I got back from my KY trip yesterday. This was also the test run for the trailer I bought for Matt, so it was loaded up. I strapped everything up real good so it didn't shift.
The truck was full too.
I am aware that my draw bar is waaay too high for this trailer, but I couldn't get the ball off my bar with drop on it, so I used it anyways.
It is nice to have my third room back too. I need to reorganize it.
I apparently didn't have any license plate bolts, so I zip tied the plate on. Looks a little funny, but worked just fine.
The drive down kind of stunk. The trailer tracked well and by the time I got to NY I stopped checking on it, it rode really nice. What stunk was that every road in PA was under construction. And to boot there were traffic jams everywhere. My plan to drive down on Friday to avoid the weekend traffic apparently backfired. I got stuck for a half hour in a traffic jam in PA at one point. So I ate some pretzels. At least the weather in PA was pretty nice.
Sunset on the way down. Sorry for the bug splats.
The drive down was eventful even after the traffic jams in PA. In West Virginia, I was passing a semi when his tire exploded. Fortunately for me it was the inside tire. I did lose a strap.
My truck took a hit too. This is not the factory shape for that piece. Thankfully the trailer was undamaged.
I had another ominous sign on the way down. Even at 11PM, it was still 80 degrees outside. Yuck. The whole week was miserably hot and disgustingly humid.
A rather ominous and bug splat filled sunrise the following morning.
Most of the week was riddled with storms because of the heat and humidity. One such storm hit right as we were buying the lumber. We ended up waiting at Lowes for a bit for the cell to pass.
The lumber was for the project while I was down there. That project was to build a shed. The slab for the shed was done before I got there. It is always amazing how projects start off with so few tools. I ended up leaving quite a setup for Dad to clean up after I left (sorry about that).
The wall framing went pretty quick. I had to work while I was down there so Dad did a lot of the walls.
I did the walls a little bit differently; I made the wall chunks independent at each of the wall section joints (basically double studs) instead of using mismatched plates to get the seams different for a single unit for the wall. The double stud approach made the wall pieces easier to stand up, but the fact that the wall was two separate units nailed together made that joint act like a pivot, which is why the wall looks like it is curling inwards here. This was eventually fixed with the rafters. Not sure the downsides were worth the ease of building/standing up the wall though.
Normally for a shed you don't use housewrap, it is extraneous and doesn't buy you much, but the longer term plans for this building are to temperature control it, so I thought it was prudent to do this now instead of having to put up a zip system setup or something later for a moisture barrier.
After house wrap came siding. One of the downsides of T1-11: it curls when left out in the sun. We ended up having to block this out to make it flush. You can bypass the curling problem if you cut pieces so they overlap on studs, but that would have meant buying another couple sheets, so I decided to just deal with it for cost reasons. It is hard to see in this picture, but the T1-11 we got from Lowe's had another issue too. They didn't cut the laps properly, one of the layers that was supposed to be cut to overlap it was not cut completely, so we had to trim all the pieces to get them to sit flush. Ugh, shame on you Georgia Pacific.
Siding took a little bit since all the pieces had to be trimmed.
It turns out I can't count either. I bought 12 sheets, we needed 14. Oops. This was as far as we got. Once Dad went out for the holiday, Uncle Jim and Uncle Matthew were recruited to help
Work for the day was about to end anyways. The clouds were looking angry and the radar was rather colorful. It was darker than the picture made it seem.
The storms that day made for a nice sunset though.
The final half sheet (the shed was 10x18, so each side had a half sheet of siding) we needed to make the overlap; the wrong piece was used on a previous wall, so they had to cut the layers and chisel it smooth. They did a really nice job on it, better than the manufacturer edge...
Uncle Matthew also did a lot of the roofing (aka all of it), which I had no problem with. I don't particularly like being on roofs, and the sheathing on this one I am not sure is thick enough to hold my weight. So a special shout out to Uncle Matthew for doing all the work I didn't particularly want to do and being a surprisingly good carpenter.
The roofing looks nice.
Next up were the windows and door. I ended up using sill flashing instead of a PT 2x6 because I mis-measured the rough in required, but it still came out nice.
I also put up a shelf inside to help with using it for storage.
The final pictures before I left. There is one window on each end for cross-ventilation, and nothing on the southern side where most of the weather comes from.
It was still missing the outriggers (you can see one of them built on the ground in the final picture) which support the edges of the plywood, and the wooden trim pieces for around the windows which will help seal the windows in (and cover up the mistakes made sawing out the windows...). I just ran out of time. In all, dodging storms, this took about a week to build start to finish, with an average of two people working on it. I did some of it myself, Dad did parts of it himself, but the roofing was a crew of 3. The final walkthrough.
I used my Jackery for all the tools down there. Turns out that while it has a full true 20A circuit on it, that isn't enough to run the compressor and saw at the same time. All told though, it handled being outside in 90+ degree heat just fine and I only had to charge it once during the week, and it was still half full when I left.
I could have posted updates while I was down there, but my attention was normally turned towards the wet willy's I was getting when I went inside from Autumn.
Sunday morning Heather and I unloaded the truck and trailer. The shed has stuff in it now.
There was only one casualty, the white shelving/pantry thing. It looks like the tarp over the trailer leaked and it absorbed it and swelled.
Sunday afternoon I drove home. I did get better mileage; I got around 17-18mpg towing the trailer down, but just under 20mpg on the way home. I think that is more due to the fact that I was going slower and didn't sit idling in traffic jams. I drove to NY and took a short nap and then drove the rest of the way home since I had to work on Monday. This was not an ideal way to drive home, but oh well. I was a zombie at work yesterday, and took far too many 15 minute blinks. I slept really good last night though and feel much better today. I did get to watch a sunrise on the way home though.
Things at home were just fine. I was a bit surprised it was only 77 inside.
It looks like I had a raccoon playing in my trash can based on the prints. It was empty though, so no biggie.
My turkeys are still around too, with a bunch of miniatures as well. The picture isn't too good though, they saw me raising the blinds to take the picture and started to disappear.
Most of this week in NH looks like the week in KY, just a tiny bit cooler and less humid, but hot and stormy. I still hope to finish the armoire up and I have a lot of rearranging to do now that I can move things between the rooms. I still need to change the fluids in the excavator as well, so I might get motivated to do. It is hard to believe that the summer is almost half over though. On the checklist though, we came up with another idea while I was there that I intend to explore: extend the roof of the house over to the rock wall, move the carport up the hill, and then just have the deck in the back. I like the end result of that a lot more, but will require a crap load more work, but the end result would be awesome.
Current to-do:
- Design deck
- Build deck
- Build armoire.
- Install whole house filter.
- Refurb cap
- Access panel upgrades in master closet
- Back yard drainage.
- Insulate the water lines
- Take scrap metal to Buffum
- Close up tiny home. Seal up plumbing.
- Storm doors
