belt back on. It has maybe 20k miles on it since it was replaced by the yard we bought the car from. With the belt tension restored, I moved the engine back into place and re-connected the mount. Then, I put the airbox back in and returned under the car to put the inner wheel well back on. I finished up with putting the wheel back on and the battery back in.

 

I had read online that this was a 8+ hour job, so I had set aside 2 days, hoping that I'd be done by Sunday in time to see our friend Maldarine play a show. It took me 6 hours, start to finish, backing her out of the shop and the lane way back into the front well before dark on Saturday. 

 

Moving In

With all the extra time I now had, I decided that I would get as much of our summer project done as I possibly could. I figured that it wasn't raining and every nice summer day I could save by doing things now, would make for a better summer. This year's project is getting everything car-related into the shop and everything home-repair related into the tiny shop (tool shed). Then, the only stuff in the garage is camping and ski gear, leaving plenty of room for Boo to park Astra when the fall rains return.

 

partway day 2

I had started with the garage, moving the red rolling tool cabinet before I even had the doors installed. This renewed effort was about getting anything else car or tool-related from the garage into the shop. This included my jacks and stands, the hypersonic-cleaner and lots of random parts. All that remains is my big black rolling tool cabinet. I hope to move that this week.

 

Next, was the tool shed. I regret not taking a genuine before picture. The shed was so full, the back half was out of reach, blocked by stuff. So, those large items blocking the floor were first, rooting through them a little bit looking for junk before moving the keeper-bits to the front of the shop floor. I noted that there was evidence of rodents, so I spent the next few days wearing a dust mask, shop-vacuuming a lot, and generally moving at a slower-than-hoped pace. I would vacate a shelving unit, dismantle and wash it, move it, and finally re-assemble it inside the rear of the shop. Most of the stuff that were on the shelves ended up in a heap at the front of the shop, or a heap for the dump. The exceptions to this were solvents and cleaners, which went onto freshly cleaned shelving, and everything painting related, which went into an old kitchen upper cabinet the kids used to use for skate and snow gear repairs and parts.

 

Those with a keen eye will see (in the shed heap picture at the top) that I put Zed on furniture dollies so I could move him around a little bit. These dollies are the $30, 1000# max variety found at Harbor Freight. The genuine car dollies I've seen cost up to 10x that much. Are they 10x better? Unlikely, except they work on heavier cars. I was able to move Zed by myself, one end at a time, so I could fit a shelving unit against the wall beside him. I used another pair of those same dollies under the paint cabinet.

 

paint cabinet on wheels

Boo and I agreed that the Tetris I did to get Zed's entire interior onto the high shelf in the tool shed could not be easily repeated (see the upper deck in the tool shed "empty" picture above), so that stuff stayed. Otherwise, the tool shed is clear of car stuff, the shed is cleared of all evidence of rodents and the shop vac has been emptied and washed. Next, I will be moving home-repair stuff from the garage.

 

Wrap Up

This got really long, but a lot gets done on a full week stay-cation. I hope to get after the big black rollie cabinet and the garage-to-tool-shed over the next couple of weeks. Then, our summer project will have been completed before summer even arrives. We all know nature hates a vacuum, so that time will be filled by something. And that something will probably be either home improvement or car-related. Once that happens, I'm sure I'll post about it. Until next time, thanks, as always for following along-

We're Out

Similar to a prior post (We're In), this post serves as another major milestone, marking when we got the last of our things out of what we have been calling "existing house" and leaving it for the last time. I posted about moving the garage to the ToolShed (see Shop to ToolShed) and about moving the vehicles (See 4-Wheeled Friends...), so I'll skip that here. Those significant steps completed while the things below were happening. The first 2 pictures dramatically depict the significance of what has been resolved with the current state at the top and those same 2 rooms after we had them 90% empty only to receive a 1-bedroom apartment's worth of belongings.  

Moving Flotsam

living and dining ready

The end of a move can be incredibly elusive. You move the big things, and the boxed things and think you're practically done. Then, there are all the things you had not boxed for various reasons. That stuff ends up taking 80% of the time. At least, that's the way it's always been for me, but that could be because I don't buy, like, 100 boxes and box everything up ahead of time. We box and move the critical, or the rarely used, leaving everything else to be solved in a subsequent pass. In our case, our level of flotsam was increased by the influx of all of my parents' stuff and my siblings taking so little of it (no judging, of course. Is what is). Regardless of how it appears, it takes forever to get it all moved. Of course "moved" does not mean "relocated" in that we have stacks of things that need resolution in NewOldHouse. It doesn't matter. It is no longer at the other (once called existing) house so we are taking the win.

