cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Spring Construction Musings In about a month I am getting my annual dividend check. No idea how much it's going to be for. Could be anywhere from ,000 to 4,000. I have no idea. But whatever it comes in at, I am spending at least ,500 of it on construction materials. Enough to finish the workshop and then build a playhouse for Ida. She's been asking for one. I'm thinking something simple. 4 posts in the ground, all pressure treated 4x4s. 8'x8' and probably 7 feet tall, with 1 foot of the 8' posts buried in the ground. Exterior grade plywood around all the sides, 2x4 framing for 2 windows and the door. Shed roof. 2x6 joists and plywood floor. Paint it, make some kid-sized benches and a table. I just did a quick materials list and it would cost 50 for all of the lumber. I've already got enough roofing felt lying around and I can make shutters out of scrap plywood rather than spring for glass windows right away. There should be enough scrap by the end of that and the workshop to make furnishings. I figure it's worth building something like that to be fairly sturdy and weather-tight so that it can be a useful outbuilding even after the kids have outgrown it. You know what else I'd like to build this spring? A toy garage. I mean a little garage type thing for bikes and trikes and outdoor toys generally. To get that crap off of the porch and the front yard. I'd put it over by the parking area in front of the house. Gravel floor. Maybe 6 feet tall at the most. 100 square feet or so, with 80 sq. ft. on one side and a partition in the middle with the other, smaller area being for a pair of trash cans. I'm sick of looking at the trash cans. Maybe a little alcove to put the grill in. I suppose that something like that could be done for as little as 00, assuming that I go with just a dirt or gravel floor and keep it very simple. Part of me is contemplating going nuts and having someone pour me a foundation for a new house with the rest of the dividend money. All of my efforts to get an addition any other way have come to naught. I'm refinancing my mortgage at the moment and it's looking clear that getting a second loan for construction is not going to be a realistic prospect. If that is the case then the only way forward is going to be getting a new house the hard way. The really hard way. Getting a contractor to pour a foundation for what little cash I'll have and then ever so slowly building the rest of the house myself. Nail by nail on my own. It's the lack of a pick-up truck that makes this a sketchy option. Without a truck, I'd have to get all of my wood delivered the whole way through. Meaning that I couldn't just go get a load of wood every time I've got 00 to spare. I'd have to pay for delivery, which is about 00 regardless of how much is getting delivered. So it only makes sense economically when you are ordering a few thousand dollars worth of materials at once. Otherwise I'd be literally increasing the cost of my materials by 10% or more. Fuck that. The bright side of doing it myself now versus looking at this same option a year or 2 ago is that now I have more friends who know how to do this stuff whom I can get to help now and then. Farrell has done a fair bit of carpentry on his place in the last year and knows what he's doing. Gabe, the National Geographic guy, used to be a timber-framer. Paul knows his way around any tool you could show him. They are all avid carnivores, so I can trade meat for labor during the hunting season. I'm not afraid of doing the work. It's the fear of spending the money on the foundation and then watching a year go by with nothing more happening for lack of materials that bothers me. I've been thinking more about the little secret cottage I want to build in the woods some day. Maybe 200 square feet or so. Everything laid out for perfect efficiency. I was thinking that I should build such a thing right in the middle of the huge tangle of large, fallen trees that is near the corner of my property. So it's totally invisible. Build it on a pole foundation over the fallen trees so I don't have to mess with clearing them out. Maybe a little bridge over the fallen trunks to get into it. No electricity, or at least not on the grid. Maybe a solar panel on the roof and a bank of car batteries under the house to run a couple of electric lights and have enough juice left for a laptop or something. For water, I figure I would have the gutters run into a closed 55 gallon barrel that sits on a tall post under the eves or something. The barrel would be in a wooden box with insulation around it to prevent it from getting too hot in the summer or from freezing readily in the winter. By having it up high like that, I'd have running water without a pump required since it could be gravity-fed. Obviously this would run through a tap filter in order to not taste like the roof. For an occasional use thing, 55 gallons would be plenty. This isn't being designed as a full-time residence. Just a nice place to spend a night or 2 every now and then. The septic would be tricky on account of it being hard to dig holes in the woods. Too many tree roots. If I could manage to dig the holes without wanting to shoot myself, I could bury a 55 gallon steel drum sideways with the sewer pipe from the toilet running into it. Drill a couple of holes at the other end of the drum for 10' long pipes to come out, running sideways about 8 inches from the surface. The pipes would be perforated along their length. This set-up is, in essence, basically how any septic system works. Just in miniature. I've read about these types of systems being built for fishing camps and that sort of thing in the 1940's. They work well for vacation homes or situations where they only see occasional or seasonal use. Now such a system would by no means ever be approved by the various County inspection agencies, but I don't really care since this would be a secret little building anyway. We're talking about 1 or 2 people occupying it a total of a few weeks out of the year and there are no other homes for about a mile behind it. It's not like this would be some environmental disaster. I've got no business starting a project like that cottage until the workshop and the the new house are both finished. So we're talking years from now. But some day I'll build it. A little thing tucked into the debris of the woods, perfectly at home with it's surroundings. 14:54 - 2008-02-19 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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