Things Which I Did Recently

I have a "vintage" popcorn holder/megaphone circa 1978 that I got at a Red Sox game when I was just a wee lad which I haven't had a good place to display in recent times, so I took the broken handle from something, cut it, screwed it to the wall of m'shed, and stuck the popcorn holder/megaphone on.

Also, I could never find my box of nitrile gloves, so I took some pipe hanger stuff and some scrap wood and made a space in the wall by the door for it.

Evil Shed II

I had a hard time deciding what color to paint the house and since I had a shed to use as my guinea pig I experimented a little. Z wife put a coat of a yellowy beige on the shed whilst I was in West Virginia last spring. Then she started painting the trim a light brown and decided she didn't like it.

Mid summer I took a trip to Lowes and picked out light blue for the body, dark blue for the shutters, and white trim. The nice thing about white trim is that my white gutters and white vinyl windows won't stick out like a sore bum.

I really liked the light blue. Bright and different, as it seems everybody paints their house some shade of beige or white. Being bold with paint isn't really my thing, so I kind of agonized over the light blue for a while before finally pulling the trigger on it.

See, I'm of French-Canadian genetic stock. When I was a kid, and if you grew up in or near New Hampshire towns with a large population of French-Canadians like Nashua, Manchester, Somersworth or Rochester then you will know what I am talking about, it was the running family joke that whenever we would see a house painted purple or pink or bright blue, we would say, "oh they must be French". I don't like being the butt of a joke (even if I am the only living breathing French-Canadian-American some people down here have ever seen), and I most certainly don't like being the butt of my own jokes.

My dad painted the shutters on the house in Dover (not a town with many French-Canadians by the way) that we lived in when I was a kid pink and he never lived it down.

So anyway, enough about my history of paranoia. I didn't like the first shade of light blue, too light, so after putting 2 coats of that on the entire shed, I went and bought a darker shade of light blue. This is what is on it now and it is also what I've started painting the big house with. The front wall of the shed has 6 coats of paint on it including the primer. Crazy.

The doors I decided to paint the dark blue that the shutters will be. Alas, I didn't quite like that shade of blue either. Too bright. So after three coats of blue on the doors, I switched it up and got a darker shade. I like it better and will go with it.

This a picture of the doors with one half the darker blue and the other half the brighter blue. The darker side is still wet at this point soo...

Here it is after it dried. I am not totally down with the idea of having dark blue doors. I'll get used to it. Plus, I don't know what other color I would paint them besides white, maybe beige but that would be too many colors on the house I think.

Cockroaches

So they say that cockroaches could survive nuclear war. You know what they can't survive? A nice blast of starting fluid. It's the first thing I grabbed (I was in the shed).

Unleeesss, the starting fluid just put him to sleep for awhile. Rats. I should have squashed him too.

Shed.

In case you didn't believe that I painted yesterday.

Shed.

The weather was perfect today (almost 70), so I decided to make some progress with painting (priming) the shed. But unfortunately, it had been very cold here recently and when I opened my bucket of paint there was ice in it. So, I had to wait a little while until the sun warmed it up.

Today's Work

Thought it was going to rain, but it ended up being pretty nice. And warm until the sun dipped behind the trees.

I got a coat of primer on one side.

She Done

Except for paint. These pictures are from last Sunday.

WWNAD?

I completed the corner trim on Saturday. At first I was going to just butt the edges  up against each other, but then I asked myself, what would Norm Abram do?

He would miter the edges of the trim.

I ask myself WWNAD a lot. Like the advice the angel on my right shoulder gives me, often I disregard it as inconvenient or too difficult. This time, however, I decided to go with it and miter the edges of my trim pieces. Ripping and mitering at the same time usually doesn't work well for me. Luckily it turned out ok and I didn't lose any fingers.

This is where I didn't follow Norm's advice. He would nail the boards together at the mitered joint and then attach to the shed. Hey, man, it's just a shed. No need for perfection.

There's a completed corner. It looks good from a distance.

All four corners done. And I did it in one day.

Another view. Gettin' dark...

Trim

The weather was perfect yesterday. About 60 and sunny. Warm enough to be comfortable in a t-shirt, but not warm enough to sweat.

I worked on the trim. Its getting there. Little by little.

Behold!

A series of photos that will bore and disinterest you!

Making a frame for the door in the lattice. Incredible!



Attaching lattice to the frame. Astounding!



Sandwiching the lattice with another frame. Marvelous!



Mounting to the exterior. Unbelievable!



Driving in stakes for extra strength. Brilliant!



Door completed. Stupendous!



A view from farther back. Awesome!



Inside looking out. Fabulous!



The unfinished soffit. Phenomenal!



The finished soffit. Outstanding!



This post is done. Incredible!