Clutter Peak 

Overall, we donated at least 5 pickup truck loads to GoodWill. 2 truck loads went to family friends and our sectional couch was taken by niece J and significant other C down to LeisureLand in the coast range west of Eugene. We recycled a considerable amount of paper, plastic and glass, leveraging containers at both houses and still occasionally having piles next to the bins on garbage / recycling day. Another 2 or 3 pickup truck loads of larger items were moved to the back of NewOldHouse to eventually route to metal recycling or the waste processing center.

NewOld Attic

One thing this new place has that our old house didn't is a real attic. The old house had small cubby-style attic crawl accesses where small things like banker-boxes could be stored, but they were spread around the upstairs, preventing central organized storage. NewOldHouse has an attic that runs the width of the house. It is not very tall (I have smacked my head multiple times), nor fully floored, however. Still, we can store things up there. In an earlier post, I mentioned that all of the sporting goods, like camping gear and ski/snow stuff went up into the attic. In truth, almost everything which used to line the wall next to Oliver ended up in the attic as well as some of the things from the ShedRoom which hadn't found another home. Even with all that has been moved up there, we have considerable space remaining. We don't intend to fill it, of course, but better to have the space and not use it than the alternative.

Big Pile of Shame

Pile of Shame

In the end, there seems to always be a big pile of stuff that is moved near the end which doesn't have a clear destination. Or, lack of time forces an additional level of chaos leading to the pile. In all of my moves, one or both have happened, and I think in each case the pile has had different stuff but the Pile of Shame has appeared in the same place every time: the garage. "But wait," you say. "Isn't NewOldHouse garage already full of new-to-you kitchen cabinets?" Yes, it is. So, our pile of shame is on top of those cabinets in one of the least attractive, least manageable piles of any of my moves. It includes things like the white metal rack which used to hold laundry supplies, some building materials, some cleansers, yard chemicals, a traffic cone? Yeah, the picture really tells the story, complete with a shelving unit all catawampus. Not my best work.

If this move were like my prior ones, this pile would be among the last things solved for. Since it is the most significant eye-sore that we get to walk past every day, this move is different. In truth, between the time I started writing this post, and it's completion, the mess has been mostly resolved. It needed to be early in the organizing process because it was preventing the kitchen cabinets from being installed, and we cannot live with the camping-kitchen indefinitely. I felt that we could not in-earnest return to the kitchen work until this was solved. I organized some of the pile of shame up into garage shelving, sorting the rest into logical places (garden chemicals to the garden shed, eg).

Repair, Clean and Paint

closet repaired

Once the last of our things were moved, the house had to be readied for whoever lives there next. While I completed the evacuation of our stuff, Boo focused on painting, starting with the first floor baseboards. Then, she re-painted all 3 bathrooms, the master bedroom, another bedroom and the front door. I cut-in one of the rooms and did the super-high work in the entry, but she did everything else. Meanwhile, our friends Lana and John completed the closet repairs in the upstairs hallway closet, started and abandoned by the mess-making handy-person I mentioned in the garage lament in Shop to ToolShed. For background, Boo and I had done the demo to install a stackable washer/drier in the hallway prior to the NewOldHouse saga starting. Walls were gone so we needed to enclose things again. With the painting completed, the closet complete and our stuff out, we set to cleaning the place.

We figured that we could save some house-cleaner money if we did some of the more time-consuming things. This list started with dusting the walls, mopping the hardwood and cleaning windows. Before we knew it, Boo had cleaned the bathrooms (down to disassembly/re-assembly of the shower doors), the kitchen (cupboards, fridge and oven too) and the hot tub. We contracted out shampooing the carpets, but Boo did an incredibly thorough job. Last, there is considerable concrete around that house, from the long driveway (flag lot) to the back patio, the opportunity for moss to grow in western Oregon is significant. So, John, Lana and I power-washed the patio and the worst of the driveway.

Reflections

ShedRoom ready

With the house in the best possible shape we could have made it, we handed the keys over to a rental management company. This has been a very long slog. We were not ready nor really thinking about moving when NewOldHouse came to us. I imagine most folks who consider a move do some elimination of things they are not moving prior to the start of the actual move. We had the inverse happen: a 1 bedroom apartment's worth of stuff arrived maybe a month after we started that "elimination of things" and months after the move was decided.

