GARAGE STEP 6 - DOORS, WINDOWS, & PAINT

Now that Google has its hooks into me for a whopping $2.49 a month, I once again have enough storage capacity for as many pictures as I will ever be able to put on this computer.  Perhaps there was another way, like removing photos onto a disc, or something like that, but what the heck, sometimes it's easier to just go with the flow.

The garage is done!!  Yesterday morning, the smaller roll up door was installed, the county inspector came by and signed off on the final inspection, and we now have a 1,504 square foot building that will allow us to get serious about moving everything to the new place.
 

During the last couple of days, all 3 doors were installed, the 3 small windows were installed, and the entire building was painted to match the colors of the house.   From start to finish, the entire project took exactly 2 weeks, and that included a few days of down time waiting for the roll up doors to arrive from Utah.  There were also some delays getting the building permit, but the actual construction only took a little over a week.

My next focus is to get the underground conduit closer to the building, and to where it will tie into the main power source at the left side of the house.  I also have some plumbing and utility clean up work to do in that same area, where the power comes into the property.

This experience with the Original Shed & Garage Company, has been a very positive experience through all phases of the project.  It took me awhile to commit to a contractor, getting bids from several builders, and that delayed the process.  Once I decided to have Spence, Bobby, and their crew build the garage, everything went just as promised, with no surprises.  There were extra expenses on their end, such as increased costs for the doors, and a re-engineering of the plans, but there was no attempt to pass on those additional costs.  Total cost of the building, including concrete patio & walkway = $42,000.  When making the final payment yesterday, I told Spence that I would be happy to serve as a positive reference for any future customers.  

Now that the building is complete, the next priority is to get back to Lake Havasu, and get serious about moving our stuff to the new place.  That's going to happen right after this Thanksgiving Holiday weekend.

A Happy Thanksgiving day to all, and a special thought for our son Michael, who is in transit back to Afghanistan.

REACHING THE LIMIT

This post was supposed to be about the finishing touches on the garage.  When I started to load the pictures of the paint being applied, the doors and windows being installed, I got a pop up from Google, stating that I had reached my storage limit of 1 Gig in Picassa.   What the heck is going on?
Further examination showed that after reaching the storage limit for pictures, you have to purchase more space, and that it can take up to 24 hours for the increased storage capacity to be applied.  So, no pictures this morning.

Swell, I love surprises at 5 am, particularly when they are going to be unexpected hits to the bank account.  I guess I shouldn't complain, considering up to this point, that Gmail has been free for all of these years.  The only cost associated with the blog, has been the annual purchase of a book, that I have created from the blog, through blog2print.  Maybe by tomorrow, I'll have more cyber storage space, or whatever they call it, and I'll be able to post some pictures.   By the way, the cost from Google for the increased storage is $2.49 a month.  I think I can afford that.

MOVIN MORE DIRT

When the roofers were finished, I started moving about 12-18 inches of dirt away from the right side of the new garage.  I have a 12 foot wide area next to the building that's going to be used as a parking area for trailers, the tractor and it's implements.  From the top of the slab, to the roof eve is 11' 3", and when I'm finished, there will be a little over 12 feet.  Almost enough clearance for the motor home, but not quite. 

I'm going to extend the roof out 12 feet, from just under the eve, and with close to the same slope as the roof, by the time it gets out to the end, there will be about 10 1/2 feet of clearance.  That will be high enough for everything except the motor home, which needs a minimum of 13 feet.  Eventually, there will be some type of shade cover to the left of the house for the motor home.

All of this extra dirt is going over to the lower driveway, which I'm widening, and building up, so that it is more on the same level as the upper drive.  The idea is to make it easier to turn the motor home around, instead of having to back up and go forward a bunch of times.  When all of the dirt is moved to where it needs to be, I'll have several truck loads of driveway gravel brought in to cover it. 

Today, the two garage doors are supposed to arrive from Salt Lake City, and when they are installed, along with the man door, and the 3 windows, the only thing left will be the paint.  We're getting close!

 

HILLBILLY LAILA

Marc, Chandra, & Laila came over for a Sunday morning breakfast, and I finally convinced Laila to pose for a picture.  One of her top front teeth is so loose,  she can push it forward with her tongue, close her lips, and the loose tooth sticks out like it's the only one in her mouth.  As loose as the tooth is, it's not quite ready to come out, as several attempts have been made at an extraction.  I think any day now, somebody will be talking with a lisp.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we're looking forward to spending the day with our family, and enjoying the traditional feast.  We've already purchased the Butterball turkey, and Chandra, Patty, and Aunt Claudia will be putting together all of the other yummy stuff.  Tomorrow, our oldest son, Micheal will be flying back to Afghanistan, and we'll all be thinking about him a lot, until he returns to his wife Amy, and their home in Georgia.

