Back to Work!

Well, I had to get back to the real world this week and go to work.  I have been moving stuff for 2 nights now and this is where I am at. The shop area is crammed full of most of the crap. I have been dispersing stuff to the basement, the trailer, the shed and the garbage. I still have a big mess but I almost have the garage bays where I can get to them and mud the walls. I swear it's going to take all summer long to go through all this stuff and get it organized and put away. I am still keeping my fingers crossed that no big car projects come up where I will actually need to get to my tools. I am going over to my friends house tomorrow to hopefully fix the air conditioning on Dixie's van. Luckily we will be using all his tools so it should work out OK.

Here are the garage bays. It's not too bad now. I am going to get rid of the cabinet in the middle of the floor and everything else can be moved quickly. I still need to clear the walls of the stuff that remains and hopefully tomorrow I can get a coat of mud on it. I can then put one more coat on Saturday. That is my goal for this weekend along with fixing the AC in the van, mowing and fertilizing the grass and tilling the garden. I think I will have plenty of time.

 This is the wall where the flames will eventually be painted. I can picture it in my mind. The hood will get a proper finish on it and will be relocated to the ceiling. Not sure what I am going to do with the bikes yet but they aren't going back on the ceiling. I am tired of hitting my head on them.

 I decided that since I have so much free time, I will restore my vise. This is a super cool old vise I bought from McDonnell Douglas at a surplus sale. It's a Columbian and is in pretty good shape. I plan to strip it, polish the areas that need to be polished and powdercoat the rest of it a high gloss black. It should look pretty good.

 I will either polish the name or paint it so it stands out in silver.

 Can't beat a good old vise that's made in the USA. It will fit in nicely with the garage when it's finished. I also got an awesome birthday present from my Brother-in-Law. I will do a post about it when I get some time. Until then, enjoy the weekend.

I've Been Everywhere!

I took my annual trip to St. George this last week and had a blast. I went through Tooele and drove all the back roads to get there and took highway 89 for the trip back. The trip down was fun but the cattle guards just killed my front end. I tried slowing way down but I still hit hard. Anyways play this video and enjoy the music while looking at the pictures of the journey.

This was right at the beginning. If you look way out you can see the Great Salt Lake. It's a nice view to start out the drive.

 I decided to fill up at Flying J just before Tooele.

If you look close, you can see this is an old picture of the bug. I took these pictures on my last trip to St. George but I went through these towns. I just didn't get any pictures on the way down.

 Another picture from last year. Milford hasn't changed much since last year.

This was an old fort I checked out along the way.

This is pretty much the view most of the way on this route. It's cool to go through some of the little towns but the scenery isn't the best.

Here is the hotel I stayed at while I was in St. George. It is actually in Washington.

 I spent three days there helping out with a charity event for my work. I didn't get a lot of pictures there but it was a great week with even better weather. Here I am starting my journey home. This trip was one of the funnest I have taken with my bug. The weather was totally awesome and the drive was super fun. It's really a beautiful drive.

 I hit some pretty fast speeds trying to keep up with traffic on I-15. I cruised up to Cedar City before I kicked over to highway 89.

 Cedar City was where I got some breakfast. I then hit the road.

I had to stop at Butch Cassidy's hideout along the way. This would be an awesome picture except for the stupid espresso, ice cream sign below it.

I made it to Circleville.

 Found an awesome place I'd like to buy. The bug fits right in here.

I found this awesome little bridge over the Sevier river. I almost got stuck after I drove over it. I went to go back over it and hit the front end hard on the lip of the bridge. Luckily I was able to angle the bug just right to get it back over the bridge. 

 It was a super cool bridge.

Here's the little town of Joseph. Don't blink or you will miss it.

I couldn't get close enough to this sign in Salina City so I had to take it from inside the car.

 I somehow got routed around Gunnison but got to Manti. I love the town of Manti.

 Awesome shot of the Manti Temple. The pioneers made a beautiful temple.

