I got Plans... Not Resolutions ~ I Got Work to Do in 2021
The main goal is to have the house ready to paint before the hot weather gets here. Now I don't want to just slap a coat of paint on it and move on. I want the house to look better than it the day it was originally painted. You know Church it up a bit. In order to get the house to that point it is gonna take some work. Some stuff is just for looks but others are because someone didn't do it right the first time. WARNING there may be a couple rants in this post... People doing a Half-Assed job doesn't set too well with me. I haven't done any DIY projects in a while... well except for the work on my truck. Welp, it's gonna be a big project year at the Splatts house...
I feel as though I am opening a can of worms on this one. Like mentioned before some of what I plan on doing is strictly cosmetic. One of those ~ While you are in there ~ type of things. Like the window for my daughter's bedroom. It faces the west and that is where all the weather comes from. The Sun beats on it and when we get those driving rains, the track gets water in it. The window needs replaced. From what I have seen the easiest, cleanest way to do it is to cut the siding out around the window. Then after the new window is in just add trim around it. Now I can't just have one window with trim around it so the plan is to trim our all the windows with some 2 inch trim. I will just cut out around each window the thickness of the trim, install the trim, and caulk it up.
One thing that always bugs me is when the builder doesn't enclose the soffits. Ya some style of homes look good with the exposed truss ends but most of the time it looks unfinished to me. You see the roofing nails sticking through the plywood and it just looks cheap and half-assed. With the new table saw my wife and kids got me for Christmas, ripping these soffit boards down will be a breeze. Attach a nailer 90 degrees off the facia to the house and install the soffit boards. Oh ya, and the router I recently got will made cutting out holes for the vents a piece of cake. Enclosing the soffits will take away a ton of places for the wasps to make their nests.
REALLY!!!
"Let's just overhang the shingle a little further and that should work"
It may have worked for a while but eventually the rain isn't making it in the gutters anymore. Well most of it is but all around the house there are places where the water just sneaks right behind the gutters and drips down the facia boards.
See the water marks on the facia?
It would have been much easier to install the flashing at the start, instead of now! I have to remove all the gutters, pry up the shingles, slip the flashing under the shingles and use some sort of roofing sealant/glue to hold them in place. The gutters need to be removed to paint so this might as well be done too. Perfect just perfect...
Then comes the front of the garage, it just looks so plain. I want to add some new light fixtures which is simple to do. Yet the big change will be when I pull off the siding and install some type of wood shingles to the triangle portion above the garage door. I did this at my parents house a while back and it sure did make the house look really nice. It doesn't cost too much and the area isn't that large.
Next comes the back deck. Who ever built this had no idea what they were doing. Honestly I was surprised it held 2 feet of snow on top of it a couple years back. You can go to any of the posts and shake the whole thing with ease. It is a free standing roof, it isn't attached to the house. I would like to attach it to the house, and continue the shingles down to cover the patio as well. Having the clear/tinted corrugated plastic roofing does help bring a lot of light in the house. So somehow I need to maintain a good level of natural light coming into the house. Not only does the roof of the patio need rebuilt, but the wood deck is rotting in a few places.
Rotten Boards
The Disguise
When the deck was built they didn't overlap the seems. So there is a big seem that runs right down the middle of the deck. It looks terrible. Instead of having to worry about staining the wood and sealing it up, I plan on having a concrete slab poured. I will be able to do all the prep work for the slab, so I will just need to pay someone to pour it and make it all perdy. Then once that is done I can get to rebuilding the whole patio. Oh ya, it's going to be about another 6-8 foot wider on one side and 10-15 feet wider on the other. I want to install ceiling fans and some lights for when we BBQ on those hot summer evenings. I want to somehow have a fire pit built in but that will have to wait.
I am beginning to think I may be biting off more than I can chew... But with the help of my son, @w-splatts, I think we can work at this thing a little at a time and make some good progress. The back patio will be one of the last things because having that covered area during the wet months makes a huge difference. This is going to be a great learning experience for the both of us. I will become a better teacher and learn to have more patients and my son will learn some valuable skills that he can use later in life... or until the next project.
Cheers
and
Happy New
Your Random
Dose of...
Big plans for sure, several months at least, that's unless you're retiring and can go at it full time.
By the time you get it will be a whole new place.
This project will give you another reason to purchase some more tools.
The deck extension you're planning is huge, what are you adding, another couple hundred square feet.
Good luck with this huge undertaking. Knowing you, everything will be G.I.
A great learning experience for your boy. Years down the road you'll look back at those days working alongside of your son and cherish those moments.
Ya, the new patio is gonna be super nice. I figured out a rough estimate for just the lumber and sheeting and it was around $1,500. The concrete is where it is gonna hit my wallet. My son and I just got my chop saw fixed, the guard broke, and got it all dialed in. I gave him fair warning... “Dude you better be ready, we got a lot of work to do and you are gonna need to get comfortable with this beast”. 😉😉
The patio roof extends out about 12 feet... so ya it's gonna be link a separate living space. Lol After I get furniture built and all that it should be an awesome place to hang out and watch the sunset... over the sandblasting shop behind my house. 😂😂
I have an old framing buddy of mine that I need to call and pick his brain a bit. Actually I have 2 come to think of it. I have been out of the framing game since 2005... dang!! I have been in the lineman trade that long... most people that knew me growing up never thought I would make it to this age. 😜😜
It sounds like your son is going to be as busy as you.
