Lyndon
Well-known member
Well, here we go. Anyone that’s seen my introduction (all 4 of you) knows that around August 2013 I became very ill, with what turned out to be Oesophageal Cancer (those of you in the British colony of America leave the “O” off the spelling there). After 3 months Chemotherapy, I had a massive operation that took 75% of my stomach and 10 centimetres of Oesophagus (there’s that misspelt word again) I awoke to a whole new lifestyle that I hadn’t been warned about. You probably don’t want to hear anything more about that here (it’s all in my intro). 
This intro to the thread will probably be a bit wordy, but that’s just me. I’ll probably put this up first then follow up with the pictures I can find, so be patient (sound familiar BBCHEVRO….).
Anyway, about the end of 2013 I was wandering around the house bored one day (daytime TV is the pits isn’t it), I ventured into my garage, and was fairly disgusted at its condition.
I’m quite OCD about things, and it (the garage) had become a junk pile. When we had our wedding cars the garage used to house a 1950 Mark 5 Jaguar, and a 1956 Bentley (2 Series III XJ6 Jags sat under the carport outside). And because we used to take customers into the garage to look at what they might be hiring, the place was usually quite presentable. But since I stopped doing wedding cars in 2003, and gradually had to sell the cars to fund the Transport Company (a bottomless pit requiring more and more capital to keep it going), that I bought to replace it, the place had become a spot for the wife to “hide” stuff she wanted to “store”….. I don’t have any pictures at this stage, because that’s the last thing I was thinking of…. 
Sooooooooooo, I set about starting to clean it up. Once I’d sold a lot of stuff on the Bay of Fleas, and threw out heaps of other unwanted fluff and flummery it had started to improve. The in March 2014 we got accepted to be on a lifestyle program here called The Living Room (Channel 10 7.30pm Fridays) as a Mother’s Day special (theoretically it was me nominating my wife, Irene, to repay her for all the support she gave me during my illness).
They were going to do up our lounge room, and entranceway for the show. So a team of workers descended onto our place, with the “talent” being the main builder, his offsider (who did all the work), another 2 labourers, 2 painters, a cameraman, a sound man, 2 producers, 2 stylists, and other assorted hanger-onners…. The front door was like a revolving door, and the first thing they did, after filming the “old” layout of the place was to pick up everything in the areas being done, and stack it into my garage. The place was chockers again….. DAMN IT. They did do a good job of the house though, and the show went to air on the Friday before Mother’s Day 2014.
By then I had had my operation, but was very ill, losing an enormous amount of body mass, and unable to control what my new innards were doing, so any thought of getting back into the garage were a long way from front of the brain. I started more Chemo in July 2014, but that made me so sick I told them I wasn’t having any more of that, thanks…
By August that year I was just cruising the internet one day looking for storage ideas for the problem I knew I had out beside the house (my garage is a separate building but more on that shortly), when I found GJ, and my life took a new turn.
I discovered there were people out there that gave a hoot as to what the car storage section of the house looked like (hooray – I thought I was going bonkers). I joined straight away, and started gathering ideas. I also found reading the stories, being reminded of things from long ago, and talking to, and reading about (even if I didn’t post on their threads) like-minded individuals from around the world to be somehow cathartic, and reassuring. I also took a long look at my place (the garage that is – the house and yards are magnificent if I say so myself).
My garage was built for us when we bought the place in 1997. It’s a standard “Colourbond” constructed 2 car at 7.5m x 6m (24’ x 19.6’ for you un-metricated ones). They built up a slab for it to sit on as the land sloped away at the back, up to a 950mm (3’ 1.2”) drop. But when it was built the slab was sloped toward the rear to allow any water to go out the back of the thing (why they thought water was going to get in is beyond me), and the 2 guys who put it up didn’t own a Level between them, so it is 50mm (2”) out of square from top to bottom, and 50mm (still 2”) out of square across the front from side to side. In other words, it’s a bit wonky. The company that we bought it from is no longer in business, but I won’t mention their name anyway. Suffice to say that any fixtures that I build into the garage always look out of whack, but it’s because of the building, not the builder (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it). I also have a shed, the tidying up of which I mentioned in my introduction, and fortunately all the gardening implements, heaps of them, are stored out there away from the garage.
I wanted very badly to have a place that looked like Jack Olsen’s, or Thomas’s, or Don Long’s or Dubber’s, or a multitude of others,bowdown but with the building constraints that I have, I’ve had to compromise. There will probably be another, much bigger and better garage in the future at the next place, but the timeline on that is another story, and not on the near horizon. I’ve also been inspired by people like Bob Heine, who has dealt with adversity using positivity, and a fantastic outlook on life. In fact one of Bob’s posts, post 411 (and 2 others following on), on this page here: http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?p=5057450&highlight=luckiest+day+life#post5057450, that he titles the Luckiest Day of his life, I showed to my wife, because it was brilliant, funny, poignant and inspiring all at the same time.