I don't think the emotional impact of leaving a place we called home for 6 years has really hit us yet. When we started to move in, we had 4 sons and a niece moving with us but our family shape seemed to change every 6 months. By the time our things moved, son K had decided to live with his girlfriend instead, so we were already in flux. By the end of that first Summer, our niece had returned to Montana. Shortly after that, C decided to live with his mom full-time and did so for 2-1/2 years before returning at the end of the 2018 school year and then stayed with us until Fall 2022 when he retuned to his mom's to attend Portland State. In the middle of that, T continued to bounce between homes, staying with us increasingly. Then, he went to University of Nevada, Reno for a year and returned to stay with us full-time for a year before heading to Eugene and then LA. Barely missing an overlap with C, K2 shifted to living with his father full-time at the end of the Summer of 2019. That's a lot of moving pieces, and the amount of overlap between them was very light. After that first summer, we rarely had more than 2 kids with us at any time.

master complete

Boo and I had moved into that house to create a stable home for our 4 boys where they could really become brothers. We didn't achieve that goal; there were too many changes of who was there for large periods, and even at the week-to-week level, we lacked fixed periods together as all of them would do short periods at their other parent's house. Boo's ex-husband was very supportive of our create-brotherhood effort as he also recognized the gift of 2 brothers to his sons. He was quite flexible to accommodate days/nights/weekends/holidays to allow for more overlapping time with all 4 boys. Unfortunately, my ex-wife only saw our brother-building effort as some kind of a threat to her. She had and has an all-too-common misbelief that love, joy, happiness and contentment are all constrained resources to be horded for one's self, and thwarted for others. So, she actively undermined our efforts both in words and in actions. She would purposefully schedule things that would force the kids apart, and was completely unwilling to shift things unless we sacrificed additional days/nights/weekends/holidays for the favor. It is unfortunate she was unable to rise above the petty for the benefit of our children, but that's just who she was. Perhaps she has since grown.

One might think that leaving a place where our boys lived their last years together would be difficult. Honestly, we are leaving a constant reminder that we failed to create that nurturing space for them, but not from a lack of trying. Today, their relationships span from strained to non-existent. So, we have a sadness, but not for what was, rather for what we could not manifest.

As winter tries to turn into spring (we had snow flurries on the morning of 3-April), Boo and I both remain positive that the NewOldHouse is and will be a great place for the 2 of us. Going forward, our attention will be split between (a) getting the random stacks resolved and (b) the demo and construction of the kitchen. Of course, I have some cars which need attention as well, and I expect I will get some time very soon.

Thanks, as always, for following along. This move has been an incredible, and unexpected, journey. I hope to be returning to more typical activities (and blog topics) very soon-

Shop to ToolShed

Clearing the old (previously called "existing") house has lots of sub-topics. I think, for this blog, moving tools and parts from a 2-car garage into an 96 square foot shed might be most on-point of what's left for a targeted post. So, I cover that today. 

Garage

our humble beginning

We start with a sub-sized 2-car garage. I say "sub-sized" because a full-sized car could not reasonably park in either spot if you were also using that bay for any storage at all. The former owner had a BMW SUV parked in one bay, where we parked Oliver (1978 MGB). Otherwise that side of the garage was completely empty, including the back wall. The other bay was filled with shelving. The other bay was also where the laundry area, the furnace and the hot water heater were located. We set it up in a more standard way, with shelves along the side-walls, leveraged the laundry space in the same way and added some storage along the back wall nearest the door to the inside. So, basically, wall-to-wall shelving where some major appliance wasn't already located.

Facing the garage from the driveway, the bay on the right was filled with Oliver and shelving. The shelves he was parked up against were used to store recreational equipment (skiis, camping gear, eg) and household spares (light bulbs, batteries, paper products, eg). Oliver barely fit and access to the shelving was accomplished by shimmying sideways along Oliver's passenger side. His rear bumper was less than an inch from the garage door and there was, maybe, a meter and a half (5 feet) from his front bumper to the garage back wall, and the entrance to the house. We had a small storage cabinet there which jutted out, maybe 8 inches from the wall to further constrain passage, but a person carrying a laundry basket could easily pass through without touching anything. An MGB is not exactly a huge car, measuring in at just over 4 meters (13 feet) so a more typical car could prevent door access. A VW bus, for example, is almost 4.5 meters (15 feet), which may have been too long to park there. When you add a spare tire to the nose, like Hapy (1972 VW camperbus) has, you lose another half a foot, so Hapy stayed outside. Anyway, the non-car-ish contents of the shelving next to Oliver are eventually routing to the NewOldHouse garage, once that garage is cleared of the new-to-us kitchen cabinets earmarked for the kitchen rebuild. So, we got creative for temporary storage, putting that stuff into the NewOldHouse attic.

a "before" image

In the other garage bay, I had all of my car/bus/truck parts and my tools. These things were relatively well organized until the furnace was replaced last Summer. Okay, maybe that's being a little generous... it was semi-organized chaos, but I knew where everything was. The furnace installers needed access behind a shelving unit full of parts so they just moved things around, putting things in a heap until they could do what they wanted. This left a huge mess in the middle of the walkway from the rear of the garage to the driveway. On top of that mess, a handyman we hired plopped another mess of scrap wood and drywall. So, before I could move anything, I had to clean up and reorganize a little bit. Remaining Agile, I dealt with just enough for tools and parts to be moved, leaving a larger organizational effort to happen at the ToolShed.

