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Residing the House

Oh, the house needs paint. Mmmmm this paint is peeling badly. Lots of dry rot….. Yuck. Maybe we should reside our house…… Mmmmm but if we reside our house, then that would be the perfect time to also plunk in some new windows… The rest is history.

Here’s the start of the project. Ryan Eagy came over and donated a Saturday which really got us going. Without his help, it would have been discouragingly eternal.

Here’s the primered siding.

And Lisa in her everlasting quest for the perfect shade.

Siding Project...

Decided to reside our house. The decisions are always hard because it seems to be a pay me now or pay me later kind of choice. Either I wait for the old T-111 siding to delaminate and rip it all off and then put up OSB and then side over top of that OR side right over top if it right now and save all that work and labor. I opted for the second option. We also installed a few new windows which saved us the headache of doing that later.

4 Monkeys... 4 Beds

Lisa had been wanting some captain beds for the kids. She showed me a bed from pottery barn, and said, can you make this? I said, “mmm….I can try.”

The trying began when Albertson’s remodeled and threw away a couple hundred board feet of beautiful painted poplar. The ends were filled with screws and the paint would have to be sanded away, but that was the perfect foundation for the project. I’m all about free wood.

A couple months into the project, I was reaping the consequences of being cheap. I never realized how difficult it would be to make four of anything. For example the bed has 3 drawers times made up of 5 pieces of wood each of which had to be squared on all 4 sides times 4 beds. That equals 240 cuts. Just to get the wood the right size. Repeat that math for every single piece of the bed.

Because I was cutting so much wood, I wanted to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes so I drew it up in my favorite CAD program Rhino3d.

If you want to download the file here you go

Making the legs was a lot of work and fun. I used my CNC machine to drill precision holes for the referencing pins. I used a bunch of the scrap poplar to make trim for the posts.

Gluing up was time consuming at best, but it was fun to start seeing it come together.

My paint booth ended up being our back yard deck. Its not exactly a looker so we didn’t mind using it for a paint booth. Kinda fun actually.

Lisa helped put the edge banding on the top of the drawers

Then finally came the day when we got to assemble them! Success!

Finishing our Pillars

Finally making some progress on the pillars for our front walkway. This project has taken a REALLY long time (as in 1 full year and some change).

Pour it Baby!

The point of no return. 9 hours on the business end of a jackhammer and this is all we have to show for it?

We figured 16 truckloads of urban rubble to the landfill and two days of solid labor OR an hour and 45 minutes with a bobcat and a dump truck. It was a tossup :-) Jay and Rena kindly paid for the professional help on both ends of the project.

Here’s a shot of the compaction under the previous pad. Not much in the way of road mix (as in nothing…). It was no wonder it cracked.

Pulling out some fresh lumber from Franklin Building Supply to setup some nice clean forms. The boys loved helping when they could.

Jay the perfectionist! It was so nice to have his quality eye and expertise to give it that professional touch.

This form was as much work as anything else on the project. Not only did we have to solve the 20 inch grade problem, but we had to solve the 1/2 stake through the neighborhood cable line problem. heh heh heh….

Here we are forming up the landing as we get ready for the pour. You can see the road mix spread out and compacted. All told we shoveled 16 yards of 3/4 mix by hand. My dad lent a hand that day trying his hand out on the rotary hammer and teaching me the finer points of operating the human backhoe.

The pour was broken up into two separate days. Thursday we poured 8.5 yards of concrete: the landing, the steps and the west side of the house.


The boys were watching from the living room window. Here’s their view. If that’s not a concrete guy, I don’t know who is!

This guy had some fun in the concrete. He flew the coup and left some cute little chicken tracks through the middle of the wet cement. We also had a stray dog, a bike and a school boy all try to leave their marks. Wet cement is like a homing beacon for neighborhood mammals.

The gang staying in doors sick and not feeling well. Nana helped out a ton just keeping everyone fed, clean and entertained. Lisa and Rena had a full time job just keeping all the workers fed!

The final product drying out… 19.5 yards of concrete! The last cement truck said their wasn’t even half a wheelbarrow left in his truck. Those are some impressive calculations Jay!

Final Preparations and GRASS!

I spent 100 bucks on some railroad ties and about 6 hours digging to get a border put in so the dirt wouldn’t fall into my neighbors lawn. Six months later I would rip it all out when we replaced the fence. Lesson learned: do projects in the correct order! Live and learn.

The boys loved being dragged around on the home brew landscape rake. They were actually and indispensables resource. They were intelligent dead weight.

The first signs of life!

BLM Rocks and Brick Paver Preparations

Went down to the BLM office and purchased a landscape rock permit to quarry stone from the missile site south of Mountain Home about 20 miles (17 dollars for 2 tons of rock).

We borrowed Mike’s (Lisa’s dad) trailer to pick up the rock. Caleb and Brock helped unload some of the smaller stones.

I used my dad’s cherry picker to load and unload the larger stones. I harvested the rocks in the dessert by myself which was quite the adventure. I about crushed my leg several times.

This picture shows the prep work for the paver walkway. A 3 inch bed of 3/4 mix followed by a 3 inch bed of sand is the foundation for the walkway.

Trenching and Pouring Mud

Ripping through the backyard with a trencher is destructive and very unnerving. We laid down 6 separate circuits in the backyard. I managed to rip through our cable line while trenching. We don’t have cable, but I imagine if we tried to hook it up there wouldn’t be much to offer.

We also poured a footing for a future wall we envision. The forms were made from scrap OSB and homemade 2×4 stakes. It’s fun to be resourceful.

Brock is hanging out in the back of “the beast” with the 3/4 mix.

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For now the footing serves as a nice divider between the garden and the grass.