It's official then, Zombie, no more raining down on your parade! 

We all know such interventions always come with a little fallout to deal with afterwards.

As the saying goes, "cleanliness is next to godliness", right? Well, considering the order of the proceedings for more or less of a full cleanup as you've described, I hereby wish thee a most expedite and not too back-breaking endeavour!

I spent a little more time on Friday cleaning up in the small garage. Took everything off the shelves on the left side and moved most of the stuff under the shelves out. Threw out a lot of things. With the stuff out of the way I removed the shelves... I would rather sweep just the floor. And then came the messy task of blowing off the ceiling and between the joists. Finally I swept up what I could into a pile:

This pile is about 6 inches (15cm) tall and a foot wide (30.5cm). This is what I was left with:

I managed to put the shelves back up and moved the stuff I was going to keep either on the shelves or under them. There's still plenty of room left so I can fit more on the shelves for sure. Under, not so much, but there's a little. So that is part 1 of the cleaning.

Right now the limiting factor is actually dumpster space. There's lots more I'd like to throw out but there just wouldn't be room. So this is going to have to be a 4 or 5 part project, and since garbage gets picked up every other week that means it might take to the end of the year to complete. Well, probably not that long. I haven't climbed into the dumpster to stomp it down yet and that usually compacts it by 50%. So I'll stomp it down sometime this week and then load it with more.

Still need to complete my painting project on the east side of the building yet. I could probably paint the primed areas quickly then all that would be left to do is the tuck pointing. The new mortar could wait till next year to get coated so it isn't critical.

 - Zombie

No more hiding debris and none left to fly around escaping capture. Busted by Zombie!

I swear, stuff seems to just accumulate almost without one noticing. It's easy to have hundreds of objects gradually gather and when you do a doubletake it'll take hours to sort through and get rid of all that's no longer of any use.

Just don't get too exuberant when "dumpster diving" or your space saving efforts may be misconstrued as vandalism by onlookers. 

15 hours ago, Thorondor said:

I swear, stuff seems to just accumulate almost without one noticing. It's easy to have hundreds of objects gradually gather and when you do a doubletake it'll take hours to sort through and get rid of all that's no longer of any use.

True, part of the problem was when old bossman and his wife died a few years apart - I ended up "inheriting" a bunch of things from their home which I thought I'd use, but never did. Also there were things I stacked up on the shelves because we used to use it, but not anymore (old plastic liners with floral foam waxed to the bottom on the inside, paper mache funeral containers which we've switched to plastic, etc). Then there's the things that you naturally accumulate over time. And the stuff you put on the shelf to put away in it's usual spot, but never did because other things were piled on top of it.

I put a lot of stuff away so far, so it's looking good in there. But there are a lot of areas that need to be cleaned yet. It's almost never-ending.

- Zombie

I always said: "You gotta make a mess to clean a mess" and the small garage is the perfect example. Pulled everything off the table (above it and below) and stacked that on the floor. Put a tarp over it so that it would limit cleanup. Pulled the table out too:

And this is what the corner looked like:

Needed a lot more sweeping as the floor and the walls were full of spider webs. Found a big box (it's on the floor to the right of the white hand brush on the table) filled with containers from a wedding long ago that was caked full of dust and dirt. That's gonna have to go eventually. I even cleaned off a section of the shelf:

After sweeping the floor a number of times I figured I'd better put some of the mess away. Put the table back in it's usual spot in the corner stacked a few styrofoam boxes on it and some cardboard boxes underneath. Even washed the table top so that it would be somewhat clean:

And here is the pile of dirt after sweeping:

About the same size as the pile from the other corner, so it's a significant amount.

I put more stuff away today and identified some more things I could get rid of (mostly cardboard boxes). I stomped the garbage in the dumpster down but didn't have a chance to dump anything else in there because it was pouring rain. Well, you'll know what I'll be doing tomorrow then.

Gotta bring a few styrofoam boxes over to the apartment across the alley for storage until we need them again (probably Valentines). After that I should probably sweep up the piles of dust and then finish off putting stuff on the shelf. With that clean, my next area of conquest is going to be the other corner. That'll take some time to complete as there's a lot of stuff to move. Slowly but surely I'm making progress.

- Zombie

Making room in one place by displacing stuff makes things get crowded just next to it in a hurry, Zombie, so just take care not to accidentally topple anything over when cleaning or you'll end up wrangling boxes in there even longer.

Those styrofoam ones do take up a lot of room so your plan to take them elsewhere until they're back in need makes good sense.

Outward with it. Don't let yourself get cornered. There's another round waiting for you around that corner - get out there and get it finished, champ! 

What's annoying is that I wanted to clean in the small garage some more today but wasn't able to as I was needed elsewhere. Bummer. I crushed up some boxes and hauled them out to the cardboard dumpster. Still have plenty of room in that dumpster yet which is good because there's a couple more stacks of boxes in the garage that need to go in there yet. Dumped some old invoices in the garbage too which freed up a little more precious floor space (and shelf space too)!

Also got rid of those dusty wedding containers today too. As I was hauling that box out to the dumpster I recalled waxing the foam into them way back in the day - I just wasn't sure how far back it was. That is, until I crushed up the cardboard box they were in. The box was from an old glass vase type we used to get in, and there was a date of 5-28-98 on the bottom (the cardboard box was manufactured on that date (Tomorrow I'll check to see if the box has a shipping label on it yet, that would narrow the date down some more). We probably got the box in the summer of '98 and I estimate it was maybe a September or October wedding? I'll go with that, 27 years ago. Needless to say, this should have been tossed out long ago. No time like the present though.

Once I move those styrofoam boxes out and crush up the other cardboard boxes, that should clear up enough room to start working on a different section. I may roll our long stainless steel table in the garage to help with sorting everything out. Progress. As long as you make some headway everyday it's a win.

- Zombie

A little note, at the risk of preaching to the choir here, Zombie - such invoices are no doubt ancient history, but, unless they contain no identifiable personal data (like names, addresses, social security or fiscal identification numbers, bank account numbers, etc.), I would otherwise strongly advise you to either finely shred them, burn them, or at least use a heavy black marker to fully obscure such things before trashing the documents. You never know where those papers might end up...

Anyway, your detective work points towards a wedding back in the heady days of 1998? If the couple is still married they've already crossed the 25 year Silver mark by now, which is no mean feat!

For the rest of us, that likely brings back memories of Windows 98, Fallout 2, Tomb Raider III, Starcraft, Half-Life. Not bad. 

On 10/24/2025 at 6:47 AM, Thorondor said:

A little note, at the risk of preaching to the choir here, Zombie - such invoices are no doubt ancient history, but, unless they contain no identifiable personal data (like names, addresses, social security or fiscal identification numbers, bank account numbers, etc.), I would otherwise strongly advise you to either finely shred them, burn them, or at least use a heavy black marker to fully obscure such things before trashing the documents. You never know where those papers might end up...

The invoices do not contain any vital info. They are mostly business-to-business invoices for purchases etc.

The other day I had a little time in the afternoon to work on the inside of the small garage again. Specifically, the area across from the table of styrofoam boxes. Speaking of such, I moved the excess boxes to the flat across the alley which freed up some more room. Anyhow, took all the easels off the shelf and sorted them out by size:

I went through the "clear" plastic liners for plants and baskets and tossed a few stacks out since they were turning either yellow or brown. Color was the first qualifier for throwing a liner out. The second was trying to crush a liner, if it shattered, it was too old. Didn't want to throw all the bad ones in the dumpster so I kept a few stacks in the garage to maybe throw out just before garbage gets picked up. Here's the liners all sorted out:

I think you can tell which ones are going in the garbage - the 5 stacks in the front and 2 stacks in the middle in the second row. That should free up some shelf space at least. There's some wood and snow shovels stored above (which isn't shown in the pic) that I need to take down yet, but other than that, the next job will be to sweep the shelves off:

Mind you, this is just the stuff that fell down on it's own. I didn't blow it out yet which will uncover more. So yeah, it's a mess. I wanna move some of the stuff out from under the shelves before I do that because I don't want to make a bigger mess. Once I get this area squared away, that'll mean 2/3 of the garage is clean.

- Zombie

I see a measure of composure is indeed gradually returning to the small garage, Zombie. 

Just look at all those easels so neatly aligned. The white ones at the center almost give off a sense of fractal arrangement.

It's your turn to corner chaos now!

I found a little time at the end of my day to work on the garage a little bit more. Dumped out all those discolored liners and some other miscellaneous stuff we weren't going to use anymore. That plus the normal garbage from today ate up the last of the space in the dumpster. Tomorrow the garbage gets picked up, so that starts a new week of throwing more out. Anyhow, pulled the stuff out from under the shelves so that's out of the way. I need to move those plastic liners someplace else for the time being and also take down the stuff above the shelves Other than that, then I can sweep off the shelves and blow everything off. Here's what it looks like currently:

I thought that today would be a good day to paint the two garbage containers. Hauled them into the greenhouse and painted them in there:

It probably isn't any better to let them cure in there than the garage as the garage would probably stay warmer overnight. But at least in the greenhouse they can sit there out of the way and then tomorrow the sun will bake them dry. Need to do a little bit of work in the greenhouse yet, gotta get rid of the pine boughs in the background and also the branches on the right. Plus I gotta put some boards away in there, now that planting season is officially over for this year.

- Zombie

On your first picture, the bottom row of bricks in the wall seems to be of a different color than the rest, Zombie. Was it so originally or was that something done to it?

In any case, other "revelations" are more instrumental - who could've told dumpster management, of all things, was such a critical part of the job's progress. 

Which, coupled with the sight of the greenhouse, brings to mind something from the realm of physics:

"Nothing is lost, nothing is created, all is transformed. Nothing is the prey of death. All is the prey of life." - Antoine Bechamp

11 minutes ago, Thorondor said:

On your first picture, the bottom row of bricks in the wall seems to be of a different color than the rest, Zombie. Was it so originally or was that something done to it?

It was like that originally as far as I know. This is an old garage predating our establishment. I'll take a closer look at them today to see if they differ from the blocks above. This garage had a fire back in the 70's and it's possible that there were loose blocks lined up in front of the first course along the wall which prevented the soot from the fire from staining the wall in that area. Just a guess on my part, sounds plausible.

12 minutes ago, Thorondor said:

In any case, other "revelations" are more instrumental - who could've told dumpster management, of all things, was such a critical part of the job's progress. 

Dumpster management is a big part of my job. When we used to get garbage picked up every week, there was very little management involved as we could always throw junk in there knowing it was going to be empty the next week. Now not so much. Garbage pickup cost has increased significantly in the last decade so to cut our costs I told bossman to get garbage picked up every other week instead. We usually can go that long without worries, but when there are weeks like this where we have a lot, things can get a bit dicey. Cardboard pickup used to be done every other week but we switched that to once a month. Rarely do we ever fill that completely, but it gets close when it's busy like Mother's Day week.

- Zombie

I finished cutting flowers early today so the first thing I did was to put another coat of spray paint on the lids to the garbage cans:

They were mostly dry when I was leaving, so I brought them into the small garage to finish curing. Speaking of the small garage, I swept the shelves off and moved them, moved the plastic liners away and took down the stuff above the shelves. Then I swept the floor. Then it was the messy job of blowing everything off. Dusty! Swept the floor off again and this is what it looked like:

The cinder blocks on the lowest row don't really look any different than the others. I think maybe it was a reflection? Hard to say, but it looks the same to me today. Here's the pile of garbage I got:

Swept that up and blew the floor and walls off again. Looks clean now, especially above:

I have basically one more section I could blow off yet, but the rest is going to have to wait - maybe till next spring. It really depends what is going on and how the weather is. If I have a couple days with nothing going on in the next couple months then I'll tackle that last part. Right now the focus is getting that east wall buttoned up since the weather is cooperating a bit.

- Zombie

Zombie: Putting a lid on it, the flashy way! 

Well, different cinder block optical illusion debunked then. Just goes to show seemingly plain small garages get to have their little mysteries sometimes too.

All told, you did coerce quite a bit of garbage out of there already, even if we're solely considering the blown/sweeping variety at that. Extra brownie points for sustained thoroughness: earned! 

