We’ve been in the house for three weeks. Every time Steven needs a tool, he has to go through seven large black and yellow storage containers and five toolboxes. Or the orange bucket that serves as the sixth toolbox. It is frustrating.

And the garage is a minefield of lumber, boxes stacked six high, construction debris that was never really cleaned up, and all sorts of stuff we have no other place to put.

Steven reached the point this day where this has got to end.

Jacquela chose this day to escape to the Renaissance Faire with Bridget from work. Good for them.

Steven stepped into the garage to claim the house and begin to take control of the garage.

Boxes of CDs, photos, artwork, fragile items were culled from the garage and transported into the bedroom upstairs that is intended to become the model trainroom.

Jadin was coerced into helping to transport boxes upstairs. Reluctantly.

Boxes designated by Jacquela for the bedroom that will become her craft room — Steven hoisted those up the ladder to the storage attic over the new third bay of the garage. What will be the craft room is crammed with the shelves and carts and table that we need to organize into a configuration that works. Shelving will be screwed to walls. Carts will be rolled against walls. The worktable will go wherever Jacquela points it.

Back and forth. Up and down.

Steven reached the back wall of the third bay, where the workshop and power tools will eventually go, vacuumed up the construction debris, shifted one metal shelving rack into position below the window on the side wall — and started to relocate cartons of books and magazines off the plastic shelving to the metal racks. Then there was space to move a second metal rack into place. Then a third.

Back and forth. Box by box.

When the metal racks filled the workshop space, Steven shifted the black-and-yellow containers to the top of each rack. All he needs to do now is pop the lids to get to what he needs. Progress.

Behind him, a huge expanse of garage floor is beginning to clear.

For extra credit, Steven put tools and supplies left behind by Ranserve on a plastic shelving unit near one garage door, and cans of paint and grout up on a second shelving unit near the back door of the garage.

There’s still a long way to go, but … we can now walk on bare feet on bare concrete across all three parking bays of the garage.

In photo above, the space between the bicycles and middle ceiling light was filled with boxes before Steven set to work — with some stacks six boxes high. Now we can see floor. At rear, the yellow lids are the storage containers with Steven’s tools, screws, nails, parts — the stuff he needs to get the family moved into the house. At right is a pile of lumber that Steven is putting on the schedule to tackle.