Garage Sale & Level Ceiling

We had a garage sale this Saturday, thanks to a neighbor, Tammy, who organized it for our whole block. This was the first time we've ever done a garage sale, at least as adults, and so we weren't very organized. It started at 7am so we were up by 6:30am, had a quick breakfast, then started hauling stuff outside. Treese sat out and took care of the all the people while I kept bringing stuff out, always finding more and more stuff stashed away that we no longer wanted. Tammy came around a few times to see how we were doing and we ended up doing pretty well. As I suspect is typical of garage sales, there was a bunch of stuff that didn't sell. Some of it we brought back inside which I'll try selling online, but we had several boxes of stuff that we just wanted to get rid of so we took them to the Goodwill Donation Center.

After the garage sale I continued working on the garage ceiling repair. I had finished the East side of the garage on Friday, but using a new technique. Based on advice I received from neighbors on Nextdoor.com as well a my friend Gary, I attached sections of 2x4 to the two metal posts so that they formed a T shape and would be able to support a larger section of drywall. Like before, I used the car jacks with the posts to raise the drywall, but this time I set up a couple old smartphones in the attic, pointing them so their cameras could see the gap between the drywall and stud. Then I used an app called IP Webcam to remotely view those video feeds on my phone so I could see exactly how high to raise the drywall while operating the jacks. Once it was flush, I skipped the furring strips and instead removed the old nails which had popped through the drywall texture then reused those holes to drive in some screws. I started with 2.5" deck screws since that's what I had on-hand, but once it became clear this was working properly I went and got some star drive 2" multi-material screws.

That technique seemed to have worked well, so I decided to do the same thing on the West side of the garage where I had used furring strips to help raise the drywall. I would jack up the posts to the current height of the ceiling along one of the furring strips, remove the furring strip, continue jacking up the ceiling until it was flush with the stud, then screw that in. Tammy had said earlier she would like to help so she came by when I started working on that. She was a big help as it meant I didn't need to set up the phones in the attic, instead I could just get up there and have her operate the jacks until I told her to stop. What a time saver! For the parts where she had nothing to do we just talked while I worked. She is very friendly and knows a lot of people in our neighborhood.

I didn't quite get the ceiling finished that evening so I went out on Sunday to finish it off. I got all the furring strips removed and the ceiling appears to be level again, though there are a bunch of screws visible and places where small sections of drywall texture fell off so I'll have to fix those next. I figure I can just use the spray texture to cover all the screw holes but not sure what to do about the couple of places where there are tears and gashes in the drywall. I'm also not sure what do to about the seams where there is/was drywall tape as it has peeled away in some areas. If there is some kind of drywall adhesive then perhaps I can use that to reattach some of the pealing tape, but there is other drywall tape which is now pinched between the ceiling and wall seams that I can't pull back out so not sure what to do about that.

Happy Vallejo Strawberry Festival

Yesterday I volunteered at the Happy Valley Strawberry Festival to help a friend who was managing the pie eating contests and gunny sack races. It was a relatively nice day for the festival, although quite warm out even in the morning. I'd say it probably got to be somewhere in the 90s by the height of afternoon. The local celebrity pie eating contest was the first event so we got that all set up and ready to go. The celebrities consisted of eight people from local news, radio, and newspapers and that was a blast to watch. It was the first pie eating contest I ever remember seeing in real life. There were two more pie eating contests throughout the day for anyone who wanted to sit down and try, and it was fun to see how messy some people get trying to devour their pies. For the gunny sack races, only kids went, no adults gave it ago. We're going back today so we'll see if any adults step up for the challenge, putting their body on the line in 90 degree weather to win a ribbon

Finally got around to fixing our sagging garage ceiling

I spent pretty much all of yesterday fixing the sagging ceiling drywall in our garage. I needed to get it fixed because the sag was pretty significant, like a couple inches, and it seemed to just be getting worse as time went on so I was afraid it would collapse. There didn't appear to be any water damage on either side, just that all the nails had pulled loose from the joists... ah nails, why does everyone love using nails? They are nothing but trouble! My fix of choice was to screw in some 8 foot long 1x2 furring strips along the studs to pull the drywall back up. This turned out to be more difficult than I thought as even using 4" screws I couldn't get the drywall pushed up high enough for the screws to grip into the wood. Thankfully my friend happened to have a couple of eight foot tall metal posts so he brought those over and I used those with some scrap wood and car jacks to raise the ceiling enough for the screws to grab.

