Box and Strip

It’s been a very productive last few weeks at the box house, with very few opportunities for updating the blog.  Now that I have a chance to write, I don’t know where to begin.

At the last entry I was beginning the drive to install a rudimentary indoor bathroom.  That work, at least the part to be done now, has been completed.  It took a bit longer than anticipated because the amateur plumber (me) incorrectly placed a stack (vent to the roof). That mistake required redoing part of the under-house lines.  That’s now done, and a utility sink and toilet now grace the inside of the house with their plumbing presence.  There is even enough sheetrock up to provide for a bit of privacy.  As soon as practical, I’ll make a move on the shower.

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It’s the end of an abbreviated weekend at the box house. My daughter has an event this afternoon in Austin that cannot be missed.  As happens frequently, I’ve wound up getting things done that presented themselves at the moment, rather than working on exactly what I planned.

I wanted to finish the plumbing this weekend, but for complicated reasons, I wound up out here without all the pieces I needed on Saturday morning.  So, instead of plumbing, I finished framing out the new bathroom and redesigning the under-house plumbing.

New walls to divide the laundry closet and bathroom.

The guy who has really been busy around here, however, is A. Click to continue »

Here’s a post about one of the things that this blog purports to cover; but rarely directly addresses: renovating on a budget.

I need about 150 feet of heavy wire to connect the box house to the electric service pole through an underground conduit. I vaguely knew copper was expensive, and was prepared to spend $4-$5/foot for the main service cable at the box house.  It turns out, however, that the current price is almost double what I was expecting.

Copper has recently been at an all-time price high. If you do a Google news search, you’ll find stories about copper wire theft and projects delayed due to high prices.

The copper wire I need presently comes in at about $7-$9 a foot, with prices changing daily. That means the cost of the underground cable I planned – here we’re just talking price of the material – would be about $1300 including tax. Click to continue »

It’s been a weekend of not altogether successfully ensuring that things run downhill at the box house.  School was out on Friday and Monday, and my wife is away on business, so here on Sunday afternoon, I’m winding down a long weekend of plumbing.

On Thursday, before I got here, A kicked things off by pulling away the foundation on the corner of what will be the bathroom, and by trenching about 50 feet over from the existing line to its new destination.

But A isn’t any better a plumber than I am, and I’m a rank amateur. So he didn’t quite appreciate the inflexibility of 4 inch PVC pipe (i.e. the need to carefully maintain angles). This meant we had to adjust the trenches some as we brought the line over to the house – more digging.

A little messy there at the start.

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Spring is starting off with a bang at the box house. Or maybe a grunt. Perhaps it’s a little optimistic to declare spring, but odds are that the light freeze last night will be the last of the year. Temperatures hit the high 60s today and be in the 70s for the rest of the week.

Things are moving again. The background is that the Mrs put her foot down and said “No more Prowler“. So the trailer is going. To be honest, it is beginning to annoy me too – so many little plumbing and other problems taking too much of my time to fix.

Before the trailer can be disposed of, however, we’ll need a bathroom in the house. The plan is to build a temporary one in the same location as the final one. This will obviously require better utilities in the house, which presently has no water and is powered by extension cords!

Let’s begin with the sewer. The house hasn’t ever had city sewer service. There’s an old clay pipe headed into the back yard that, I assume, leads to a former septic field; but I have never gone digging after it.

The prior owners tapped the city sewer line at the street a few years ago; but only ran it onto the property far enough to use it with their own trailer. Now, I need to extend the line over and into the house.

The main sewer run.

A beautiful thing about the box house is that the soil is fantastic for digging. Click to continue »

Even though it’s only January, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I’ll do this spring which, in Texas, isn’t that far away.

The no-brainer is to get A back over here to complete the front porch. All I need to do is to go get some appropriate rock and get A over here for a week.

Another rock task is a bit more complex. That will be addressing the “pooch” on the north side of the house, where a wall is slowly failing (jutting outward). A will have remove the existing foundation, and while that’s taken apart, I’ll rebuild the wood structure above it and figure out a way to tuck the wall back in.  Then A can rebuild the foundation underneath. I think I can handle it; but it’s a relatively structurally complicated thing.

Getting the front yard cleaned up. Lots of removing dirt, raking, and cleaning up fences lately.

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I managed to spend another day and half at the box house this weekend. Looking around, I came to terms with my denial about what a mess the place had become.

So there’s little of interest to post about this weekend’s activities. I spent most of my time cleaning up debris inside and out. I now have quite a bit a rubble and other garbage piled up in the side yard and could desperately use a free dump day. Since maybe four or five loads of it is concrete and gravel rubble, it’d be a bit expensive to take it on a normal dump day.

Only two minor “new” activities. First, from the heat and vegetation standpoint, this is definitely the time of year to clear brush, so I have almost finished the job of cleaning up the back yard to the lot line. It’s not a clear cut – I’m leaving some clumps of bee brush and small mesquites – but these are now islands instead of an impenetrable thicket. Click to continue »

It’s been a very long while since I’ve posted so I suspect my audience has dwindled to zero.  Many months after leaving the box house to move back to Austin, I’m finally reaching to point where I hope to be able to renew my efforts here.  It has been a long hard slog in Austin but the house there now has a new floor, refinished walls, a redone bathroom, and some remodeled closets.  There is still some work to do; but the last major hurdle – completing a new shower – was done a few days ago.

This weekend I’m at the box house, and although I’m starting no new projects, I’ve been able to get a bit done. I got out the bluebonnets I harvested late in the spring.  The seed pods pop like rice crispies (“explosive dehiscence” is the technical term); but I still threshed the four grocery bags’ worth that I stored in the house.  I walked on them on top of a cement pad – the one that used to support a water tank (see “Over and Out”).

Bluebonnet seed, more or less cleaned.

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Apologies for the long delay. Since I last posted three weeks ago, my solo time at the box house has ended. I took charge of my young daughter at the end of June, and the tenants moved out of our house in Austin, leaving me with far less time on my hands and an intimidating “to do” list at the Austin house (new walls, new floor, new bathroom, for starters!), which shows the wounds that 5 years of renters can inflict.

This means things will definitely slow down at the box house in the next couple of months. As of today, however, the rock foundation is finally being rebuilt. Getting the masonry mix right proved to be far more difficult than I imagined it would be. After failing with white masonry mix and failing again with a liquid cement dye (among other problems), things have finally come together.

The winning recipe combines gray Type N masonry mix, a healthy portion of extra lime, and a slightly off-label (strong) helping of powdered cement dye. The dye is “Texas tan”; but it has the color and consistency of aged powdered turmeric when it comes out of the box.

A and I finally mixed the first working batch this morning, and he went to work rebuilding the front foundation:

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My day job has been busy lately, so I have been able to pay A and M to be on the job around the house.  It makes me feel like a whimp having other guys do my work; but it’s undeniably practical as long as I’ve got the money.

M has almost finished rebuilding the porch.  There is a lot of new 1×4 decking, new plywood decking on top of that, and a few new studs.  He’s reaffixed the old metal, filled the “hole” that leaked, and patched the metal flashing to (hopefully) resolve all the drainage issues up there. Most of the beadboard ceiling is now up as well.

As you can also see above, A has been busy digging out the rock and gravel mixture that underlaid the former cement patio.  He’s also knocked out a portion of the foundation on the front:

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