Pimp That Garage.

The Wife and The House "Big Blue" at 153 Delaware Avenue.

One of the things that I love most about moving downtown and becoming an "urban pioneer" is the old frontier spirit that my neighbors all share with each other.

While the homes on my cul-de-sac are a mixture of historic and newer, each of the owners happen to be relatively new to the street. As on many streets, we have a lot of home improvement going on. A friendly competition has developed among us all and many of our yards are cluttered with construction materials and rental equipment. Fortunately, we all seem to be pretty laid back about things and none of us are overly fussy about making it into Better Homes and Gardens. Most of us park our pickup trucks on our lawns.

I'll give you a brief introduction to my neighbors. They are lots of fun and we all look out for each others places. We pretty much have an informal block club going. The Browns live in the big place on the circle of our Niagara Square cul-de-sac. They rent with an option. The Issas are two doors down and are a nice ambitious young couple in their twenties. Across the street we have some very inspiring recent immigrants and and directly across the street are the Neweras, of the Derby Neweras. They are from a town called Derby and they are in the hat business! How perfect is that! The biggest home improvement showoffs are the Dulskis. That guy has completely gutted the place and is updating everything, and Judi is a real sweetheart too. We also have a new-build going up. The Courthouses bought that lot. I haven't met them yet. I believe he is a judge. I think they are living in the trailers that are on the property. Hey, doesn't bother me a bit. Put the money into the place instead. I don't blame them.

So we all visit each other and we yell out "Neighbor!" when we see each other on the street, and we borrow each other's tools and things. But what happened today really takes the cake. Everybody who knows me knows I love cars and I love spending time in the shop puttering around with them and getting dirty. Well, the one thing about our new house that I pine about is the fact that we don't have a garage. I love everything about the house, so I was willing to live without the garage but I guess I do talk about missing one quite a bit, especially after a couple of beers.

The green square is potentially my new attached garage.

Well, today I found out that one of my neighbors had indicated that he may offer to build an attached garage onto the back of my house. From what I understand, part of it would actually be built-in. And it's huge! I am probably getting ahead of myself but I am really excited. That could be me in there waxing my car! My neighbor Byron hasn't mentioned this to me yet but I found the plans on his website today on page 32. The website says that we would be partners. Hey, that's fine with me. There's all kinds of room in there!