Now that the walls were up and the roof was on, the focus could be turned to the interior of the addition. Now before insulation and drywall could go in, rough plumbing and electrical needed to be done. Neither of those things are up my alley – growing up I worked in residential construction with my dad, but we always did framing and finish-type work, both inside and out. For these, we had to hire it out.
Continue reading “Then came the insulation and drywall…”Next came the walls and the roof…
As noted in my last blog entry, this entry is going to talk about the wall and roof construction for the addition. So let’s jump in!
I got to the walls at the end of May. The exterior walls in this build had a unique feature – they were going to be built out and around the existing roof, as you can see in the following picture.
It started with a piece of paper….
It’s been a while since I’ve posted, closing in on a year, but this year we’ve been busy. This year we decided one of two things…either we were going to move, or we were going to add-on to the house. We started by looking at a really cool farm house, but the interest rates were simply way too high to go the route of buying – especially something as big as the farm house with the property and out buildings that it had. So for now, we opted to go the route of adding on. Our house was built in 1967 – it’s a single story ranch, and only has 1.5 baths. With 3 of us in the house, 1.5 baths is starting to be too little, especially with Riley getting older. What we needed was a master bath suite – and it all started with a piece of paper.
Shed Adventures
At the end of August, a very large storm went through the area. It ended up causing a lot of damage in the surrounding area, including structural damage and downed power line and poles. As it turns out, a tornado was also in the area and cause lots of damage, including loss of life, along the highway.
Continue reading “Shed Adventures”The Year 2023 so far…
It’s been a while since my last blog post – to be expected I guess…too busy living life to stop and write about it. But we are halfway through the year, and I want to catch you up on what’s been happening in our lives. Let’s go!
Continue reading “The Year 2023 so far…”Christmas train comin’ at ya!
Ah yes…it’s that time of year again. Time to decorate the house…trim the tree….wrap presents….and, oh yeah, ride the Christmas train! Choo-choo!
A roof over our head…sorta
In 2018 we re-sided the house. As part of that, we added a ledger board to the back of the house – the future home for the deck that would be built in 2019. When we got around to building the deck, I had the idea of building one without a railing. Because the deck was going to be relatively small (essentially 12’x12′), I didn’t want it to feel claustrophobic with a railing. On top of that, because we have such a large expansive back yard, I wanted the deck to feel open – one of the main reasons I went with 10′ wide steps. It took us a while to get actual patio furniture, something we did this year (2022), but even without the furniture, we’ve gotten a lot of use from the deck. The biggest problem however has been the sun.
Continue reading “A roof over our head…sorta”It is the year 2022 – A check-in
Wow, it’s been a while since my last blog entry. A lot has happened since the last one…let’s try to cover some of that.
Overhauling the house flooring
When I purchased this house back in 2016, I knew the flooring was eventually going to have to go. Initial pictures of the house when i found the listing showed that it had a somewhat dark brown stained hardwood flooring. When I toured the house, the current homeowner was trying to update it a bit, and decided to sand the flooring and overhaul it themselves with black stain. Upon taking ownership of the house, I literally had a weekend to seal it – the previous homeowner didn’t even get to that. In the end, its was a black hardwood floor….which would have looked OK if it had been done right, it wasn’t. So because of that, I knew I would eventually change out the flooring, and over the spring and summer of last year, I did just that. Ripped out the old and put down the new. I have a lot of photos of the process, but I’ll include just a few here.
Continue reading “It is the year 2022 – A check-in”HTML5 doesn’t have that? Hey, there’s a custom web component for it!
I’ve been on a custom web component kick for the last few months. Why? Let’s go into some background on that…
MSU’s College of Natural Science is currently in the process of migrating from one CMS to another. The reasons for doing so I won’t go into, but the process has revealed the need for some custom functionality that won’t be in the new CMS on Day 1. At this point in time I haven’t had any training on the new CMS, that is actually coming in the next month or two, so creating custom functionality in our new system isn’t even an option for me yet. So, I’ve had to turn to custom web components.
That camping life…
I grew up camping with my family, so it’s still something I’m interested in to this day. We started in a tent, but quickly moved to a travel trailer when I was a kid. Throughout my childhood up through my teenage years, we continued camping all over, but mainly in Michigan. The trailers came and went as my parents continued upgrading and ultimately moved to a 5th-wheel. One of our favorite places to go every year was the Mackinaw Mill Creek Campground in Mackinaw City, MI. We would go over Labor Day with my grandparents (on my dad’s side). Even when I was older, and the family camping stopped, I managed to go to this campground with my grandparents the very last time they went. There are a lot of great memories there for sure. The picture below however, is not one of them. This is a picture of teenage me in my apparent self-described “badass” look, sitting outside with my grandparents, eating something while wearing an Outback coat. Cool huh? 😂
