cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reality Check Ok, time for a reality check on the workshop. It's not really 'almost done.' It's almost *framed*. There's a difference. I need to spend a hundred and eighty one dollars for the remaining sheathing, roofing felt, roofing nails and sub-floor for the attic in order to be dried in. I suppose that I could hold off on the attic sub-floor, except that it's hard to imagine how in the hell I would get the 4x8 sheets up there once the roof is fully closed in. So I've got to buy them now. Drywall for the downstairs walls and insulation for the attic will cost me around three hundred sixty dollars for materials. Insulation is ridiculously fucking expensive. And that's just to insulate the attic. Leaving the wall cavities empty. That's also leaving the downstairs ceiling open without drywalling it. Then there's siding. If I went with the cheapest thing possible, T1-11, I'm looking at two hundred and eighty bucks. Oh yeah, also actual roofing shingles to go over the felt. Shingles plus nails is probably about a hundred fifty right there. Add in a hundred bucks for various electrical wiring components and nails for various applications and basically it's going to cost me another one thousand one hundred and fifty dollars that I don't have in order to make this into a habitable space for the winter. Sobering. That's before even getting into the materials to build the kitchenette, ladder and the trap doors. Now those are things that I plan on doing with a lot of salvaged or free materials at least. The side porch and the front steps, however, will probably have to be built from new materials. Just the pressure treated wood for the steps and a small landing will probably cost around another hundred fifty. Motherfucker. This kinda sucks. The optimistic way of looking at the situation is that I can start using the building at least as a workshop and storage building just after the 180 for sheathing, felt, etc. With roofing felt on the roof and walls, I should have at least a year or so to get something over it before the felt starts to degrade (or more likely the plastic buttons on the roofing nails with become brittle from UV rays first). I don't need to shell out all that money at once. But I really ought to come up with it and get all the work done before October, so that we have a lifeboat of sorts to use in case of the usual cold weather emergencies. Losing electricity or running out of heating oil and not having the 600 (or more likely 700 by this winter) bucks to have the tank filled up. It happened last winter, and prices of oil and food and everything else have only gone up since then while my income has not gone up at all. Odds are that this will be a very, very difficult winter that I have ahead of me. Just struggling to stay solvent, have enough fuel to get to and from work, put food on the table and keep the house warm enough for small children. There will come a moment when I will not be able to afford to heat this stupid, shitty fucking house with the fucked up duct system under the crawlspace that is physically inaccessible. At that point, when the money for a fuel delivery literally is just not there, I need to be able to turn the thermostat down to a few degrees above freezing to keep the pipes from bursting and then move everybody into the workshop for the duration. I'll be able to heat the workshop for a tiny fraction of what it costs me to heat the house. This is why I've just got to get this thing finished. I've got to. Otherwise, I don't know what we'll do in the winter. We need a lifeboat ready. The one bit of good news is that in my own odd corner of the industry here at work, I sense that we have hit bottom and are about to see an upward shift. Things have happened which suggest that prices are going to be forced upwards such that our income should once again have some resemblance to the actual cost of living. It's not impossible that this shift could happen soon enough to raise my standard of living back up to something recognizably civilized by this Winter. I can't bank on it, but it's possible. 15:35 - 2008-05-19 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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