Dec
3
My Christmas Wish List
December 3, 2007 |
Dear Santa,
Please bring me a new back for Christmas. K, thx, bye.
Me
I realize that 33 isn’t exactly a ripe old age, comparatively speaking, but it’s also not early/mid 20’s, either, when I’d do all sorts of grunt monkey labor over a weekend and be completely good to goon Monday, without a twinge, ache, or creak. These days, not so much, as the weekend pretty much wiped me out.
Got lots done at House #2, though, so there is that. 90% of the backerboard is in, ready for tile, and I knocked out a ton of painting and other small stuff. Still at the slightly depressing stage where each little job completed reminds me of 19 more related jobs that need doing, but at least the huge, lumbering tanker ship is pointed in the right direction now. Contractor should be back over at the house mid-week, and he’s probably got a full week of work until he’s done with what I’ve set aside for him.
The budget battle seems to be a bit of a lost cause, unless the plumbing comes in under budget (yeah, right, hah). I’m of slightly two minds about a “blown” budget on this one, as I originally was shooting for a budget of $20,000, and it’s looking more like $25,000. When I first started putting the budget together, though, I was thinking $20,000-$25,000, and settled on $20,000, trying to keep costs down by doing things like not replacing the windows, etc.
I pretty quickly realized that was dumb, though, so new windows was an immediate $4,000 hit, which is pretty much where all the overage is going to come from, budget-wise. So yeah, I’m going to be over budget, I suck, yada yada yada, but it’s more being wishy-washy when I was putting the budget together originally than being an idiot and missing huge expenses here and there.
This week’s going to be fun, as I need to buy the slate tile I’ll be using over roughly 1000 sq. ft. of the house (front living room, kitchen, back porch), from a warehouse place in north Austin. They unfortunately don’t deliver and I’m buying the 16″ by 16″ tiles by the pallet, which my wee little Mazda truck can only handle one of at a time. So the basic plan is to buy a pallet, have them load iton my truck, drive it all the way down here, back up to the side entrance of House #2, take it out of the back of my truck by the piece, plop it on the floor, and repeat. Times four.
You know you’re jealous. Admit it.
Comments
5 Comments so far
How much does it cost to rent a Ryder or UHaul for 1 day? Don’t know the distance from you to north Austin, but how much does gas(4x) + your time equal? Local rental places might have other solutions. I’m assuming each skid of tiles is about 1,000 pounds. Renting a “big dog” vehicle might be advantageous. And you’ll want to consider how to unload them too! A really big moving truck with ramps and a hand truck / hand dolly.
Coffee anyone?
Bill,
I may resort to that, as it’s a good idea.
I commute to north-ish Austin for work anyway, and the tile warehouse is very close to my job, so it’s basically zero extra cost/time to go fetch tile after work.
I talked to the tile folks and they’ll let me buy everything and store stuff there for up to three weeks, so my plan was to get a pallet at a time in my truck, and basically install from my truck bed, with no unloading and storing other than grabbing pieces from my truck and installing them.
The tricky part, though, and where that plan may break down is that each pallet is something like 175 sq. ft. Even if I lay everything out, pop my chalk lines, and have everything ready to roll and just install the full pieces of tile (saving the cutting and trim pieces for later), that’s a lot of tile to lay at night after work, so that the truck will be empty for picking up another pallet the next day, etc.
So we’ll see what happens. If it’s killing me to stick to that plan, yeah, it might make more sense to rent a truck and get it all hauled down in one fell swoop.
33 ripe old age! LOL! I feel your pain though. I am 36 and in fairly decent shape (if you call looking like a pear good shape!) and when I work on a house I feel the pain a little more than I used to. I am having a hard time keeping up with my 14 year old son too…
Heh. I hear you about the aches and pains. I’ve been wondering lately if I’m just a big Nancy-boy for having all kinds of new aches. Wasn’t I just running varsity cross country???
Chris
That must have been the 1980’s dude… LOL