During the week last week, I was bored and started drawing up some designs in meetings. I went and priced out some trucks, and discovered that nobody offers a half ton extended cab long box anymore (the same configuration I have now). You have to go to a three quarter ton for that. Going to a three quarter ton erases a lot of the cost and fuel mileage savings that pickups had though, and forces me into a monster engine (while adding several thousand pounds to the vehicle). So for half tons it is basically standard cab or else. I haven't sat in a standard cab where the seat went far enough back in decades. So I started looking at vans instead.
I also went to Home Depot to price out the shelves I wanted to build. Holy crap plywood has gotten expensive. These sheets of underlay were 8 dollars last time I bought one, which was only a couple years ago.
The sanded plywood which I decided to use has also almost doubled in price since I built the armoire (this is what I used for the sides and structural shelves on that). It was almost enough to make me consider just ordering a wire rack since they are actually cheaper now, but my last experience ordering one kind of soured me on that. It took three tries for them to send me ones that weren't horribly bent when I bought one for the bathroom.
The big project for Saturday was to get the excavator started. It turns out that the battery is quite easy to find, it is right below the floor pan.
I got one of the strap removed. The bolt for it was destroyed and it took a very long time to get it out, since it fought me every step of the way. Considering the machine had 0.1 hours on it, this is a bit concerning.
It confounded me for a while after I did get the bolt out. This is a pretty poor design if I am being honest.
In the end, I just went brute force and bent the strap. I got the battery slid down enough to get the charger on it, and surprisingly the charger said it was about 90% full.
I am not sure what changed, but after I charged it, it did start turning over.
I was confused and sad, so I went and ate some lunch. Came back after lunch, and more out of sadness, hit the key, and... it started? I don't know what I did to fix it, but everything started working.
Apparently I forgot to turn off the key or something last weekend. It now has 144 fake hours on it. Whoops.
Because the bolt was destroyed and there was nothing actually holding the battery in place, I didn't do anything with the machine. While I had the charger out though, I did top off the lawn mower battery, which has a history of dying.
That evening I made a Home Depot run to get a new bolt and I picked up the lumber for the shelves, crying inside a little as I did so. It was well past dark when I got home, so I transcribed the post it note floorplan to something closer to scale.
Sunday came time to play with the toys. I got the excavator fired up, played around with it a little, and then got to digging the trench. I remembered to dig the channels away from the house first this time.
I discovered something about the excavator though, it gets really hot really quickly. I know most of the places that I read online recommended adding a fan to the engine compartment, but I didn't realize how quickly it heated up. This was as far as I got before I stopped to let it cool down. I could feel the heat coming up through the seat. Still though, this only took a few hours, and considering it was my first time using the machine, that isn't bad at all.
It wasn't in the danger zone though, the hydraulic fluid wasn't warm, it was just the motor.
After stopping to let it cool off, I decided to get started cutting for the shelves. I am making it too wide to use the table saw; the shelves on this are 22" deep and my table saw only goes to I think 16". Instead I just clamped a board down to use as a fence so I didn't have to deal with the wobbly cuts like I had on the armoire. It is a lot slower to cut like this, but the result is better.
Apparently my circular saw doesn't scare away turkeys anymore, though admittedly they didn't stick around too long.
I got everything cut for the first set of shelves. I decided to do this first before going back to digging because this gives me something that I can work on during the week. Days warm enough to stain are at a premium this time of year, and I wanted to make sure I am ready, though I could stain it inside like I did the armoire I guess if I am willing to put up with the smell.
I actually cut well into darkness. It kind of worked, but I did screw up one cut. I am not sure if that was because of lighting or not though, the saw slipped under the fence. But I called it a night at that point. It was almost 9PM anyways. I got a good chunk of the second one cut up too.
I cleaned up the third room enough to be able to assemble it. I have kind of neglected this room, and just kind of used it as a dumping ground for far too long. And given that these shelves are quite large (6' tall, 4' wide, and 22" deep) I had to shift a lot of stuff around.
This morning I awoke to an undesired surprise. It was snowing. It wasn't collecting in the driveway, but the yard was white, and the truck was white.
I didn't get a good picture of it, but it was still coming down at a decent clip too. Winter is definitely on its way.
Foliage is pretty much done for the year, outside of the few trees that for whatever reason wait for Thanksgiving. This looked much more vibrant on Friday, but I forgot my phone.
On another note, I made my first mega-payment on the mortgage. It wasn't quite enough to get it under 6 figures, but I still very much on track to have it paid off in 10 years or less. I had actually debated only making a smaller payment, and then kicking off the events that would give me a van to convert, but I didn't really have enough money for that.
Doing the van floorplan raised some interesting questions. I have more or less settled on overdoing it a little bit on the electrical side, since that is what I would use the most. I am still debating on the big plumbing decisions though. Most of my original designs just used a hand pump faucet in the sink, and no indoor shower. For travelling, this is for the most part fine; if I am out in the woods I can shower outside, and while slower a hand crank faucet is fine. I am not sure I like the idea of building something I would live in without something I consider a basic amenity though: hot water. Hot water though requires a full fledged pump and tank system, the plans to keep it simple and basically just use buckets is not really tenable. Moving to a full system also means I need a place to put the pump, tank, water heater, and so on. It requires propane plumbing, and I haven't looked up whether it requires bumping up to a 20lb tank from a 5lb tank. It also isn't clear whether those are sufficient to get it above luke-warm. I am leaning towards having hot water, but not an indoor shower currently, I just need to do more research on it. I might just get a mini 2 gal propane heater or something if the tankless ones won't cut it. The other design decision I am debating is whether to leave the side door available or not. It would actually be kind of nice to run the kitchen all the way to the front. The back doors must remain open because of my requirement to be able to haul lumber and stuff, which is why the whole center galley is open. I am not sure I see the need for three entrances though: you can get in from the front, and the back. Do I really need a side door too?
Before Winter:
- Back yard drainage.
- Close up tiny home. Seal up plumbing.
- Clean off driveway at top.
Smooth driveway enough to not catch the snowblower.- Winterize equipment
Unlikely to happen at this point until next year:
- Build shelving for second room
- Insulate the water lines
- Take scrap metal to Buffum. Clean up trash.
- Storm doors
- Gravel the driveway
- Side yard drainage
- Eliminate cap.
Winter Projects:
- Design deck
- Install whole house filter.
- Access panel upgrades in master closet
- Cut trails, or at least mark paths.
