It's squished in between a power line and the next door garage so only fits one car but has an adorable extension which is great for storage (think bikes when it's snowing outside!).
As I sit at my breakfast counter right now I look out the window directly at the garage. So cute, like our own cottage in the city, but oh so dilapidated and in need of much TLC.
Our builder came last week with his team to FINISH up. Yes, finish up. I can't believe how far we've come since April. Quite the whirlwind really, and we should be sick to death of painting but it's so great to have our own home again that we seem to continue to be inspired. That, and the fact that winter is coming, keeps us on track.
Here is how the garage looked when we bought the place...
Cute! But with a very old roof which let all the water in (the right-hand extension had an ice rink for a floor), a dangerously wobbly chimney and lots of cracked or broken window panes.
Then the ice melted and we could see our yard better...
You can see that the old tin siding had peeling off paint, which turned out to be near impossible to remove. In the end we paid the builder to spend a day stripping it with his high-power water thingy, and then he primed it too. Well worth the money so we could get on with it.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Our next trick was to replace the entire roof and remove the chimney. I got to work on my Portuguese as the roofer spoke very little English. But he was lovely and they did the whole thing in record time.
Last weekend we spent all of it painting and priming and learning how to repair old glazing (still a work in progress!) and the garage is starting to resemble it's future gorgeous self...
Can you believe it's the same building?!
There's still an awful lot of painting, filling and re-glazing to be done but now I can look at the window and smile instead of shuddering at the thought of such a big project. We'll do some work on those windows tomorrow and next weekend we'll prime all the gutters and give them a fresh coat of paint.
The interior of the garage is a ridiculously big job but we are chipping away at it slowly.
But at least it doesn't smell of mould and raccoon anymore. The roofers evicted our 'tenants' from inside the roof cavity and they don't seem to have found their way back in so far. We have to keep an eye on the roof for any torn up asphalt as raccoons are very strong and have clever fingers!
Summer is fading already (only top temps of 24 predicted in the coming weeks) and school starts back in a fortnight. Poppet is attending a brand new school this year and we have great hopes for that, but she'll also be getting the yellow school bus there and back again and Mummy is particularly nervous about that!
My market prep is into full swing now so I will leave Mr Poppet to continue the good garage work outside.
More photos soon, I realise I haven't taken enough lately to capture this 'phase' of the renos...
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