ToolShed

Ah, the ToolShed. In my last post about the ToolShed, I had just dropped all of Zed's interior onto the floor (see "before" image on the right). Those items needed to be sorted and, as much as possible, stored on the mezzanine before anything new arrived. Well, as I was preparing for this, we had a freak snowstorm drop 4+ inches of snow. The snow and rain and melting took out my last remaining canopies, leaving considerable wreckage, and blocking both the doors to the shed and the egress from the driveway to the shed. So, the daisy-chain of mess grew by one more.

Zed parts up, one shelf in

On a Saturday morning, I disassembled the canopies and moved as much of Zed's interior up onto the mezzanine as I could fit. I also took apart the table that I had set inside the doorway for a temporary work table. The table went into the demo-in-process kitchen and the stuff that had sat upon it got piled on the side. Now, I could consider a shelving solution.

The side walls of the shed are just shy of 12 feet long and less than 7 feet high before the ceiling pitch starts. The mezzanine juts out 4 feet from the rear wall. With the mezzanine location, it does not make sense to put shelving all the way to the rear wall. Besides, the standard shelving system is 4 feet wide, and the interior of the shed is just shy of 12 feet so you can't fit 3 shelves side-by-side anyway. So, my plan became setting 2 shelves along the wall width-wide and a third shelving unit turned sideways nearest the rear wall. After measuring it out, I was left with over 3 feet of space behind the turned shelf. Into that space, I set the old Westfalia closet, and used it to protect Zed's window glass between the closet and the rear wall. Ultimately, I will probably share that closet with someone else who will put it to use, but for now, it is helping protect Zed's glass. If you're local, and you will use it, please message me.

Moving Shelves and Parts

end of day 2

That afternoon, I started moving things. My process was fairly obvious, and repeated a few times: empty a shelving unit into large plastic tubs, disassemble the shelving unit, move the shelving and the tubs, assemble the shelves, and reload them with the tub contents. This cycle took a couple of hours per shelving unit and lasted the rest of that Saturday and all of the following day. 

Once the shelves and their contents were moved, I shifted to the heaps of stuff left by the HVAC folks, the handyman, and, honestly, me. I ran out of energy, daylight and give-a-crap before I got all of the remaining stuff out that day. As you can probably see in the images, it was raining (of course, it's Oregon) by the end so I left wet footprints as I went. Still, you can see I had quite a bit of available shelf-space after moving over 80% of the stuff. I returned after work the following few days to move things like the car jacks, ramps, jack-stands, random larger car parts, sound absorption materials, etc so all that remained were my rolling tool cabinets, and their contents. It was this 20% that unraveled the organize-as-we-go model I had been following. These things, unfortunately, ended up where the tool cabinets are intended to go.

Moving Tool Cabinets

rollin'

The documentation for the tool cabinets say to empty the cabinet before rolling it. I don't know how much people actually follow that advice when you're moving it around your garage, but I followed it to move the larger one to NewOldHouse. I do not have a liftgate nor a very low-floor trailer. Even if I did, the mud bog in the backyard of NewOldHouse prevents driving anything back there. We already got ToyoTruck stuck when spreading bark chips, requiring a visit from AAA to pluck him out. A truck hauling a tool cabinet would definitely get stuck. So, I started by emptying the cabinets into a pair of large blue tubs, like you can see in the various pictures. These buggers got so heavy, I needed to use a wheelbarrow to move each tub from the ToyoTruck in the driveway back to the ToolShed.

Once the tools were moved, we considered the remaining space in the ToolShed and how overgrown the assortment of to-be-shelved pile had become. Boo and I considered that the organization would take away from our get-out-that-house velocity. So, we decided that the tool cabinets would temporarily live in the attached garage. We just had to move them. The red-rollie is an older Kennedy upper/lower cabinet. I moved the upper cabinet with the large blue tubs. I use the lower for holding my larger power tools, and electrical stuff. Since that cabinet is so much lighter, I did not empty it, we just pushed it. The larger black cabinet is the one I bought a couple of years ago (see $50 Tool Chest). It's a Harbor Freight / US General 44" that weighs 300 pounds when empty. I had pretty much all of my hand tools usually stored there (wrenches, sockets, body hammer/dollies, tap/die kit, etc) and I still had a couple of empty drawers.

cabinets at NewOldHouse

To get the cabinets to NewOldHouse, we hand-rolled them down the street to the end of the NewOldHouse dirt driveway. That's our friend John pushing red rollie in the picture above-right. We were blessed with 2 dry days, and did this move mid-day on the 2nd dry day. We brought some wood planks with us, strapped to the top of the 44 with a plan to lay them on the driveway for ramps to run the cabinets. We figured we would try simply running without the ramps first... and we made it without incident. I was super-concerned about moving these cabinets, so the fact that they moved so easy and fast was a great surprise.

