One of the absolute must retirement tasks was the most
American chore of cleaning out the garage. I could be wrong but, in movies and
TV shows I’ve seen about Europe and other parts of the world, I don’t think I
saw anyone with a garage. In any case, I
had big plans to build things (like a miniature golf course) and I would need a
clear workspace in which to do that work so the garage had to be made useful.
To our credit, despite the junk piled along the walls, in
the corners and on top of the workbench, we’ve always been able to get both of
our cars in the garage. I guess my
father somehow impressed upon me the idea that garaged cars last longer. The house where I grew up actually had two
garages that, over time, had housed the family cars, my dad’s antique cars and
a boat or two (although not all at once, I don’t think).
Unfortunately, I didn’t get any “before” pictures of the
garage before the clean-up. However, I’m
guessing you might be able to picture a garage with junk stacked in virtually
every available spot (heck, you might not even have to picture it if your
garage is anything like ours was).
As you might expect, this job involved a lot of throwing
stuff out and re-organizing things. I
even made good use of the rolling shelves I had gotten as a “parting gift” from
a former employer after they had lost their government contract and had no use
for the contents of their Florida office.
I also got a ladder, an uninterruptable power source (UPS), some tools
and other stuff out of that. One of my
former co-workers, upon learning that the company was essentially giving away
everything, actually rented a U-Haul and virtually cleaned the place out. But that’s another story for another time.
In the shelves underneath the workbench, I found a cache of
maybe a dozen or more partially full cans of paint. These were mainly left over from all of Pat’s
projects painting different walls and rooms over the years. Plus, there were a bunch of small sample cans
of paint for when she would have been deciding what color to use. My first inclination, as you might expect,
would be to chuck all these out, except maybe for the colors that are actually
on the walls and might need touching up someday. My friend Jim even told me how I could buy
cheap kitty litter and dump it in the paint to responsibly neutralize the paint
before disposing of it.
Then, never one to want to waste anything, I came up with
another idea. Over the years, Pat had
accumulated quite a collection of yard creatures—gnomes, creepy bunnies, frogs,
etc. Now, most of these were looking
pretty tired and worn. Why not, I
thought, whimsically paint all these things and give them a fresh look? I couldn’t think of a reason not to do it, so
paint I did.
Turns out, this started a
painting mania that somewhat continues even today. I was so pleased with how the woodland creatures came out
that I looked for other stuff that needed painting. One thing I found was this old lamppost/candle
holder that had peeling paint and was rusted.
This required more than leftover paint, so I purchased some spray paint
and Rust Reformer. After a lot of sanding
and spraying, I had something looking decent enough that Pat eventually allowed
me to place in near our front entrance.
By the way, this probably would have been
another thing that would really benefit form before and after pictures but, as
I’ve stated, I really suck at remember to get the before pictures (although I
did get a few).
By the way, the fact that I temporarily halted the garage
clean-up to paint all this stuff clearly demonstrates how easily I can get distracted
and side-tracked.
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Yard creatures painted in whimsical colors using old paint I found in the garage
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The Creepy Bunnies moved to their natural habitat in the yard
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Newly painted cats on a bench
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Yet another creepy bunny and elf house in the garden |
Maybe the creepiest bunny guarding our cable and internet connection-it might look like flowers in his basket but it's a camouflaged uzi |
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Frogs sitting on bricks before painting
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Frogs
on bricks after painting-Pat pointed out that the frogs previously had
a nice patina that I ruined (I didn't know what that was)
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Believe light and disabled gnome (missing arm) before painting |
Believe light after painting |
Gnome happily on bench after painting (he would later be redeployed to the mini golf course)
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Repainted pelican (should have seen him before)
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This scrap metal art project pelican had to have several pieces glued together before painting
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The last paint job was this lamppost that required new (i.e. not salvaged from the garage cabinet) spay paint and rust reformer
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As an after-the-fact note, many of these newly painted
creatures were repurposed as parts of my miniature golf course.
While I found use for the old paint, there was never going
to be a use for the old fluorescent lights that had been stuck a corner for
many years. Some might still have
worked, but it must be decades since we had lights that actually took those big
old lights. Wanting to be responsible
and not just hide this toxic waste among regular trash, I called the county to
ask how to dispose of them properly.
They said I could just drive them to the dump (they didn’t call it that)
myself and I would be directed to the special disposal area for them. The only catch was that I could only drop off
10 lights per year, per address. Of
course, I had 11.
One day I carefully wrapped 10 of the 11 bulbs in a blanket
and set off for the “sanitation facility.”
It was actually kind of interesting waiting in line to get onto the
dumping grounds amidst these giant Waste Management trucks. Turns out, when I finally got to the special
location, the guy there didn’t take my name or check a database to see if I had
left fluorescent light there 364 days ago or something. He just had me add my bulbs to a pile and I’m
pretty sure he never counted them. As to
what happened to that 11th bulb (that I should have brought with
me), let’s leave it at I didn’t need to make a return trip to get rid of it a
year and a day later.
