So I tossed my wife’s car out of the garage. The snow’s finally gone and that’s the deal. From April – November the garage is the man cave. Horsepower heaven. Home to my Pantera and Cobra SVT. When winter comes I move the Mustang to our office and turn over half of the garage to my wife’s SUV. Along with her parking rights comes her right to bring in the dirt, grime, snow and salt and leave her sh#t all over the garage. Baby seat, a dozen enviro shopping bags (whatever happened to plastic bags?) and 20 pairs of boots, gloves, hats, scarves, umbrellas and other junk that goes from car to counter to wherever. Working on the cat in the winter I learn to deal with the mess and try to ignore it. Occasionally I wash the mud and dirt splatters off the side of the Pantera that faces her side.
Anyhow, it’s finally nice and warm for a few seconds so I moved her car out and got ready to return the garage to its pristine, hospital personality. At last.
After cleaning up and storing everything that did not belong, I restocked the beer fridge and the cappuccino machine. But looking at the floor I was dismayed. Caked with crystallized salt the black paint had been eaten away and her side was mostly down to bare concrete.
Yes, I know all about those great garage floor finishes and coatings. I’ve studied them for years. But the work to prepare the garage floor for a real epoxy finish would require leveling the floor, filling the cracks and chunks and the disassembly of all my cabinets and removal of all the tools and pictures and trophies. Too much to ever consider doing again.
I tried it once and ended up with an inch of concrete dust on everything and a bad job to boot. It took months to clean up all the dust. So now I just scrape and paint the floor every couple of years. Fifty bucks and it looks fine. When I chip it with a jack stand I get out the paint, a $2 brush, touch it up and throw the brush away. In the words of Frank Zappa, “It’s a little bit cheesy, but nicely displayed.” Yep. That’s how I roll.
For a minute I considered just painting around the cat. Doing the wife’s side first and letting it dry. Then I would move the cat over and do the other side another day. But really, even a dummy like me could figure out it would be twice the effort. So, here it was – the moment had finally arrived - I would have to start up the cat and move her out in order to get to work.
It’s been 6 months since she last fired up. I connected the battery and turned the key. Lots of juice in the Optima after spending a winter minding her own business - and she cranked solidly. I watched carefully as the pressure climbed. I didn’t touch the throttle and waited a few seconds until oil pressure reached about 65. Then I stopped cranking. I took a breath and turned the key again. She immediately fired and idled at a perfectly smooth 2500 rpm. It was like she ran 500 miles yesterday. I gently released the clutch a little and backed out into the end of winter's crisp sunshine. I left her to idle for a bit until the revs climbed. A quick yank on the carb cable and she settled into a perfectly calm 900. I let her run for a while then climbed in, ready to stall her if she decided to run on or stumble at shutdown. Nothing. A perfectly clean startup and shutdown. Freakin’ amazing machine.
Ok. Back to the garage.
I began by scraping the floor (ok, not too hard – this is me). After removing anything that came loose, I swept and vacuumed up the floor and saw how much exposed concrete there was. I had some leftover POR15 from my chassis job last winter, so I used it to cover all the bare concrete patches and pockmarks. When I was done with the POR 15 I let it set for a bit while I went shopping for some cheap rollers. When I got back I painted over the POR15 and did the rest of the garage floor with some basic garage floor paint. Awesome!
Anyhow, I sort of forgot how that POR15 stuff stains. Sheesh. I wore rubber gloves, but must have knelt into some wet stuff at one point and my pants and knee were black. In the shower later that night I was able to get some small black spots off my hands and fingers by using my wife’s pumice stone. So I did the same to my knee and after scrubbing away really hard I realized I removed t a lot of the black paint - along with about 10 inches of flesh. Ouch! Now it’s bright red and freakin’ killing!
Ok. So, back to the story about how women are weird.
When my wife left the house this morning the garage was the same horrible mess she caused during the past 6 months of winter. When she returned later on and realized I had been MIA all day she eventually made it downstairs and poked her head into the garage to see where I was.
As the glory of a gleaming new garage hits her, does she say “Wow, honey! Nice paint job?” Or maybe, “Ooh, look at the garage?”
No.
She makes and face and says “Ewwww, that smells really bad. How long will that last, cause it’s gonna stink up the house.”
“The reason it sounds like we’re in a B52,” I replied, “is because these 4 fans are moving all the air from the neighborhood out through the open garage door and will continue to do so for the next couple of days.”
“Well you’re not leaving the garage door open all night!” she says.
“Yes honey, otherwise the paint won’t dry and the house will really smell.”
“Well, what if someone comes in here?” she asks.
“The door from the garage to the house is locked," I reply. "And it's alarmed. And anyone who actually wants to stroll down our driveway in the middle of the night to see if our garage door is open, then decides to walk in here to get their shoes stuck in wet paint, just to steal a screwdriver, is welcome to do so,” I replied.
Anyhow. What can I say. Women are weird.
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