Once the cabinets were moved, everything tool or car/truck/bus part related had been solved for. The garage still had camping gear and other not-car stuff, I'll touch on that as part of a larger "we're out" post once we're actually all the way out. Of course, the cars themselves remain. Each of them presented their own challenge to move, so I'll tell those adventures in the next post. 

Reflecting

Thanks so much for following along, and staying tuned during this move. I can't really describe how difficult this has been other than list out the challenges: no help from my family; little help from friends and Boo's family; my folks stuff was added increasing the overall amount of stuff we needed to resolve; my father died; we moved my mom into assisted living; both Boo and I are suffering at least one arm with tennis elbow; record-setting cold/wet winter; our only vehicle to move our things is an open 6-foot bedded pickup truck.... and, of course, the NewOldHouse hadn't a bathroom nor kitchen (still hasn't a kitchen). These are not complaints, rather, I am reminding myself that our success in light of these barriers is all the more worth celebrating. We are very close to being done, and then life will start to return to normal.

Again, thanks, as always, for following along-

Zed in a Shed

Well... sort of. Today's post is a mish-mosh of things that need an update which includes Zed parts. Consider, our over-arching goal is to get out of our existing house and into NewOldHouse in as predictable a way as we can. Sometimes, that means repairs and other times that means moving non-critical things.

Tool Shed not just for Tools

As the post title implies, I got all of Zed's parts which are not fastened to the car moved into the ToolShed. Recall all those years ago when I re-purposed an otherwise unused bedroom for "temporarily" storing car parts? It was the Shed Room, and held all kinds of things. Of course, the first significant resident was Zed, or rather all of his interior and glass. Once the line was crossed, though, it was not long before K2's things were in there, and then some of T's and, of course, some of C's. An extra television, some broken electronics... a box-spring... next thing you know, it's full of random stuff and you can't really get in or out of the store room anymore, and it doesn't really have "shed" stuff in it much either.

So, I spent the last weekend digging through the Shed Room, and moving everything car-related not just out of the room, but into the ToolShed. No, things are not organized there, but they are inside. I hope to fit most of the Zed bits onto the upper deck/shelf since I have to sand and shoot Zed again before any of those parts go on. The picture on the right, here, will serve as a great "before" image, assuming I can get it into an "after" state that's actually useful.

Folks Belongings Sorted

I had thought about a post just about this stuff, but I decided it really was not that interesting to anyone other than me. In my last post, and in another post last year, I mentioned that Boo and I had started moving things out of our old house into NewOldHouse... and then my father passed away. His passing prompted an accelerated effort to find a safe place for my mom to live because she really needs to be on someone's radar all the time. Dad had provided that eyes-on. She could no longer live independently, and the facility we were able to get her into was close to us and among the best in the area. This alone was no small miracle. Unfortunately she would go from a 1 bedroom apartment to basically a hospital bed with a couple of dressers. Setting aside all the emotional difficulty, there was the logistical issue of a 1 bedroom apartment that needed to be vacated in less than 10 days. For a typical move, belongings follow the person. Not this time. Everything still needed to be treated with care, but with an opportunity for family to carefully go through at them since those things which did not go to family and friends were going to donations. Of course, this was all while we were relocating Mom and planning for Dad's funeral service/reception.

A small subset of Mom's clothes and treasures belongings went with her on move-Mom day. Boo lead that spike, transporting Mom while my brother I loaded and delivered the stuff to the new place. Boo organized on that end while E and I made separate run, loading a truck and a van and bringing it to my house. The following day, we emptied the rest of the apartment.... into my dining and living rooms. I mentioned that in earlier posts. Over the course of the next few weeks, Boo and I would host family members to take things that meant something to them, or because they simply liked them. By the time of the service late last month, we were down to about 25% of their things remaining. All family members had gone through, leaving us with boxes of photographs, papers, some donations and a final small collection of things. The photos and papers were hauled over to NewOldHouse this past weekend, and the donations went to Goodwill as well. All that remains now are things earmarked for remote family or the hospice team (like the walkers and stuff like that).