A NEW DISH

With the purchase of a new flat screen TV, it was time to have our DISH Network account moved from Lake Havasu to Tucson.  The technician came out yesterday morning, installed the new DISH antenna, ran some new cables, and had the TV up and running within an hour or so.

We're slowly making the transition from our old home, to the new one.  With the new garage almost finished, it's time to get serious about getting all of our "stuff" down here to the new digs.  Right after Thanksgiving, we'll be making a trip back to the lake, where we'll load both of the trailers, and find a mover to bring the furniture.  I'm hopeful that by Christmas, we will have made the complete move, and the last chapter to close, will be the sale of the house.  No offers yet.  The Boat Brokers sold our boat, and we should have a check within a week or so.  By consigning it in Lake Havasu, we took a pretty good hit on the amount of money in our pocket, but, I didn't want to drag it to Tucson, and it just wasn't possible to put it up for private party sale, without being in Havasu.

I spoke with our oldest son Michael yesterday, who is just a few days away from heading back to Afghanistan for his second tour.  He will be working at Bagram Air Base for 4 months, with a return sometime in mid March.  Since his retirement from the Army as a Chief Warrant Officer, Mike has served as a contractor, and is now a civilian employee for Uncle Sam.  His job in the intelligence community, under the National Security Agency umbrella,  is similar to what he did during his time in the Army.   Even though his work, and living location at the air base will be fairly secure, we'll all be glad when this latest tour is over.

GARAGE STEP 5 - A ROOF

The roofing crew showed up mid morning, and there was a question before any work even started.  The shingles that they brought were brown, matching the two exterior colors of the house.  However, the shingles on the house are white, and fortunately, they asked before nailing down any of the darker shingles.  One of the H.O.A. rules, is that detached buildings must have the same paint colors, and the same roof colors.  This little glitch was more my fault for not communicating the need for the same shingle color as the house.  In a couple of hours, they were back with white shingles, and the two man crew started putting the roof on.

While I was leveling the approach to the garage, one of the guys came over and asked how high my loader would go.  I raised it to the top position, which was only slightly below the roof at 11 feet, 3 inches.  They asked if I would lift the very heavy shingle packages, so they wouldn't have to carry approx. 70 of them up the ladder.  The pictures show that they only had to put the shingles in the loader, then take them out at the edge of the roof.  This sped up the process, and saved them the agony of manually climbing the ladder with all of the shingle packages.

When the sun started to set, they had one side of the roof done, and about one half of the other side.  I think they're coming back on Tuesday to finish roofing, install the two garage doors, and the man door, then start painting.  If we get the final inspection on Wednesday, we're still on track to be done by Thanksgiving.

GARAGE STEP 4 - A BUILDING

The construction sounds of nail guns, hammers, skillsaws, air compressors, and the ever present boom box radio, blasting music that lets just say, isn't on my Ipod, was not present yesterday.  It was back to normal, as the framing crew finished the garage shell about 36 hours ago, and the peace and quiet of the rural desert had returned.

The garage shell is up, and what remains to be done, is a little bit of trim, doors & window installation, roof shingles, and paint.  The roofing crew will be here today, and the two large garage doors are due to be delivered next Tuesday.  A final inspection is tentatively scheduled for next Wednesday, and when we sit down for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, the garage project should be finished.  Notice that I used the word "should".  I shouldn't be quite so skeptical, because this project has moved along at a rapid pace.  When you consider that only 8 days ago, there wasn't even any concrete on the ground.

Now that the building is up, it's much easier for me to visualize where everything is going to go, and this smaller version of the garage/shop that I originally wanted to build, is going to be more than adequate for our needs.  It's just not big enough to house the motor home. 

While I was picking up some of the scrap wood yesterday, Ray, one of my new neighbors came by, and we were talking about how fast this project had progressed, once it got started.  During our conversation, he asked me if I had contracted with an electrician to do the electrical  yet.  When I said no, I was planning on getting several bids before committing, he let me know that he was retired from a 30 year career as an electrician.  When he offered to do the job, at a fraction of what I was expecting to pay, I quickly accepted, and in a few weeks, I'll add apprentice electrician to my resume.  He estimated that materials, minus lighting would be under $500, and the total cost wouldn't be much more than that figure.  Wow, what a surprise, especially when I was budgeting around 2-3 thousand for the job.  Maybe I'll be able to return the favor, with some tractor/backhoe work on his property. 

This morning, the noise returns, but by the end of the day, there should be a new roof on this latest addition to the Chance Ranch.
  

BAD WORKMANSHIP

Late yesterday afternoon, Mike from Creative Aluminum came by to do the final measurements for the new patio/walkway cover, that's going in front of the house.  While here, I had him take a look at the 10 x 40 awning that covers the back deck.  In just a few minutes, he confirmed my suspicions, that whoever put this thing up, didn't know what the hell they were doing. 

