We’ve had a record mild winter (next to no snow either) in southern Ontario which has the added benefit of not much sand or salt being dropped on the roads. Pouring rain all day today will wash what little is left so I’ve put the insurance back on starting tomorrow…month earlier than usual. Next week supposed to hit 16C (60F) which is unheard of this time of year.

Anyway just sharing my excitement with my fellow northerners who store their cars for the winter.

Seat heater on and top down in March!

 

I'm with you Viper! Took the cover off her today and will restore insurance next week. Portland has only received 24.3 inches of snow to date and only half an inch for the entire month of February. My brother lives outside of Detroit and has had a similar winter to you and took his C8 out for a spin last week.

 

I re-instated my street coverage 10 days ago, planning just for the weekend because it was 60 degrees and then bitter cold again. I put it back in the storage garage figuring it would be mid-april before i took it out for the season. Unfortunately, I failed to call the insurance guy to put it back in the storage mode. Guess what! It's gonna be mid-50s to 60's all next week so I guess I'll just have to drive the dang thing. I dont hate it when that happens!

 

I have the opposite problem at the moment.
Too hot to take the car out.
Forecast for 40C today and it hasn't rained in months.
Last time I went for a decent length drive was late December and I got badly sunburnt on my right forearm, ain't doing that again.

 

Probably a week ‘til mine comes out of storage. This beast has been twiddling its thumbs all winter, about time to move it outdoors.

 

DJS, you may be able to help me with something that has intrigued me for many years.
I note the unpainted partly flushed drywall in your garage.
I see this all the time in US movies and TV shows - unfinished unpainted drywall in garages and basements.
Almost always with very poorly half-flushed joints and nail holes, obviously done by someone with little skill or experience.
Is this really so common in real life or is it just for movie/TV prop appearance???
If it is common in real life why do people half do the flushing, what is the point, either do it fully or not at all! Put another way, if you are not going to bother painting the drywall why bother half-flushing it at all???
I ask because in my younger days I was what is called in Oz a "ceiling fixer" - I installed ("fixed") plasterboard (mainly Gyprock brand), wot you call drywall, I then "flushed" it - filled in all the joints and nail holes so they were flat and smooth and ready for painting (three coats on the joints, with tape in the first coat, then sand the third coat, not just one maybe two coats with no tape like I always see in the movies/TV shows), then I put up cornice on the wall/ceiling joints which I never see in the movies/TV shows.
Lastly I always see masses of nail holes when here in Oz we switched to mainly glue in the middle of the sheets with a small number of nails around 1976 (I was in the trade from 1974 to 1978), why no such switch in the US???

 

The biggest thing is that the drywall (and steel door) are fire resistant and create a fire barrier between the house and garage - a code requirement here. Why the contractor mudded (I.e. applied joint compound) to the joints and nail holes, I can’t say for sure. Certainly preps it for painting, and it may be that the mudded joints are required from a fire-resistance standpoint.

Never felt the need to paint it.

I taped, applied joint compound and sanded enough in this house and my previous one that now I pay someone to do it, or just plaster it instead.

 

Makes some sense now, if the rough as guts "mudding" (wot we in Oz call flushing) is solely for fire resistance reasons.
Again here in Oz the basic plasterboard/Gyprock is not fire resistant (or it wasn't 50 years ago when I was in the trade!), if fire resistance was necessary/desired then we used a variety of Gyprock called Firecheck, twice the thickness of standard Gyprock (20 mm vs 10 mm) with treated sisal-like fibre in the middle, similar to the old fibrous plaster that my old man used to work with before he switched to Gyprock in 1966. That Firecheck was a bear to work with coz it was nearly three times the weight of standard Gyprock and you needed special extra long nails or screws.

 

To the question, "Who's the one person from history you want to sit down and have a chat with?," my answer is hands-down, I'd like to speak to the folks who decided in was a good idea to head north [from Africa...or at least the Mediterranean region]. What were they possibly thinking?

 

California Dreaming. Why put salt on your roads, you can't eat them? Sand belongs on a beach. It is a bummer though to be paying for insurance year round!

Sorry, could not resist.

 

Hard to believe that some of us like snow. I’m less enamored with mudslides, wildfires and water shortages. Everywhere has something!

 

I'm in the Toronto and it's going to be 15-17 degrees Celsius in 2 days BUT it's snowing today again ... they better not salt the road. I took mine out of storage just over a week ago because I couldn't wait, there was a little salt residue on the road but I made sure to the wash the car multiple times. I received my 2024 just after Christmas and was only able to drive it for 1 day before storing the car in the garage for the winter.

 

There are the fire code aspects already mentioned, but I might possibly have the answer for the mudding. In my region at least it is a known thing that builders will have the new drywall guys cut their teeth on garages for learning purposes. I guess the rationale is that most people care less about a garage area than they do about a living area inside the actual house.

I’ve been in my house coming up on 25 years. My garage sat looking like that pretty much the whole time. In the last year I fully insulated the garage and put a heat pump in for storage of the F-type that I have coming shortly. Only at that time did I fix up the drywall proper ;-0 It will be a car storage and converted “man zone” area now ;-0

It’s a thing around here for sure. On a nice summer day when you drive around neighbourhoods you will see open garages everywhere with people displaying their ugly drywall ;-0

 

I’m in the New Brunswick area right now. You wouldn’t want to be taking that beauty out here right now. Full-on winter with lots of salt for sure. In central Canada we have definitely gotten lucky this year with the weather.

 

Makes even more sense now.
Here in Oz a basement is almost unheard of (never seen one myself!) and very few bother to line the walls of their garage if it is not "under main roof", and those garages which are under main roof are built fully lined and painted from the get go.

 

Got my baby out here in Barrie, Ontario on March 4 ..... but it snowed yesterday & the salt truck drove the by house

 

We don’t pay the full insurance while off the road as it goes into suspension mode which greatly reduces the premium. FYI motorcycle insurance is year around …no reduction.

As mentioned in my first post my insurance went back on yesterday so by 10AM I went out for a long awaited ride. The power ! The glorious sounds!

 

I don't know how you northerners do it--put your best, most beautiful, exotic, exhilarating cars in storage for several months a year. That would be worse than not being able to sleep with your significant other, knowing they were in the next room wrapped in a blanket.

 

I sleep with my beautiful exotic wife and drive my beautiful exotic car in the Winter. Fit the A/S Michelins ( to the Jag) and stay in the bedroom and garage when it is snowing or raining.

 

Up here in the Southern California mountains the weather is finally sunny and forecast to be between the low 50's to mid 60's for the next ten days. We had some snow last week but the sun came out and it melted within a day. They don't salt the roads here but the County does put sand on the highway. So I'll wait a few days for them to have one of those street sweepers go along and clean the roads. I have a Mazda CX 5 with AWD as my daily driver and have only driven my F Type a few times since November. It stays in my fully finished and insulated garage, plugged into a CTEK device when the weather is poor. I'll be taking it out again soon to run the fuel level down and put in some fresh gas. I do have Stabil in the tank now as the gas is about 4 months old. It will be good to get it out for some exercise.

The comments about people from warm climates who emigrated to cold, northern locales cracked me up. My great grandparents emigrated from Sicily and central Italy to the US in the late 1800's and settled in the Buffalo, NY region. I'm sure it was because there were plenty of jobs available but I'll bet their first winters there were a giant culture shock. They probably wished they had kept going to Florida or California !