It is Labor Day and I noticed that it has been another 5 weeks since our last post. With the remodeling done, it is now just small projects here and there that Gary and I are working on. With any project it is nice to have someone else to help out and we have been lucky enough to have a very eager new neighbor to help us out from time to time.

A couple of months ago, we had new neighbors move in (Lauren and Christian) and with them came their 2 and a half year old son Diego.

They are great neighbors and Diego enjoys hanging out in the driveway with us. He is a very curious kid and reminds us of our nephew Reid when he was that age. He always wants to help and has helped Gary wash his hummer and our three Harley's.


In fact, he loves motorcycles and every time Diego hears one of us fire up the bike he runs to the door of his house and looks out at us and waves. It is very cute.

Well, our most recent project has been the continuation of the garage remodel. Two weeks ago after looking at several options, we contracted Home Depot to come in and lay down an epoxy coating on the garage floor. The floor can be seen in several of these pictures, and if you look at the first picture with Diego you can see it quite well. The installation involves filling in any cracks in the concrete and then sanding everything down. After that they lay the mixture of chips that we picked out over the entire floor (we chose to go with a black, brown and white color scheme). The chips look like confetti and those sit for a day. The next day, they returned and then poured a clear epoxy over the entire floor and let it dry. We could not walk on the floor for 36 hours and then could not drive on it for a week.

As we waited for the floor to 'cure' enough to move the cars and Harley's back in, Gary and I decided that we would like to add some color to the garage. We immediately thought Orange and Black. 'Orange and Black?' - you probably gasped! Yeah those are Harley-Davidson colors so we thought it would fit for our style. So, I spent a day and a half with a laser level and blue tape and marked out two Horizontal stripes around all three bays of the garage. Marking a 8 inch stripe for black paint and a 2 inch stripe for orange. While I did this Diego came out and said 'What are you doing?' to Gary. Gary told him and for the next two days Diego would spend some of his day as Gary's little helper, while his mom Lauren sat in the driveway watching and I was taping up the garage.

Diego was a great helper as he would put the liquid nails on the back of the tiles for our kick plates and windowsill, help carry lumber or help install the lumber as baseboards.


Diego always made sure to have the proper helmet on when working with Gary in the garage.


And when Gary needed an extra hand to hold the tape measure, Diego was always there to help out.



After the baseboards were down, Gary helped me with the painting of the racing stripes (and the subsequent touching up where the paint bleed beneath the blue tape). Once that was done, we started moving some things into the garage (it had been living in the breezeway for a couple of weeks).

We then went shopping for some garage organizers for all of our garden tools etc. We settled on a Gladiator brand from Sears and started this part of the install. We ended up with 4 sections in various areas of the garage to house our garden tools, our brooms and our ladders.

While at Sears we also bought some garage cabinets that we are going to use for our motorcycle gear. We had flirted with the idea of having our friend Pete (who built our entertainment center in the TV room) build us something, but this was quicker way of doing it. We bought two 'lockers' and one small cabinet and I built those this past Saturday. However, when I opened the second box up, I discovered the one of the walls was broken in half. And no Sears in the Seattle Metro area has another one. So we returned it and a replacement is on order.

Afterwards, we hung up all of the classic signs that Gary has collected over the years and put them up in the garage. They used to be in our kitchen and tv room, but they have found a nice home out here.

The last thing we did was move the motorcycles (which were stored in our neighbors garage for the past week - Thanks Kim and Mark!) and the two vehicles back into the garage. Everything fits! Whew!

Oh, and while we were finishing up on Saturday, Diego was there and when we started moving the bikes into the garage he asked "What are you doing?" and Gary said "We are moving our motorcycles into the garage". Diego then said "I am too!" and he jumped on his tricycle and came towards our garage as Gary was backing his Nightster in. Diego was laughing and Gary moved forward in time for Diego be facing Gary for the '37th Avenue Stare Down". Luckily I had my camera and caught this cute picture.