Reflecting upon your experiences:

Would you have liked to be a homebuilder professionally?

Does that seem like a good fit for your personality?

I've thought about that but I think it would be enjoyable for a while but like anything become routine. My personality doesn't seem to fit anything professionally. I used to enjoy the work I do now and I hate it now. Actually, this has happened with every job I've had. I once entertained fishing (my favorite thing to do) professionally. Other than the fact I wasn't good enough, the grind of putting in a ton of hours fishing took the fun out of it.

The other problem is the enjoyment for me is the process and the product. But in the business it's all about monetizing. Sometimes when I google how to do something I stumble on contractor forums. They are all about how to make money at it, not really about how to do it (they already know that). It doesn't seem like an easy business to be in. I was a roofer when I was a lot younger and I remember it being feast or famine. Work work work, then all the sudden nothing.

Roofing: is that the seasonality of American life?

Winter no work ---> snow?

Many parts of the US have mild climates and year round building. It's just the nature of the business.

When I was roofing it was the heat that was the problem. The shingles would melt and the staples would shoot right through them.

The "feast or famine" comment was based on just the randomness of jobs coming in. In Austin it seem pretty "feasty" right now.

Finished the laundry room. The last piece was the little wood piece that I had to stain to cover the gap between the wood floor and the tile. I tried to get this in the pic but it's hard to tell what it is. Anyways, 2nd room completely finished!

In other news it appears as if Imageshack no longer allows you to use them for free.

Population growth and tech seems to have kept Austin pretty feasty for decades, minus a couple blips (I suffered through the dot-com bust and '08 collapse). It's kinda crazy. I've only been gone for 5 years, and I barely recognize the skyline now. I was reading an article on the best restaurants in the city recently, and I only knew one of them. You blink and the entire city changes.

Rainey Street is full of bars? When the hell did that happen?

LOL, yeah. Seemed like overnight.

East Austin is gentrifying like crazy. Some parts aren't recognizable.

The newest thing is Mopacalypse. They are adding a toll lane. Unfortunately my house is right next to Mopac. I'm looking forward to about 5 years of roadway mess.

Lowe's came and picked up this leftover siding. One less thing in my driveway.

Mini-rant about Lowe's

I got a Lowe's credit card last month which is pretty sweet because it's an automatic 5% discount if you use it. For anything at Lowe's. I wish I'd had it when I started this.

Anyways, I go to the website the day I got it to set up an autopay so it will draft every month from my bank account. Today I'm checking my bank balance and I don't see any Lowe's payment. Sure enough, it did not process AND I got charged a $25 fee.

So, I call them up and I got an extremely rude and unhelpful woman who blamed me for everything. User error. I was positive I had done this correctly. Her attitude was so bad I actually told her she had no business being in customer service.

Anyways, I got home and decided to set it all up again. Only when I went to set up the recurring payment it told me there was already one set up. I went back through my records and sure enough I got an email confirming I had done this on the 22nd.

So, I call Lowe's again and this time got a much more helpful person who verified that I had indeed set up everything properly. But, she said, it takes one billing cycle for it to process. This seems pretty stupid and I don't see it anywhere but oh well. At least I know I did it right.

I'm sort of baffled how the first woman has a job. The second one took about 2 seconds to figure out the problem.

She removed the late fee.

/minirant

Seems like all things considered for BB life is good.
Maybe I remeber things wrong but were you unhappy before you started becoming Grizzly Adam's man rebuilding your own whole house??

Thanks for asking. I have a really long answer to this but it's probably not anything anyone wants to hear.

As it is relevant to this blog, the answer is not really. I sort of dived into this in the hopes it would help me out of my funk. I'm not sure why, though. I guess just to force myself to be productive. Actually at the time my thought process was that if I got my house in shape it would be one less thing that makes me unhappy. I won't say it's had the opposite effect but it hasn't really helped. I mean, I'm spending every free moment of my life just to have what most people already have - a house that isn't crumbling around them. It's sort of disheartening to be at this place in life at 56. When I really think about it all, I realize I probably have at least 2 more years of this. It would be nice to spend my time doing something more meaningful or satisfying.

The house is but one of many things I'm trying to "fix". I sort of wanted to start a second blog about all this but rules is rules! I didn't want to clog up the building blog with me whining about life.

Thanks for your interest, though, Digger.

Power washed the house so I can paint tomorrow. The power washer sort of removed some of the primer. I think it'll be OK. Hopefully.

Finished the non-trim painting. That hardi really holds the paint well. I don't think I'll have to put a second coat on. The front porch ceiling is wood (lap) and I think I'll have to put a second coat on that but the rest looks good so far (whew).

I'm pretty toasted. It took about 9 hours and I only took one short break to down a power bar.

I'm pretty satisfied, though. I think it will look pretty good. I'll post pics when I'm done.

Trim tomorrow.

Pics of finished stages!

Unable to post yesterday because I barely finished up before I had to be somewhere.

Yesteday I put tape around all the trim. I'm sure a really good painter wouldn't need to to this but, well.....

Put one coat on the trim. It'll need 2.

All in all a pretty good day. I ran out of paint when I ran out of trim.

I'm absolutely exhausted. I'm going to finish up today but I'm paying for it.

Pics coming!

The scaffolding is no more.



Ode to a scaffold

Oh scaffolding, oh scaffolding
You stood fast through the snow, the rain, the heat, the cold
Ever the rock
Always waiting until I needed you
A stalwart of patience
Lifting me when I was down
Raising me to the highest heights
Never asking for favor
A more trusted companion I have not had
Alas we knew this day would come
When our paths must diverge
You to your destiny, me to mine
And yet, the sadness fills my bosom
I shall miss you so

*sniff*

Paint looks good!

biggerpoet

woohoo!

There's still about 2 days of punch list on the outside. Clean windows, add some touchup paint, fill in a couple of gaps with hardie, hook up lights, etc. But, I think the 3 day weekends of being on a ladder are in the past. Didn't fall off so that's good.

I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I'm not sure the pics do it justice. The lighting was sort of wonky. I'll try to get some better pics later.

Skimming through the first couple pages of ITT just looking at pictures shows the huge improvement this is. Nice work.

Great job bb!

LOL. Enjoying your thread BB.

House looks great.

Thanks everyone!

I'm sort of taking a breather to assess my course of action.

I need to get a new permit for the front porch. However, I really don't want to provide another mountain of diagrams and forms when I just did this six months ago. So, I'm gonna take a trip to the city and see what can be done (or not done).

Probably gonna get a couple more bids on the living room sheetrock repair The guy that did the bathroom and laundry room did a great job but I'm having trouble swallowing his bid for the living room.

I really need to tackle the deck. It needs to be repaired, power washed and stained. I'm leaning towards doing this myself. However, this is one of those jobs (like nailing shingles) where there's a gazillion people that do it really cheap and really quickly. It's a pretty massive deck so it might be worth it to hire this out.

The yard is a total disaster. Haven't even thought about this but I should probably at least do some planting this spring.

Anyways, I need a little break before I'm back at it again.