New projects

So, the rain came.

Of course, that just meant going to inside projects. 

Then, we got some bad news.

About a month ago, the truck started eating coolant.  We took it in to the dealer and paid a couple thousand dollars to get it fixed.

It didn't get fixed.  It turns out that it is probably a blown head gasket. That sucks.

Lots.

The quote to get it fixed ended up being about half the home renovation budget.  I just can't do that. 

So, it looks like I'm going to have to add diesel mechanic to the skills I need.  I'm going to have to do it myself.

The shop manual quotes a trained technician with a fully stocked shop should take around 36 hours of labor.

I'll probably need longer than that.  Not being a trained technician with a fully stocked shop and all.  On the plus side, I have a garage!  And, after some rearranging, the truck even fits inside it.

But, before I disappear into the garage for a few weeks, I wanted to finish a couple of in-the-house projects.

One big one in particular. 

In order to be comfortable in the house, we needed a kitchen sink. We probably needed a cabinet to put it in as well. They are tough to use when they are sitting on the floor. 

So, cabinet maker.  Yeah.

I started out with the base.

Measured to my lovely wife's exacting specifications.

I used my new pocket hole jig from Harbor Freight. Fancy, I know.

 OK, so here it gets a little strange. I decided to use some old, scrap OSB that I had lying around for the sides. I did this for two reasons.  First, I don't really trust my cabinet making skills yet. I don't want to waste any nice wood on my mistakes. Second, I don't have a truck to go get anything else.


OSB it is.

I cut out one side panel, flipped it and marked the other side.

I'm learning the value of wood clamps. I need some better ones though.

Michael joined me for some education and to help.

I screwed on one side panel and built the frame to the panel. 

That might be backward from the normal way. I don't know. I'm not a carpenter.

The bare carcass over the plumbing.

That part took all of a day off. I spent part of the next day off working on the counter top and getting interrupted with things.

Nothing is as easy as the pictures make it look.

Then, this happened.

It's waiting for you Mom!

When this happens, you go out and look.

The sky was so crazy, it was brighter yellow than the house!

Then it was back in the house.

I cut the counter top out of a 3/4 inch plywood piece I had left from doing the sub floor. Unfortunately, I was so focused on the cutting that I forgot to take pictures.

I will say, I had to do it all twice.  Sarah ordered an undermount sink and I didn't leave enough room for the clips that secure the sink to the counter. So, I tossed that piece aside and cut another one.  That was frustrating. But, it was also educational. The second time around, everything worked a little better. But, I was running out of days off.

And something was still missing.

I went to Lowe's last night and bought all the stuff I needed to make the plumbing work.

Then, today, Lowe's came to me.

Sheet rock and 600 cinder blocks.

That will be walls and skirting some day.

Some day.

Again, I was running out of time, so I didn't take many pictures. I didn't finish this project until after 9pm this evening.

The towels were just in case it exploded. It didn't

There was one leak because I cross-threaded one fitting. It fixed easily

I even have most of what I need to hook up the dishwasher. That will be big.

It isn't fancy, but I built every bit of it.  And... it works.

I hope I can say the same about the truck repair.

It's the fanciest thing in the house. Except for the water heater maybe.

Time to change gears and hats.

Have you ever wanted to know how to change a head gasket on a Duramax diesel?

Me neither.  But, we will.

It was a race

 From the very beginning, it was a race. And, we knew it.

The house was taking damage every time it rained. For the past few years, sitting abandoned, it grew worse and worse.

When we took over the place, we knew our first priority was to stop further damage. In order to do that, we had to make the place waterproof.

I don't know if you've heard, but it rains quite a bit up here in western Washington.

We knew that nature was going to put a hard deadline on our efforts to improve the outside of the house, but we didn't know when that would be.  Last year, around mid-October, it started raining and didn't stop for three months.

We finished putting the final part of the first coat of paint on the house about three hours before the rain started.

