Shelves in the garage

Now that the loft is in, I've been waiting to put some shelving in to help organize the place. I have a TON of stuff in the garage, from go-karting to yard work stuff, and I simply don't have space in the lower level if I want to put a car in the garage (it was really really disorganized). This was the motivation to building the loft, which helped some, but I really needed to have some shelves up there to make good use of the space.

Matt helped me put up the shelves which have 20" brackets which EACH are capable of holding 1,000 lbs. I put 24" deep particle board on them as it was the cheapest thing I could find that had some stiffness. I'm pretty sure my boards will break before I get anywhere near that point, but in theory, I could hang a car off of each shelf. Actually, with five brackets on each shelf the load capacity is 5,000 lbs, which is WAY over the capacity of the particle board (and potentially my wall). Good thing I don't plan on using it.

The shelves are currently pretty full. The good thing is that they have pretty much removed everything that was on the main floor! You'll see what happened down there in a later post..

Happy Birthday Ash!

About a year ago we made the leap to adopt Ash (read more about that here), and we couldn't be happier having him as part of our family. He is perfect! We love him so much and he has brought so much joy to our lives. Because he is a rescue we don't know his actual birthday, so we declared the day we adopted him as his birthday; Happy Birthday Ash! To celebrate the day, we brought him home one of his favorite treats :)

Who do you trust to give you a haircut?

David's mother has been cutting his hair his entire life and doing a fantastic job at it. While he was at Cornell it didn't matter that sometimes he'd go months without seeing his mom, he'd just cycle through a very trim look and a very bushy look. Since starting at Stroud, a regular haircut has been more important. Luckily, it has mostly worked out scheduling wise for his mom to cut his hair, with just a couple of trips to see this barber down the street (who he quite likes). Yesterday afternoon (David his home this week on vacation) David and I decided he needed a haircut, but instead of going to the barber he thought it would be a good opportunity to let me wield the scissors. Keep in mind that I have never given a person a haircut (other than a couple of really hack job ear trims on my uncle Chip). I have groomed the dogs (see blog post here), but I'm not quite sure that translates... 

Anyway, I took a look at a video from a blog I read for some pointers, set up in the kitchen (my makeshift "grooming" studio), and got to work. It took me a bit longer than it takes his mom, and David is not known for his ability to sit for long periods of time. This is probably a good thing though, because if he had been a happy client to sit for hours I would have been much more focused on perfecting the cut. All in all the end result looked pretty good! I may have to make a few adjustments over the next day or so as I see straggling long pieces, but I'm satisfied with my first hair cutting attempt. Luckily, David thinks it looks "great" as well! 

Front shot

Side shot

Professional Tire Service

As you can imagine with 4 cars, I've accumulated a lot of spare tires. The rx7 doesn't have any extra, but Caroline's snow tires, extra truck tires, and soon to be extra MR2 tires take up a lot of space in the garage. The solution in a 13 foot tall garage? An overhead tire rack!

Matt and I made the rack using one of the extra steel beams I bought when I bought the ones for the loft floor. It works pretty well and looks professional. The beam is twisting in the center a little due to the weight of the tires (not a structural concern, but it looks off), so I'll be putting in a strap to hold the top of the beam to the wall in the center. Strap or no strap though, it still makes the garage look like a professional tire shop!

Poodle Symphony

Last week David and I dog-sat for Mom and Tommy while they were in Florida with Dan and Purvi. This meant that instead of having just two poodles running around the house (Ash and Pepper) we had four doggies to care for (Coal and Brandy being the temporary guests). One evening we left all four dogs alone while we went to take care of a few wedding tasks. We had been meaning to video Ash while he was alone in the house to try and catch him in middle of his shoe arranging act. We decided that with all four dogs it would be a great opportunity to see what the little fur balls do without any humans around.

This is just an image of the video - click on the link below to watch the clip!

The video we took is about 50 minutes long, and the majority of it is quite boring - you just see each dog change position, or go for a walk. In the first 5 minutes though the dogs are really vocal. It's actually sad to listen to, because you can hear how upset they are to have been left alone. In the video you will only see 3 dogs, and this is because we left Pepper in the crate as we were unsure how he and the other dogs would get along without us around. Either Pepper or Coal starts off the howling, and then all three black poodles join into what becomes a miniature poodle symphony (Brandy seems oblivious to the chaos). If you skip through the rest of the video you may be lucky enough to catch Ash in the act of carrying a shoe or two!

To watch the video, click on the link below. It's a large file, so we have stored the video elsewhere and made it available for you to watch. You'll get a good laugh!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO