Noobies VÜ

On this never ending quest of getting my house where it should be (IMHO) I  got one step closer to the non-end.
Gutters! This hovel house is over 20 years old and none of the previous owners put on gutters! What. The. Hell? It doesn't make much sense to me the amount of corner cutting. I can be a lazy bastard corner cutter on some things, but on structural and energy efficiency I do my best not to. Now gutters are neither structural or energy efficient but they help keep water off the house. In the first year I lived in the house we had a BBQ out front against the wall. We had some pretty intense rain and it hit that BBQ and soaked the wall behind it. That wall was to the pantry and I could actually see that the wall was wet from inside. Even with the BBQ gone if the rain came from the north that wall would get a bit wet. It didn't get soaked through by any means but it just wasn't something I liked.
I checked out getting the materials myself and thought it would be a pretty easy little project that I could not possibly screw up do with few problems. On a whim I decided to price out the job with a contractor. Surprise surprise! It turned out the contractor was able to do the whole job for $30 cheaper than I could just get the materials for. To make it even better I didn't have to go through the whole speaking in tongues/throwing the hammer/drill in frustration part of the mod. Me likes that.
The only problem I had was that the guy I contracted with, though easy to talk to, had issues with his email and wasn't the best at returning calls. Took almost a week to get things sorted out. His crew also had a language barrier. Maybe it's just me, but I think it is useful to be able to communicate with people who are working on your house. Other than that, I think it worked out and I like the look of the gutters. It's not like I expected them to transform the house by any means, but I am still pretty satisfied with how it all looks.
As a result of getting the gutters done I actually got off my ass painted my trim a much darker color and I love it! Next up: rain chains and urn thingys.
Pics below, of course click to embiggen

with the old trim color, ick.

new trim color, "Stealth Jet"

with the gutters bad pic will replace tomorrow

If you are a regular follower of this blog then you are familiar with the continuing saga of my "improvements" around my house.

One of the things that has bothered me is the lack of storage. It's a good sized house and the rooms are somewhat large, but not in the right areas.I have been wanting to do something with the sunroom for some time now and I knew with as shallow as the room is (couldn't even put a standard sized couch along the wall) I was going to have some problems arranging furniture. I thought about putting in mirrors and a barre and make it a ballet rehearsal room but when I went from a plie into a tendu I kicked the wall. sigh  I didn't want to simply put in a couch or loveseat and lose any chance of having some kind of storage. Plus the windows are quite high in that room and it's nice to have the light and it will give a phenomenal view of my carefully cultivated weeds. So it seemed to me that some built-in window seats would be the best solution. So someday (never) I had hoped on doing some work on the room. Well someday arrived.

Roomie announced she is going to throw a birthday shindig and I have been wanting to make my sunroom more of an entertainment space (I have put in a crap small bar I found and installed shelves on the wall behind it) so this weekend sounded like an opportune time to see if I could throw together a cheap ass inexpensive set of window seats.

I elected to make an L shaped window seat with the short section going along the plain wall and the longer going beneath the windows. I went to Home Depot with a simple plan in mind and priced out about $100 worth of wood and materials- not including the cushions. oh my god! Yikes.

My Jeep isn't the best for hauling lumber of any significant dimensions but it gets me tons of action, uh huh dream on so I was gonna wait and see if Roomie would be able to help me get some stuff to the house later. Her jeep is mucho larger with a nice fold down rear seat for illicit sex hauling things. As luck would have it I ran to ReStore and located some hideous old bifold doors and sliding closet doors. Around 24" x 79" and 30" x79".  I realized that this could make the front and tops for the boxes of the seats. All I would need otherwise is the rear frame. $24 later I had the basis for my seats.

My good friend Shane was able to help me get the doors back to my house (THANKS! I was not looking forward to packing those bitches on my back.) and I started mocking people up. The only downer was I over-estimated the strength of the doors when my fat ass sat on them pressure was put on them. Those types of doors are hollow core and the skin is very thin; they aren't exactly meant to hold a bunch of weight on the face (shut up), though when used other than designed they are very effective at mocking one's physical dimensions. Thus I learned quickly that they would likely dimple and ultimately dent over time, if not relatively quickly. I remembered that I had inherited some 1/4" oak sheets when I bought the house along with a ridiculous to heat and cool floor plan and an hvac and ducting system that makes hvac guys laugh out loud as well as an upstairs bathroom that dwarfs would have a hard time using and realized I could face the doors with them and vastly improve their weight capacity. I learned that the seats were going to be a bit taller than I expected, being a combined 26" in height (24" for the height of the door on edge + the depth of the door used for a lid) which make the seats quite tall, but I was okay with that as it allowed for tons of storage beneath and hours of entertainment when Constance tried to use them as well as a place to shackle cute guys that I abduct.

I ran to Home Depot and grabbed 6 8' 2x4s and sustained multiple splinters carefully put together the back supports. With Jason's assistance I crookedly mangled cut the oak, 2x4s, and the doors and then screwed everything up together.

I'm happy to say the oak seems to have done the trick and they easily held our weight without any kind of dimpling or caving. woo hoo.

I figured I could use another 2x4 and splinters and I wanted Connie to check out some foam for sale at Home Depot so we made another trip. Came back home with more wood and some foam for cushions.

The cost thus far for the seats, $24 for the doors, $21 for HD run #1 ($12 for wood + $7 for nails and $2 for brads I never even frickin used since I forgot I had a damn brad gun) and $44 for HD run #2 ($20 each for the foam + $2 for the 2x4) = $89. The most expensive portion so far being the foam. I still have to locate some fabric and make some covers. Then I'll want to get raped for some throw pillows.

But I think it's turned out looking like a spastic monkey with bladder control made them really well and I am digging all the storage for boys! Most of the shit stuff that was stored in the room cluttering it up is still in the room just nicely out of the way. :o)

If nothing else the spiders should be happy for a new home.

Pics below 9click to embiggen)

Yeah that bastard in the middle, yeah it gave me the splinters. Hate it with me.

The full Monty, need to cover the foam.

Well, I learned that neighbors can be neglectful bastards.

The old guy who lives across the street, I call him Ray since that's what he told me his name was, is well, old. He also seems to be a lazy damn ass unable to do some of the more physical things necessary to keep his damn yard clean of all the leaves that have fallen off his trees.

Well he needn't worry any more! All those fricken glorious leaves are now in my mostly treeless yard.

Great. Awesome. Thanks so much man.

The irony is, I thought about going next door and see if I could help him prior to the tornado small windstorm we had this past weekend. But I am also a lazy son of a bitch wasn't sure if he was even home since I couldn't be bothered to knock and see he's got multiple cars and you just never know which one he's driving currently.

Well har har on me. The wind blew every damn one of those leaves into my yard, I think he even moved his car off the street since it apparently blocked some of them from migrating. Those leaves also found their way to my yard by day's end.

So I am stuck with a bunch of leaves now. So, I went out and bought a leaf blower and it is my dream to blow them all back onto his damn yard. But since I am a sissy bitch I will probably just vacuum them up (That's right, it has a vacuum and mulch setting!) and bag them. It may be possible definitely that I just love toys and this gave me a reason to buy a new one to play with.

So I will take care of those pesky leaves without a complaint yeah right, this whole post is one big complaint to him and try to be a good neighbor.

Though, I did see him today with a leaf blower of his own and I have a sneaky suspicion that he is helping nature along and blowing the last leaves that finally fell into my yard to join the others. If this is so, I may just shove use my new blower and blow the leaves up his raggedy old ass back into his damn yard after all.

Click to embiggen

Note my lack of trees. Thanks ass Ray