Mice in The Garage

We have three cats, two of which go walking around the backyard on a daily basis. Now wouldn't you think that any mice with a smidge of sense wouldn't cross our property lines?

Rusty has caught a couple of mice in the backyard within the past few months. I would bet that the mice were trying to get to the bird-feeders, to snack on leftover birdseed. To cut back on their snack options, I've been putting half the amount of birdseed in the feeder each morning and hoping that there's precious little left for midnight-snacking rodents.

The mice, however, seem to have made a home behind the tarpaper walls in our garage. Because our garage is only attached to the house via a fairly long covered outdoor breezeway, the walls inside the garage weren't finished with sheetrock. When you walk into my garage, you see the wood studs and black tar-paper. Not exactly an inviting atmosphere, but we use it just for storage of outdoor things. Plus, I always keep my car on one side of the garage. I've never kept anything in the garage that has to come into the house.

I called our favorite handyman company last week to give us an estimate on installing sheetrock in the garage.... all along the walls, and the ceiling as well. Plus, we figured we would add some extra lighting in there, and even paint the concrete floor. A simple project. Or so we thought.

According to the head handyman, if we want the walls sheetrocked and finished so they look like the walls inside our house, plus have the floor sealed and painted, plus the extra electrical fixture, the total cost would be $4800. If we just want the sheetrock put up along the walls and ceiling, along with the electrical work, not counting the floor painting, then the cost would drop down to $2800.

Our jaws dropped at both of those prices. I didn't want the inside of the garage to look like a room in my house. I hadn't planned on hanging up artwork in there or making a game-room. I just want a mouse-free garage to drive my car into and have storage shelves to hold the outdoor holiday decorations, lawn chairs, gardening equipment, etc.

I asked Head Handyman to give me a bottom-line, pay-cash-and-walk-out-the-door price for just hanging up plain white sheetrock, without taping, painting and making it nice. That price turns out to be $1800..... and for that, my husband and I would have to remove all the shelves that now hang on the unfinished walls, and the workers wouldn't put them back up after the sheetrock walls go up. So we'd have to re-hang all of those shelves. Oh goodie.

"You may think this is an easy job, and for the most part it is. But it's all labor that y'all will be paying for. Every shelf in there has to come down, then they have to mark the studs where they were at so they can put 'em up again. It's all labor, labor, labor, because the sheetrock itself would be pretty cheap for y'all." --- which is what Head Handyman told me.

$1800 to hang up sheetrock in a two & a half car garage seemed pretty high. Not to me, since I'm the one who's been sweeping up mouse-poop in the garage for the past few months. But my husband wants to get more estimates.

My young friend C called me yesterday, asking if I wanted to go out to lunch. I had just walked in the back door from the garage when she called and the only thing I wanted to do was get into the shower and get the garage dust off of me------- I cleaned out half of the garage yesterday morning. I told C that I wasn't ready for a lunch out because I was busy cleaning out the garage because we had mice. "You have mice in the garage? Cool!" Bless that child....... she loves all animals, whether they be pets or pests, domesticated or wild.

I now have a huge pile of trash for the next trash pick-up. Old packing boxes that I was keeping for eBay sales... I tossed out the bigger ones because I don't sell large things on eBay anymore. I tossed out some old carpets that I had covering half of the garage floor. I went through all the make-your-garden-grow products that I don't use because the only things I can grow are spider plants and impatiens. I had three pairs of old shoes in the garage that I used for gardening. Out they all went, for the simple reason that I have no idea if one of the mice had curled up for a nap in one of them.

Every time I brush the cats (which is every day), I'm saving the hair that comes out on them and I'm sprinkling it around the perimeter of the garage... along the inside, near where the studs meet the floor. Hopefully, the mice will smell the cat-hair and think my cats have taken up residence in the garage. If it wasn't so blasted hot out there, I would let Rusty stay in the garage for a few days. But my cat-loving conscience won't allow that. I'd rather deal with the "cool" mice than have a cat who needs therapy.

Bottom line...... I will get more estimates and hopefully find a handyman who has a crew of new workers who need to learn how to hang up sheetrock in a garage before they attempt to do the same in a house.