Renovation Rants

Renovation Rants http://www.maro.net/ Renovating our craftsman style home en-us Nucleus CMS v3.24 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://www.maro.net/ns/nucleus2.gif Renovation Rants http://www.maro.net/ <![CDATA[Looking At Cultured Stone]]> http://www.maro.net/?itemid=473
This stuff is 1/4 the weight of real stone and looks identical. The only catch with this stuff is that the coloring of the stone is on the surface, so if it gets nicked you'll likely see grey. Originally I wanted a tight fit "ledgestone" but the reseller talked me out of it since I've never done stone work before. He pointed out that it would take 4 times longer to cover the same amount of space because of how many pieces it would require.

Cost for the fake stone? Around $4 a sqft with tax. That's a heck of a lot cheaper than real, and should suit my purposes just fine. Besides, if I screw it up, I risk less money. :-)

]]> General http://www.maro.net/?itemid=473 Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:55:48 -1200 <![CDATA[Porch Walk]]> http://www.maro.net/?itemid=472

I also layed in the pavers that lead up to the porch. Next is to paint some of the boards of the roof for moisture protection, then start framing in the porch to be screened. I've decided to go with 36" wide doors on the porch to make moving out easier than moving in was :-)

I also dug a trench around the front of the patio leading from just left of the walkway all the way to the right edge, turning then down about 3/4 of the length of the patio. I placed a PVC pipe with holes drilled in it to help with drainage, then covered it with drainage rock. Hopefully this will prevent any possible problems with water runoff making it's way onto the porch. The front edge of the porch is lower than the end of the yard, and the back edge of the porch is about 9" above ground, so the water should naturally roll around the porch now.]]> General http://www.maro.net/?itemid=472 Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:12:02 -1200 <![CDATA[The Roof Is Done]]> http://www.maro.net/?itemid=471
Even though it was expensive at $45 a roll times four rolls, I installed "Ice and water shield" first on the deck. It's a self-adhesive rubber that protects the wood from ice, snow and rain. Over that I put 30 pound roofing felt, followed by asphalt roll roofing. The roof has about a 1 1/2" per foot pitch to it, which is too flat for shingles. I sealed all the edges of the asphalt with roofing cement and nailed down securely. I'm no expert, but I think I did the job right and it should stand up for the next ten years without difficulty. Ten years is about what you can expect from asphalt roll roofing.

Now if only I can get my contractor to show up to get the debris out of the yard and break up the concrete slab I want removed that adjoins the porch.]]> General http://www.maro.net/?itemid=471 Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:59:40 -1200 <![CDATA[Porch Continues]]> http://www.maro.net/?itemid=470
I replaced each "support" beam with new 4x4 pressure treated beams mounted on brackets anchored into the concrete. None of the original beams actually provided any support. I think the weight of the roof was held up by the 1x2 framing for the screens more than anything else.

For instance, here's what I found in the corner after removing the siding:

Now I have a huge pile of debris while I wait for my contractor with the dumptruck to arrive and remove that and the concrete slab in front of the porch. There's a slightly raised "walkway" that's about 6'x4' in front of the porch that funnels water onto it.

I'm still in the process of replacing and supporting sections of the roof where I didn't trust the wood anymore. If this had to support any actual weight on top I would have replaced the entire structure, but there's only a few small sections that had issues in the roof framing, and the main support beams were fine, so I'm saving myself hundreds of dollars in wood and a lot of landfill material and just replacing the sections needed.

]]> General http://www.maro.net/?itemid=470 Fri, 6 Jun 2008 01:42:26 -1200 <![CDATA[The Old House]]> http://www.maro.net/?itemid=469
Things like miles of solid oak trim, thousands of cedar shakes on the siding and whatever bricks I can get without dropping a chimney on my head.

Life is good.]]> General http://www.maro.net/?itemid=469 Thu, 5 Jun 2008 04:54:30 -1200 <![CDATA[Replacing Support Columns On The Screened In Porch]]> http://www.maro.net/?itemid=467

So, off to Lowe's I went to purchase 4x4x8 pressure treated beams. I also opted to go with steel brackets to hold the bottom of the 4x4 columns, so I needed to drill into the concrete footing to anchor them. Unfortunately my 20 year old corded Black & Decker drill wasn't quite going to cut it, so I spent around $220 on a DeWalt 18 volt cordless. I was pleasantly surprised to learn my purchase earned me a $50 Lowe's card rebate at the register!

Read on for the full story and pictures...The first thing I did was provide some temporary support for the roof by wedging three of the beams into various positions to take roof load if anything went wrong.

Next I removed the old column - which as you can see wasn't even sitting on anything. They had simply cut a square into the sill to sit the column inside and toe-nailed into the sill around it. Not quite sure how... I'm guessing at one time there was something underneath the column.

