Basic Carpentry

Learning how to do basic carpentry has been fun.  I'm still not any good at it, which simply tells me I need to practice more by making more things.

The first thing I really built was a simple short table to set my washer and dryer on; they're front loaders, and I'm really tall, so bending over was getting annoying.  Sure, I could have gotten the drawers they sell to set them on, but where's the fun in that?

I figured it better be pretty sturdy since they're heavy appliances, so I decided to use 4x4s for legs, and brace them with 2x4s.

After I built the frame, I topped it with some nice 1/2" sanded plywood.  Then I added some 1x2 rails, which probably won't do a dadgum thing if one of the appliances decides to dance off the table.

The biggest mistake that I made with this project was to not treat the wood before I put the appliances on it.  "How bad could it be?" thought I.  Well, sure enough, the drain hose popped out during one of the first wash cycles, soaking and thus staining the wood.

Construction-wise, it worked out fine, and has been totally functional.  It's not as pretty anymore, though.  Lesson learned.

There's a few more pics of this project up on Flickr.

Stairway to Something

The stairs project wasn't terribly hard.  Getting the old, rotten stairs out was a pain in the rear, as you might imagine.  Tearing 4" deck screws out of redwood isn't the easiest job.

The hardest part of putting in the new stairs was getting them even.  This took a bit of careful measurement and math.  I hate math.

After getting things all even on virtual paper, it was time to get some wood and start cutting.  The stringers are 2x12" which is by far the biggest dimensional lumber I've touched to date.  And, as fate would have it, 12' boards weren't going to be long enough (by about 2") so I had to get 16'.  Those suckers are heavy and hard as hell to move.

Cutting the three stringers took a while, but I managed to get them right.

The boards that I used for treads are Trex brand.  They're a composite board made of recycled plastic, and they're tough, dense, and a bit of a pain to work with compared to normal lumber.  They'll last forever, though.

The one thing I didn't account for, though, is that the Trex boards are 1" thick, not 1.5" thick like normal dimensional lumber.  Thus, the bottom step is 1/2" too short and the top step is 1/2" too tall.  Not a huge deal, but asymmetry bugs me.

This also caused a bit of an annoyance once I got to the top, because the top  step couldn't be Trex or it wouldn't match up with the rest of the deck.  What's more, the brackets that I used to hang the stringers at the top had a flange that stuck up above the plane of the deck; I found a solution for that, though.

I used normal 2x6 decking for the top step, and set the board in place.  I banged on it with a pry bar a few times, which marked the underside where the flanges made contact.  I then took a router and cut out enough room for the flanges to sit, and screwed the top step down.

Stairs:  Done.

Technicalities

I don't try to avoid technology by living up here in the woods.  It's actually been a challenge to bring this place up to snuff with what I expect from a modern home.  The house itself offers a lot of opportunities to put tech to work.

To get the low-hanging fruit out of the way, obviously I'm documenting my efforts on Flickr (and here now, too.)

One point that became obvious pretty fast was that I needed a way to track the various projects and sub-projects so that I could see what needed to be done in what order.  Yep, bugzilla.  I can tie each task together as needed by making blocker bugs for dependencies.  This has worked out pretty well, and I've been tracking other household maintenance tasks there as well.

Designing things is made a lot easier by using Google Sketch Up.  I've put together several small projects in Sketch Up first, created my materials list, and built it from exported images of my models.  This is how I built my laundry stand, aquarium stand, and generator shed, and I've created a model of the entire house in it now so I can play with changing interior walls and things without resorting to a crowbar.

With regard to amenities, wifi is what it is (and I still don't like it) so I set a requirement for the remodel to wire each room with ethernet jacks.  I picked up 500' of Cat-6 cable, some connectors and a pair of crimpers, and I'm going to town on that.  I've just wired up the living room with dual ethernet, TV cable, and telephone, and I'll add ethernet to the other rooms as I retool them.

Generation X

Two years ago, the power went out up here during a storm.  At some point, PG&E got everybody else back on but me and my next door neighbor.  Because there was a lot of outages (and totally understandably) they didn't get us sorted out for a few days.  Five days, to be exact.  Just long enough for everything in my freezer to be ruined.

