Thursday, May 25, 2006

Memorial day weekend

It's still decoration day to guys my age. This is another loose ends trip. I have a trailer load of steel studs to unload and an air conditining compressor to install. I found some ready made trusses at habitat for humanities that will really work on the west side so I have to bring the trailer home again.
If you can picture this: the "taco bell tower" will be a 20'x20' two story structure at the West end of the courtyard and will join with a 14' shed roof along the West side of the Bunker. The tower will be a living room and the rest will be a bath and an office/bedroom. The shed roof will be tile as the mansard on the bunker and the roof of the tower will be flat. Big ideas, huh? So far the frame and roof trusses are less than 1k and the walls, which will be 8" sip panels, will add about 3k. My labor, which is worth zip, will bring the total to 6k for the addition. Stay tuned.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Phase One Finished

It was 1,303 miles in two days but the load of studs is home. We left Austin at 6:00 on Sat morning, reaching Farmersville (35 miles NE of Dallas) at 10:00. Terry's kids were home from college so it only took an hour to load all the studs. On the road by 11:30. Eight hours later we were in Pecos where we had to make up our minds to stay the night or drive in the dark for a couple of hours. The thought of our own bed at the bunker won, at 10:00 PM we pulled into the driveway.
The load came off easy and Barbara finished her work in the bunker so by 10:00 we were on the road again (that would make a good song title...Oh, wait). What to do for Mothers day, food always works so we pulled off interstate 10 at Iraann and headed for Coopers Bar-B-Que at Llano. Without a doubt it is the best in Texas, a state with a LOT of B-B-Q. Be sure to put a drool guard on your keyboard before you click on the link. We had an early dinner and were home by six. Next I will take the trailer from here out to the bunker and the frame for the courtyard and the addition will be ready to build.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

View from the driveway


View from the driveway
Originally uploaded by neillsmth.

Stud watch

Not what you think. I found some metal studs on e-bay that will frame the addition and several other things around the place. I had to go to Dallas to pick them up and it turned out that there were many more than I thought. I loaded my trailer to the limit and stacked some on the top of the truck and will still have to go back for another load. I left about 100 2x8x20's and 50 2x6x14's an a ton of connectors and stuff. They are really heavy too, 14 and 16 ga. A logistics nightmare. The full trailer sits here in Austin and I have to rent a trailer to go to Dallas, then to Ft Davis, unload, and back, then the trailer from here to Ft Davis where I'll leave it for a while. I had planned to make the addition 14x45 but with all these 20'ers I will make it bigger. There are enough to build a freestanding garage, too, so the bunker will look more like a compound.