Starting garage repairs

Mary and I had our morning beverages and did our language lessons then went downstairs. We had some of the leftover biscuits from Sunday along with cold cereal for breakfast. While Mary and Cindy took the dogs on their morning walk, Mark and I went to Home Depot to get supplies to work in the garage. The structure of the garage is concrete block so there was no damage to the exterior walls from flooding. However, the interior partition had damage from the saltwater that filled the garage with several feet of water over the night of September 26 during Hurricane Helene.

We bought a 4X 8 sheet of 1/2 inch Durock cement board to repair the downstairs partition and 11 sheets of Sheetrock to start the process of finishing the upstairs of the garage. We got a small pail of premixed thinset mortar to use like drywall mud for the cement board and the special 1 5/8” screws for the cement board.

When we got back to the house, we placed the new sheet of Durock against the damaged wall and used it as a template to remove the existing material. Most of the cutting was done with a masonry disc in Mark’s Milwaukee cordless angle grinder. We scraped around the rest of the wall to remove flaking paint and prepare the wall for repair. We attached the cement board with the screws then placed adhesive mesh tape along the joints. The mortar filled and smoothed the joints in preparation for finishing. Mark will prime the wall, spray it with orange peel texture and finally paint it to match the other walls in the garage.

We went into the house for a lunch of a bowl of soup and ham sandwiches then returned to the garage to carry the 4X8 sheets of drywall up the stairs of the garage. We started on the ends of the room since full sheets were required to cover the walls. We tried using the Roto-Zip to cut the drywall around outlets and the windows, but the 25-year-old tool no longer had the power to speed through the cuts. We found that a drywall blade in Mark’s cordless Milwaukee oscillating saw did a much better job. By dinnertime we had one end of the room covered and had started on the wall along the stairwell.

Although the temperature got down to the low 40s this morning, it warmed up to the upper 70s by afternoon. While watching local news from Lexington and Huntington online we are seeing single digit temperatures at night as well as additional snow added to the initial 8-12 inches from the weekend. Continued cold temperatures and snow in the forecast promise no relief in sight. We feel for family in Georgetown, Cincinnati and Huntington but are happy that we are in Florida during this weather.

We cleaned up and drove to The Villages where we had dinner with Grant and Jodie. Jodie had a taco bar and baked quesadillas. We had a variety of desserts and chips to snack on as well. After dinner, most of the group played card games while I read. Grant and Jodie were leaving for a Caribbean cruise, and we enjoyed hearing about their travel plans.

After we got in from Jodie’s we covered a few plants outside in anticipation of possible temperatures here in Florida approaching the mid 30s.