As much as I try to do this on as little money as possible, get as many things as I can for free, recycling what others discard there are simply some things that need to be bought and paid for. Like concrete. In my last entry, the concrete was pouring, but only enough to do half of the foundation work. Then the summer came, trips were taken, expenses came up and money disappeared. I'm sure most of you are like me living pay check to pay check that even a $200 dollar purchase of concrete can cause a major dilemma in your creative abilities to balance the books. Even the big banks and Wall Street investment houses can only get so creative with how they balance the books. I had to do it the old fashion way and simply admit that I didn't have enough money. I had to save a little at a time until I came up with it. Kind of the way we use to do things before credit cards. I do have to give credit to my wife Dana who manages the family accounts. I tend to live in the financial moment and I can be generally clueless as to how I spend my money. I would have had no problems buying more concrete without noticing that my daughter has old worn out shoes or there was no food in the fridge. Dana has a better grasp on the realities of the parental financial priorities.
So yes, I have spent some money on this garage. I set a goal of no more than $1000. Very optomistic!
How much have I spent? All right... no cooking the books. Like all good businesses, transparency is what we're after. Here are the financial reality of this project to date:
Dumpster: $100 (split with the house expenses as half the dumpster was used for the disposal of the old deck, half for the garage roof.)
One trip to the Seattle Dump: $30
One large tarp: $40
Rental of the Concrete Saw and the Jack Hammer: $260
Cost of rebar: $25
Rebar Chairs: $8.16
Wire to tie rebar: $3.85
1 Large box of 3" screws: $16.79
First load of concrete: $123.45 (I thought that was a pretty fun total)
Breakfast and Lunch for my friend Keith who helped with the concrete: $22.72
And yes, I have the final load of concrete that I am estimating at: $200.35
Grand Total: $830.30
Sadly I am off my last prediction of how much I thought I have spent. I'm realizing that I will most likely have to up my overall budget. Perhaps $2,000?
I hope not that much. So I have to break the funk, pump up the optimism and up my search for the free material.
Free material came. In fact a huge score on the building materials came in the form of my neighbor down the street adding onto the back of this house and remodeling his kitchen. His deck came off and ended up in my back yard. He took out some doors and windows and they ended up in my back yard. They started tearing apart another house down the street and...(you guessed it) stuff ended up in my back yard. I have become a common site in our neighborhood carrying items home for the garage and gaining some interesting looks along with questions as to what the hell am I going to do with all this stuff. ("Junk" was the word my wife actually used) Every time I enter my yard I can hear the soundtrack to "Sanford and Son" playing in my head. Dana has become adept at humming the tune in perfect pitch. The best reaction was when I scored on a 300gal. plastic water tank that was at least 10 feet long. She came out to take a look at me rolling the thing into the yard. She simply rolled her eyes, shook her head, turned around and went back inside without a word. I have to admit that I am starting to become overwhelmed myself with all the stuff. But you have to grab somethings at the time they are available or lose out. You also have to have a clear vision of what your project will finally look like but be flexible to to change that vision if something better comes up. It's a man's way of looking at a lot of things in life. Especially when he enters his forties.
So what have I scored on to date. Let me give you a quick list:
- 2 skylights.
- 1 large double pain fixed window.
- 1 multiple pane swivel window.
- 1 large double pane single hung window
- 1 full day lite exterior door
- Roughly 300 lf of 2x6 cedar boards (these will make an awesome floor)
- 60 8" cinder blocks to build the foundation wall
- A small stock pile of framing material.
- I also salvaged 320 sf of oak flooring that will eventually go into my kitchen. ( I wish I would have saved ever damn nail that I have pulled out of something when I got started. I may have filled a 5 gal. bucket by now)
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| Material accumulates in the tent |
So the materials accumulate and the challenge is where to put it all. In my neurotic discomfort with clutter, my weekly chore over the summer turned out to be organizing, stacking and re-organizing my piles of stuff. I guess this made up for my lack of movement on the construction. But organized it is! Stuffed into every crawl space, every open stackable space in my house, my garage tent, my yard and you'd never know it was there. A big help was finding some industrial size pallets that I was able to cut up into 6 foot pieces and they made the perfect lumber rack. One in the garage tent and one in a crawl space in my basement.
My fear is that the summer is over and the wet months are back again and the garage tent is looking pretty worn. I had to replace the tarp on the garage as the old one lost it's ability to repel water. In fact it simply was acting as a small obstacle for the water to pass through only slowing it down for a moment.
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| More accumulates in the crawl space. |
But I have enough material for the moment. I just gotta get that foundation finished. The autumn has been fairly nice here in Seattle so I have to take advantage of it and get this garage anchored down before the wind blows and the heavy rain falls and the garage tent collapses!
WISH ME LUCK.
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| and even more in the basement! |
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| Where do I put it all! |
