Are We There Yet?: It's a MIRACLE!

Well, folks, let's go back and revisit the garage. Yep, the dreaded garage! As you all know - I have a love hate relationship with our garage. As I have said before, I love the fact that we have a garage and I hate the fact that we have a garage. It has been a royal pain in my backside for months, but I think things are definitely looking up!

Let's go back and do a little review, shall we?

This was the garage when we started the remodeling project last April

As you can see for yourself - this was a major disaster, and this wasn't even at it's worst point. At one point you could just barely walk through the garage - all the old kitchen cabinets (remember all those ugly pink cabinets??), all the kitchen appliances were stored in the garage along with all the tools that Mountain Man needed to work on the house with.

Fast forward to December. This was phrase one of the "clean up project". We had bought storage shelves on sale at Walmart and a couple at a garage sale. We worked really hard and made great progress on one side of the garage, but we had a problem.

Semi Clean

Four shelving units put together

Mountain Man's workshop side of the garage.

We, or I should say - I knew that he needed a space to work and we had agreed that he would use half of the garage. However, he did not have a workbench - he was using a folding table and that just wasn't cutting it (no pun intended). So, he found a workbench that he liked, but Lowe's had sold out during Christmas.

Fast forward to about three weeks ago, and Phase two. We found the workbench at Lowe's - finally! So, we picked it up for MM and he spent the next morning putting it all together. We spent the afternoon getting his side of the garage all cleaned and everything put away. The next morning I was all ready to take pictures when we remembered that it was the last weekend of the month and we needed/had to clean out the large storage unit that had all our "treasures" we were keeping for our garage sale. We knew we had to get it emptied because I refused to pay another month's rent on a storage unit that just had a bunch of junk (I mean all our treasures) in it!

So, my nice clean garage turned into a nice big storage unit!

This past weekend we FINALLY had our garage sale! Can I hear a great big YEAH! (and we did pretty well, thank you very much!) Last Thursday I spent all day getting everything out of the boxes and crates and on tables. Then I had to price things - all you garage sale people would have LOVED my garage sale - I priced things to sell! I had determined that I did not want this stuff back in the house or storage, so what didn't sell would be donated on Monday morning!

Friday morning was a great day - and we were very busy! One our neighbor's also decided to have a garage sale - so we had quite a bit of traffice because people could go to two garage sales with one stop. Sweet! Then about 12:30 it started to cloud up and 15 minutes later it started to rain. Mountain Man and I started grabbing stuff and putting it on the one table we were able to get inside the garage.

Saturday morning the rain had cleared, but it was COLD and the wind was blowing!!!! Customers were few and far between for the first hour or so, then things started to pick up. It worked out that we had quite a bit of traffic and we sold most of our ~~junk~~ treasures. There were few things that needed to be packed up, but by 1:30 what things had not sold had been packed and were ready to be loaded in the truck for their trip to the thrift shop.

Monday morning we loaded what was left in the truck and off we went to the thrift store. Then, it was time to clean the garage again. I was determined this time to get it really, really clean (and get pictures of it to prove it)!

So, after another day of hard work we did it!

Ta DA AA!

Do you notice anything different from the almost clean garage?

Yep, we don't have all the shelves anymore!

One of the things that I did was clean out all the built-in cabinets and repack them so there was a lot more room in them that there had been. We were able to get quite a bit of things in them and we were able to take two of the shelving units down. Yeah!

Yes, the motorcycle is for sale!

And if you look on the right side of the picture you can see the back of the bicycle that we bought at a garage sale a couple of weeks ago - not too bad for $10.00!

We did a little tweaking on MM's side of the garage - moving one of the shelving units to the opposite side of his new workbench and then turned the shelving unit that was left sideways, so it takes up much less room. We can also access the things on this unit from either side.

(These is also another shot of my bicycle!)

If you look - you can actually see the top of Mountain Man's workbench AND his saw! This might be a minor miracle in itself and I had to have a picture of this because I really don't know if that will ever been seen again!

I don't know if you can see or not, but everything is labeled so you know what is in each and every crate. Even the recycling containers are labeled (one on the shelves is for newspapers and the white trash can is for plastic water bottles).

Then, just to top things off - there is one more picture that I have to share with you. This is something that I did not think would EVER happen in this garage!

Are you ready???

Wait for it

Yes, that is our F150 in our garage, with the garage doors closed! I was actually able to walk down the side and across the back to get over to the workshop side of the garage (but NOT over to the extra refrigerator)! I don't think this is something that we will do very often, but it is nice to know that the truck will actually fit in the garage IF we ever need to.

Well, that is my miracle!

I FINALLY have a CLEAN garage!

AND I HAVE PICTURES TO PROVE IT!

Plus, I have you as witnesses!

So, what do you think of my clean garage? Have you ever had a room that you didn't think you would ever get clean? What did you do to conquer it?

I'm linking up to: