Our garage has been a mess lately: tools all over the place and not enough room to work in. We got sick and tired of hunting through the shelves for a screwdriver so we decided it was time to finally get organized. Grandpa Ray was famous for organizing and making gadgets and shelves and toolboards and the like and so we came up with a plan to make a toolboard that would make him proud. We also decided it was high time to hang the cabinets that we got from Connie. (Note the lack of drywall in our garage - another one of Ivory Homes' "moneysaving" techniques)

Messy garage

Connie gave us the cabinets after she remodeled her house. We were living in our little student housing apartment at the University of Utah. When you're living in student housing and someone calls you up and says "hey, do you want some cabinets?" you don't hesitate to accept. When we left student housing and moved into our castle on Downhill Road we thought we had plenty of storage space so the cabinets were plunked down on the garage floor and there they stayed.

We wanted to make sure we did a good job of hanging the cabinets - a job that Grandpa Ray would be proud of - so we decided to stabilize one end, place a level on top of the cabinets, and then adjust the other end. We hauled out the ladder and Nancy helped me heave one end of the cabinets onto the top of the ladder. I then did my best Atlas impression and held up the other end while Nancy checked the positioning with the level. True carpenters will tell you that the level we used was too short considering the length of the surface we were trying to level. It's a good thing we don't care what true carpenters think. It turns out that trying to get the little bubble to line up just perfectly is like trying to scratch that one itch in the middle of your back. You know the one - no matter how much you contort yourself you just can't quite reach it and end up rubbing your back against the wall while everyone else stares at you and concludes you must have fleas.

After several iterations of "up a little bit, down a little bit" we decided (actually, my weak muscles and lack of patience decided - I think Nancy would have been content to adjust that dang thing for another hour or so) it was "good enough" and started driving in the screws. Oops - the screws were too short and only the tip actually made it into the studs. We were worried that they wouldn't hold the load so we propped the cabinets up with the ladder and Nancy set off to Lowe's to procure some longer screws. I'm not a big fan of going to the hardware store - it makes me realize just how handy I'm not. Nancy doesn't seem to mind going so she usually ends up with that particular errand in our family. Anyway, Nancy did a Mario Andretti over to the hardware store and came back with just the right kind of screws. A little action on the DeWalt drill and viola! - we were in Cabinet Heaven.

There was only one problem. Check the picture closely - can you spot it? It took us a while to figure it out but the light bulb finally came on ...

What's wrong with this picture?

...and we realized that we had hung them upside down Any idiot knows that the handles go on the bottom of the cabinet instead of on the top. Well it turns out that I'm not just any idiot. Nope, I'm an exceptional idiot. Nancy volunteered to unscrew the cabinets, flip them, and go through the leveling process again. I volunteered to move us back into our student housing apartment. There was no way I was touching those cabinets. "Besides", I kept telling Nancy, "with the handles on the top it means the kids won't be able to get into them." Nancy wasn't buying my "prevent the kids from getting into them" line because Nancy happens to be on the short side and it meant that she couldn't get into them as well. In the end, tired muscles won out and we decided to just leave them where they were. See, wimpiness does have its rewards!

After a bit of cleaning and moving we were ready to hang the toolboard. I had decided to get the bigger size of plywood because I figured my meager collection of screwdrivers and pliers constituted "lots of tools" and I didn't want to "run out of room" on the toolboard. It turns out that the danger of us running out of room on the toolboard is right up there with the danger of Eskimos running out of snow. Once we had screwed the toolboard in place and put the nails in for the tools my puny tool collection looked almost silly on the toolboard. Oh well, now we've got plenty of room to grow. I was going to draw little black lines around the tools like Grandpa Ray used to do but I just couldn't bring myself to make that kind of commitment - so I just penciled them in instead.

Grandpa Ray would be proud

After some more cleaning, sweeping, and organizing we were ready to call it a day and drive the cars back into the garage. Hanging the cabinets on the wall and moving the shelves around gave us some much needed space. Not wanting to let good space go to waste, we spent the next several days filling the space up with all kinds of junk until we were back in the same place we started: a messy garage without enough room to move around in. Hmm, maybe for our next project we'll try putting some plywood on the rafters and making an "attic".

Clean garage