Just A Chad Bit....

Mike visited Chad last night. Chad is our soon-to-be-roofer. A few years ago he re-roofed our garage... which, wasn't good at the time, because we had asked him to trim out our new exterior windows. Chad's an interesting dude to say the least. But he's a good roofer and a friend.

So Chad will come by the house and take some measurements to give us an estimate on time and materials. We'll probably purchase all the materials from Morse so we can get our discount and have them delivered - always a big plus on big jobs. Chad will just be roofing the really high and steep parts of the house, while Mike and I will tackle areas like the farmer's porch roof, mudroom roof, etc.

That's the good news. The bad news - we can't do it until late fall. October-ish. My jaw just dropped to the floor. Octoberish?! But even our carpenter agreed that roofing in hot weather is not a good idea. And not just because roofing in hot weather is a highly uncomfortable experience. The roofing itself would go on hot and then when the temperature drops, the roofing would shrink or expand (I forget which, I'm no expert here!) and possibly cause leaks.

Believe me, I don't want any leaks, but having to wait until Octoberish will not be fun... plus that means possible roofing mess during our annual Halloween party! Also not good.

As I recovered from the news, I said to Mike, ok then let's do some siding. More bad news. We can't just take some clapboards and slap 'em up there... our carpenter has to come over and take measurements with his fancy construction calculator to figure out how far apart to space the rows. This way, we won't come up short at the top of a window or anything like that. Plus, we have so many weird additions on the house at different levels, it would be a super pain to figure it out without a fancy calculator.

Nothing is ever easy, I suppose.

So that begs the question - what's next? Well, we have plans on Saturday, but I've already grabbed Mike for Sunday. I hope that we can perhaps start on the upstairs railing - another home inspection must-do. If you remember, my home depot card has been wiped clean and shiny - primed and ready for more 12mo no pay no int. purchases. Ironically, I'm super itchy to make a purchase that I won't have to worry about for a while.

Cross your fingers!

Cancel the Plot

Fishing trip is for Sat night - Sun morning. So my evil plot is canceled and I don't think I could have purchased the tile this weekend anyway. Bummer.

But stuff continues on. And unfortunately, now that Saturday's free - it will be time for some irregularly scheduled maintenance on my truck. It has needed it all summer! I have an exhaust leak, I need an oil change, one of my mirrors needs to be replaced, the new soft top needs to go on, the speaker box needs to go back in, the whole shebang could use a good scrubbing, and I have an annoying piece of metal on the front that scrapes the wheel when I turn and it makes a big loud noise like "ERUSAHDSFALSPKRPHAEEHG"

And it's very embarrassing when I'm making tight turns in crowded parking lots and soccer moms are staring me down... not good people, not good.

Meanwhile the house is in complete disarray - and, like the garage, you all know that I can only stand states of disarray for a short time before they start wearing on my nerves. Plus, time is ticking. We need to do the siding and the roof.... mmm, NOW. Not to mention the fact that the basement still looks like home depot just exploded down there.

At least Mike has been keeping the garage clean. I'm so proud! He's been putting everything back in its place and everything.

Poor Mike, he's been having such a busy time at work, plus working side jobs after work.... I feel horrible about producing a to-do list for Saturday on top of the already scheduled maintenance stuff.

I tend to be a slave driver as everyone knows.

There's just two days left in the week. I don't know. At this point I've just got to wait and see I guess.

Brewing Sinister Plots

This weekend was yet another indication and example of how absolutely insane and out of control summer has become. Let me explain - so, despite exhaustion from a mad week, we awoke early Saturday morning and hit the dump. From there we drove 30min in traffic to my parent's house to meet the boiler man. (A friend of ours who promised to take a look at their exploded oil burner - yes exploded.) A couple hours later, we're at the ATT store to consolidate more phone lines into our family plan. A half hour after that we're driving another 40min with heavier traffic back near home to the super market to pick up food for that afternoon's bbq. The store is madness and we barely escape with our lives and our food. On the way home we hit the liquor store. Then, finally home, we have barely enough time to shower, change, and cut up the veggies before heading out to the bbq. Traffic is horrible and we're a bit late to the bbq.

The bbq is fun and we eat and drink. Night falls and we dance and get ready to hit the town. So we drive another 20min to da club. Surprisingly energetic at 1am, we hit McD's on the way home, and then once at home, eagerly eat up and hit the hay.

Early Sunday AM. Mike's phone is ringing. We have to get up, wake up, drink water and get ready to eat clams at the annual Marconi Club Clam Bake. By 11:30, we're out the door and on our way - although still a bit groggy. But by the time the clams hit the table, we were feeling much better and each ate about 5 baskets. Arriving home at 3:30, we were bushed again and could do nothing but sit around watching TV. I slept for about three hours and could have slept for more, but forced myself to stay up until 10 at which time we finally went to bed.

So as you can tell by that madness - there was absolutely zero time for anything else! I'm lucky we managed to squeeze going to the dump in there!

This weekend though, I thought we were through with summer festivities. Ahhh, a weekend of work and relaxation ahead! And then Mike drops the bomb on me last night - fishing trip. Fishing trip?! Of course, not for me. It's one of those manly man fishing trips.

But then it hit me... What if.... what if I was to purchase the tile for the mudroom... and what if I had my dad come over on Saturday since he's not working Saturdays anymore to help me put it in.... (he used to own his own tile and carpet business and also did our kitchen tile) It's only Tuesday. And at this point a lot is riding on the fact that I have to do some financial juggling after paying off the DeepHo card last week.... But what an opportunity.