It looks OK to the casual observer, but the first clue of problems came during a rainstorm.  The entire 40 feet, where the awning attaches to the house, leaked like it was a mini waterfall.  When I got up on the roof, I discovered that the flashing had not been secured under the drip rail, but instead, it was simply screwed to the facia board.  I did a temporary repair, by caulking the top edge of the flashing, which stopped most of the water from making its way in between the roof edge, and the awning.

The scariest discovery was that the awning was not attached to the roof edge properly, and where the 5 support posts are attached to the deck, it's  a disaster waiting to happen.  Rather than being bolted to the deck, each support is attached by 2 small wood screws, that according to Mike, will not hold during a strong wind.  Can your just imagine a 400 square foot aluminum sail, flapping in the wind, as it waves like a flag over the top of the house.  Don't want to go there, so when Mike comes back to put up the front awning, he agreed to do all the things necessary to fix, and secure the back awning according to code.  His schedule is pretty full, and with Thanksgiving next week, it's going to be about 3 weeks before Mike can get back here to do the new installation, and fix the existing awning.
Hopefully, there are no strong winds in the future weather forecast.

GARAGE STEP 3 - LUMBER

During the day long process of replacing the front doors of the house, and all of the water damaged wood, the new garage lumber arrived.  The 4 man framing crew started building the walls, and continued non-stop for the next 5-6 hours.  When they finished, the front, and both side walls were done, and ready to raise.  Due to some pretty good wind gusts, they decided to wait until yesterday, to put the walls up.

At 7 am yesterday, the carpenters fired up the air compressor, and the two nail guns started spitting nails into the wood about as fast as I can fire my AR15.  Before I finished my morning routine (coffee, blog post, email, food, shower, etc.), the 4 walls were up, and this project finally started to look like a building.

During the weeks leading up to this point, I have been waiting for the official approval from the Homeowners Ass'n (HOA).  I have spoken to the president on several occasions, and he has given me a verbal OK, despite the fact that the new garage will  be taller than the CC&R guidelines.  With the horsepower that HOA's have, I'm going to be a little nervous, until I see the approval in writing.  The HOA board of directors met last night, and I anticipate hearing something today, or in the near future.

One of the reasons the building will be about 2 feet taller than the maximum 14 feet, is because I wanted a 10 foot door.  The door to the right in the above picture is the larger door, and the one to the left is an 8 foot high door.  With a 10 foot door, I will be able to fit everything, including Marc's boat, inside the garage.  The only thing that won't fit is the motor home.

View from the back of the garage

  

 At 47 feet deep, I think all of my toys, tools, and other stuff will fit.

 The trusses arrive.

About mid day, Patty and I drove into town, and when we returned a couple of hours later, the crane had arrived, set the trusses, and was leaving when we pulled into the property.  Now the structure is really starting to look like a building.

When the workday was done, most of the roof plywood was firmly nailed down, and one wall was sheeted with the siding.  Today, the roof, minus the shingles, will be finished, the walls will all be covered, the man door installed, and a bunch of other stuff will be completed.  The intermediate inspection from the county has been requested for tomorrow, and by Friday, the roof will be shingled, and the only major things left to complete will be painting, and installation of the two garage doors.

With the completion of the garage just days away, Patty and I are both starting to focus on getting everything moved to Tucson.  We were going to make a trip back to Lake Havasu next week, but because of Thanksgiving with family & friends, it looks like we'll be making that trip in a little over a week.

DIGGING DEEPER

Did I mention in yesterdays blog post, that many of my projects turn into much more than meets the eye?  I said something like they're never easy, and the repair of the water damaged floor at the front door, turned into exactly one of those can of worms projects.

When we purchased the house, we knew from day one, that because of a loose tile, and some other evidence, that there was possibly more damage under the tile.  When I pulled off the first row of tile near the door, a few weeks ago, I thought that perhaps I could just replace the tile.  Later, when putting weight on that section of floor, I could see the floor move, and I knew it was much more serious.  What I didn't know then, was just how extensive the damage was.

It appears that water had been getting under the front door for quite a long period of time, as the more my two guys tore into the floor and wall, they continued to find dry rotted wood.  When all of the damaged wood had been removed, Marteen, the classic fix, or build anything kind of guy, tried for a couple of hours to get the doors and frame back square with the house.  Because of the damage, both doors were sagging toward the middle, and dragging on the threshold when opened or closed.  Due to the rotted wood, not only on the bottom, but on the sides of the doors, we both determined that the only way to really fix the problem was a new pre-hung door and frame.  Marteen located one in town at the Window Depot, and Patty and I were off to retrieve it.  

By mid day, we were back at the ranch with a new set of front doors, and $616 poorer.  Marteen had the new wood installed, and the opening for the new door was once again square.  From that point, the installation of the new doors, the drywall repair, the replacement of the ceramic tile, and the repair of the front steps was pretty straight forward, and completed without any complications.

