Salvaging Old Original Wood and Organizing the Garage

Salvaging old original wood and organizing the garage made us excited about the potential to bring our old historical home back to life!

MAKING A DOOR TO THE GARAGE

Nate decided to build an opening from the living room into the attached garage so that we can go in and out of the garage from the house. 

He makes an opening from the living room wall into the garage and places a temporary door there until we can finalize our plans for how we really intend to design this space. 

CITY SIDEWALK

Around the same time, the city began working on the sidewalk in front of our house by removing it and paving a new one. They tore up the sidewalk by removing huge pieces of cement! It was crazy to see something like this right in front of your house. And we were not sure why they did this.

We wished that we knew then we could’ve contacted the city to see if they could cut the curb to line up with our driveway since they were redoing it anyway. When we had a meeting with the city later they told us that we could’ve put in a request for them to review the new curb cut that we were proposing, but at that time we really weren’t ready to come up with those plans.

We missed the boat on that one. And not sure if we will actually pursue that in the future because I’m sure it will cost a lot of money. So we’ll see about that one. 

MORE NAILS TO REMOVE – SALVAGING OLD WOOD

Nate set up a little station to remove nails again where he could stand up while he worked.

Nate continues to work on salvaging the old original wood we found in our house from the floor boards, to trim, and the ceiling. He still has to remove nails from them and then organize them in the garage. But, it’s so exciting to see how much we were able to salvage and reuse! 

Yes, let’s go zero waste! I’m your zero waste girl! Don’t even get me started on that topic because I’ll end up talking your ear off about that and composting and so much more! We’re really just trying our best to be resourceful and not waste anything as much as we can.

ORGANIZING THE GARAGE

Now it’s time to put some of the salvaged wood in the garage and organize it. Nate removed the nails from the pile of wood here and will have to find a place to store it in the garage.

Here are floor boards full of nails and stuff, along with several pieces of trim. And below that are smaller pieces that are mostly broken. He still has to take nails out of them and organize them and then clean up the garage. It may be ugly now, but it’s going to be purdy later!

After Nate worked on salvaging the old original wood and organizing the garage, I get a tour of the progress. Now there was a new door in the living room attached to the garage. I got to see all the wood he salvaged and how he started to organize it in there. 

He justified the new door by saying that when you come home from work, you don’t want to have to walk all the way outside, close the garage door, and then walk around to come inside. And if you want something from the garage and you’re in the house, you can just go through this door.

So the garage is under construction of course, but it’s coming together.

SALVAGING OLD WOOD

Salvaging old original wood and organizing the garage was quite the task!

Nate took all the wood that we saved from the house with all of the nails removed and stacked them up on the top in the garage as they were pretty big pieces. Some went all the way across the whole garage.

There were floor boards, trim, and smaller pieces. He removed all of the nails from those. There were some old trim and floor boards mixed together. So he will need to go through that pile and remove all the nails, screws, staples, and anything that’s in there that don’t need to be. Quite a time consuming job ahead!

He would easily stack the wood on top of each other once all the nails are removed. The nails in the wood made it difficult to lay down flat and organize. That will make it easier to work with and save a lot of space!

Wow, I’m really impressed by his salvaging and organizational skills!

BLESSING OUR HOME

Since this is the first home we’ve ever purchased in our lives and we haven’t moved in yet, we thought it was the perfect time to bless our home. To ask God to bless and protect this very special gift that was provided to us, which in itself was a miracle story! Even to this day, we still question how we were able to land such a small cute house in an incredible urban historical neighborhood with an old school country feel.

You can just call me a city girl with a country heart! I love the conveniences and liveliness of the city, but also really appreciate the grounded, homemade living, and nature of the country. We get to experience a bit of both worlds here! What a blessing!

We decided to pray over our house and bless our home as we hadn’t done that yet. Maybe that’s why we didn’t have our permits at that time! Haha! We wanted our house to be blessed by God and to be a blessing to others. We tried to do everything the right way and not everything has gone perfectly right. It’s all a part of the process though.

Nate used an anointing oil from Israel to pray over and bless our house. We believe that our house will be a blessing and one of the center pieces of the neighborhood!

Ezekiel 44:30

.. to cause a blessing to rest on your house.

PERMITS AND APPROVALS

As we were working on applying for a permit with the city to renovate our house, we had to also get approval from our heritage commission on any exterior changes, like the windows we planned to replace. There were so many things to think about and get done! What a journey it has been and continues to be!

CHECK OUT OUR VIDEOS

Thanks for joining us on this journey! We hope that you will find inspiration watching us learn as we go while we’re attempting to renovate and rebuild this old small historic home mostly on our own. Stay tuned for more progress updates ahead!

You can also watch a video about this here.

To see more adventures of our tiny fixer upper journey, click on the links below.

THE FRAMING IS NOW EXPOSED AND MAKING DESIGN PLANS

RIPPING OUT DRYWALL AND INSULATION IN TINY FIXER UPPER