So I started on the garage, again, and have been stealing ideas off GJ to smarten the place up, and it became my “Recuperation Space”. I find I can lose track of hours out in the garage, and teach myself new skills in woodwork that I’ve never attempted before. I’ve grown the tool collection (both powered and manual) to enormous heights and am finding new things to make to use them. The problem I have is that as a by-product of my illness, Chemotherapy, and operation, I have chronic fatigue. I just can’t seem to go very long without getting witheringly tired (and when I do go for several hours it then involves a long nap in the lounge inside later). And that was a factor holding me back from creating a thread – I work on things very slowly (because it’s all new to me) and because I get very tired very quickly. It’s a pain that one of my Drs told me only last week may go away, or may not, ever. DAMN IT.
Anyway, in front of the garage sits a 3 car carport. And it’s under the carport that our daily drivers have normally sat. Last August our eldest daughter moved out and into her own house with her boyfriend, but that still leaves 3 of us here, with 3 cars. The garage has normally got my XJR in it, and the other spot was free, which made doing projects quite easy. Since just before Christmas my other pride and joy (the last remaining of the wedding cars, and my 2nd Jaguar ever purchased - a white 1983 XJ6) came home from long term storage in a warehouse. Its head is in the boot, and while it was always going to get going again sometime this year, it wasn’t supposed to be stored here before that happened. But it’s here now, and immovable, and with the XJR in the other spot it makes doing dusty jobs in the garage quite hard. I have to be able to take saw horses, tools and the job I’m working on out under the carport to work on things now, which brings climate into play. And at the present it’s summer so it’s either 200 degrees or cooler but swelteringly humid…… DAMN IT, AGAIN!
My 81 year old father told me recently that I should write my life down in a book, but I think this will suffice, and if the Mods allow it, the thread might wander from time to time into historical stories from the long distant past, in mildly accurate (or excessively exaggerated) form. It will also detail many interesting “things” in the garage…
Enough of me rattling on, I’m at 8000+ characters now, so I’ll post this, and then follow up with some pictures (maybe tomorrow).
Lyndon
From South West Sydney on a blisteringly hot summer's day.
This intro to the thread will probably be a bit wordy, but that’s just me. I’ll probably put this up first then follow up with the pictures I can find, so be patient (sound familiar BBCHEVRO….).
Anyway, about the end of 2013 I was wandering around the house bored one day (daytime TV is the pits isn’t it), I ventured into my garage, and was fairly disgusted at its condition.
I’m quite OCD about things, and it (the garage) had become a junk pile. When we had our wedding cars the garage used to house a 1950 Mark 5 Jaguar, and a 1956 Bentley (2 Series III XJ6 Jags sat under the carport outside). And because we used to take customers into the garage to look at what they might be hiring, the place was usually quite presentable. But since I stopped doing wedding cars in 2003, and gradually had to sell the cars to fund the Transport Company (a bottomless pit requiring more and more capital to keep it going), that I bought to replace it, the place had become a spot for the wife to “hide” stuff she wanted to “store”….. I don’t have any pictures at this stage, because that’s the last thing I was thinking of…. Sooooooooooo, I set about starting to clean it up. Once I’d sold a lot of stuff on the Bay of Fleas, and threw out heaps of other unwanted fluff and flummery it had started to improve. The in March 2014 we got accepted to be on a lifestyle program here called The Living Room (Channel 10 7.30pm Fridays) as a Mother’s Day special (theoretically it was me nominating my wife, Irene, to repay her for all the support she gave me during my illness).
They were going to do up our lounge room, and entranceway for the show. So a team of workers descended onto our place, with the “talent” being the main builder, his offsider (who did all the work), another 2 labourers, 2 painters, a cameraman, a sound man, 2 producers, 2 stylists, and other assorted hanger-onners…. The front door was like a revolving door, and the first thing they did, after filming the “old” layout of the place was to pick up everything in the areas being done, and stack it into my garage. The place was chockers again….. DAMN IT. They did do a good job of the house though, and the show went to air on the Friday before Mother’s Day 2014.By then I had had my operation, but was very ill, losing an enormous amount of body mass, and unable to control what my new innards were doing, so any thought of getting back into the garage were a long way from front of the brain. I started more Chemo in July 2014, but that made me so sick I told them I wasn’t having any more of that, thanks…
By August that year I was just cruising the internet one day looking for storage ideas for the problem I knew I had out beside the house (my garage is a separate building but more on that shortly), when I found GJ, and my life took a new turn.
