Garage Updates (And Internet Videos of Puppies Being Cute)

The garage work continues to move along and, no, it hasn’t gotten pretty yet.  Sorry.  However, I feel compelled to keep you all updated on everything that is going into this mess of a room.

Had I known it would be this much grunt work, I would have… still taken it on.  I am learning A TON by muddling through this big of a project.  And it is actually pretty fun, it just doesn’t make very pretty content to share with the internet.  To make up for that fact and make this post more “internet friendly,” I’m going to mix hilarious videos of cute puppies in with all the ugly photos in this post.  Deal?

Deal.

When we last left our heroes my garage, I had just finished up sealing a bunch of holes in the ceiling as a first step toward getting it ready to paint.  That extraordinary progress may have made you forget the real issue in the space – the damp, pitted floor.  Our extraordinary contractor was kind enough to look at a few photos and give us some advice.  To paraphrase: we’re doomed.

The floor is likely damp because it was poured incorrectly, and to take it up and re-do it would be a huge undertaking, costing many thousands of dollars.  Not worth it.  I mean, it is a perfectly functioning floor, as in, I can still stand on it.  I’m not spending thousands to replace it!

But our contractor ended our conversation with a piece of advice that I really needed to hear: If it is probably going to look bad, anyway, why not try what you want to do and see if it works?  The worst thing that can happen is that the floor will STILL be ugly!

Patching Holes in the Garage Floor

The first step toward a potentially reformed garage floor is patching the worst of the holes and pits.  I had originally planned on resurfacing with a cement product, like this one, but as I’ve learned more about cement in general and my floor in particular, I think adding another coating to the mix will just be a recipe for disaster.

Instead, I picked up this stuff (affiliate link – read our policies) with the plan to fill in a few of the deepest holes and biggest pits, and then just paint over the rest and pretend they aren’t there.  (That just about sums up my entire decorating strategy, BTW.)

Brad took on this project while I worked on other things, like watching this hilarious pug climb the stairs 50 billion times productive and important projects.

First, he cleaned the holes using a wire brush to remove all loose debris and dust, and then vacuumed them out to get them as clean as possible.

The product is a two-part epoxy,  He mixed it with a putty knife on a piece of cardboard until the color was uniform.

He then scooped it into the holes using the putty knife, and leveled off the top.

We decided to do just the largest holes.  It was somewhat arbitrary where we chose to stop the fill, as large portions of the floor are pitted, but we mainly wanted to get the very deep portions that you might trip over.

I know, it is a total bummer that the “after” pictures are uglier than the “befores.”  To distract you, here’s a beagle puppy who just learned how to howl:

There was also one hole that was too deep to fill with this epoxy, which you might remember as the one that went all the way through to the ground, and was stuffed with a bunch of loose change:

I patched this one with cement, using the rest of the Quickrete Water Stop Cement left over from my various cement projects recently.

I just mixed it with water, fed it in using a paint stirrer, and carefully leveled off the top.

Painting Over Rusty Metal

The other project we worked on was starting to get the walls ready for paint.  With a strong, water-blocking primer, they should mostly be fine.  However, there are quite a few pieces of rusty metal that I fear will mess up our nice, final finish.  There is also a metal window at the back of the garage, which is totally rusted over.

Whatever primer I eventually use might work, but I would hate to be in the situation where all this hard work is ruined by rust bleeding through.

So, valid enemy or not, I decided to confront the rust head-on:

That’s called a “preemptive strike.”

I picked up a can of Rust-oleum Rusty Metal Primer (affiliate link – read our policies), which is supposed to stop any rust in its tracks.

It is oil-based, and makes it very clear what it is supposed to be used for by being the color of rusty metal itself… also known as marsala, the color of the year.

You might have noticed that this is how Sage and I feel about the choice of marsala as color of the year:

I.e., helplessly, futilely angry, in a way that you hopefully find endearing, but that we mean in all seriousness.

To use the primer, Brad went around and scrubbed the worst of the rust off with a wire brush and then washed the dust away.  This made a big difference.

I then followed behind with a coat of this primer.  I have to say, painting in this room was pretty fun.  In most of the spaces I’ve worked on, paint is the somewhat boring first step… but here getting to the point where I could put paint of any kind on anything felt like a major victory.

While painting, I was also able to rejoice in how on-trend I am.  Even my primer is this year’s “hit” color!

In all, we painted each of the rusty pieces in the wall, the window frame, the metal shelf supports, and a whole lot of rusty nail heads in the ceiling.

I’ll probably need to do multiple coats of my general-use primer to cover the contrast that this primer creates, but if I get to a clean final finish, it will be worth it.

So there you have it!  We’ve continued to move along on this garage-project-that-will-not-die, and the end isn’t even in sight.  Still, if we don’t keep going, we’ll never get there.

To make us all feel better, in closing, here is a stampede of puppies.

(Sharing at Create It Thursday)