Well, I didn't have much time to work on the garage today unfortunately. I did scope out what I need to do and came up with a plan to get it done quicker (hopefully).

The garbage cans were in the garage overnight and it seems like the tops are both fully cured now. I left them in for another night just to make sure as it's been pretty chilly in the morning. I think tomorrow I'll bring them out and put them back into service again - seems like I started fixing them ages ago, but it's really only been 2 months. On the plus side, I didn't have to empty garbage cans for 2 months. I'll take a pic of them as they look really nice again. Not only that, but they are much sturdier and functional too.

- Zombie

Here are the "twins" garbage cans all fixed up and painted:

Night and day, almost looks new. Put these back into use again today so I can finally cross this project off the list. I managed to pull together the small garage too. Put everything back kinda where it was before and had some space left on the shelf to sort out all those easels into nice groups:

Washed the shelves off too because they were rather filthy. Really glad I stained them 20 years ago because it made cleanup a piece of cake. I should really paint them at some point, well, maybe next year. So this is another section cleaned up. All that is left is the section above the garage door by the driveway (should be able to knock this out pretty quick) and then the last area in the middle of the garage. I don't think that area will be terrible because I didn't see much dust there.

- Zombie

Look who it is; no longer ho-hum, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, bound to please any who come to fill their drum.

Considering all the work it entails, you surely make it seem easy - everything restored, placed back where it belongs neatly and cleanly. Well done indeed, Zombie, bravo! 

Yesterday I was trying to put some flowers away and noticed a little puddle on the floor. Checked out all the buckets nearby and found one that was leaking. So today I fired up the soldiering iron and plastic welded the crack, plus melted some mesh into the repair. Figured that since I had a hot soldiering iron that I should melt a strip of mesh into one of the two cracks of that white pail. No pics of this, just mentioning that there's always something to plastic weld it seems.

The weather was rather nice today in terms of temperature so I decided to touch up the east wall with some of that color matched Loxon stuff from Sherwin Williams. Had a half gallon of the stuff in a plastic paint pail, but the rim (which was steel) was rusting off. Last time I used it, I put a plastic bag between the can and the lid before pounding the lid back on. Paint looked ok when I opened it, but upon stirring it, the stuff seemed awfully thick. Added a couple splashes of latex paint conditioner to it which seemed to help.

Started painting with the stuff and it was tolerable for a while but with the strong winds today the paint got progressively thicker as time went on. Took me forever to get a small section touched up and eventually brought the can back inside to add lots more latex paint conditioner. Got it pretty good, but ended up mixing in a splash of water which made it nearly perfect. I touched up the rest of the wall in record time since the paint was nice and smooth.

It's dry, but shiner. Not really sure if this Loxon stuff is eggshell or a satin finish, but it certainly isn't flat. I'll have to check on that. Because it was so windy I had to put some landscaping bricks on the canvas to keep it down:

There's a bit more scraping + caulking + priming left underneath the fire escape which I hope I can get to yet. The neighbor yelled over to me today mentioning that it looked nice. Totally agree, at least he isn't looking at the ugly gray primer splotches anymore. That's gotta count for something.

Oh, pretty tree in the background. It's a columnar maple variety so it gets yellow/orange/red leaves on it in fall. The only problem is that the leaves hang on till late November and the city stops picking up leaves around that time so there's only a few days to get it all cleaned up and piled on the curb for pickup. 

- Zombie

Caught another one "wetting the bed", Zombie? Poor thing. No scolding for you - a downright scalding is in order! 

As for the east wall, I'm very much in agreement with the neighbour - you've hit the spot and the fresh coating is blending right in, despite the fast drying timetable imposed upon you; like a true seasoned professional that fears no weather.

And while we're on the subject, you're just going to have to check your windage when the time comes for the lovely tree's shedding. Maybe it blows the right way out and you won't have to do any raking. 

16 hours ago, Thorondor said:

And while we're on the subject, you're just going to have to check your windage when the time comes for the lovely tree's shedding. Maybe it blows the right way out and you won't have to do any raking. 

