House Projects

[turbotalon1g]

Nice.
I just picked up a mower Tuesday night.

[AJ]

We picked up a battery powered craftsman mower this week. No more gas. Save it for the cars.

We are trying to do a few new things around the house to prep it for selling. Going to move into either the kids school district we are open enrolled in or grab 20+ acres out west on 55 a ways.

Started on the storage room tonight. Repainting, making everything visually appealing.

So if anyone is looking for something in the loop, on the NW side of the cites, set up nice for a car guy and family (nearly 1k sq ft 4 car garage, 4 bedroom, 2 bath) let me know. lol

[turbotalon1g]

20+ acres? god damn.

Drove by some of those lots yesterday afternoon, nice and peaceful out there.

[A//// Guy]

mmm acreage.

[Halon]

Originally Posted by turbotalon1g

Nice.
I just picked up a mower Tuesday night.

What did ya get?

[AJ]

Originally Posted by turbotalon1g

20+ acres? god damn.

Drove by some of those lots yesterday afternoon, nice and peaceful out there.

I want to have space for just getting away from the busy work life. I've found that the commute would be worth it that alone. Add to that being able to having people over and have no issues about big bond fires or music... I could welcome that...

[goodhart]

Offer accepted! Inspection is this coming week, then closing is on or before July 3rd.

4br, 1ba, 3 car garage, .3 acres (Better get that riding lawnmower eh Brown? )

Right now it's about 1,300 finished sq ft, when the basement is finished it will be just a hair over 2,100.

First projects: Garage floor epoxy and deck stain.

Doesn't need a whole lot really, the current owners bought it in 2012 with a VA loan, and the VA is real picky, so we know it can't have any major issues unless they popped up in the last 18 months.

Here's some pics:

[Halon]

Very nice, where abouts?

[goodhart]

Cambridge.

[JET]

On the E side of 65? Looks like that neighborhood. Looks clean and I like the vaulted ceilings. Grats!

[turbotalon1g]

Congrats I know you have been trying to buy for a while.
I'll been on craigslist looking for a rider for you, you will need it.

It takes me 30-40 mins to do my 1/4 acre lot with mine! ;-)

[Halon]

Rider for sure, turns a chore into something enjoyable.

[goodhart]

Yea, east side behind Menard's. I already have a push mower though, I'll get out and get the exercise. I'm more concerned about other yard tools, and eventually a snow blower

[A//// Guy]

Exercise ftw! Congrats!

[curt_gendron]

Originally Posted by AJ

Going to move into either the kids school district we are open enrolled in or grab 20+ acres out west on 55 a ways.

Owning acreage is awesome! It is so nice not having neighbors on top of you. I'd much rather hear birds and ducks versus screaming kids, and fart canned Hondas. LOL

We've started some landscaping this year. Planted some rose bushes and just started a flower garden.

My big purchase this Spring has been a new tractor. Bought a Mahindra MAX 28. Its actually a rebadged Mitsubishi tractor. Has a 1.3L diesel Mitsu engine in it. Its quite the worker. Here is a pic of me adding some dirt to the flower garden:
http://www.mn3s.org/00uploads/tractor.jpg

In the next month, we are planning on adding more sod and grading the rest of the yard.

later,
Curt

[goodhart]

Originally Posted by curt_gendron

Owning acreage is awesome! It is so nice not having neighbors on top of you. I'd much rather hear birds and ducks versus screaming kids, and fart canned Hondas. LOL

This. I wish we could afford something in the country a ways, but it just isn't in our budget now.

[Murlo26]

Well, after months of dinking around, I finally got my refinance to go through. I have a rental property with my dad and it took a lot of paperwork to convince them to remove that from my debt/income ratio as they had to know I had nothing to do with it.

But after we got past that, I also had to have a second appraisal to confirm the first, (LAME). So I had to pay twice because my house appreciated so much since I bought it (more than 50k). But I was able to net 11k out of the deal, so now onto reinvesting in the house!

i am having one of my dads sub contractors stop by soon, he is going to remove a semi dead tree in my back yard that will be in the way of my new deck that I am putting in. I am also going to have him quote a retaining wall for behind my garage too and maybe some various other landscaping items. Then my dad and I are going to design the deck and he will work it up in CAD or architect builder or whatever his program is called, can't remember. And then I will buy all the materials and get building soon hopefully. My dad and my gf's dad (also used to be in the construction business) are going to help me build the deck, so should be fun to get my hands dirty there. I have done framing and poured concrete in the past, so i am not totally green but I am not a pro by any means.

The last thing on my list is gutters.

So hopefully I have some pictures to post soon, I am excited to finally have a deck so I can grill out back

[asshanson]

Been working on garage projects lately. In preparation for the epoxy coating, I had to make overhead shelving to store some of our stuff so the two main stalls could be completely empty. The shelf is 20' long, and 28" deep. I built it using 10' sections of electrical conduit struts, and 1/2" threaded rods between them. I used structural screws to tap into the ceiling beams, and the wall side rests on a 2x4 that is screwed into the wall studs. There are 10 grates total, each held onto the 2x4 with big staples, and on the front with a bunch of big zip ties. It actually ended up being very strong and stable, it holds several hundred pounds easily on each side, I was hanging from the lower bar and it didn't flex. Final step will be to paint the 2x4 to match the garage walls.


Last week I started prepping my garage floor for epoxy coating. I used the Rustoleum Professional floor coating solvent based epoxy. I purchased three kits total, but only did 2 stalls for now, the third stall will be done at a later time. First I mixed all three gallons of base coat "Part B" in one big bucket so the color will match, then poured them back into the individual gallons.

Tuesday I did a dawn scrubbing and couple rinses, Wednesday I did the degreasing stuff and a rinse, and then Thursday I did the acid etching and a couple rinses. Got all the water off, towel dried, and let it dry two full days. Spent about 9-10 hours in prep for the two stalls. Saturday afternoon was my first coat of epoxy. Went pretty well but I went too thin and ended up with extra paint so I just did some areas again trying to get it even. After 24 hours you could see it was pretty blotchy. Sunday I did the second layer of epoxy, and knowing that it would take even less paint since there were no more pores to fill, I went extra thick on the paint. Seemed to come out with a pretty nice shine, but you could see some faint lines between the areas that had some time between them, got a little too dry while I was putting the flakes down I think. Overall I was pretty happy at this point, but I noticed you could hardly see the flakes, the floor was glossy and reflective but the flakes were not, so they were like voids, you just saw black, not the actual color. Today I put on the clear coat, and went pretty thick again. Just took this picture and the clear has pretty much tried to the touch, so it should retain the same shine. All of the previous lines are now gone and you can see the color chips way better because there is a gloss coat over everything (Emily even commented that the color stands out a lot more now). I also added an anti-slip into the top coat, reminds me of little sugar or salt crystals.


Now I just hope I did the prep well enough, and that it doesn't peel or bubble up.

[turbotalon1g]

Looks good. Be careful that shit is like ice when wet.

[A//// Guy]

Looks great!