Up until a few months ago, my attached garage was mostly unfinished.  There was drywall on the adjoining wall and the ceiling, but it was in terrible shape.  I started by removing the drywall from the ceiling, and replacing with new 5/8" thick drywall.  The saving grace was the drywall lift, which made a world of difference!  I had also added some R13 insulation to the walls in preparation for the addition of drywall.   

After finishing up the ceiling, I threw up some 1/2" thick drywall on the walls, which went pretty quickly, compared to the ceiling.  I also added some insulation to the aluminum garage door.  This insulation came from kits I found at Menards. 
​Here's the link:
Menards Garage Door Insulation Kit

All of this was done with my new Atlas 46 JourneyMESH Vest, and I couldn't have been happier with how it performed!  Check out Atlas46.com here!

After working in the garage last year during the Winter, I knew I was going to take some action and try to warm up the garage this year.  As the weather started to turn this year, I was ready!

I had some vacation time schedule for the end of June this year, so what better to do than refinish our deck!  We had built the deck in early 2016, left it unfinished all Spring and Summer long, with a southern exposure, which baked the wood to needing stain rather quickly.  I used the water drop method to decide when the neck needed to be finished, and it was ready (Use a drop of water, if it beads up, then the original wood treatment is still working.  If the water soaks in, it's time for stain).  

At that time, we used a good (or so we thought) Olympic Elite Semi-Transparent stain to put down.  The stain went on well with a nice light coat.  The rest of the Fall the stain worked really well for us.  Then came Winter, and eventually Spring, which is when we realized we had made a mistake...