Posts Tagged ‘saving money’
Pile Processed
It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t quick. However, our do-it-yourself solution of relandscaping the area of our walkways along the foundation of our garage saved us thousands of dollars that it would have cost to have professionals do the work. When covered in dust and mud with wet shoes, soaked pant legs, and tired backs, my cheerleading often involved reminders of all that money we were saving.
Maybe it was a residual impact of my three vaccination shots from days earlier, but my stamina for the project of processing the pile of river rock did not match Cyndie’s. Her tenacity to remain on task kept us going until the tarp was rinsed clean yesterday.
To my credit, it was my idea to modify our shoveling and rinsing by pulling out the grate we had used weeks ago when trying to clean up the old existing rock for reuse. Placing that grate on the tarp and rinsing through it freed us from the tedious effort of trying to scoop rocks off the top of the pile in avoidance of the unwanted wet, sandy gravel that became increasingly prominent as we progressed.
Suddenly, I could simply scoop shovelfuls mindlessly, and the detritus would be washed away with ease. We then used the small stones that filtered out to fill spaces between the big slabs along the walkway.
I would say the results lack the look of a job done by professionals. It needs time to settle before it will look more natural. We will be kicking stray river rocks off the slabs for months, I expect.
Each time I do that, I will think of the money we saved by doing this ourselves. I’ll also remind myself that we used that saved money to take an adventurous trip to Iceland with our friends.
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Strenuous Fun
I worked almost exclusively on covering the exposed edge of another 35 yards of asphalt yesterday. It is some hard labor but it is a labor of great satisfaction. While I was toiling away, it occurred to me that this job is getting a level of attention to detail that is totally unmatched had we paid to have it done by the paving crew.
Not that I wouldn’t have preferred to have someone else do all the finishing work but it wasn’t in our budget. That’s not an isolated incident around our place. You may recall we hired a couple of professional tree trimmers to trim and fell a day’s worth of trees but had them leave everything lay where it landed for us to deal with later.
The miser in me is inclined to dodge an expense for services if I can do the work myself. I rarely get things done promptly, but I tend to focus on the money I didn’t spend, not the time it takes me to complete the work.
Speaking of the time I spend on things, I had an insight yesterday that the satisfaction I was getting out of the gravel work could be compared to my slow shaping of an artistic piece of wood sculpture. I’m crafting an outcome that I want to look good and fulfill its function even better.
Framing it like that might be a way to justify my tedious pace of progress, but it works for me because I’m getting a similar joy from the results. There are endorphins to be had by accomplishing the progress of each additional length.
I felt like I was doing twice the work yesterday because I needed to dig up and move gravel from places where there was surplus to areas that didn’t have enough. Digging up the gravel is strenuous work but it is oh so fun to pour it out on the spots that didn’t have enough.
We had some wonderful downpours of rain last night that will help settle the most recently tended lengths and will also soften the gravel to be raked up over the asphalt edge where we will be working next. Cyndie is coming home today, so I’m looking forward to having her contributions again.
Just not today. My arms need a day off. The calluses and blisters on my hands could use a break. My legs are longing to be propped up in the recliner. A guy can take only so many consecutive days of strenuous fun.
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Beyond Sunset
Once again, we put in a very full day hoping to reach the end of the deck renovation project. Having saved the worst for last, we were up against the most-used steps that had drooped out of level due to rotting and erosion below. That meant spending an uncomfortable amount of time under the deck.
I did have some regret that we didn’t choose to address this problem before finishing the floor above. I didn’t realize how extensive the problem was until we had pulled up the boards of the steps and observed the impact water runoff was having there.
With no real experience in this level of carpentry, I did my best to add some boards for support underneath and reuse as much as possible of the existing frame to create a sound platform for the new step boards above. That also required some added fill to build up the ground that had washed away over the years.
We needed to create new footings for the bottom of the steps so they weren’t exclusively hanging by the screws holding the frame against the main deck at the top.
After lunch, we took the ATV down to an old drainage spot that previous owners had filled with broken concrete. Ironically, evidence points to that debris having been dumped there after removing it from the very spot we were returning it to. It looks like there was once a concrete patio that got removed for the landscape pond and deck expansion at some point in the history of this property.
When those steps were completed, we were officially done with the portion we originally planned to redo. All that remained was the mission creep portion of replacing the top boards of the railing. We’d gone this far already, why stop now?
