Tag Archives: Renovations

The Eve of Destruction

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Once again, I’ve managed to go a couple of months with nothing new written here – which is sort of odd, because a lot of new things have happened since August. I guess the most earth-shaking is that I’ve kinda started dating again. At the end of the last post, I mentioned that a couple of friends and I might hike up to Bob Bald since Joyce Kilmer was open. The two friends were one of my bartenders and one of her girlfriends, and the bartender bailed – so the girlfriend and I went alone, had a nice couple of days (in spite of the fact that we went up in the tail end of a hurricane), and decided to continue seeing each other when we got back to the big city.

As it turns out, Sandie (I’ll call her “Sandie” here – largely because that’s her name) bought a fixer-upper of a house several years ago, and she’s fixered-up the hell out of it since then; so she’s been very interested in making me move a lot faster with my own projects. What that means, frankly, is that she’d demolish my entire house if I let her. I’m not letting her. I’ve given her the upstairs guest bathroom as her own makeover project while I focus on replacing the floors in the rest of the house – at my own pace, thanks very much – which has been the plan all along.

The first step of that project was to buy some new power tools. Partly because I’d need them for putting down the floors, and partly because I needed them to build a new workbench so that I could clear up some space in my garage so that I’d have room in it for three pallets of laminate and my car. So I dipped into the refi money and bought a new table saw, miter saw, and brad nailer.

Yeah, so I didn’t really NEED the brad nailer, but I’ve always wanted one and I was in the store and…things just happened.

Next, I needed to buy enough lumber to make a long, sturdy workbench in the garage. The idea being that I’d be able to get rid of at least two of the three “benches” that are in the garage now and have plenty of room for the laminate. I built the bench top during the weekend of September 27th, and was moving along nicely….until I got word on the 28th that the laminate, which was supposed to have been delivered in the middle of October, would be delivered the following day. I spent much of the 28th moving as much stuff as I could out of the garage and into the attic above the garage, and throwing out a bunch of other things. Rather than freeing up room by replacing three benches with one, I actually received the pallets with FOUR benches in the garage (one being only half-built).

But I managed to get the pallets in.

I also managed to finish the bench – last night. The final glue-up for the top of it (a piece of MDF) is the subject of this post’s featured photo. The final product ended up looking like this:

So far, I haven’t actually started putting in the new floor. Sandie, however, has gone crazy on the guest bathroom. She removed the stipple from the ceiling, then spackled it (and the walls), sanded everything, primed and painted the ceiling, and has primed the walls.

She also managed to talk me into buying bead board for the walls, a new sink, new sink hardware, new light fixtures, and a new fan cover. Somehow, she convinced me to take out the toilet – which I did yesterday, which resulted in a whole new set of problems and necessitated my having to buy a new Dremel multi-tool in order to get the busted closet flange out of the main pipe (in addition to buying a new flange and the ever-popular wax ring). I also determined that the sub-floor around the toilet might be suspect, and I may have to replace that (leading to removing the bathtub and vanity). I dearly hope not. The bathroom will end up looking amazing. Of that, I have very little doubt. I’d never planned to spend so much time or effort on it, however. I just want to put the floors down, to take my time doing so, and to deal with whatever comes up next….NEXT. Some people like to do everything at once. I’m not one of those people.

In the good news department, I’ll be heading back to Cheboygan next month and spending a week in the 14-Foot Shoals cabin at Cheboygan State Park. I opted for a “staycation” last year – worried that I waited too late and I might have a problem with snow at the Straits of Mackinaw – and I was unable to get the kind of relaxation that I needed. Combined with my health issues at the beginning of this year (along with other pandemic-related things), missing that week away really took a toll on me this year. I’m really looking forward to just going to my little cabin on the shore, putting a nice fire in the stove, and doing absolutely nothing for 6 days. If I get snowed in, I’ll find a way to dig out. Nothing’s stopping me from going this year.

And that should bring everybody pretty much up to speed. I’ll try (again) not to wait two months to update this – but maybe I’ll wait a month and update it from my phone when I get to Cheboygan.