Home Repair Update: Heat

seriously: crawlspace

Well, this post ended up longer, so I'll drop a quick update on what we have fixed since the last time. Boo got under the house again to address some furnace issues. When the crawlspace was done, the guys did a C+job. The main rectangular duct running down the center of the house (off which the individual vents connect) had a huge gap in it. The gap was so big that we could feel warm air wafting through a hole in the bathroom floor where a heat register had been removed. With lots of high-end silver duct tape (not that sticky grey crap), she sealed up the main duct sufficiently to contain the heat leak.

Corresponding to that improvement, I put all of the outlet and switch covers back on. Yes, this actually made a big difference. This is a 1948 farmhouse with it's original siding, so wind can make it through the siding into the outer walls. Yes, new siding would help, as would blown-in insulation, but both of those cost money and we're pretty low on that these days. Outlet covers help hold that cold out, and by keeping the ones we removed, this cost nothing. After the covers were on, I applied clear caulk between the 1/4 round and the hardwood floor, eliminating all drafts from the outside. When these 3 improvements are put together, the newOldHouse is much warmer and waaaay less drafty than it was. This difference is especially noticeable in "the addition" (2 bedrooms added in the mid-1960's).

Camp Kitchen

Boo and I were loaned a 2 cubic foot mini-fridge by our niece so we can "camp" at NewOldHouse while the kitchen is demolished / rebuilt. We will be effectively camping in our house, using camp equipment and whatever else we can put together for a make-shift kitchen while we build the real one. This picture on the right fairly captures the humble beginnings of our temporary kitchen. Similar to the image of the shed in it's great disarray, this will serve as a viable before image for a working camp-kitchen as well as help me remember this period after the real kitchen (thru that doorway) is completed. Other than the kitchen, we are down to smaller things like hanging closet doors and, of course, moving. The bathroom needs a shower curtain rod, and some small wall repairs before it is fully functional, but we are starting to feel close.

There are so many different balls in the air these days, it's kind of hard to keep it all straight, and remember what the next step is. For moving things, we are working our way towards the center from the edges, resolving the outermost ring of our belongings first (like the outside, the ShedRoom, etc). Having a trajectory like that helps when you finish something and need to decide what's next. There is no written list and it would change fairly often if it were. Instead, we look at what is in greatest need and do that first. In a way, it is extreme Agile as applied to moving, reconstructing a house and solving for your aging parents while holding down a job, sending your kids to college and trying to retain a little sanity. Whee!!

Thanks, as always, for following along-

Deck Transformed

We have a brief break from the oppressive heat waves, so I attacked our deck. Today's post has little car content. I just wanted to post on this since it took so long, and therefore got in the way of generating car content. For those who still remember, my condolences to the families of the victims of the 9/11 attack.

Power Wash

post power-wash

This journey started with a basic powerwash. We knew that with the change in the weather, any remaining moss from the prior year will quickly grow back and make the deck as slippery as ice with the first rain. To avoid the moss quick return, we simply powerwash it. Boo bought one a few years ago, but I had the time, so I took a turn this year. Things to remember for next time: check that you have the blaster tip set to fan and not cone before pointing it at anything, and it's okay to start with a low power setting first, if you aren't sure. I didn't do any permanent damage to the deck, but a few boards got chopped a little bit by the cone on high pressure.

Once the deck was clean, we could see that lots of the stain had seen better days, and some decking was going to need some holes solved. We didn't want to lay out for a whole new deck surface, nor did we want new boards to look all new and shiny next to the really old ones, so we decided to reduce the footprint size and use some boards we removed as donor material to patch holes.

Pry Apart

mid-way thru pry-apart

So, the deck has seen better days. It was kind of neglected by the prior owner the last few years she lived there, and we haven't done anything to it since we moved in (See Move Again for that fun). Instead, the boys have used it to work on skateboarding antics. So, we have a few holes to go with some rotting boards. I got a 24" wrecking bar from HomeDespot and removed around 10 planks, including the 4 rows closest to the house. We decided that we could live without the first 2 rows and still have that edge of the deck place-foot on the patio. This took a little finesse to pull up a board in the middle of other boards without meaningfully damaging either. I found that placing the wedge-end between the boards, with the angle facing the one I intended to remove, and applying steady leverage, the nails would give a little bit. By repeating the process, the end would start to lift from the deck enough for the wedge to get underneath and then I could work down the plank, lifting it, with the nails still in it.

Put Back Together

mostly sanded

I collected all of the boards and removed the nails. During removal, I considered the condition of the board. A few were rotted from end to end. Others had a hole and a couple had both holes and rot spots. I selected boards which just had a hole from the skateboarding and cut them to fit the gaps created during removal. Because we were shortening the deck by 2 planks, I had more material than gaps, in theory. We really didn't want to use new wood, if it could be avoided, because we knew that the new boards would not blend as well. I ended up with enough material to fit the gaps, and had a few feet of left over viable wood. I could tell during the re-install, though, that I would need to replace more boards next year or the year after.

