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Help From Friends

·1 min
Hovel
Author
Lance Barker
Exploring my own creative expression and building things that help people.

Before

I have had an ongoing problem with my front door. It’s the result of poor design. The roof slopes over the entrance which means all precipitation including snow ends up dumping right in front of the door. I asked a carpenter friend to help out by coming up with a simple solution to extend the overhang to 3 feet in front of the entrance door. He did. It works. Couldn’t have done it myself.

After

It took the 3 of us about 7 hours from start to finish. I will need to paint and touch up but that won’t happen until after the siding goes up. Cost: about $600.00

Related

What Not To Do

·1 min
Hovel
Some time ago, I worked with a friend to lay some tile on my small bathroom floor. It turned out great! Made a big difference. The next day we walked into the bathroom to inspect the finished product. To my horror, it all cracked! Turns out the floor was slightly spongy - not enough to really notice. You can’t do that with tile. The floor has to be absolutely rigid. (Makes sense after the fact.) I didn’t know. I was catatonic. We had to pull it all out, add support to the floor and relay the tile. I tried to organize the tile to put it back in the original order. Glue got on top of most of the tiles. Not sure how I’m going to get it off. At least its solid now.

Moving Forward

·1 min
Hovel
Completed a milestone today! I finished turning my shack into a decent, orderly place to store my stuff. In order to get here I had to clean it out first, which means I had to go through practically everything I own. That was hard. Then I started building shelves. Got better at that as I went along. Then I had to start packing it again in order to make room in the house to start the real construction.

Slow Progress

·1 min
Hovel
Slowly and painfully, I go on. I’ve gone through about 85% of my stuff. Now I need to rearrange it somewhere. As I begin work on each room, I need to move the contents somewhere to free up construction access. So, the last few days I’ve been working on making shelves in the shack to more efficiently hold stuff. Got my drill and saw out. Making them out of 2x4s. Slow and crude, but functional. When that’s done, I’ll pack it and start working on the music room.