Stopped at Ephraim for some lunch. Ephraim is where Snow College is located.

 Mt. Pleasant came next.

This was an awesome little shop I found along the way. Couldn't resist taking a picture here.

Cruised through Fairview. I then went through Thistle where they had really bad mudslides years ago. There are lots of houses that are abandoned, but I was surprised to see lots of new construction going on there also.

I turned on to Highway 6. This is the most dangerous road in Utah. I was testing my luck taking a 43 year old Bug on that road.

 Just my luck, If you look closely you can see I am stuck behind a student driver on Utah's most dangerous road.

 Still on Highway 6 and to help make it more dangerous they put up these really cool air generators right next to the highway. I had to take another risk and get a picture of them while I was following a student driver in a 43 year old bug on Utah's most dangerous road. I haven't been known to be the smartest person around!

 AAhhh, back to the freeways I know and love. I am in Provo in the heart of construction and soon to be traffic. I felt safer on Highway 6

Everything worked out great on this trip. I was able to get the bug ready in time and it ran without a hiccup. I don't think I have had a funner trip than this one. It was nice to be able to just get out and cruise the backroads of Utah. The only thing that would of made this trip better is if my family was with me. The only bad thing about getting home is that I have to deal with the mess in my garage now. I look forward to cruising south again next year if things work out.

Blinded by the white!

I've been busy getting the garage ready for paint. I needed to do some mud work and get things cleaned up. I quickly remembered why I have always hired my mudding out in the past. I spent 3 days mudding it and Saturday I finally thought I had it ready for paint. I have to say that I'm glad I don't mud for a living and if I did I would surely get fired before long. It's definitely not the best job but it's good enough for my first time trying to mud a whole room and it will work just fine for my garage. I borrowed a texturing spray gun from a buddy at work to do the ceiling with. It turned out so good, I should of textured the walls also. I used the powder mix for the sprayer and it makes a mell of a hess. I wasn't going to cover the walls but after spraying it I am glad I did. I had mud everywhere. Here it is just before I sprayed it.

I used a drill and a mixing paddle to mix up the mud. It has to be about the consistency of a thin milkshake. I didn't get a picture of the sprayer but it has a big hopper on it. Just fill it up, get your air pressure right and spray away.

 It's hard to see here but this is just after I sprayed it. You need a pretty good sized air compressor but I saved a ton of time doing the ceiling this way.

 I then used this scraper to knock down the mud after it dried for about 10 minutes. It really worked awesome. The technique is called a California knock down texture. I think it looks great. I did this on Friday so I would be ready to paint on Saturday.

Saturday I took Steven and Isaac to Home Depot with me at 7 in the morning to buy primer and paint. I estimate that 5 gallons will be enough for the garage. I bought a 5 gallon bucket of Kilz latex primer and primed the walls and ceiling. I think the hardest part of painting was the priming. The ceiling sucked a lot of primer into the mud and the walls looked really horrible after I primed them. I was getting really worried at that point. Luckily after I put on the paint everything looked a lot better. I researched paint pretty extensively before I bought it. My goal in painting the garage is to make it nice and bright for working in. I love working in a bright environment. It makes it really nice to work in rather then a dingy dark garage. That is one reason I really love my job. I have a bright, clean, comfortable shop to work in. In my painting research, I found that flat paint on the ceiling will reflect the light better to the ground so I bought 2 gallons of Behr ceiling paint. For the walls I went with semi gloss so they would be easy to clean. I also read that a bright white with a tiny hint of blue actually reflects the light better then white alone. I chose a Behr paint called frost in semi gloss. It has a tiny hint of blue to it. Here is the shop painted and ready for trim and stuff to go back in.

Here's another view. I like how bright it is. I love Behr paint. It covers awesome. I only used one coat and it looks good. I've used cheap paints in the past and I always have to cover twice and they usually look like crap even after 2 coats.

So, I am 1/2 way done with the garage. Here you can see where I had to stop. I need to move stuff around so I can get to the other half of the garage and I can get to mudding that. More fun to come.

