The Anthropological Garage…

As I’ve been telling you, I’ve been deconstructing and reorganizing my garage.

An interesting thing started happening in the process. With each little area that I’d begin ‘unpacking’… I’d find myself remembering.

Remembering projects, intended but never started, started, but never completed, or finished but the ‘remnants’ were squirreled away for one reason or another and long since forgotten. A sort of "Anthropological Dig" if you will.

If I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m a ‘pack-rat’.

I’m not exactly sure why I am, I just know I am. I do have a couple of theories though.

It could be, that growing up “poor” as I did, I never truly believe I’ll have the money to replace these things if I throw them away. I could also be, for the same reason, that because “I bought it, damn it, I’m not throwing anything away”, and down deep I believe that sometime, somehow, I’ll find a use for it.

It could also be, that I’m simply a ‘pack-rat’… that I simply can’t make that crucial “Do I need this?” decision, so I just tuck it away somewhere and decide, to decide, at a later time.

Regardless of the reason, my “pack-rattiness” has finally reached, and exceeded, even my (rather hig) tolerance level. I’m seriously unpacking the garage, reorganizing and throwing out whatever I have no immediate use for. I’ve even gone so far as to call the ‘dumpster’ guy to get a dumpster dropped off this week so I can just ‘store things’ in the dumpster and have him haul it all away.

I’ve also resolved myself to finishing each of the little projects that I discovered the ‘parts’ for. Like the conduit, fittings and lights I bought to install some outdoor wiring and lighting. I started that project, but, in true ‘Tim Taylor” fashion I managed to severely sprain a wrist while drilling an access hole in an exterior wall. That project got sidelined while I healed up, and by the time I had, some other project else had popped to the front of my ‘monkey brain’.

A monkey brain, for those of you who don’t know, is one where it ‘latches’ on to whatever is the most interesting item at the moment… and as soon as something more interesting pops into view, the current item is dropped, and the new one picked up.

Anyway, I’m sitting here, typing, and burning daylight….When I should really be out there working on my “mess”.

I’ve been promising you all a photo update, and you’ve been extremely patient with me, so… without further ramblings from me… here are some pics.

Here's the beginning of the bed sanding project. I tried a half a dozen different tools and various abrasive materials. None of them worked particularly well.

Then, I used a two inch backer, with three inch quick change sanding discs on my right angle die grinder, and while it was still slow going, I started getting the results I wanted/needed.

You may recall, that I had one corner of the bed that was completely gone. Worse yet it involved a portion of the bed that is visible every time you open the tailgate. It also involved having a very small portion 'rolled over' the lower valence panel. It took quite a bit of time to form and fit this particluar piece. In the end I think it fit up well.

These next couple of shots are top views of the finished panel. If you look closely, you'll see the welds are not ground off 'flush'. There's a reason for that. When you grind away on a weld, the steel in the actual weld, is harder than the surrounding steel. With sheet metal, if you attempt to grind it flush, you risk 'thinning' the surrounding metal. So, I knock off the high spots, and let it be.

Once this is all in primer, I'll come back, skim a thin coat of filler over the seams and feather it out. Once that's done, the patch will be invisible to the eye.

It seems blogger has a limit on the number of pics in a post... so all of the pictures are posted here, Click the 'recent photos' button on the left and then select the 'Garage Project'.

As always, thanks for reading, listening and your wonderful commenting that serves to keep my spirits up as I grunt my way through this!