The Super Official Homeowners Thread

[Sijray21]

I hear you on the time... With the kiddo and wife's weird work schedule time is precious. I just hired out (family friend/retired contractor) to have my screened-in back porch turned into a three seasons room. So worth it...

I took care of some of the remedial tasks of getting supplies and trash removal and let him do the harder labor. The western wall needed attention anyway since the support post was rotting (and we later found out that most of that wall was too).

[JPolen01]

That looks great! Love the flooring choice.

[Sijray21]

That looks great! Love the flooring choice.

Thanks!

99¢ / sq*ft laminate from Home Depot (floating click-lock). Looks better than anything else in the house, too...

[ScottyB]

Jay that is crazy nice looking. i can't imagine how much that opens up the place with a kid and dog running around. i would LOVE to screen-in or wall up our covered back porch but there's a million other things to do.

[Apoc]

Needs more shiplap.

[Sijray21]

I think the next steps for us are the back yard (pooling and drainage issues), trimming the trees, and replacing the fence. I'll tackle some of that stuff within the next 12 months,

[Jake]

Wow, that looks great! "Three-seasons room" means what exactly - no HVAC out there?

[Sijray21]

Wow, that looks great! "Three-seasons room" means what exactly - no HVAC out there?

Yeah, pretty much. Insulated walls, roof, and drywall / flooring. Lots of windows and a ceiling fan. I'll use a window a/c unit and we have a small oil radiator for heat that's working well. We have electric baseboard for heat anyway, so it's not all that different.

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Plus I compromised with the wife. She wanted this sooner and I wanted a gti replacement. But now I get to throw a little more at the z3 with the room built and the gti replacement waits another year or so.

[Beej]

btw,  Id highly recomend getting some of the cheap garage epoxy floor coat from homedepot and coating the wood floor with it.  Its really improved the durability of my shed floor and it looks great too.  No need for the expensive epoxy since its wood and will gladly bind to the cheap stuff.

Got 3/4" ground contact ply so durability didn't even occur to me but that's not a bad idea.

also getting stuff square is like the chasing boost leaks of the car world.

Oh my god I'm so happy to hear someone else say that, I thought I was going nuts, I had no idea why it was so difficult sometimes.  And all my shit was right angles, that fancy curved stuff you're working with must be even trickier.  Having been through this, your trailer is that much more impressive than it already was.

Most decent sheds I saw around this size (14x10) were like $2500-3500.  I know I built mine house-quality instead of shed-quality, but I'm in this wayyy deeper than that in supplies only.  Lumber was $1500, doors were $900, siding/shingles/trim were $1000, windows $250.  Add a bunch of misc trim/hardware and random Lowe's trips and I bet I hit $4500 easy.  Plus the man hours?  Amish people or pre-builts are definitely the easy button.  I'll also do pre-built trusses next time.

[ScottyB]

Oh my god I'm so happy to hear someone else say that, I thought I was going nuts, I had no idea why it was so difficult sometimes. 

the struggle is 100% real. you tweak one wall and it throws the rest 1/4" off...fix those and it throws the roof off. its some Chinese finger trap black magic kind of stuff.

my grandfather would harp on getting stuff square constantly. he was a seriously pro-level carpenter and his #1 time expenditure in new builds and renovations was either getting walls square or fixing floors/trim/sheetrock that required special cuts to accommodate a bunch of joints that were 1 or 2 degrees out of square. i didn't take it seriously back then...

i spent an inordinate amount of time on the camper getting the frame square for that reason and i STILL hit problems due to the wood being slightly warped or my math being garbage. just gotta roll with it.

[.RJ]

My house is packed up....  moving tomorrow.

I cant believe a crew of 3 dudes packed the whole house in 3 hours.

[Apoc]

I cant believe a crew of 3 dudes packed the whole house in 3 hours.

Mind blown, yes? I'll never pack my shit again.

[.RJ]

Laura was running around trying to "help" them by moving/packing shit. Fuck that - we paid them $1000+ for 3 hours of work and we'll have 6 or 7 people unpacking on the other end Saturday.

[Sijray21]

Laura was running around trying to "help" them by moving/packing shit. Fuck that - we paid them $1000+ for 3 hours of work and we'll have 6 or 7 people unpacking on the other end Saturday.

I'd only do that with specific things I don't want them destroying, damaging, or stealing.

[WRXtranceformed]

Yeah I don't know if I could pay people to actually box up my stuff, but moving them is a different story

[Apoc]

[.RJ]

i went to college so I didnt have to pack my things

[Ryan T]

Is that $1,000 just for the 3 guys packing your house? Or is that for the whole move?

[Apoc]

I'm chalking this up as a life skill. I used to struggle to get grass seed to germinate, then I realized topdressing actually worked pretty well. Top to bottom is about two months, including a very dry October where I had to water the damn yard every day (we have the most expensive municipal water in the US, I think). This are gets sun blasted like crazy, so I'm happy with the progress. 



Lawn restoration with only organic material was about 18 months worth of work, in all. I was tempted to spray it with all manner of synthetic shit more than once, but wanted to see it through. At some point it became a thing of personal pride, even if the lawn isn't that big (20% pictured). The trick was getting all the disjointed pieces effectively watered without getting any on the sidewalk, as it's a major pedestrian thoroughfare. Also, as I said, our water is expensive as hell. 

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-new...ter-bills/

[WRXtranceformed]

I'm chalking this up as a life skill. I used to struggle to get grass seed to germinate, then I realized topdressing actually worked pretty well. Top to bottom is about two months, including a very dry October where I had to water the damn yard every day (we have the most expensive municipal water in the US, I think). This are gets sun blasted like crazy, so I'm happy with the progress. 



Lawn restoration with only organic material was about 18 months worth of work, in all. I was tempted to spray it with all manner of synthetic shit more than once, but wanted to see it through. At some point it became a thing of personal pride, even if the lawn isn't that big (20% pictured). The trick was getting all the disjointed pieces effectively watered without getting any on the sidewalk, as it's a major pedestrian thoroughfare. Also, as I said, our water is expensive as hell. 

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-new...ter-bills/

Well done man, having gone through this on a slightly bigger scale with our yard I feel your pain.  Ours has mostly filled in thanks to generous applications of milorganite but I think it'll take another 6-9 months or so to get it to where it should be. 

In other news, today I took on the refilling of a recessed bed my wife wanted to put in. I felt the irony in my back when filing it in with fill dirt when I remembeted digging and dumping probably 10 wheelbarrows full when we originally dug it.  While doing so I also killed a baby copperhead and three big fire ant hills.  Im all for organic methods but when it comes to pests I prefer to take the sharp shovel edge + scorched Agent Orange approach to those demon spawn