Sanding
Once the deck was gap-free, it was still an ugly red-ish gray deck. While I could have just painted it, I wanted it to look better, especially after I'd already put in around 8 hours on it. So, I grabbed my belt-sander and a stack of 100-grit belts. I would have used something with a more coarse grit, but I had 100, so I used 100. Plank by plank, I sanded the loose red off, and got down to where most of the board was its natural creamy color with some red streaks. This took 6 hours, and it's very dusty. Like any paint job, though, the top coat is a reflection of the work performed underneath. It was unpleasant work, and had me walking funny for 2 days, but the final result showed that effort.

Stain
I let the deck sit for a week after sanding it. In part, this was because I had a job to get to, part of it was because I could barely walk, much less crawl around and part of it was other distractions. Regardless, after a week of high temps and dry winds, the deck was ready to stain. So, we broom-swept it a couple of times and went over it with a leaf-blower a couple of times. Still, there was a thin film of dust, evidenced by the dust on our clothes after staining.

finished deck, drying

We started at the far end, working one plank at a time, and getting the hard-to-reach spots first. As best we could, we would finish a small area on a board with the brush stroke going from the unpainted into the painted area, eliminating brush-marks. With Boo and I working this part together, the deck was stained in 4 hours. This included the front facia, but like the rest of the job did not include the bench nor the fence. For future reference, we used semi-transparent "chocolate" stain (this stuff and referenced in the picture), and the deck required a full gallon, leaving about 1 cup in the bottom of the can for touch-up.

That's it for today. After staining in the heat, we spent the rest of the weekend relaxing... except for helping T with his A4. I'll probably post on that at some point. Anyway, thanks for following along, and there's more car/bus content coming.

Little British Car (part 1)

I've mentioned the move. I've mentioned the job change. Both of these things take quite a toll on your time and energy. Before I left that last job, though, I received that one last, albeit disappointing, bonus. I had received enough to cover my share of T's college tuition and had about a grand left over to piss away on something stupid. Enter something stupid:

Little British Car

sample, but it looked like this

My first real girlfriend had older siblings, a sister and a brother. Her sister used to hassle us about our shared love for Led Zeppelin. Her brother had an old racing green chrome-bumper MGB he had been carefully restoring that looked like the picture on the right here. I remember the family got him a wood steering wheel for his birthday and watching him melt before our eyes as he unwrapped it. As I think about it, that may have been my first within-arms-length exposure to fixing up an old car that wasn't a piece of crap. Anyway, I really liked his old MGB. I liked it so much that when I later won some money on a radio contest, I started making plans to go buy one of my own. Well... the radio contest turned to bust when they learned I wasn't 18, so my dream of an MGB drifted away. Until this past September.

Garage-eesh
As I mentioned in the move-again post, this new-to-me house is 20% smaller than the last one. I have found that the shrinkage applies to the garage as well since the laundry facility is out there. Careful measuring demonstrates that the bus can technically fit in the garage, there won't be any maintenance work performed upon it in there. Truth be told, there aren't many projects left on it that I want to tackle anyway. I really just want to drive it. So, combining the small garage, bus fitment and interest in something new, I went looking for something small. Like a Ghia or a Beetle... or maybe something not German.

Seek and Ye Shall Find
I admit that I spend more time than I probably should cruising around Craigslist cars_and_trucks and auto_parts sections. When I had some stupid money around, of course I went there. I'm always pricing cars in one way or another, so I had a pretty good idea of what I could get in a 30 year old project for a grand. The market for Ghia's is off the chart and even older Beetles are fetching a high price for no-floor, no engine/tranny projects. In the case of MG's, I found a concrete floored barn-car in Molalla, some yard art in Eugene and a few projects that looked like parts car sell-offs. Not exactly the treasure trove I'd hoped for, but with high hopes, T and I hopped into his Subbie and set off for cowboy country.

Molalla

GoogleMap of Molalla

If you've never been to Molalla Oregon, it is a contemporary version of an old west town. For example, if you pull it up on Google maps, the first business that appears is the Molalla Buckaroo Association (the Molalla Buckaroo is a rodeo). Through the center of town runs main street, and this is where you'll find most of all the businesses that operate within the city. T and I spotted a Mexican restaurant (el Charrito), and stopped to eat. It was happy hour, and the place was about 1/2 full. All locals, all friendly. We were seated in a booth, served well and ate well. We figured that since we were in the center of town, we had to be pretty close to where our barn-find lived.