Some of the water damaged wood from under the threshold of the doors.

 

 The new doors in the back of our trailer.

 

 The new door combination as it is placed in the opening.

We have some painting to do on the inside, and the outside, but the job is done, and despite the extra cost, we both feel good that the problem is gone.  Patty still has the doors she likes, with the venetian blinds inside the door, and I can cross off one more project on my long list.

The wood, and construction materials showed up yesterday, and the 4 man crew started framing the garage.  It's amazing how much progress they made, and I'll have pictures tomorrow.

TV x 2, & A COUNTRY FAIR

 The new second TV.

It seems that most everything I do, or get involved with, is never easy.  At least that's my perception, as I often end up not satisfied with the end result, and find myself doing the task over again.  Or, I end up with a defective product, and have to go through the hassle of sending it back, exchanging it at the store where it was purchased, and in cases where not much expense is involved, simply throwing the junky item in the trash can.

Yesterday morning, I took the Sanyo 50" flat screen back to WalMart where I purchased it a few days ago.  After unpacking the TV, and mounting it on the stand, I discovered that at the very bottom of the glass, the screen was cracked.  Damn!  I had to take the TV back down, repackage it in the huge box, and drive 20 miles back into town for an exchange.  The good news was that WalMart had one left, and by noon, the second new TV was unpacked, and up on it's new stand. 

Over the weekend, Patty and I drove out to the Pima County Fairgrounds for the Vail Country Fair.  This was more of a business, and services display for folks like us who reside in the southeastern area of Tucson.  We picked up some information, I had a burger, and it was a nice way to spend an hour or so at the fairgrounds, where we have on many occasions, parked our motor home during visits to Tucson.

This morning a couple of things are supposed to happen.  Notice I say that with a bit of skepticism.  My handyman/concrete guy is due to arrive about sunup to fix the damaged floor at the front of the house.  The lumber for the garage is set to be delivered, and the framing  is scheduled to start today. 
Stay tuned.............

ART FROM N.M. VIA S.F.

I won't pretend that I know much about the pottery piece, or the basket that arrived in the mail a few days ago.  Patty's brother Michael, who lives in S.F., obtained both of these pieces on a recent visit with his friend Jamie, who lives in New Mexico.  Knowing that his sister is a collector of Native American baskets, and pottery, Mike gave Patty an early Christmas present.   When she opened the box, there was a detailed description of the history for this particular type of pottery, with origins in Mexico.  I think she said that this piece dates back about 60 years, and the artist was responsible for resurrecting the techniques that are utilized with making pots such as this.  I know she was pretty thrilled when she opened the box, and was grateful to add these two pieces to her collection.

On a recent trip downtown, while browsing in a western style furniture store, Patty spotted this arrow quiver made from a fox hide.  She wanted this picture for her pal Nancy, who has recently begun a project to redecorate part of her house with Native American/Western pieces.  Needless to say, I'm pretty clueless when it comes to stuff like this, other than a lot of it is kind of neat to look at.

Due to the rain yesterday morning, my floor repair guy called to cancel.  As I mentioned, taking the front doors off during a rainstorm wouldn't have been a very good idea.  He's tentatively scheduled to return tomorrow.  The lumber for the garage is also due to arrive tomorrow, and the roof trusses the day after.  If, and that's a big if, according to my contractor, if everything goes as planned, we'll have a finished garage by this Friday.  The only thing that will not be completed, is the two insulated garage doors, that are coming from Utah.

A NEW TV

When we moved to Lake Havasu City from CA 10 years ago, we purchased a new TV with surround sound, and all of the other bells & whistles.  Back then, this 48" projection TV was state of the art, and the total cost was around $3,000.  When we decided to move to Tucson, I got "THE WORD", that the big, ugly TV was not coming with us.  I had to agree, the old TV & cabinet does take up a lot of room, but hey, it still works perfectly.  One of the deals Patty and I made with each other, when we made the commitment to move, was she was in charge of the interior details, and the outside, including the garage, was my decision area. 

Flash forward to yesterday, and we pulled the trigger on a new flat screen 50" TV.  Total cost - $548 plus tax.  A TV cabinet and stand was another $200, and we were out the door for about a third of the cost 10 years ago. 

The cement contractor I hired,  is kind of a jack of all trades, and while he was doing the concrete, he looked at the floor near the front door.  The sub floor is indeed damaged from water intrusion under the door, and needs to be replaced.  He's due here this morning, to start removing the damaged wood, and eventually putting it all back together, including new tile.  The only problem as I write this at 4:50 am, is that it's raining pretty good, with some stiff winds.  If it doesn't stop soon, removing the front doors won't be a very good option.   We'll see................