Bacon, Lattice and Tomato

Sunday was a beautiful day and I was able to get more done on the lattice.

First up was filling in the space around the stairs.





Stairing at the back wall I decided that there was a lot of usable space under there for storing stuff, like my ladder for instance.



So I left a gap in the middle where I will make a small door.



A closer view underneath. The kids were playing under there after they got tired of painting. Watch out for black widows!

Lattice Pray

I'm wearing my wigger jeans tonight. Thats it, I just felt like saying "wigger".

Went out to Home Depot last night and got myself some lattice. The stuff is a pain in a neck to load into a vehicle. It catches on everything. Luckily, a nice couple came over and helped me load it. They startled me, and I jumped and let out an involuntary "holy crap!". At least I don't scream like a girl.

Sweet sweet lattice.



Unfortunately when I woke up this morning at 6:30 (thanks kids) it was raining out. Kind of a bummer, but at least it was warm.

I set the kids up with paint brushes and had them begin to prime the shed while I began working on the lattice. We had to take frequent breaks for sudden downpours.



The first thing I had to do was rip a 2 x 6 into 3/4 wide strips to use as trim on the lattice skirting.



The slope of the yard adds a degree of difficulty to this operation. Here I snapped a chalkline, which I didn't bother to do on the other sides. Waste of time.



I had no idea what the best way to cut this crap is, but I settled on snapping a chalkline and using the jig saw. A circular saw seem like overkill.



Test fitting the first pieces that I cut. As you can see it doesn't line up with the chalkline, which is why i didn't bother with the chalkline any more.



Test fitting the other side. At this point I was thinking, "oh CRAP. How do I do the stairs?"



Attaching the previously ripped 3/4 inch strips of wood.



The rain slowed me down. This is all I got done today. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice.



It was raining pretty good out while I was attaching the two sections of lattice in the previous photo. The battery in my cordless drill was dead and I was using the corded one. I was a bit nervous about getting electrocuted. Not nervous enough to stop working though...



At this point it was time for dinner, so I called it a day. I was going to cook flounder and I decided that I wanted to fry it. Unfortunately, I tossed the filets in confectioner's sugar instead of flour. It wasn't bad though. Not as bad as when a couple of weeks ago while stir frying some chicken I dumped in a half a bottle of crushed red pepper. I took the cap off and thought it had one of those sifter things on the bottle. It turns out the cap is the sifter thing.

Kinda Sorta Final Cost

So, I tallied up the cost of the shed. I say "kinda sorta" because obviously its not done yet, but I know exactly what I need to finish it and I included those costs in my calculations.

$2,058.32. If I still lived in NH with no sales tax it would have been $1960.30. But then, who knows, lumber costs may be higher in the granite state.

If you are interested in the breakdown, I entered it all into a google spreadsheet.

I think I made out alright. Go check out your local Lowe's or Home Depot and see how much they are charging for something of lesser quality. Plus, I had something interesting to do over the summer.

My Summer Reduced to a Pile of Trash

Gonna start adding up my receipts for the shed project. These are all of them. Except for that CVS one that somehow slipped in there. I guess it wasn't ready for the trash yet.

Tired of Movie Title Puns

Stairs!

All three stringers present and accounted for, sir!



I had to build a support for the stringers. Pretty simple really. I could have had the top step of the stairs level with the floor of the shed, but I didn't want to do that.



Stringers attached, 4 out of 5 blocks down.



Finished! The blocks aren't perfectly level and I dunno if bolting the blocks to the stairs was necessary...



Meanwhile, while I'm working on this, the neighbor has a ramp truck back into her back yard to pull out an old junk car. If I hadn't been there watching they would have run right over my lilac bushes.

Idjit

The People Under the Shed Stairs

Not much accomplished this past weekend. I gotta kick it up a notch so I can at least get a coat of primer on this thing before winter sets in, so expect a flurry (pun intended) of activity in the coming weeks.

Sunday afternoon I managed to start my stairs. I got sidetracked however and didn't really get anything done.

Future home of the stairs. Yes, the blocks are not level. I haven't set them in the ground yet.



Layout of one stringer on a piece of 2x10. I spent hours consulting web sites and books and drawing this on paper to make sure I got it right. Yes, your eyes deceive you not, my framing square is rusted. Its hard to see when its lying on the ground and it got left out in the rain.



One stringer done. I thought for sure I would screw it up somehow, and then have to make up some excuse about how I meant to do it that way, but luckily it came out perfect. Yes, my handsaw is rusted. Its hard to see when its lying on the ground and it got left out in the rain. And no, I did not cut this entire thing out with a handsaw. I slapped a new blade in my much maligned circular saw and zipped through it like butter. The handsaw is just for finishing the inside corners.



Two more stringers to go and then I can start attaching them to the shed.