Had to get paint deep in the crevice

The little things often take much longer than the big ones.

One, thin coat

I'm going to call that a draw.  Photo finish.

We were pretty happy to get even that done.

This gave us the occasion to look back at what we have accomplished.

Day one.  No RV.

The arrival of the roof.

All that tall grass?  Gone

RV? gone

Jet skis?  Yep, gone.

The first day of exterior demolition.

Cutlass?  See ya!

Mega-Spider! Gone, but his many, many cousins remain.

Progress

Ninja house

Little helpers

Starting to look like a home.

Getting there.

Almost there.

Of course, we also have to take a look forward at what is still left to do. And there is a lot.

It's a long winter that will be filled with indoor projects.  Like the bathroom.

 And the kitchen.

But even now, as the rain starts in earnest, work goes on.

R.I.P. Big Stinky 1994-2016

Meet Sunny!

A milestone

It's nice to check off a big accomplishment.  I need to congratulate myself from time to time. It helps keep me motivated.

And there is so much left to do that motivation is important. 

The last blog post left with me fixing a previous mistake.  I had put the siding on wrong on the back side of the house so I pulled it off and re-hung it.

Well, I had to go back to the regular job and didn't have much time to finish.

The first thing that had to happen was furring strips.

 There wasn't enough time for pictures. Before my regular shift, I only have two or three hours to get stuff done.  So, instead of taking pictures, I got stuff done.

At the end of the day, I nearly finished.

There were just these little corners left.

Soooooo close.

And yeah, the lines don't match up. 

I didn't care.  It was raining on me most of the day so I had to take the siding panels inside to measure and cut. My time was very limited. Sacrifices were made.

But the next day....

All the siding on! 

We ripped off all the old siding, tore out wall studs, windows, floor joists and everything. Having sheathing, house wrap and siding on before the rain starts in earnest is huge.

Now we just have to paint it.  Oh yeah, and trim. Don't forget skirting of some sort before it really gets cold.

Yeah, there's plenty to do, but I am going to let this one feel good for a minute. Heck, we even took most of one day off.

Then, it was back to work.

With so much done, we are changing the name of the house

From Big Stinky, to Daisy.

Famous from the election ad of the same name.

So, we passed a milestone. It's awesome.

There is still a ton of work to do, but I think this is proof that we are at least mostly up to the challenge.

Checking off a few things

It's been a big few days.  Some of this will reflect in pictures, some won't.

The house is improving.  I do believe that if someone saw this house now, as opposed to when we bought it, they wouldn't have trouble seeing the value.  When we got here, seeing value required imagination.

Until we let them inside, that still requires some imagination.

I know that it seems like I know what I'm doing.  I don't really, but I am pretty good at making things up.  Sometimes that backfires on me. 

Take the back of the house. 

I started putting up siding and furring strips there first so no one would see the inevitable mistakes. 

Can you see the mistake(s)?

Here, let me help you.

Yeah, those look a little off.

That's going to require a large trim piece to hide.

Yeah. 

By the time I got around two other sides, I was feeling pretty good about my siding skills. I could probably be the junior guy on a real crew!  So, I decided to fix the mistake. 

Of course that meant taking all the siding down without ruining it. 

So, I did.  Mostly.  The two pieces that framed the window weren't salvageable.

It went back up better.

We were still waiting on two windows to come into our supplier before we finished the front of the house. 

Still a ninja house.

Something not right with those windows

That's better.  I'll save the window tutorial until someone asks for it.

That cleared the way to finish the band of siding all the way around the house.

Which we did... today. 

But, it was too dark to take pictures when we finished.  Have to wait, sorry.

And, the burn ban was lifted yesterday, so we burned two of our debris piles.  Gone.

Again, no pictures. We worked until just after the sun went down.

Oh yeah, and I finished the latest rewrite of The Adventure Nickel book.  I sent it off to an editor.

Yeah, how about that! 

All these things finishing up, what will I do with all my time?

Oh yeah.