It was then, after learning that lesson the hard way, that I decided I did indeed need a generator.  I picked up the $1k Honeywell model with a Honda engine from Costco.

This is all well and good, but the generator can't stay in the living room.  Or on the deck.  So, it needed a shed.

After the roof debacle, I knew I needed to learn carpentry and construction.  The convergence of these two needs meant I was building a shed for the generator.

Google has a product called Sketch Up that's really neat (and free).  It is a 3D modeling program that makes it really easy to design things like generator sheds.

This is where I started, and a few decisions went into this initial design.  First, it's too small to bother with 16"-on-center stud framing.  Second, 4x4s for corner posts was probably excessive.  It's heavy and it's sturdy, and that added about $20 to the final cost, so 4x4s it was.  Finally, doing the doors with heavy hinges and a reasonable design means they should last a while and not sag.

So, I took this design I'd made, bought materials, and dove in.  A few things became apparent pretty fast, such as "4x4s are heavy, when you screw a few of them together with 2x4s in between, it's real heavy."  Another was that any time you're going to start on something like this, you need to build it on a flat, level foundation and not try to frame it and move it after the fact.

Here's what I should have built first -- the foundation:

I did a post and pier foundation with very short posts -- 3.5" tall, to be precise.  wrapped the outside of them with 2x4s and then hung 2x4 floor joists evenly within the space to support the floor.  I laid plywood on top of that, and covered it with roofing asphalt.

I did the roof of the shed with plywood, asphalt paper, and shingles, and made a valiant effort at flashing it properly.  It's probably not watertight, but it's not bad.

To finish it off, I wrapped the outside with Hardie siding -- that stuff is insane.  It's made of concrete fiber or some such, and each sheet weighs nearly 80 lbs.  It's hard to cut, hard to handle, and easy to punch a nail through, but it doesn't burn and it dampens sound nicely.

To make this a fully functional generator house, I still need to route exhaust out and fresh air in, run electrical cable to the house, get a transfer switch installed, and a few other things.  For now, though, it's a place to keep the generator, and that's exactly what I needed.

The full set of pictures of the project are on Flickr.

Getting Started, Catching Up

So, I've been at this a while now, and at Jennifer's suggestion decided to write about the efforts and experience of remodeling my house.

Back to the beginning, then, and let's catch up -- I bought a tiny house in the Santa Cruz mountains as a fixer-upper in late 2008.  The house was livable (though some days that word is questionable) though it did need a lot of work to be "nice."

A few things I've learned about myself and my house since 2008:  Living an hour from town via twisty mountain roads does sometimes suck.  Living in a house in the mountains with only a wood-burning stove for heat also sometimes sucks.  Firewood is heavy, and is pretty worthless when it gets rained on.  It's fine to pay someone to do something, but you better get an accurate set of expectations in writing and agreed to beforehand.  Doing stuff "under the table" is cheaper and a great way to get screwed.

Having said all that, living in the Santa Cruz mountains among the redwoods is pretty freaking rad.  Being able to work on my house and make it what I want is too.

So, things I've done (or had done) to the house since I got here in an effort to increase both livability and resale value:

1. Roof leaked pretty bad, so I gave a contractor $5k to fix it.  He got his money, and I had leaks as soon as it started raining again.
2. Basement needed some sort of roof over the part of the deck that it's under, so I gave the same contractor $2k to build one.  The roof's too short front-to-back, so when it rains it drips directly onto the deck it's supposed to be covering -- and he never put up the gutter he promised.  I eventually put up a gutter, which helped some, but the front half of the deck still gets rained on.  That's the last time I hire that contractor.
3. Generator needed a shed, so I built it one myself to teach myself basic carpentry.  The shed roof doesn't leak, and it has a gutter.  The door/lock design is pretty dumb.  The generator stays drier than I do.
4. The stairs up to the deck were in terrible shape, so I tore them out and built new ones.  I used Trex boards for the treads, and that worked out fine.
5. Currently, I'm underway on the living room and hall remodel.  I've discovered a lot of stuff about this house since I bought it, and even more got uncovered as I demolished some walls.

I'll post more details about these projects in separate posts so that I can share what I did and what I learned from it.  I've got a lot of pics, too.

I hope you enjoy reading about this little adventure I'm on.