I now have to deal with all this crap and decide what to do with it. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will all be worth it when it's done.

The garage has side tracked me with getting the bug ready for my trip to St. George. Looks like I will be cramming to be ready to leave in the next couple of days. I need to change the oil, adjust the valves and check the points before I go. It's suppose to snow tonight and my bugs outside because the garage is such a mess so that won't help things. Oh well, it will all work out. Party On!

Hoarders here I come!

I have finally decided to finish the walls in my garage. I looked it over and figured I could do the shop area first. I was just going to push all my stuff that I have there into my garage bay where the bug usually is. That didn't work out so well. I have so much CRAP that it didn't fit. I was blown away at all the stuff I crammed into the little shop area. Here are some pictures of the mess. This is what I started with. Funny thing is, it didn't look too bad this morning until I started moving it.

 OK here is the shop area. I wanted to get this part done first so I needed to remove everything so I could have lots of room to mud and do my texture on the ceiling. When we bought the house I told them not to put drywall in the garage. I was planning on wiring and insulating it the way I wanted to so I figured it would be easier to have them not put the drywall up in the parts they didn't have to. I walked in one day during the time my house was being built and I saw that they had put drywall up in the garage but they had not mudded it yet. I figured that was OK so I told them not to mud the garage. It would be easier to take the drywall they had just put up down if it wasn't mudded. Well, the very next day I checked on the house and they mudded it. Argh! So after we moved in, I removed all the drywall on the walls of the garage and wired it with lots of plugs, 2 telephones and cable TV. I then put the drywall back up and so it's in pretty rough shape.

Here I have started taking out some of the stuff. My plan was to get the shop cleared, and get a 2nd coat of mud on the walls and finish putting tape where I didn't put any on the first time around. I also wanted to get the ceiling in the shop textured. I figured if I could accomplish that , I would only need one more quick mud job, and then a quick sanding and it would be onto prime and paint.

 Here is the one side of the wall. I put up a lot of signs and stuff in the 7 years we have lived here. I removed all that stuff. The slick on the wall is Dale Earnhardt Sr's from California Speedway. I went to that race with my Dad and Brother many years ago.

Here is the other wall with more crap that needed to come down.

So you can see how quickly the one bay of the garage is getting filled up. I swear when everything was moved I totally felt like a person from the show hoarders. I am actually quite embarrassed about the mess. I guess it's almost spring so I can count it as spring cleaning.

 So, here, almost everything is moved out. It's almost ready for some actual mud to go on the walls. I really butchered the window area when I removed the Sheetrock from the walls. If you look closely, you can see where I needed to tape and mud it. It was the worst part of the shop area.

Here is where my bug usually stays. Not for a couple weeks now.

 Here it is after I spent a few hours mudding it. I think it's looking a ton better. I got everything taped and I started texturing the ceiling way in the back left corner. I was a little intimidated about texturing the ceiling because I have never done it before but that turned out to be the easiest part to do. I have actually never mudded before except for little patches. If you have any tips or tricks, I would be glad to hear them. I have been picking my buddies brain for a week on his techniques and stuff. It really helped. This definitely won't be perfect but it will be plenty good for my garage.

 Here is the other wall. The area around the door was pretty rough also. I spent a lot of time there. I didn't meet my goal to have the whole ceiling textured but it took a lot longer then I was planning to get everything moved out. Oh well, there's always next week.

So check out the blog in the future to see how this whole mess turns out. I have lots of big ideas. I am hoping to paint some flames on the wall that currently has the nova hood on it. I also am going to paint that hood so it looks good and it will end up being hung on the ceiling of the garage. I am also going to paint my flammable cabinet with some cool old style hot rod flames. It's a flammable cabinet, shouldn't it have flames? Can you sense that I like flames? There may also be a VW symbol that gets painted on a wall somewhere. Time will tell. In the mean time, please don't call hoarders on me.