Garage

New Garage Door

Over on Instagram I posted “after nearly a half century of service it is time to replace the garage door on our house”, but now I’m not so sure. Last year when I blew up the garage door opener and had it replaced, the fellow looked at the old opener and said it appeared to be from 1995, maybe the door was new than too. This would make it only a quarter of a century old.

Either way, it really is time to replace it. It is an old wooden one that has sagged in the middle over the years and now at each end the door does not hit the concrete garage floor, allowing copious amounts of cold air and leaves in. The sagging is so bad that it does all this in spite of the angled shims that cover the 1/3 of each side that had been added somewhere previously in its life.

Today we went down to the local Overhead Door place to pick up some catalogs and look at some sample doors. We have opted for a nice insulated steel door, but the question became, what style and what color.

We both agreed that we would like to keep it as similar as the current style, so that meant the long panel with the long clear windows. But what color, they offer a gray that is close to our present house color, but I was intrigued by maybe trying the brown color which is almost the same shade as the window trim and the gable fascia is painted.

So I came home, snapped a photo of the front of the house and “photoshopped” a new door in both colors. After looking at it, we both think the brown is a more interesting choice. See for your self, below on the left is the original, in the middle the new in brown and on the right the new in gray.

Garage Flooring Part 2B

I didn’t hear from RaceDeck for a full week, so I called the 1-800-NUMBER again this last Monday. When a person answered I told them I placed an order a week ago, but have yet to be contacted by a Sales Rep. She said, “Hmmm. I don’t know what happened, but I can transfer you to someone that can help you right now.” Next thing I know I’m placing my order.

This afternoon the UPS man dropped off 4 big boxes. I managed to get the second half of the floor down in a couple hours. All except for the last 4 tiles by the door into the laundry room. I will need to trim about and inch and a half off the left edge to get them down to lay down flat because of the threshold.

Because the garage entry is flat, unlike Aiken, I bought the small leading edge pieces to finish off the front of the floor. When I got through, I thought that maybe I should buy them for the other end facing the “shop area” as well, so I wouldn’t trip on 1/2″ elevation gain. What’s another thirty bucks? Not going to get finish edges for the sides as they are close enough to the walls that it isn’t really that noticeable.

Garage Flooring Part 2A

Last Friday I went to the RaceDeck website and used their floor design tool. When I was done I clicked the Submit for Quote button. Like last time I did this we have revised the design a couple of times over the weekend, playing with the check size, adding more carpet pieces, etc. By Monday I had still not heard back about the request for a quote, so I started calculating costs based on the pricing I received back 2-1/2 years ago. In the end I have decided to keep those 24 carpet tiles in between the two “designated” parking areas, it didn’t seem like it was worth and extra $90 (in 2017 pricing) to buy the blue and silver free-flow tiles to make one big checked area.

After finalizing the design for the last time, I called the 1-800-NUMBER to go ahead and place my order. Turns out this is sort of a misnomer, the person who answered the phone was just a front person. She took my information and what I wanted to buy and said she’d be passing it along to a Sales Representative and they would get back to me. Twenty-four hours later – crickets… I’m not real sure, but I think this might have been the way it went in July 2017 too.

Garage Flooring Part Two

The new house has a two-car garage compared to our old one-car back in Aiken. When we moved, I packed up the RaceDeck tiles and brought them with us. I had tossed a few of them out that I had to cut up to fit around the cabinets we had in Aiken.

Today we had a nice sunny mid-forties day, so this afternoon I backed the Mini out of the garage and installed the tiles that I brought with us for it to park on. The existing free flow tiles will help hide the water we are bringing in with us when we have been driving on the snowy roads. Because the Miata is just sitting for now, water is not a problem, yet.

Tomorrow we will order the flooring for the other half of the garage. The one side of the garage is deeper than the other because somewhere along the way a previous owner stole several feet to add a downstairs bathroom. The deeper side is even deeper than the RaceDeck flooring will go and that is where there is a workbench and shelving for tools and storage.


This is what it looks like now.

This is what it will look like finished.

Spray Paint Bounty

A project that has been on my Honey-Do List since I retired, “clean up the garage”, is underway. In cabinet number one I found a treasure trove of cans of spray paint. Several of these I have no idea way I have them and I’m giving them away, so if you see something you like, come on over and its yours.
 

