I'm sure you're right.  

I think I got a good slab.  

I just don't understand my slab.  Watching its behavior with regard to water is a learning experience.

That's a great story.  I've seen people load scoops of mulch with a LOT or a little, depending on the operator and how they handled the machine.  Didn't think about that being true for gravel but I guess it is, and that's  a serious weight difference.  For mulch it matters a lot whether they go to the very bottom of the pile, or go in up the side a bit.  Dunno if that matters for gravel, though I'm betting the gravel at the bottom might be wetter?

I finally had to bite the bullet and get new tires for the old Trooper I'm using as a tow vehicle. Same issue...dry rot from the vehicle just sitting.  They were holding air, but it was a matter of time before I got stranded on the road with a trailer.  I did not go for particularly good tires because of the age and questionable longevity of the vehicle.    I may regret that at some point.

Back when I was landscaping for money, I did everything out of the bed of a pickup. (I did not mow for money, so had no real need for a trailer unless it was a big job, and then the nurseries would deliver)  I remember going to the quarry and getting what my small pickup would hold--back then they would load the bed of a truck, even a small one.   They eventually got tired of writing up tickets for $3.00 every time I hit the scale, and told me to just come back when I had the job done and pay for the whole thing.

It was not that much of a surprise to find that most quarries won't load a small truck or a single-axle trailer now, as everything is about liability now and is tending toward "go big or go home."  (More specifically Home Depot.)  Still, I was sad to hear them say it.

Look what came to UPS today!







Is it food?  I bet it's food.







I can't smell it, but it LOOKS sorta like food.  It must be food.






Oh teh Noes!!!  It's NOT FOOD!  






Nope, definitely not food.





Ah, shoot, that one is skinnier, but it is not food either.






Thank you very much, @Handydave for trusting me with your awesome tools.

@Rat_Patrol

You think the weight might have blown out the side of my valve stem?

I honestly cannot figure a reason that the stem failed.  (It failed at the usual point-- right at the tire-- but maybe I just had a faulty stem since these tires were new with the trailer)    It was NOT on the side where the loader was dumping rock, and even if it had been, the fender should have taken the beating, not the tire.

I've had exactly one blowout in my life, going down I-65 at 85 mph in a light truck.  Hit some tiny sharp thingies dumped out of a container on a tractor trailer flatbed.  That tire blew apart completely.

But after considering this load, I wonder if I did blow a tire with the weight, but it was not an immediate catastrophic failure. It just put too much pressure on the tires and blew the weakest point?

Not seeing how a keyway would have done anything useful at all in this particular building.

Sorry all..

It's a slow time right now.

Death in the family, emergency surgery for a pet, rain, rain, blowing cold, more rain, yadda yadda yadda.

We have mud.

I will be back to it asap.

In the meantime I will post pics of my urban assault vehicle loaded down with nearly an entire pallet of tile.  (Not quite...had to go for a second load.) Van was ridin' low.

8 X 48 hardwood floor type tile.  Pretty thick, so it should go down relatively easily.

Chickiepoo at Lowe's wanted it gone so she came down to a dollar per square foot and I made it gone.  The whole time I was thinking, "I might have just made a massive mistake."

Not because I'm afraid of large format tile. I'm not.  But even with two bathrooms in a house I'm rehabbing in the big town north of us, I might get really tired of it before I use it up.

Anyway this will be the floor in the bathroom and kitchenette in the new building.





This is it against the (beat all to shit) floor in my house.  My current floor was once an old barn, and it turned out WAY warmer in color than I'd hoped, so the more neutral tile appeals to me.



I stalk Lowe's clearance products like a vulture stalks roadkill.

Got some windows for the upstairs of the building--on the back side because I don't care what that looks like (I know, that makes me a rotten person, doesn't it?)

Guy: How about $350 for these two windows?

Me:  I've been watching these. They've been here a long time.

Guy:  Okay how about $75 for this one and $50 for the other.

Me:  That sounds AWESOME.

So.....$850 worth of windows for  $125.

They're sliders without the appropriate grids, but since only the neighbor (who bought 26 acres and built his house 200 feet from my back door) will see them from the outside, I don't care.

Well...he bought the land. It's ag land. He can put his house wherever he wants to.

All the neighbors are wondering why as well.

I have thought, (and so do a lot of the neighbors) that he intentionally did this, thinking we would be miserable and sell to him and move.

I don't know if that's true, but if it is, that will not work out well for him.

Only way to control the land around you is to own it, and our money was committed elsewhere since it is land that will not pay without making it a niche farm, which he is doing.

That's BEAUTIFUL!

Did you do that?

Not mine.  It's porcelain.  I think the other poster's is too.

ETA:  If you're considering your cabin, they do make some really nice wood-look vinyl.

Doesn't look quite as much like hardwood, IMO, as the porcelain tile, but so much better than it used to be, and in my experience, usually more durable than laminate (if waterproof qualities are at all important).

