Since I last mentioned our “garage studio“…
The new mini split is officially installed and running. It wasn’t quite as smooth as I’d hoped when I wrote the previous post — we had both a physical space issue (the new compressor unit not quite fitting where the old one was) and an electrical issue (a short that had to be fixed) — but it finally got done and is running, and the garage has stayed at a cool 75 degrees despite the still-summer hot weather until very recently.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to control the humidity as well as I’d hoped. Our house a/c consistently maintains the humidity around 40%, but the garage was averaging around 65%. This is lower than outside, of course, but still not as low as I’d like to be confident about putting my longarm in there. After doing some research, we think the airflow route through the garage and attic space is causing too much humid outside air to be pulled inside. We bought a small dehumidifier, and that has been effective in lowering the garage humidity to ~50%. In addition, we had a contractor add a few soffit vents — this will hopefully let the warm/hot attic space pull in air from outdoors, and the cool air in the garage can stay in the garage.
This past weekend, the weather was gorgeous so we actually turned the a/c and dehumidifier off entirely and opened the garage door. This helped us make good progress towards cleaning out the space. We got rid of 5 big bags of trash, and dragged a bunch of other stuff to the curb heavy trash pickup. There’s still more to do — outgrown kid stuff to donate, more items to trash, and a lot of cleaning and scrubbing of both the floors and walls — but it’s getting there. I can see a twinkle of light at the end of the tunnel.
Back inside, we donated the old bed so there’s a lot of floor space at the moment. Once we finish the garage cleanup, the longarm will move out there and we’ll get a daybed plus air mattress to give us flexibility in both this room and other rooms for sleeping guests.
We need to push hard to get all of these clean-ups and moves done by Thanksgiving, since we expect Jose’s family to visit for the holiday. Wish us luck!