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I had way fewer fluorescent lights than this (10, in fact)
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Entering the Sarno Road Landfill, you can't see my car between the WM trucks (actually photo from Florida Today) |
While cleaning out the garage, I came across a few things
other than light bulbs that might be classified as hazardous waste—stuff like
old computers and power supplies. I did
set these aside to deal with later but, although I never returned to the dump,
somehow they have disappeared. Hopefully
they didn’t “accidentally” get put in the regular trash. Conversely, old plant food and pesticides, as
well as cans of stuff like paint and primer, remain boxed and stored on the
aforementioned rolling shelves for me to deal with someday.
Slowly, the garage got pretty well organized, with a lot
thrown out and stuff I was keeping put into plastic tubs and Pat’s old army trunk, which might have belonged to her father (she
used to say it was loaded with guns, but I think it was mostly blankets). I even put labels on some of the containers!
With virtually all areas of the garage now accessible, I
thought I’d try opening the side door that led out to the cement pad where we
keep our trash cans. The door had always
been buried behind all sorts of debris so we had never attempted to open
it. I figured it could provide a
potential alternate escape route from a house fire or zombie attack (they never
seem to guard the side doors).
After putting my shoulder into it, I succeeded in getting
the door open. Yet another victory! My celebration was quickly quelled when I
realized the door would now not close. I
don’t know if the door was warped, the hinges were bent, or if the door was just
was so happy to be open that it now refused to close.
I tried any number of tools in an attempt to bend, bang or
otherwise coerce the door into closing.
I had no success. Eventually, my
solution was to simply chisel away as much of the doorframe as I needed in
order to get the door closed. This
seemingly simple undertaking—opening a door—turned into another multi-hour
delay in getting the garage cleaned up.
It did, however, provide some entertainment for Jayne, who cleaned our house every couple weeks.
Once I got the door closed, it has remained closed to this day.
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After-the-fact picture of the garage side door that will likely never be opened again (if you look close you can see where I chiseled the doorframe to get it to close) |
With the garage pretty organized, I had the idea of sprucing
it up a little bit, especially since I planned on spending some time in there
over the next several months. I still
had plenty of leftover paint so I figured maybe blue walls would be better than
the existing yellow-brownish color, so the walls became blue.
After the painting, I had another idea. When I retired, that meant all the stuff that
had been adorning the walls of my various offices (and, for a while, a cubicle)
over the years was now coming home but with nowhere to go. Pat has about 95% of the wall space covered
with her artwork, clocks (although none of them seem to work) and the
like. She had, however, granted me the
use of about a wall and half in one of the back rooms. Here I had hung some of my Boston championship
posters and plaques as well as some great custom commemorative art pieces created
by a Providence Journal sports cartoonist and given to me by my brother John.
However, given the embarrassment of riches the sports gods
had bestowed upon Boston this century—a dozen championships in all—I had
accumulated way more championship posters and plaques than would ever be
allowed to be hung in the house. That’s
what happens when your baseball team takes 86 years between championships, your
football team wins none in over 40 years of existence, and your basketball and
hockey teams wait 22 and 39 years, respectively, before winning another big
one. You tend to want to “over-commemorate”
those long awaited victories.
So, I decided I’d give the garage kind of a Boston sports
bar look by hanging as many posters on the walls as I could. However, when Pat found out I was
straightening out the garage, she expressed her long-time ambition of having
all her seasonal wreaths hanging up so she wouldn’t have to bug me to go into
the attic above the garage to get the next wreath to swap with whatever one was
currently on the front door. Of course,
I figured out a way to accommodate her request so, on one wall of the garage you’ll
see all this Boston sports memorabilia while, along the other, seasonal wreaths
are displayed. There’s also a few other things like a Beatles “Let It Me”
fake gold record, my beloved Three Stooges golf poster and a souvenir from my
hometown—a sign from the long defunct Methuen Mall which, apparently, my father
had “salvaged” when they were tearing the place down.
One of the last garage refurbishment efforts was to get the workbench ready for use. This effort was more incremental, starting with locating my screwdrivers and other tools conveniently, adding a circular saw, then eventually repurposing glass jars from Pat’s flower-of-the month gifts as containers for screws, nails and other hardware. I also salvaged a clock Pat didn't have a place for and an old Beatles paper mache Yellow Submarine lamp that someone had given Pat, over Pat’s suggestion that it be thrown away. Lastly, since every workspace needs some tunes, I added a couple old computer speakers that I could plug my iPod into. Later on, I even painted the workbench and shelf with yet more leftover paint.
Now, we had a somewhat clean, relatively organized garage
with a usable workbench. And not only
can we put both cars in the garage, you can actually walk between them now.
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The East wall of the garage before painting |
The East wall of the garage after painting |
The East wall of the garage after painting |
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The East wall of the garage with Boston sports memorabilia, The Beatles, Methuen Mall and the Stooges
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The Patriot and Red Sox dominated middle of the East wall of the garage
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The end of the East wall with tools, Masters flags and Malcolm Butler's game winning interception
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The
West wall before painting with my old, plywood hurricane panels and the
new vinyl ones as well as what would become my first mini golf green
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The West wall of the garage after painting
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The West wall with Pat's wreaths and an old bedspread covering the less attractive stuff
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The back wall after painting but before getting organized
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The back wall and work bench ready to go with tools and stuff, the Yellow Submarine light, a clock, iPod and speakers
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Squeezing in more memorabilia around the door to the house and above the cat carriers
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After cleaning up the garage, there's room to walk between the two cars
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