See, there are two issues. First, at this time of the year the wind blows either from the west or south. That's from the tree to the cameras position - meaning the leaves blow that way. The two neighbors to the east rent the upstairs and downstairs, and the owner doesn't rake so I usually blow whatever I can out to the street. Wind from the west would blow the leaves east, but any bit of swirling will normally deposit a pretty good pile of leaves from the trees down the block at the corner. If the wind was from the north, that would be prime as the leaves would just blow across the street. From the east isn't too bad either, but that doesn't happen often.

I made a little time today to do some tuck pointing on the east side of the building, first, above the window:

There's a vertical joint I didn't do because it was too close together - I'll just caulk that later. Another spot was just to the north of the door:

I caulked some of it previously. Will need to strike some of the joints tomorrow to remove the excess mortar. Anyway, I had plenty of mortar left so I fixed one of the bricks that had crumbled by the corner door (where I fixed the threshold):

Apologies for the pic as it wasn't in focus for some reason. The last area was by the door to the lower flat across the alley:

There's a big chunk of brick that just crumbled apart when I was trying to clean the loose stuff out. And there's a bunch of mortar joints that need to be repaired too. Technically, this should all be torn down and rebuilt, but that's beyond the scope of what I could do as part of this brick is structural (the area below the black metal). I'll just get it all patched up so that water doesn't get in and make it worse this winter.

So you can see the few areas that I fixed, but I ran out of mortar. I almost mixed up another batch but it was getting late and I was worried it may not set properly overnight as the temps were heading down to freezing. Not only that, but I wanted to open all the bad joints up so it's easier to gauge how much mortar I'd need to mix up. Maybe tomorrow.

- Zombie

I suppose, in life, like in politics, one way or the other everything eventually blows over, Zombie. 🍂

Tucking in everything nicely on the east wall it makes good sense to see to the area near the door, of course - that's where eyes are going to be roving most, so make sure not to leave any sores in that regard.

As for that last area by the door to the lower flat across the alley: oh, I concur, by the looks of it what that needs is a good sledgehammer. At some point. 

On 11/6/2025 at 6:45 AM, Zombie said:

Oh, pretty tree in the background. 

 

With all the practical work being done, you manage to notice the beauty in the frame. Not that I'd ever think of accusing you of not seeing the beauty of plants, but still.

There was a break from the cold weather today which gave me a chance to get some jobs done outside. Cleaned out the greenhouse which really needed a good cleaning after summer. Swept up most of the dried weeds, leaves, sticks and trash, and then used the leaf blower to blow the dust away. Since I had the blower going, I also blew out the parking lot, sidewalk and part of the street - lots of leaves! Figured I better do some more tuck pointing on the south side of that wall across the alley:

This side is mostly done, but there are a couple areas that need some help yet. There's a couple more mortar joints that need to be cleaned out and filled and also a patch I made a number of years ago is also loose. When this dries, I'll "sand" off the excess mortar with an old brick and then prime it. Moving 90 degrees, this is what the west side looks like:

I cleaned out the old crumbling mortar so that joint will be ready to be filled. Going to take a lot of mortar as it looks pretty hollow under there. Turning another 90 degrees, this is what the north side looks like:

I filled in the big crack above the lowest concrete block, jammed a little leftover in the crack above it. To the right, I filled in a spot where a chunk of brick popped off. Also filled in a mortar joint just below the top cement cap. To address the big pink elephant in the room, yup, I see the missing brick. Here's a better shot:

The brick that was in the hole was cracked in half so I brought that inside and Gorilla Glued it back together to reuse. Jammed some brick chunks in the hole to keep it from collapsing. The brick directly left of the hole is also loose. As is the brick directly under the hole, and the one next to that too. Plus the mortar joints under that. That big crack between the wall and the cement walkway will also need to be filled.

Lots of work left on this! It's supposed to be nice again tomorrow, so hopefully I can finish this up (or at least get it to a semi-complete status). Eventually I'd like to put some concrete protector on the top caps of this wall. Pretty sure I have some Thompson's Water Seal I can brush on that. And also to prime and paint it. So much work, so little time!

- Zombie

Wow, these cracks must have been forming since the last ice age!  

I mean, definitely a long time - or the mortar was complete crap. The wall defnitely would crumble soon-ish, so high time for some zombification.