Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Amores Cobertizo

Soffits = fun

This was my Sunday afternoon project





to keep out the fruit bats and wasps and spiders and other creepy crawly type things.

I pulled a muscle in my neck from all the reaching and looking up. The weather was hot as well and the liquid nails I used became extra liquidy and dripped down in long gooey strands if I wasn't quick enough putting the boards up.

The first board I nailed up and took down twice because I got too trigger happy with the nail gun on one end of the board only to discover that the other end of the board was more crooked than a Chicago politician. The boards being only 3/8ths plywood were very flexible and would sag down at one end while I was holding and nailing the other end. The piece in question was 8 feet long, so there was a lot of sag making it nearly impossible to tell if the board was straight until one end was nailed down and the other end could be pushed up into position.

After two tries with that nonsense, I just made my oldest son come out and hold up the opposite end.

Anywho...I'm still not done, but I have just four simple pieces to put up at the peak of the roof.









You can clearly see some of the gaps I have in my siding and soffits. Never fear, though. That's why some fart smucker invented trim.

Not sure what I am going to tackle next. Either the other door or steps for the other door. Probably the steps. Or maybe the door. I don't know.

After the door and steps its just trim and paint. Joy.

Oh I almost forgot. New tool for the job.



Both of my other tape measures broke.

Is this the cheapest one they had at Lowe's? Nope, they sell some really really crappy Lufkins that look like they were designed and assembled by children, for children. I could have bought another shiny chrome Stanley, but my last one just broke, so I wanted to try something different.

The brand name of the one I bought is Komelon. I have never ever heard of it and it was the only model of that brand they had. It felt good in my hand and I liked the rubberized coating on it. The release button on the top was in the perfect position. And the color was great. Bright colored tools are a must for me. And most importantly the price was just right at under $7.

Here's the weird thing. Lowe's sells their own brand of tools under the Kobalt name. I don't personally own any, but from what I've seen the quality isn't too bad. Better than the Husky tools that Home Depot sells at least. Anyway, I digress. The Kobalt tape measure was the same exact tape measure as the Komelon. Except for the color and logo they were identical. However, he Kobalt was $16! It had to be a mistake.

Update: Nope. It wasn't a mistake. Its on their website.

4 comments:

Brian said...

Funny, after years of Middle School/High School/College science classes I want a metric tape measure.

gagknee said...

you know, it would be easier. adding fractions is not fun.

L-DUB said...

Funny, my son's home work on the first day of school was to learn how to use a ruler. He had to measure things and then convert measurements like 12/16'ths to 3/4'ths. After an hour of working on it I showed him my tape measure that had all the "cheater" marks on it (1/4, 3/8, 5/8...), It also has the decimal equivalent written on it. He wanted to bring it to school... Probably not a good idea...

gagknee said...

you have decimal equivalents on your tape measure. i need one of those. does it have decimals for measurements other than the easy ones like 1/4, 1/2 etc.