After cutting out the surrounding wood, I needed to set the bracket into the concrete to support the new column. If I were building it from scratch I would have gone to the edge of the slab with it, but the old post was inset about 2 1/2" from the outside. Moving the post out would have required replacing the header that supports the roof joists, and is more than I want to deal with so I decided to place the new column in the same location as the old. I attached an eyehook into the center of where the old column was touching the header, and strung yarn down to a screwdriver at the bottom. This is my ghetto plumb level:

I was surprised at how easy it was to drill into the slab with the right tools. I'd tried drilling into concrete a few years ago and failed miserably. With a powerful drill and the right bit, things went very fast. I used hex head concrete lag screws to anchor the bracket to the slab.

By then it was dark, so I just installed two screws into the bracket and will toe-nail the top of it into the header tomorrow. There's enough weight on it, it's not going anywhere. I had to knock it into place with a sledge hammer.]]> General http://www.maro.net/?itemid=467 Thu, 29 May 2008 14:09:11 -1200 <![CDATA[Porch renovation started]]> http://www.maro.net/?itemid=466
We're still in demolition phase, but here's the before pictures. Thankfully I decided to do this, because with all the rotten wood, it's amazing the roof is still standing.

]]> General http://www.maro.net/?itemid=466 Thu, 29 May 2008 04:21:16 -1200 <![CDATA[Trying to Budget Home Improvements]]> http://www.maro.net/?itemid=335
Last year I was shocked to learn that I owed over $3000 in taxes between Federal and State. It turned out that when I asked my payroll company to "add another $15 to be taken out every check" they instead put me down for 15 dependents. I know my family is big, but what the heck? I narrowly escaped Federal underpayment penalties only because I'd received a refund the previous year, but I did have to pay State penalties. Yeah, I know I should have caught it, but my pay was a moving target at the time and I mostly just dump the darn checks in the bank and don't worry about it.

Anyway, in March I had them change withholdings to a more accurate amount. I made a mental note to check things at 1/2 year and run some test calculations.
I just went to H&R Block's website and they have two calculators. They have the "2007 Withholdings estimator" and the "2007 Tax Estimator."

I thought - hey let's run both!

The "2007 Tax Estimator" tells me I'm going to owe another $720 in Federal taxes at the end of the year.

The "2007 Withholdings Estimator" tells me I'm going to get $1500 back from Federal at the end of the year.

I figure both must be right and I'll really get back $780 (the difference of the two?) It just goes to show how convoluted our Income tax system is.]]> General http://www.maro.net/?itemid=335 Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:33:08 -1200 <![CDATA[How Washington Mututal wants to screw you]]> http://www.maro.net/?itemid=323
As luck would have it due to either an oversight on my part or thinking I'd clicked "submit" on an online payment I ended up late on my payment by less than 6 days one month. The next month I was billed a $40 late fee which I paid without worrying about it.

It wasn't until two months later that I realized they had also jacked my interest rate up from around 7% to over 22% as a result of that one late payment.I contacted Washington Mutual and was told:

"We are sorry to hear that you are unhappy with our service and want to
know if you are not satisfied. Your feedback is appreciated. We will
use it to look for ways to improve our service."

Oh and by the way, we won't reduce your interest rate. That same week I got a "pre-approved" application in the mail from Washington Mututal for 0% introductory and about 7% after that. What the heck? They won't lower the account they have, but they will give me a NEW card at that rate.

Great. Thanks. I happen to make a decent amount of money, have a good credit score and have low debt so getting another line of credit is an easy thing. I signed up for a card with another company at 7% and got twice the open credit line. I went online to Washington Mutual's system and posted the payment in full using a transfer check.

They showed my account balance at zero, and then three days later rejected the payment and charged me $35 for a "bounced check". I contacted the new company only to learn they didn't show any attempt by anyone to run that check through.

I figured, ok, lesson learned. I quickly posted a $250 online payment out of my checking so I wouldn't be "late" again. I took my new bill that just arrived, wrote out a transfer check for the full amount and sent it in, paying the balance in full.

I just logged into the online system to make sure it cleared, and four days after the payment was posted, Washington Mututal charged me another $15.50 "finance fee" on a zero balance account that was paid in full as soon as the bill arrived. How would you ever pay off an account that way?

Talk about a bunch of crooks.]]> General http://www.maro.net/?itemid=323 Thu, 21 Jun 2007 09:42:48 -1200 <![CDATA[Lighting or Lamp Post]]> http://www.maro.net/?itemid=321 General http://www.maro.net/?itemid=321 Sat, 16 Jun 2007 00:56:01 -1200