Outside | Hicks House

One of the things that comes with a “brand new house” is a completely un-finished garage. I didn’t think anything of this, after-all aren’t all garages un-finished? The answer to that is two-part, they are un-finished with regard to the rest of your house i.e. concrete floors no paint on the walls etc. However, most are insulated and dry walled – ours was not. With the sweltering hot days we have experienced up here in New England this summer, with several days in a row coming close to exceeding 100 degrees, the garage would heat up to a comfortable 150 (estimating, but not exaggerating).

Considering how Ken planned to turn the garage into tool central, the heat was not providing a enjoyable work atmosphere. Also necessary in order for him to fully enjoy the space was more electrical outlets. The only two the builder provided were in the ceiling to connect the garage door openers to (the house didn’t come with openers either – but that is another post).

So, before Ken could get to insulating and sheet-rocking the garage he had to run electrical. This he did himself, although for the average person I wouldn’t recommend it as you could get electrocuted – duh. Ken is no average home improvement weekend warrior, he knows a lot about how things work, had some basic electrical knowledge and learned what he needed to know before starting to avoid that whole electrocution thing.

That orange light means it works!

Then insulation was put in between all the studs:

Insulated!

And sheet rock put up:

finishing stretch!

We unfortunately didn’t buy quite enough to finish the entire garage, but the back wall was the most important as this is where Ken wanted to build and put his tool bench. Even without the entire garage being completed there is still a HUGE difference in the temperature out there – but that may also be because we haven’t hit 100 in about a month… but I’m crediting the insulation.

As I wrote about previously in Chloe’s Invisible Kingdom, training on the invisible fence was moving slower than we originally anticipated. We’ve been trying to get outside with Chloe as much as possible and get her used to using more of the yard that the 6 foot radius her old tie-out stake reached.

She has been timid and uncertain and we have only been able to coax her out either on a leash to walk the perimeter or by playing chase around the yard. Although she seems to love the chase game she says well within the boundaries and refuses to go towards the edge. Which is good, but also worrisome since we were uncertain if tempted she would show the same restraint.

Then something wonderful happened, the perfect test to see how she dealt with temptation… there was a cat in our yard. Without thinking it through fully I put on her collar and let her outside – she took off like a bat out of hell (so did the cat). At that point we both realized we didn’t have a contingency plan for if she did go through the fence. Luckily she got to the flags at the edge of the yard and stopped dead, the cat made it safely to the trees at the edge of the neighbors yard.

Chloe wandered back to deck and waited. Sure enough the cat came streaking from the trees across the lawn and Chloe was off again, going so fast I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop even if she wanted to. As soon as she got to the back corner of the lot she pulled a u-turn back towards the center. SUCCESS!!! If a cat can’t tempt her past the boundary I feel much more confident that she is getting used to the invisible fence and will soon start to enjoy being out there.