I discovered there were people out there that gave a hoot as to what the car storage section of the house looked like (hooray – I thought I was going bonkers). I joined straight away, and started gathering ideas. I also found reading the stories, being reminded of things from long ago, and talking to, and reading about (even if I didn’t post on their threads) like-minded individuals from around the world to be somehow cathartic, and reassuring. I also took a long look at my place (the garage that is – the house and yards are magnificent if I say so myself).My garage was built for us when we bought the place in 1997. It’s a standard “Colourbond” constructed 2 car at 7.5m x 6m (24’ x 19.6’ for you un-metricated ones). They built up a slab for it to sit on as the land sloped away at the back, up to a 950mm (3’ 1.2”) drop. But when it was built the slab was sloped toward the rear to allow any water to go out the back of the thing (why they thought water was going to get in is beyond me), and the 2 guys who put it up didn’t own a Level between them, so it is 50mm (2”) out of square from top to bottom, and 50mm (still 2”) out of square across the front from side to side. In other words, it’s a bit wonky. The company that we bought it from is no longer in business, but I won’t mention their name anyway. Suffice to say that any fixtures that I build into the garage always look out of whack, but it’s because of the building, not the builder (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it). I also have a shed, the tidying up of which I mentioned in my introduction, and fortunately all the gardening implements, heaps of them, are stored out there away from the garage.
I wanted very badly to have a place that looked like Jack Olsen’s, or Thomas’s, or Don Long’s or Dubber’s, or a multitude of others,
bowdown but with the building constraints that I have, I’ve had to compromise. There will probably be another, much bigger and better garage in the future at the next place, but the timeline on that is another story, and not on the near horizon. I’ve also been inspired by people like Bob Heine, who has dealt with adversity using positivity, and a fantastic outlook on life. In fact one of Bob’s posts, post 411 (and 2 others following on), on this page here: http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?p=5057450&highlight=luckiest+day+life#post5057450, that he titles the Luckiest Day of his life, I showed to my wife, because it was brilliant, funny, poignant and inspiring all at the same time.So I started on the garage, again, and have been stealing ideas off GJ to smarten the place up, and it became my “Recuperation Space”. I find I can lose track of hours out in the garage, and teach myself new skills in woodwork that I’ve never attempted before. I’ve grown the tool collection (both powered and manual) to enormous heights and am finding new things to make to use them. The problem I have is that as a by-product of my illness, Chemotherapy, and operation, I have chronic fatigue. I just can’t seem to go very long without getting witheringly tired (and when I do go for several hours it then involves a long nap in the lounge inside later). And that was a factor holding me back from creating a thread – I work on things very slowly (because it’s all new to me) and because I get very tired very quickly. It’s a pain that one of my Drs told me only last week may go away, or may not, ever. DAMN IT.
Anyway, in front of the garage sits a 3 car carport. And it’s under the carport that our daily drivers have normally sat. Last August our eldest daughter moved out and into her own house with her boyfriend, but that still leaves 3 of us here, with 3 cars. The garage has normally got my XJR in it, and the other spot was free, which made doing projects quite easy. Since just before Christmas my other pride and joy (the last remaining of the wedding cars, and my 2nd Jaguar ever purchased - a white 1983 XJ6) came home from long term storage in a warehouse. Its head is in the boot, and while it was always going to get going again sometime this year, it wasn’t supposed to be stored here before that happened. But it’s here now, and immovable, and with the XJR in the other spot it makes doing dusty jobs in the garage quite hard. I have to be able to take saw horses, tools and the job I’m working on out under the carport to work on things now, which brings climate into play. And at the present it’s summer so it’s either 200 degrees or cooler but swelteringly humid…… DAMN IT, AGAIN!
My 81 year old father told me recently that I should write my life down in a book, but I think this will suffice, and if the Mods allow it, the thread might wander from time to time into historical stories from the long distant past, in mildly accurate (or excessively exaggerated) form. It will also detail many interesting “things” in the garage…
Enough of me rattling on, I’m at 8000+ characters now, so I’ll post this, and then follow up with some pictures (maybe tomorrow).
Lyndon
From South West Sydney on a blisteringly hot summer's day.
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Are you using Tapatalk? I find that app, um, how do I say it - annoying (or too immediate)??? I can see the photos perfectly... Anyhoo - I'm in awe of your place, and it is one of my inspirations, and aspirations for the "next" place. 
