I often wish for a kitchen that was free of aesthetic constraints. My garage, a fully practical room, benefits greatly from this freedom. The walls require no color coordination with landscape paintings. Instead, they are vertical space for which to store tools. How efficient it would be to hang cookware in a similar manner.
Anyway, kitchen woes aside, the garage organization continues. The Village Elder gave me an old toolbox recently, which I repurposed for a hardware junk bin.
Exploiting a child’s OCD
I outsourced the organization, which left me with some questions on the chosen categories and labeling, but it’s still better than a single junk bin.
“art stuff” is apparently pencils and Sharpies
It also weighs close to 100 pounds, so I put together a wooden cart on utility wheels.
If only the kitchen cabinets were so well-constructed.
The utterance, courtesy of The Redneck, indicated to all within a quarter mile radius that he really didn’t want his tools in his truck, nor did he ever wish anyone to put them there going forward. Glad we cleared that up.
More importantly, it reminded me why I spent a weekend sweating in the glaring sun.
If only it were also soundproof
Almost sufficient to block out the view, which hopefully the new clematis will one day accomplish.
A very subtle barrier
Our present relationship with the neighbors notwithstanding, the openness of this particular section always bothered me. Line of sight to our deck from other houses is at least partially obscured, except for this one, and I never much fancied the idea of them being able to casually look out any window and monitor our recreational activities through the summer. The shed business was just the final push.
In all, the design was pretty simple. The original 4×4 fence posts, upon 3 of which this is bolted, are buried 3 feet into quickcrete. I’m hoping that’ll prove sufficient to support the additions, or I’ll be digging some more post holes soon.
Unfortunately, the city limits fences to 7′, and since this trellis is on the fence, it’s a de facto fence extension. So I couldn’t quiiiite block out their upstairs windows. But I didn’t see any restrictions on what I can put on top of the trellis, so there’s a creative solution forthcoming.
And no tools were put into trucks in the making of this trellis.
Order is Man’s mastery of the universe. By applying logic, reason, and patterns to that which lies unstructured, I manipulate my surroundings to suit me. I am a creature of my environment, but anomalous in that I organize for aesthetics and not necessarily practicality. I defy evolution, expending caloric reserves on tasks which offer no definitive gain to the species. And in that sense, I have invoked a programmatic syntactical error. I follow directives which were not properly defined. Variables do not exist in sufficiency to meaningfully direct input. And so my output, devoid of complete genetic programming, is self-destructive.
***
The delineation between garden and yard is transitory. I wish it to not be so. Therefore I installed edging! But as all is ephemeral, its lackluster construction quickly deteriorated, rendering the boundary once again ill-defined. Another means was required. Materials which stand the test of time!
Bricks!
Evidenced by the apparent brick mine beneath the property, bricks don’t break down–they simply become buried over decades of subpar landscaping.
And so, after acquiring somewhere around 250 bricks and multiple tubes of construction adhesive, and shooing Liz away for her inability to effectively use a level (despite this project being her idea, I’ll note), I reforged that which was once broken and shines anew!
…with some extra dirt and grass seed…
+$5000 more in property taxes forthcoming, no doubt. The price for rule and order!
This is a minor project, but all projects will be recorded into the annuls of whatever time period this is!
This is the garage window:
As you can see, its existence serves no purpose, and is a security flaw. I had covered it with a paper blind, but that was ugly and dirty and falling apart. I needed a more elegant solution.
So I fell back on a solution I employed previously on the back door: security film. This film, when applied, bonds with the glass pane and prevents it from shattering. The back door, which contains a large window, was stupidly fitted with a thumb-turn lock. I’ve since taken additional security measures on the lock, but at the time this added an obstacle to simply breaking the glass and unlocking the door. This film is also offered with dark tint. This let me reinforce the glass as well as block out external peeping.
Ta-daa!
I put a motion sensor on that green light too. If the door is shut and the light is off, even at night it’s not possible to effectively look in and inventory anything.