However for waterproofing issues, I'd choose a sheet vinyl, not vinyl tiles of any kind.

Just my two cents.

Yes.  A quality sheet vinyl will be your friend.  I would go for reasonable quality even though it's a cabin. There's a huge difference in look and longevity between the low-end vinyls and the really good ones, from what I can tell.

Yup.  Love-hate-love-hate-love hate mostly love though. The vet bills prove that when they get sick.

I'd have a lot more building if I didn't have so many damn cats.

Just sayin.

Bumping my poor building thread for family issues and weather.

My hair is darker (and shorter now), my suitcase is softer, and although I'm WAY into wine, I've no plan to make Tuscany my first foray. (It would be the California coast, which I've experienced ONLY from the inside of hotels during conferences    )

Rain, rain, interspersed with drizzle, then rain.

Getting very frustrated, and even more behind.

Guess I better bump this.

Temp was -2 last night, and one corner of my septic tank is uncovered.

Happy New Year though.

Maybe we're just getting the cold weather out of the way early.  *crosses fingers*

66 for the high yesterday.

Low tonight's gonna be 6.

We have ice.

I would much rather have snow.  Ain't afraid to drive on snow.

When it's just ice, not so quick to hit the road.

One positive though...

My favorite guy was in millwork at Lowe's yesterday.  I'd been waiting for him because if I name a price I want to pay for a clearance item from the scratch and dent corner, he will say yes if he can do it.  He just wants it gone.

Bought the last exterior "people" door for the tall part of the shed (I am not counting the shop doors as people doors.) for $100.

Not a great quality door, but for now it will do.   I am NOT going to pick it up today though.  

Holy Smokes. It was wonderful today.  I'd hoped to get out and do a little work on the building tomorrow.

Now it's howling and 30 degrees.

Feels like about 15 out there.

Come on, spring!

Bump.  Warming up, but now it needs to dry out a little.

Jeez-o-flip this weather is teh sux for anything outside.

Since I've been bumping the thread just to keep it alive, I have decided to post some unrelated pics (unrelated to the shed, anyway) of the rehab I'm working on when the weather is bad.  Hopefully it's at least better than"bump for better weather" posts, I hope.

This house belongs to a friend who is out of the country and needs help.  It was his parents' home.  They are both gone now, and when my friend is home for R&R, the chest deep piles have been just too overwhelming for him to tackle, so I said I would help.   If the older folks were not actually true hoarders, they would fall very close to that line.  I have spent the past year cleaning out the house from attic to basement (almost done with that part) and have just now begun the actual demo and reframing of the inside.

The house was built in 1938 and has been remuddled both inside (somewhat) and out (a lot).  The original house was built like a tank, but the previous remodeling is just a big mess (done by a family member who was not overly concerned with honesty or quality of work, and whom the older folks unfortunately trusted.)   That mess will be cleaned up, starting now.

Its bones are those of a Craftsman ranch.  It looks nothing like a Craftsman at first glance, but when we are done, hopefully a bit of its former glory will be visible.  I will not show the outside (in its entirety at least) to preserve PERSEC but I can show bits and pieces.  Since y'all are pretty savvy about this kind of thing, it'll be just entertainment for most of you probably.  Maybe interesting for some folks who have not worked on older homes (or maybe who ARE doing that very thing now.)

I'll try to post a floorplan, with the changes I'm making when I figure out how to create that .  Might just have to draw it and scan it.  My digital skills are lacking.

This was a BIG house for its day.  
The house had four bedrooms (or three bedrooms, one office) and ONE bathroom.  Not unusual for the time period.  Hardwood floors throughout.  Original closets all cedar (I mean cedar BOARDS, not thin sheeting).

With one end of the house mostly cleared out, we are starting on the "shared" closet.  Y'all ever see those pass-through closets, where one closet served two bedrooms?

We're turning that one closet into two--a larger walk-in for the room that will remain a bedroom, and a smaller closet for the office.

This requires moving a closet door on the bedroom side.

Here's a view of the closet door that will be closed up.  That's the frame and (hand-built) facing that's getting moved over toward the corner of the room.  There's the cedar boards leaned up that were removed from the closet wall.  Ten internets for anyone who recognizes that object near the lower left corner of the closet.  I forgot to haul that out of there.



That is plaster over sheetrock btw.   The whole house is that.

Fun times I'll have, building up the new rock to the proper (very uneven) thickness when we put it back. Can I just say, I my 12" drywall knife with the corners filed off?

View into the back bedroom from the "office/bedroom" with the pass-through closet in between.



The door is actually now over there toward the corner, swings in instead of out, and opens/closes like butter.  Kinda proud of that.

OH LOOK!  My favorite thing EVER.  Crunchy wiring.

Since the house was *cough* rewired completely *cough* during the remodel just a few years back, this must have gotten accidentally missed!   Interesting to see how they anchored the outlet box, though, in the plaster-over-rock walls.



