A few folks have been asking for updates on the house and the projects I’ve been working on around the Casa De La Z (it just makes me feel better about my little house to act like it has a name like some famous castle or something….maybe the chicks will dig it? probably not…). I think Keni’s exact terms were to do a post about the many things i’ve been working on. Well, I’m not sure any of this stuff is really that manly, but hey, I have to listen to my reading audience!
I guess I have been in the house for 5 or 6 months now, and I’ve had time to get settled in and work on a few projects. Once a week or so, I still find myself saying “holly sh*t, I can’t believe I bought a house.” It still doesn’t seem real, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it at some point. I’ve really enjoyed working on projects and doing things around the house. I forgot how much I really enjoyed working with wood and being handy in general.
As I remember, the Shed was specifically called for (cough*Kendra*cough), so I might as well start there right? RIGHT!!! That was a rhetorical question…freakn’ armatures….talking to yourself on a blog. Ghosh. Since I called my house the Casa De La Z before, I’m sure you had images of a 20,000 sq.ft. castle on the top of a great hill. Believe it or not, that is not the case. My house is pretty small, and doesn’t have a large garage. One of the first things that I thought would be a good way to really give me room in the garage would be to build a shed where I could keep all of the yard equipment and other things that don’t really need to be in my garage. I drew the pic below before I even moved in to the house (I think….). My idea was to have a shed that actually used the fence as 2 of the walls of the structure. I wanted the shed to mix in to the shed and not take up too much space in my little yard. You will also see the garden and pond/fountain in that drawing. These things should be in the works in the next month or so.
Soon after I moved in I started working on the shed. I decided to over build the hell out of it and really make it strong. The posts are sunk 24 inches in the ground and set in concrete. The sub floor is all 2×6 pressure treated wood on 16 inch centers, lifted several inches off of the ground. The structure ended up being very strong and I’m happy with how it turned out. I hope to update the rest of the fence this summer with the same board on board style that you see as the front of the shed.
Below you can see the finished shed in the background of the pic actually taken for the deck project I worked on today.
This post is all ready a lot longer than I thought it would be. I’ll try to be short winded (that usually is not a successfully venture). I was planning on doing some work on my deck. The deck is nice, was not water proof, and had some deep discoloration under my crape myrtle. I was thinking that I would need to rent a floor sander, and sand the hell out of the whole deck to get the sap and discoloration out of the wood before I stained/waterproofed it. Vivek has a pressure washer, and I thought it might be worth a shot to see if I could use it to clean the deck. To be honest, I did not think it would really work. To be honest, I was wrong.
To satisfy the kid in me I had to start out with my Z…. Check out the difference! I was surprised how easy it was to clean the wood. Below you can see some spots where the clean wood is right next to the dirty wood.
Here is a pic with everything cleaned.
I stained it tonight also, but it’s too dark to get good pics. I’ll try to post those soon.
I was going to post pics and write about the Gallery Wall, but this thing is way too damn long already. I’ll wait until I get that project finished (about 80% right now) and post about that then. I will just say this much for now: See the orange /redish accent wall and the 1982 brass chandolere? They are no more.
and my drawing of what I had in mind for that wall :
the final project will have more pics than this (most will be smaller than they look in the pic. I’m thinking 11 x 14 and 8x 10’s)