1. Orange High Temp – Was I going to paint the Miata’s muffler? A portion of it is visible from the rear…
2. Red Wrinkle – I did use this to do the valve cover on the Emperor.
3. Custom Automotive Touch Up – Somehow I ordered 24V, a special Australia/Japan only color instead of the 22V Sunlight Silver of the CTBNL.
4. Automotive Clear Coat – I used a little of it to cover the wrong silver from above.
5. Metallic Gold – If I used this, I don’t remember what for…
6. Metallic Silver – Used to paint the black Konig wheel center caps. It didn’t come out nearly as shiny as the cap.
7. Dark Gray Primer – No clue.
8. Light Gray Primer – This went over the black center caps after painting directly on them wasn’t shiny enough. Still didn’t help.
9. Satin Finish Brown – Not sure why I have this either, but I did use a little the other day to turn a black planter pot brown.
10. Satin Finish Olive – This can may not even have been used. If it was, it was a long, long time ago.
11. Clear Top Coat – I think I used this protect a jigsaw puzzle that we turned into wall art.
12. Silver Wheel Coating – This paint is the perfect paint for the plastic center caps of the OEM Miata wheels that have yellowed over time.

Morning into Afternoon into Night


This morning started with a little event that I wrangled up from within the MMC. Something that started with a video a member posted on the Club site and another member mentioned to me that it would be cool if we could do something like that within the Club. We got all four generations of the Miata together and each one of the owners got to drive each others cars, so that when we were finished we had driven all four models.


This afternoon I started on some valances for the garage and finished about 9:00 PM tonight. A co-worker who does woodworking for fun and profit made the valances for me out of some 1/4″ plywood he had laying around earlier in the week. I started by painting the bare wood with some left over white paint and with Donna’s help picked out about a half dozen old maps to cover them with. She also helped me hang them because there was no way I could hold up a 5′ long valance and somehow reach both ends to screw them into the garage wall.

Tomorrow, the floor.

It’s Been A Week

About time to talk about garage flooring again, don’t you think?

Before I had finalized my design last Friday night, just to be sure I opened up a live chat with someone off the Garage Flooring, Inc webpage. I wanted to be sure, even though they looked like it online from pictures, that my Diamond Grid-Loc tiles would, well, lock, with the Vented Ultra-Loc tiles I wanted under the car.

Chat Transcript
08:08:14 AM [Brian] Diamond Grid-Loc can mate to the Vented Ultra-Loc?
08:08:22 AM [Teanna] Hello Brian Thanks for clicking to chat with me! I’m happy to help!!
08:08:34 AM [Teanna] yes
08:08:54 AM [Teanna] they are able to click together
08:09:25 AM [Brian] That was simple, sort of figured they would, but wanted to make sure.
08:09:33 AM [Brian] Thanks.
08:09:48 AM [Teanna] your very welcome is there anything else I can helpy ou with today?
08:10:50 AM [Brian] No that’s it, I saved an order, but first I’m going to order a sample of each my chosen colors. Thanks again.
08:11:01 AM [Teanna] great idea!

The samples came in the mail today. The pieces are only about 4″ square, but all three did in fact show at least one of the connections. The Graphite Diamond Grid-Loc had a male end and the Gunmetal Diamond Grid-Loc had a female end and no surprise, clicked right in. The Vented Ultra-Loc not a chance.

And when think about it, why would they? Grid-Loc. Ultra-Loc. They don’t even sound the same. The Grid-Loc tiles have 4 connections a side while the Ultra-Loc tiles have twice as many. Maybe why the superlative sounding Ultra was used? What I really meant to ask was do the Diamond Grid-Loc tiles mate to the Vented Grid-Loc tiles. So we had a customer who knew what he wanted to ask, asked it wrong and a CSR confirm that his incorrect request would work in a situation where it clearly wouldn’t. Or maybe I really do have Jedi Mind Powers!

This sample order was helpful on a couple fronts. Turns out I didn’t like the Diamond texture, so I’ll go with the Coin pattern instead. Plus the Grid-Loc vented tiles are 40¢ each cheaper than the Ultra-Locs.

I played around with a couple different designs. Instead of a 1′ square checkerboard pattern, doing a 4′ checkerboard, and looked OK on the web page, but would be too large for the small garage. Then I tried a diagonal stripe pattern, which I thought looked OK on the web too, but not enough to commit to really using it. I really thought this snake skin look would be just too cool park on! But we still have bipartisan support for last Friday’s small checkerboard surrounding a black vented middle.