Installing the first furring strip one took the longest to do because I had to figure out what worked and what didn't, but after the first one I got into a rhythm. First, use the two posts to hoist up the drywall under one of the joists. Next, spelunk into the attic over to that joist and use a long and skinny drill bit to drill several holes along each side of the joist so I would know for sure where it was. Then I come back down and mark the holes with bright orange tape so I could see them all while standing on the ladder holding the furring strip against the ceiling, positioning it as best I could, and drilling a single hole into it. That allowed me to screw it into the ceiling where I could rotate it slightly to get it lined up just right, then drill and screw the rest of the holes.

I was about 75% done when I ran out of screws and noticed I needed a couple more furring strips than I initially thought so had to make a trip to Lowe's. While there I saw a different kind of 4" screw which had a star drive head. It was a pack of 50 for a dollar more than the pack of 43 but I remembered reading somewhere that star drive screws never strip, a problem which I had been having on several of my Phillips screws, so I decided to try them out. Oh man what a difference! Every single one went straight in and pulled the drywall up easily without me having to apply a ton of pressure against the drill. I wish I would have known about those when I first started, it would have made this job a lot easier.

So now the furring strips are all attached and the ceiling is level again. I'll have to do the same thing on the other side of the garage as I noticed a little sag on that side but I shouldn't have to use posts to lift that up as the sag is fairly minor. Then I think I'll paint the strips to match the color of the ceiling and will have to repair the drywall spackling from where the drywall nails popped through when the drywall was raised. I'll also have to spray wall texture of those fixes because of course the ceiling had to be textured.

Hail Storm

Yesterday evening strong thunderclaps boomed throughout the sky, some of the loudest I've ever heard. Not long after we were assaulted by golf ball sized hail stones which sounded like we were being pummeled by meteorites. https://youtu.be/bOaOeIkJjXc.

The Branch Graveyard

For the past several days I've been outside cutting up all the branches that we had to clear away to do the fence repair. We had dragged all the branches to the side of the house where the pile got to be about as tall as I was and twice as long. The branches were all too small to use a chainsaw so I used my branch lopper. I cut them up small enough to place in an 18 gallon recycling bin, used my weight to compress them, then dumped them out on the rocks creating a graveyard of dead branches. After getting all the ones on the side of the house I went back into the dog run where there were a ton more waiting for me. I filled both of our 50 gallon green waste bins then kept cutting until I could make my back to the new fence sections (previously I had to hop over the metal dog run fence to access it).

ADA Toilet Install

Yesterday I installed a Kohler ADA height toilet in our master bathroom. I pretty much knew what to expect from installing one in the front bathroom but that didn't make the process any more enjoyable and I still ended up at Lowe's twice because I either misplaced or it didn't come with the nuts and washers for the bolts that attach the tank to the base. This was a free curb score off Craigslist and the toilet is in excellent shape except for the tank lid (model #1086929) which is cracked, but still functional. I would like to get a replacement lid eventually but first I have to figure out what color this is because it's definitely not pure white. It's more like some kind of gray. I sent a message to Kohler with the serial number so hopefully they'll be able to tell me. Update: They got back to me super quick and were able to determine the color is Ice Grey, color code 95.

Hawaiian Vacation!

Last month Treese and I embarked on a Hawaiian cruise with my parents, a high school friend of my mom's, and her husband. It was a nice vacation with the ship stopping at five islands and Ensenada, Mexico. The weather was a tad chilly throughout the entire trip and rainy on a couple days. The one excursion Treese and mom were eagerly looking forward to was their helicopter tour but that got canceled last minute due to bad weather, so while dad and I were on a little city tour all they got to do was watch a safety video and then get back on the ship. On the day that we all went to Waikiki beach the sun was shining and we got a great spot right near the water, but the water was a bit cold and the wind didn't help matters. Mom and I both got sunburned despite putting on sunblock. Still, it was a great trip.

I stayed with my parents for about a week after we got back while Treese headed home after a few days as she had work. I rode back with  Ryan, my brother-in-law, and he helped me repair the three sections of wood fence that got crushed by the fallen trees during the snowstorm. He was a huge help and we got it done in only three days whereas it probably would have taken me a full week to do it on my own. It was also nice just to be able to hang out and chat with him. Since he lives in Colorado we don't get to hang out very often at all.

Ryan headed home on Sunday then today we got a text from him saying something went seriously wrong with one of the wheels where it started to wobble and make an awful metal-on-metal sound. Thankfully it didn't fail completely and he was able to make it to a town and get into a shop. Apparently the damage was pretty significant. He had taken into Vallejo Nissan not even a week earlier to get it checked out because there was an obvious sound coming from the tire but they said it was nothing important. We're all just glad that he's okay, as if it had failed without any warning while going 70mph on the freeway he certainly would have crashed.