Since that outlet needs to be moved anyhow, and since we need a decent light in each closet instead of a dim, bare bulb in a single fixture, we had to shove the crunchy wiring up into the attic and cap it off.  That's an awesome handyman friend who helps me get tons of stuff done when one of me is not enough.



The interesting thing is the hole cut in the ceiling of the closet below.  It's big enough for a person to get into, and was clearly cut to allow the electrician to install the closet light fixture.  We scratched our heads until we went into the attic and remembered why they likely did that.  When I started on this house, the stuff in the attic was 4 1/2 feet deep, from one end of the house to the other.   Now it's almost empty.   Our guess is they cut the hole in the ceiling rather than move the stuff to get to it in the attic space.

Also had to go into the basement and the crawlspace to cap off the wiring under the floor.



It's where the kids used to hide and smoke, I guess.

I failed to get a pic of the boogered- up services coming into the house.  I'll try to get that for next time.  Nobody ever bothered to take the old stuff out even when it would have been easy.  The carcasses of utilities long since disconnected run all through this place, which makes it really confusing to figure out.

The door to the back bedroom had been replaced with a wider one to accommodate the stuff needed for home care including hospital bed, wheelchair, etc.  But the work was really shabby, so that's coming down, and we're going back to the original door (one will be taken from another spot in the house and we will rebuild a facing to approximate the originals).



Behind Handyguy, you can see the end of a built-in shelving unit that runs the length of the hallway.

Here's a better shot of that.



I've hauled about 1700 books out of this house so far.  Have some more to go.   Friends of the library loves me this year.

That hallway is useless, wasted space and the  built-in came out because most of the wall behind it is coming down (yes, load-bearing in a big way) to expand the kitchen by nearly 100 square feet.   A big engineered beam in the attic will span the space to carry the load where the wall is removed, so no header will show below the ceiling.

Discoveries galore when you start tearing out built-ins....

I'll post those in the next installment.

This thread took an interesting turn.

It's effing FREEZING out there.  Even Awesome Foundation Contractor chose to come and look at my rehab and give me a bid today, instead of working outside.

He gave me some great advice, some good contacts, and is willing to cut through the stone exterior on this house to turn a bank of Craftsman style windows into a set of patio doors with sidelights.

Now I have to knock into the plaster/sheetrock around the doors to see if we are structurally sound...or not.

There is a gutter issue/former roof issue above those doors, toward which I have been muttering insults since I started messing with this project.    We shall see how far the water went.

Glad somebody enjoys it.   I'm never sure whether it's interesting or boring as all heck.

Went through the last closet (the one where I'd shoved everything that "might" not should get thrown away or donated.)

There's a full-length black mink in there.  About my size (6-8).

Anybody wanna buy a mink coat?

(Seriously, it's beautiful.  Designer coat.  (see my thread about it in Team)

So the roof...

It's metal.  Installed by the infamous trusted family member who should be hung in the public square (IMO).

First, he slapped it down on top of a few layers of asphalt shingles.  STRAIGHT on top of the asphalt shingles.

Second, he didn't fix the water damage from the leak that made the owners call him about a new roof. So.....the rot was still there and now the roof is sagging even more in that spot.

THIRD...he didn't flash the roof where it met the taller part of the house.  Or the chimney. Or anything else.  There's a gap wider than two of my hands between the metal and the siding on the taller part of the building.  You know...where water runs down when it rains....and goes...UNDER THE F****ING METAL???? Yeah. Under there.

I could hide money under that edge of the roof.

Or a small dog.

Just sayin.

Captain's Report. Star date 00CE21.2018.03.16

The expedition behind the built-in bookcases revealed that the beings in this civilization understood rudimentary concepts of basic electrical principles, but possessed none of the understanding or necessary tools to actually use the new technology safely.

As evidence, I load the following into the database:



It is not clear how the beings in this civilization met their end, but the fact that the structure still stands could be construed as evidence of what humans call "miracles."

At least the vacuum cord was probably a bigger gauge than this tiny extension cord.

I feel compelled to post this since...yes indeedy...it's been snowing for TWO nights now.

A contractor would be out there, working in the freezing cold and howling wind.

I am clearly too weak to be a contractor.

Does this mean I won't have to sleep in the backyard at some point in the future?

ETA:  Er, in a tent in the backyard?

That's the plan.

At some point.  If the weather ever cooperates.

You'll even have a flush toilet, shower and guest kitchenette in the back yard, if it ever gets decent enough that I can use HandyDave's nice bit to get into the septic tank.  It's just sitting there.  Staring at me, telepathically beaming "I came all this way, and...nothing."

It is officially four and a half months since we had three days in a row without precip.

So tired of it.

On a better note, it was stinking beautiful yesterday.  I just stood in the yard and soaked it in.  A bit of sun, temps that promised better things ahead.

I can start to see framing in my future.