Since Mike had allowed us to hang on to his saws, we decided to cut the angles on boards for the railing, to have them ready for installation whenever we decide to get around to pulling off the old boards. That task of removal involves digging out the Phillips head screw slots so we can pull off the boards without damaging the wood below. One of the time-consuming aspects of this project that seems never-ending.
Marking and cutting railing boards pushed us past sunset last night. Cyndie took a photo in the waning light to mark the completion of the main steps.
I’m thinking about the money we saved.
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Next Steps
Blessed with another glorious day of blue sky and sunshine on a Friday, Cyndie and I returned to the deck refurbishing project yesterday. The temperature was a little harsh at the start but soon warmed to perfection. Even after I had removed all the screws from the set of steps we started on, I couldn’t get the boards loose until I figured out they were frozen in place. A little persuasion from a hammer was all it took to break the ice.
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I was grateful to have Mike’s power tools to create cut-outs on boards and lucky to have an old length of 4 x 4 in the shop to replace a rotted post on the railing of the second set of steps.
My perfectionistic desires are being seriously taxed by the difficulties of coping with inconsistencies in both the new wood and the old. I repeatedly measured twice before cutting and usually double-checked positioning before drilling in screws, but the results far too often failed to match my intentions.
Fortunately, my standards are loosening as the duration of this project drags on. I’m starting to view the imperfections as features. The misalignments are becoming quaint reminders of how much money we saved by doing this ourselves.
One example: I cut a new face board to go along with the replaced railing post and centered it on the middle frame board. After starting at the top and screwing in boards on each step, I discovered at the bottom that the middle frame board wasn’t actually centered between the ends.
I centered on something that wasn’t centered. Wonderful.
When one of my last boards with cut-outs was found to be off by a quarter-inch, I decided to simply cut an equal amount off the other end and have a symmetrical difference. Somehow, it still ended up lopsided once it was screwed down.
I swear, things move even after there are screws in place.
In the end, none of the small details I fret over will be noticeable to the casual observer. I’m practicing the art of being okay with the imperfections.
Maybe, just maybe, the end is within reach today. We are going to aim for that goal, especially since the weather is once again, perfectly accommodating.
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Floor’s Finished
There was little in the way of fanfare, but yesterday Cyndie and I finally completed the replacement of our deck floorboards. Woo hoo!
Finishing the section in front of our bedroom door came with a reward. The spacing worked out so that we were able to use full-width boards all the way to the end. It looks great.
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Boy, that’s a lot of wood.
All that remains of the project are the stairs and the top of the railings. We hadn’t originally intended to do the top board of the railings, but once the floorboard work got underway, the look of the new wood became a great persuader.
Between my work-week and the weather, plans for further carpentry are on hold until next Friday.
I’m happy to take a break, despite the fact the project continues to linger unfinished. I’m choosing to focus on the money we are saving.
If we had hired one of the professional firms to do this, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have taken as many days off as I do, but DIY savings can come with other costs.
Taking extra time is a cost we can afford right now. (Don’t tell Cyndie I said that.)
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Saving Thousands
If money was no object for us, I would have spent last night reclining in my easy chair with my feet up doing something pleasant, like napping. Instead, we are saving thousands of dollars by doing the work of replacing the rotting surface boards of our deck ourselves, along with the priceless assistance of our precious friend, Mike Wilkus.
That meant Cyndie and I were both out on the deck after I got home from work yesterday, manically striving to prepare as much as possible for today’s plan of installing the new boards.
We are going to keep the railing, so Cyndie has been sanding and wire brushing that wood to remove the lichen that has grown on much of it.
I worked to remove more of the old surface boards, prying up the original ones that were nailed and pulling screws from previous replacement planks.
It is one of those projects that shouldn’t be difficult but always includes unexpected challenges that suddenly bog down progress and increase frustration. Often, it has been a hidden screw that I missed, or simply one where the head is stripped and won’t spin out.
My hole-saw bit has been working wonderfully as a solution to free the old boards and leave problem screws behind to be spun out with a vice grip plier.
Most of the boards are coming up with ease, so I am growing more confident that the whole project is in reach of being as straightforward as we hoped. I’m thinking the bulk of work today will involve hauling new boards to be cut to length and then screwing them down to the joists.
All the while, I’ll be thinking about how much money we are saving by not contracting this out to any of those high bidders who recently quoted the job.
Our labor will be worth thousands.
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Relative Something 