A slice of life from a child of the 80's
With the drywall mudded, it was time to seal and paint it. I know I took more pictures along the way, but I can’t find them…so you’re going to have to settle for a single picture of the walls/ceiling sealed and prepped for painting.
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…”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’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.
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”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”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.
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”Hello! Greetings! It’s been about four months since my last blog entry, and a lot has happened in that time period. At that time, the onset of the pandemic was occurring, and we had just celebrated Riley’s first birthday. So let’s play catch-up…
Continue reading “Checking in from the Pandemic”This weekend saw some more work on the house, and more specifically, the final touches on some aspects.
Prior to settling on the idea of buying a house, I looked at building a house. The problem was that I didn’t have the necessary amount of money needed as a down payment (40% of the cost) to obtain a building loan. At that time though, whatever the house ended up being, I had the idea of wanting the house to be green with white trim. When I finally settled on the idea of buying a house, especially one with painted siding, I knew at some point I was going to be replacing it…and I still wanted to go with the original idea I had for colors.
