Things are still rolling along on The Wee House, and we’re finally almost to the stage of it actually looking like a house again, as far as the interior goes. We’re done with inspections until the final and starting in on sheetrock and texturing on Monday, with the addition being the last major obstacle after that.
“Addition” sounds scary, but this is about as simple as additions get, as we’re just adding a rectangular 150 sq. ft. room on the back of the house, to get the house up to a 2-1, and/or to add a little more space for a single person living there. I’m hoping we’ll be done with sheetrocking the main house by Wednesday, and then another week to finish off the addition, and then a few extra days until the end of the month for odds and ends.
I’m managing to hold the budget line, barely, but opposing forces of evil keep threatening to break through on multiple fronts. And the only reason it’s barely holding is due to all the stuff I’d squirreled away in storage from past jobs, as far as insulation, joint compound, a bath vanity and vanity top, backerboard, a ceiling fan, old brass doorknobs I’d swapped out on other jobs for something less brassy, etc.
There’s definitely a fine line between keeping too much crap and smartly storing and later recycling functional stuff for future jobs, and I admittedly tend to fall on the keeping too much crap side, as I’ve also taken the opportunity of having the rolloff dumpster for trash to throw away about four truckloads of crap I’d kept (carpet remnants, old sinks, tile scraps, random lengths of wood and pieces of siding) in our storage unit.
But there’s definitely something to be said for saving some of the common things that pretty much always go in houses, especially if there’s any chance you might acquire some rental properties in the future. That functional but not snazzy ceiling fan will work just fine in a rental, and save you $50 or so, as can doorknobs, lights, and other stuff, using them somewhere that functional is good enough, at least for the time being.
Once I get the spare refrigerator out of the storage unit and into The Wee House, I think we’re going to ditch the storage unit entirely, as part of the point of spending the money to enclose our carport last summer and turn it into a two car garage was to be able to do away with spending $60/month for the storage unit. Hopefully that force me to be more selective with the packrattery moving forward, as the garage is already quickly getting filled up.
Of course, I’m cheating a bit when I say the budget is holding firm, as I already know I’m going to be at least $1,750 or so over budget, due to having to add off street parking for two cars. I’d assumed that a gravel driveway was acceptable (as it was for the last project I did), but they’re apparently making a point to not allow that moving forward. The cheapest acceptable option we’ve found so far is to do the driveway in brick pavers, which is what we’ll probably go with. Nothing fancy at all pattern-wise, set and jointed with sand, for the minimum 320 sq. ft. drive they’re requiring.