Before he jumps on the chop saw and starts cutting wall studs and the like, you may want to have him brush up on his fractions. I don't know how many people I have run into who have no idea how to use a tape measurer. With all of the jobs your kid has done with you, I'm sure he knows his stuff, but a little review never hurts.
Outside living space is the best, not so much this time of year, but during the other three seasons the porch is the place to be, especially a covered porch.
Have you ever asked the dude that has the shop behind your home, to tear it down? He's probably not aware that he is blocking your view. Just a thought, there is no harm in asking.
If there is any way I can be of help, just give me a shout.
For those that doubted you would be around to celebrate 2021, shock the heck out of them and make a point of being around to celebrate 2060. At your tender age, 2060 is possible. 2060 that is a scary number, I wonder what shape this planet will be in by then.
He isn't too bad with his fractions, he is a math kid so he likes numbers. He doesn't like to write things down and does all the math in his head... just like I did. Funny how that works.
I am just glad I don't have a 2 story house behind me to be honest. It is a whole line of shops, Wine barrel rack refurbishing, cabinet and stone countertop shop, a powder coating place, and a sandblasting shop. They got a lot going on over there. Who knows I may need to use their services one day 😉
I tell everyone I plan on living until 150, and retire at 85. If I retire before then, then it goes down in the win column. LOL 2060... that does seem scary. Almost like Back to the Future II when they said we would have flying cars. HAHAHA
Your plans sound great, you do know it's gonna take some time to complete, actually what I meant to say, is your wife prepared for the project? womp! I feel like our home (s) have been under construction for-ever. But it's always fun to see the progress, I just hate the mess. It took @thebigsweed and farm-mom to finish interior walls to a huge addition on our first house 3 years to complete. That was after our friends and family worked 5 days in the snow to tear off the roof and raise the house an entire floor. Talk about crazy, but so worth it. Our home was beautiful when completed. Went from 2 bedrooms to four and 1 bathroom to 2 full baths, with a huge family room to boot. More than doubled our living space. Ya gotta give the big guy all the credit.
All I did was cook and feed the masses...then help insulate, primer paint, paint, stain wood , etc. , oh, the good ole days. 🙄
Seriously man, good luck and enjoy working with your son. VERY special times, you both will fondly remember.
That is an awesome edition!! I have been leaning that direction but I don't consider this the house we will be in for the long haul. Churching up the back patio if really going to be a selling point, along with new paint. After that I might fix up the kids bathroom. Nothing crazy just new floors, vanity, toilet, and paint. See the can of worms has been opened... LOL
Sounds like the ton of elbow grease version of painting a canvas. Some artists can take an entire year to finish a piece. Yours happen to be a huge structure that has it's own brand of restoration to even the smallest details.
I don't have a skill for carpentry and my old man never had the time to teach me. We just lived in different timelines on the same house preoccupied with different work demands. The closest thing we got going was a father son cleaning of the roof after a wasps made one part their home, and then termite infestations. It's a tropical country where the only seasons are rain and sunshine. Bugs are the norm.
Your son is going to appreciate the lessons a lot. I went for property shopping with a friend and couldn't get any good estimates on how much it would cost to fix up this house and that. Made me say, shit, I should've asked my old man to teach me to fix things because that would save me a ton of money on real estate investing.
Sounds about right. Looking at the photos just spells weeks to be busy. 😁
I am the youngest of 4 boys and my dad has always been a handyman of sorts. He worked as an electric meter reader during the day and had the handyman business at night and on the weekends. That was used to pay for all of us playing sports. He would drag me along on his repair jobs and teach me little things here and there. He knew I hated spiders but would drag me under houses anyway to fix copper plumbing pipes. "Here hold this propane torch on the pipe, just don't burn the house down"
I spent about 4 years building houses, just framing. So I built the structural stuff. When It comes to that finish work stuff... I don't have the patients. LOL
Fixing up old homes can get really expensive REALLY fast, even if you are doing the work yourself. You can save yourself a ton of $$ but it will still cost ya.
"I am just going to replace the flooring in the bathroom, oh some of the floor is rotten, oh there is a tiny leak coming from behind the shower..." LOL The can of worms has been opened...
The tough part is to get him motivated to come out and help. I know once he does he will enjoy it. It is just getting him out there, that is the tough part. Today we are going to be working in the garage making a portable work bench from old parts and pieces of powerlines we rebuilt at work. It should be pretty stout when it is done.
This made me recall a memory when I had to clean a portion of the septic tank and pick up trash blocking some canals. Not dry trash but sludge, moss, and whatever my memories tried blocking.
LoL, this is so like my old man too. One moment he just wanted to fix the kitchen sink, the next we see him buying stuff to fix the other parts of the pipeline and even the electric circuitry near the spot. None of us even know there was anything that needed fixing until he mentioned it.
This is a piece of unsolicited advice I wish I knew when I was younger for your son. He's going to remember the times you're going to hang out fixing things and it's going to help him reduce repair costs when he can do it himself and have a good eye for property investing. And he is going to thank you for dragging him into it when he gets older so keep it up.
I never knew basic carpentry or any heavy lifting jobs. My work and lifestyle was stapled with to pen and paper, doing math, or be clinical work on a hospital. That means the next generation from my line has to learn those life skills from someone else. Good luck on your project, it's going to be a productive start for your 2021. 😃
I hate seeing the tile nails sticking out. I thought that was a mistake... “something missing there.”
Thanks for the lessons. 💪
I know right?!?! It just looks totally half-assed. Dang cheap bastards!! It is only going to cost me around $1.50 a linear foot to enclose the soffits. I estimate around $5-600 is all. Again if it would have been done at the start it would have been a lot easier.