I'm glad I have some time to think on it....

Losing Steam

No dump. That was the one thing I was really looking forward to and the one thing that we didn't get to do over the weekend. And honestly I can't help but feel that we're losing steam.

Sure, the guys worked Saturday and framed out the porch ceiling - thus ending work on the porch for now. And sure Mike was good enough to put up the new hanging tool storage solution I bought for the garage last week. Looks fabulous - and organized!

And as for me, I cleaned the house. Woo-2Da-Hoo.

It may be partially because I've been feeling rather useless lately. I haven't been able to do a dam thing around the house except for garage cleaning - and that did feel good, don't get me wrong. I just hate stagnating.

And today I paid off the DeepHo card - had to. One of my 0% interest gigs was expiring 8/3 and I knew I wouldn't have another opportunity to pay it all off before then... There goes another $962.28. But it's paid. Phew. A relief and a bummer all at the same time.

As for the coming weeks - progress is unknown. Siding and roofing are next... a lot depends on a lot of other stuff. As usual, nothing comes together easily. I have to wait until my ebay auctions end, Mike has side jobs, we both have bbq's 'n other summer events to attend...

I'm going to try and be pushy, but we all know how that usually goes. Not well. =)

Fed Up Fri

This has been a lightening fast week.

So why the hell is time moving at 25% speed today of all days? Of course I'm not helping matters by checking the clock every 2.2 seconds.

I just can't wait for the weekend - and once again, oddly enough, I'm really looking forward to going to the dump. Sick, isn't it? But we have to get rid of the remainder of our garage trash before we can call that project officially completed.

Oh, and we also have to put up the hanging tools hooks I bought for Mike over the week. You know, a place to hang the shovels and the rakes and blah and blah and etc. That blah and blah and etc are always getting in the way, you know?!

Then there's that basement mess... but that might be a Sunday project. Saturday the guys will be over to frame out the porch ceiling.

And would you believe that's it? That will be the end. You probably are asking, why? Well, despite the fact that we still have money in the hopper, the siding and the roof just take priority over trimming out the porch.

What a bummer. But nothing I can do about it. Fall is fast 'a coming and there's still so much to do!

Lean Mean Cleaning Machine

Ah, 4th of July weekend. Time for beaches, bbq's, boating, fireworks, friends, fiestas, and garage cleaning.

That's right - garage cleaning.

For quite a while now the garage mess has been annoying me to no end. We can't find stuff when we need it, we think we don't have something so we buy it and then we find out we already had one, carpentry tools are mixed in with mechanical tools and plumbing tools are mixed in with building materials, and so on and so forth. Plus junk and trash and dirt - EVERYWHERE.

It was so bad, you couldn't even walk through. You couldn't even look at it, it was terrible. I said to Mike, I don't know how you can work in here if I'M this annoyed. I just couldn't imagine how he could accomplish anything.

So with the guys on vay-cay from porch work, I told Mike that Sunday was the opportune time to get this mess straightened out. He did not want to spend a day cleaning - but agreed that it was long overdue and we needed to do it.

We employed the HGTV method I learned from watching countless hours of Mission Organization. It's basically a five step process.

1. Remove EVERYTHING from the garage.
2. Separate into organized piles of like items - plumbing tools, building materials, trash, liquids, straps 'n chains, garden tools, stuff-that-should-be-in-the-house, etc.
3. Double check each pile - get rid of anything you don't want or need and consolidate. (For example liquids like oil if you have a million half empty containers like we did.)
4. Clean the now emptied garage and decide where everything is going to go.
5. Put it all back neatly.

Additionally, we had some other challenges. You may remember that our homeowners insurance company had a problem with that wood stove in the garage - so we had to remove that using our skid steer and get it down in the basement. (Using some straps and a plywood stove-surfboard mind you.) Also, our two car garage has just one door. No, not one big door. One small door on the left side. Well, eventually we'd like to put in another door, so we decided to make ready for this by moving Mike's tool box and bench to the opposite side of the garage where the stove once was.

We decided too that to help keep the garage clean, we would store all non-mechanical, non-garden tools and materials in the basement. This includes all carpentry, plumbing, electrical, and paint (non-automotive) supplies, tools, and materials. Unfortunately, we only have one shelf in the basement currently. Not enough storage space by far. And in the interest of time, we decided to leave new-shelf-building for another day. (By the by, we have so much scrap wood, we should be able to build more shelving without purchasing anything but storage boxes 'n stuff.)

So the basement is currently a mess of organized piles. I guess you could call that halfway there. When we get the shelves built, all we'll have to do is put stuff away neatly.

Luckily, we had time to make one dump run - and boy did we get rid of some junk! Phew, what a relief! Next weekend, we'll have to make one more dump run to finish the job. (Dump closes at 3pm, so we weren't able to get everything.)

Now at this point I'm sure you're all wondering, "Where are the before and after photos?"
Well, would you believe I didn't take any before? I was just too horrified by the mess. But I'm so proud of the after that I just want to hang out in the garage all day! Isn't that crazy! Although the basement's mess is going to start cheezing me off soon if we don't get those shelves built....

A little hard to tell the clean with all the bikes in there - but trust me, you should have seen the before!
Here's where the 2nd garage door will eventually go. Now we're ready for it with the bench moved!
I've never seen these shelves so clean since we bought the house. OMG it's amazing!

And finally, the bench area. There's a place for the bench, and the red tool box fits next to the compressor, and the welding cart has a place... so amazing!

I can't wait for the guys to see it next weekend!