Where in God's Green Earth Are We?
Not exactly. Our Google Map had us driving seemingly all over the hills surrounding Mollalla. We had to turn around a few times, but we spotted a driveway hidden by bushes on both sides. The No Trespassing sign was also obscured, but since we were invited, we turned in and headed down the gravel drive. After about a 1/4 mile, the shrubs gave way to grassy lawn spread out in front of a farmhouse. There was a large barn on it's left and a vermillion (c'mon, it's orange) MGB parked in between.

sample MGB image. Actual car much crappier

That's it for today. More next time...

Move Again

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post. It's been a crazy few weeks of moving. I'm not going to bore you with lots of details, but today's post is basically about moving.

The Set Up

broken light fixture

I've been renting a 4 bedroom house for 3 years. You've seen it in the pictures. There's the house in the background of the picture of Hapy the wonderbus in the upper right corner of this blog, for example. We love that house. Last Fall, our next-door neighbor unexpectedly died. Boo was out working in the yard when her brother (who was managing the estate, we'll call him G) came by the house to check in on things. She simply asked him what they were going to do with the house. That seemingly innocent question lead to a series of events that ended with us moving.

Two Men at a Kitchen Table
G told Boo that the estate was going to sell the house. Huh. Boo told me, and we had a quick conversation about it. Within a couple of days, I fired off a text to G saying that we'd buy it. So, in mid-February, G and I sit down at the kitchen table of his sister's house and talked through the deal. Within minutes we had the basis of a deal, we shook hands with an agreement to meet in a few days to sign a formal offer, etc. A few days later, we met again, signed the formal offer and I handed him a check for the title company for earnest money. I called a mortgage guy I know and started up the finance paperwork. Two weeks ago, things finalized, and just like that we own a house.

Fix. Paint. Repeat.

floor refinishing

So, I mentioned that the sister died in the Fall, and that we bought the place in mid-April. Over the course of those months, the house was effectively abandoned. This lead to lots of things that needed to get fixed before it could be occupied. Word to the wise when you buy an abandoned house: no matter how good it looks, there are lots of things to fix anyway. We had evidence of critters in the crawlspace. The temperature in the house was allowed to fall below 50* for too long so the wood floors had curled. And then there's the usual paint refreshing. All told, I spent more money than I'd like to mention and more hours than I can count getting the place ready. There remains lots of painting left, of course, but the main use public rooms were ready.

Boxes? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Boxes, Man

railing removed

The only thing that's worse than moving across town is moving next door. "Now wait a minute.." you may start saying, "it should be easier". I know, right? No truck, no back and forth trips with your car(s). It should be fall-off-a-truck simple. And that's why it isn't. Everyone looked at the move like it would be some crazy simple move where we'd just pull things off shelves and put them back onto shelves in the other house. It doesn't work that way, at least not easily. 2 days before the move, I was starting to grow uneasy. Nothing had really been done to prepare for the move, so over the course of those 2 days I packed up and moved as much of the garage as I could. It still left about a 1/2 day worth of multi-person moving. By move day, I had staged a bunch of stuff into the front room of the old house, and we had drafted an army to help us. Unfortunately, like the retreating Iraqi army during the first Gulf War, our army disappeared at the first sign of moving. We dropped from about 10 people to 6, eliminating our gang-tackle move plan we had.

Wheels Good. Ruts Bad

roofing material = pathway

One advantage to moving next door, actually, is the short-ish walk. In this case, I made the walk much shorter by removing a railing on the old front porch, putting down roofing material as a walkway across the grass and then suspending a tarp overhead between the houses. This kept us out of the shifting weather all day. There was a 6" drop off the front porch, though, so every mover needed to remember to watch that first step (it's a doozy), and some of the wheeled items needed to go driveway to driveway instead. By late morning, we had pretty much moved the upstairs. We took a break and then attacked the things I had staged in the front room. This included bed frames and such from upstairs. By lunch, most of the biggest items, including the upright (not a Spinet) piano. At this point, we received a new army member to help with the kitchen. She was great, but it was in the kitchen where things started to break down.

20% Is Actually a Big Number

rain resistant move

About this time, we started to realize just how much smaller our new house was. I started to run some numbers. We were in a house that was just under 2000 square feet. For us, having moved in from a 800 square foot condo, it was huge. We were moving into a 1600 square foot house. 400 square feet smaller? No big deal. Except that 400 square feet was 20% of our overall footprint before. We had 20% too much stuff! And, there were belongings that were not cleared out by the estate so the house wasn't exactly empty. At no point was this more painfully obvious than in the kitchen. We got everything over, eventually, but there are still more things to put away than are stowed.

We are still living in a sea of boxes and piles. But we're working on it. This weekend, I'll be plowing through some of it. After two weeks of working through it, I don't set goals anymore. Funny how after years of trying to resist the urge to set goals with the bus, I've managed to back into it with a new house.
As always, thanks for following along. More car stuff next time-