The Homestead
The fourth month of the new year is here, wherever has the time gone??
The house has been the central focus for just about a month and every spare moment around the other big rocks when they fall into place. First, we installed the new flooring, I saved no less than $750 by doing the installation myself because that is what the floor guy my realtor recommended quoted for the square footage with the floors fully prepped and cleaned. Aha, I'm not paying $750 for someone else to roll, trim and glue the vinyl down! I further had two whole rooms done before he would have even been able to get into the job due to his people being booked solid. On the downside, two rooms took a lot longer because of preparations and then materials and then project fatigue.
All was going well at this point, I even got my storage shelving set up in the bedroom designated "storage."
The last two rooms were a bear, the master floor needed some patchwork and leveling compound. I naturally screwed up the first pour of leveling cement, whereas I poured it and then immediately left for the night and then came back to find out that you're supposed to knock down all the bumps while it is still settings.
Out came the big guns to undo my work on an area roughly 4 feet by 15 feet,...masks and closing doors and maybe vacating everything out of the room BEFORE starting are HIGHLY advised!!! I did not do a couple of these things and the wife was most expressive about my mess!
The repour was far more successful...this the third bag.
And then we roll the vinyl, so we can finally sleep in our master bedroom instead of the family room where the guest bed goes! Yes, I did the floorboards not soon after this was finished.
And then the Big Orange Box ran out of my roll vinyl before I could finish and I had to drive 45 minutes to get it - and when I did, I know I picked out a slightly different color and shape that luckily is only in the kid's room. Polly. I may some day replace this...or not...sigh.
Keep in mind, the wife looks a bit larger at by the end of February, but that didn't stop her from cleaning...and in moving the fridge one night, when I bumped to see if I could make it quiet down (old crew chief trick), there was a huge flash from behind and the lights went out in her bathroom. Well that's not good...what was that?
Here's the fridge, there's once from this time and once from...some time before this time. Those are little holes burnt in my fridge from shorting an electrical circuit...
And there's the culprit! That panel to the left is 1/8" veneer, with a switchbox mounted to the side with the switches for the kitchen. This fridge was likely bigger than the old fridge, so they moved the lights, how smart of them...sigh...because when they did it, they too their wire, wrapped it in electrical tape, and said "Good Enough! Aha! This could have burnt down the house.
Yes, we missed this when we inspected the house, but with the way the housing market is right now, I likely wouldn't have been able to have had it fixed if I wanted to buy the house, and we really wanted to buy it - all the boxes checked except lot square footage, I wanted more. My realtor did me a solid, though, we had money in the kiddie before closing and he suggested I get a warranty, since any unused money from the $5000 we put in for seller's closing costs would simply to the seller if we didn't use it. Deal.
Turns out, GREAT deal, because it covered the wiring repair plus some repairs to the fridge - which is on the fritz, but we got ourselves a lovely little gondola freezer as a backup, and the wife loves it.
But back to that wall...I opened it up...and I had the electrician wire in a new set of switches on left so I could turn on the kitchen lights from either side of my kitchen. Overall, it went well. The wall is still open, but I'll get it done someday...this summer perhaps. The problem is, all of my tools and the drywall that came with the house are buried in the work shed under all the lumber and layout parts filling up my work space.
And then I cleaned up the old baseboards after they sat in the yard for two months...the miter saw turned them into little 2 foot pieces and into the bin they went. There was once a wonderful array of pastels in this house, each room a different pastel shade...I found pink, sky blue, and mint green. I suppose the kitchen was yellow, but I found none of that color.
I then had this little fun project where a previous owned used a PVC valve to run the water to the timer box, and it was broken off at the metal tee when I bought the house. I decided to replace it to ensure a future PVC failure will not render my hose in operable. No problem, new work, this time a metal valve. Eventually I'll find out what the water lines go tom because I don't know what they water, but for now, it's fixed. Upon inserting batteries...it leaks a little too much...eventual replacement or bypass due
Back to the yard and my workspace issue, I know I eventually want to build a large train room over my basketball court slab. For right now, I decided the wife needs a shed for our garden tools to get them out of my work shed, and then I need a second shed to get the lumber and drywall out of my work shed, and it would be nice to move the layout parts that are just in the way...so I buy the lumber for her 5x8 shed and holy mackerel, it's over $500 for the initial outlay of lumber!
And then I happened upon a Facebook seller reselling metal sheds. It hadn't occurred to me that I could get one, and then after his leads turn up nothing, I discovered the Large Orange Box Also Sells Metal Shed Kits - and my wife's 8x6 is less than $300! Hot Dog.
What more, they have another kit for a 10x12, and again for less than the initial outlay for lumber for the small little 4x8 tool shed. Perfect, I can finally put my lumber away in a place where it will be better protected than under the blue tarp since January that I very quickly procured because I wasn't about to let my wood get rained upon. See the price of lumber above why I care so much about a pile of wood!
So I set about building the floor with the lumber I had stockpiled, since I hadn't got to turning it into a shed yet, but now i know it's a 8x6 and not a 8x5. Yes, I returned the rest of the plywood for a refund, but I kept the 2x4x96s because in the time that I bought the wood and decided to return some wood, the price of the wood had gone up form $6.15 to $6.75, after going up from $5.95 between the time I thought about buying the wood and the time I actually bought the wood. Polly.
On this day, while I was working on my floor, a B1 flew overhead, which was a treat in and of itself, not only because they fly over so rarely, but because not long after this, there's now a B1 parked in the Boneyard...I am privileged to live just far away enough from the base that the traffic noise is minimal at best, but I still get to see it.
But also notice all the clouds? There's a storm coming in, and we had a barbecue with the neighbors on this afternoon...on a day after the wife's doctor's appointment, when we knew that the baby would be here between a day to week, and then this happened that night...
Not the snow, but the hospital, and more chiefly in the opposite direction to this picture. On the March night that it snowed in Tucson, with flakes in the air while I was driving, I took my wife to meet our son the next day, and there we stayed 4 days because things were rough in the beginning but turned out great by the time we left.
Eventually we got home and I could get that shed done...paternal leave is wonderful for work around the house!
I then discovered the easy bathtub fix to put back on the drain cover wasn't going to be so easy...luckily enough, the other side of the wall is my bathroom under the sink where the cold water does not work, so I already have good reason to add an access hatch...later this summer...because we still have other projects to finish, namely the sheds!
That 12x10 looked like a great idea, but I wanted the door on the side instead of the end so I could use my pallet jack and put my shorter lumber on pallets. If you have the room, this is a wonderful way to manage your storage! But to do this, it appeared I would need another shed kit to get the fourth panel to fill in the end wall...but I do have those layout parts filling up space, so a little 8x10 behind the 12x10 would be just the ticket! A second shed kit joined the first, with the single 24x10 roof intending to span the whole thing...I also chose to anchor this with cinderblocks, which also gets me an additional 9" of head room where I am 72" and these sheds are only 68" tall on the walls.
And that's as far as I have got with my sheds, the wife wanted a hammock put up in the bedroom over our bed for the baby, so now we have a hammock in the bedroom...another finished unfinished project because one wall needs reinforcement so the wife can also use the hammock. I also had five pieces of roof top plus trim pieces and the leading edge lip, and then affixing the top to the blocks, and that will be the sheds...and after a great Thursday, that is ONE piece of trim and about 50 screws to round out all the holes. And then, we just have to resettle the foundation, install the anchor wire, screw down the shed, and we have our storage units complete!
Tomorrow, there will be the progress on the models, for this night is nearly done and it is time to sleep...