The Rise and Fall of the Turf

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Two more months have gone by, and we’re now officially well into the hottest part of the summer in Georgia. I’m quite settled into the work-from-home routine – though I’m actually at the office today because my internet crapped out at home and AT&T isn’t sending a technician until Friday. Yes, I do have a mobile hotspot, but it’s just barely sufficient for doing my job at home.

The routine for the last few months has been pretty much set in stone. I get up at 5:00, feed the cats, drink a cup of coffee while watching the news or some YouTube videos. Shortly before 6:00, I’ll head out for a 5-mile walk, which gets me home at just after 7:00. At that point, I’ll have another cup of coffee (decaf, by the way – always), will watch the tube a bit more, and might eat something for breakfast – egg white omelet, bowl of cereal, or some fruit. As often as not, I’ll skip the food altogether. At around 7:30, I’ll take a shower and start work. Somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00, I’ll turn off the computer, feed the cats again, take another walk, put something on the stove for dinner, and drink a couple of rocks glasses of bourbon while looking at Facebook or playing a game on my phone – generally sitting in the screen house on my deck, though it’s recently gotten so hot that it’s uncomfortable to sit outside for too long.

The “Bourbon Barn” on my deck – a screen-house with removable wind/rain panels – is where I’ve taken to spending most evenings. I took this picture the day the roof was being replaced, which explains the rope on the roof.

After an hour or so, I’ll wander back inside, eat whatever was cooking, watch part of a movie or something, and generally hit the sack before 9:00. Lather, rinse, repeat. It really shouldn’t be surprising that I quite often do not know what day it is. Seriously – it’s not unusual at all for me to start the day by saying, “Alexa, what day is it?”

There are some highlights and banner days, however. For example, I had my gutters replaced last Thursday. After getting quotes from three different roofers to do the job – and after all three of them gave me quotes, but never followed up to schedule the work even when I sent them emails, I called a fourth company who was recommended by my bartender on Sunday. They came out and took pictures on Monday, gave me a quote on Tuesday, and did the job Thursday. The gutters look great, the work was done in less than three hours, and I’m not sure why the first three companies didn’t think it was worth three hours of their time to make $1500.

Another example: yesterday was Tuesday the 11th – and on Tuesday the 11th, my new retaining wall was completed. While it was expensive, it came out looking great and I’m confident that the erosion that has claimed about a foot and a half of my backyard over the last 20 years will now stop. I ended up hiring a hardscraper who lives in my neighborhood, and he went to town: 85-pound blocks, a few tons of gravel, two large drainage tubes, another ton of fill dirt, another ton or two of large rocks….the upper yard is not going anywhere anytime soon.

The new retaining wall shortly after it was finished.

The biggest disappointment with the new wall, however, is that my lawns were absolutely destroyed by the equipment and materiel needed to build it. As you can see in the picture, both the lower and upper yards are now little more than dirt. I’m fairly certain that it’s too late in the year to try planting grass, but I’m going to give it a shot anyway. Wendell (the guy who built the wall) really wanted me to hire him to resod the yard, but I’m not doing that anytime soon. The plan all along has been “Roof then wall then floors,” and I’m sticking to it. My floors – at least downstairs – are getting replaced next.

And I think the upstairs will get replaced sooner rather than later, too. Since I’m going to be working out of the house for the long term, I really want to get my upstairs office into better shape, starting with a new floor. It’s okay right now, but I need to make it feel less like a spare bedroom and more like an office, so I might as well start at the bottom, rip out the floor, repaint it, replace the lights, then put in a new floor and start getting the furniture laid out like an office. I think it will help me put some distance between home and work, and make the days a little less monotonous.

I did drive up to the NC mountains last weekend – mainly to find out if they were open and people could camp there again. I went to the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest and drove along the forest road next to the Little Santeetlah River, where all of my favorite spots did indeed have people in them. So that’s a good thing. I stopped for 45 minutes or so just to sit by the river and soak up the sound of quiet. Now that I’ve established that the place is open, a couple of friends and I may hike up to Bob Bald in the next couple of weeks and spend a night up there. That should be really nice.