Thread: So I woke up on Saturday and bought a house.

You wish I could/would be your brother-in-law.

You haven't met my brother before...

Hey, I live close

Sister is beautiful,

buy anyways, if you build a new barn, look into a premade pole barn, metal buildings. they are dirt cheap and open span

If she's into marketing, she can apply at my company for a client services position. Although its not a marketing position directly, we're a marketing company.

First let me get the pleasantries out of the way. _

We had a Federal Pacific electrical box from the 1970's installed. It is a known fire hazard and was disclosed by the seller and identified by the home inspector. It was one of the first things we wanted to deal with. Apparently furniture and a new stove were more important. =D

So $1,470 later and we have a shiny new setup with room to grow and plans for real power in the garage some time. That total includes splitting a couple circuits up in the house to spread the load and a couple more chassis grounds installed. We had one outlet installed for the living room entertainment center as well.

Electrical box and breaker panel was outside and there is no room for it inside that would meet code so it has to stay out there. It is behind the gas meter and the water heater (water heater is inside the sheet metal structure).


Axson Electric did a great job. I'd use them again.


















They finished all the work in one day and we're happy to have that major work and expense behind us!

_

It's been a crazy year. We bought the house, and shit got real busy at work real quick. Things got so crazy that I had some seemingly stress induced medical issues. I ended up spending the entire year in a state of poor health and sever lack of motivation. I spent about $2,500 out of pocket on health care and just had to settle for a diagnosis of stress induced overactive bladder syndrome. I won't get into the details, but I'm very happy to have my health back now. Because of that, I feel motivated to get back to working on the car and the house and everything else I let slide. One of those things being updating this thread.

The one decent thing I ended up accomplishing myself this year other than work-work was digging up some stumps in the front yard.

After breaking some cheap tools from Lowe's I went on a hunt for a quality shovel and axe.

I can't say enough good things about these two Fiskars items.

_

Stump #1. Week #1.



Let's follow this and see where it goes.






Oh what is this? O_o


Dammit!








Wagon!


Hose is to flood it and get the wood chips to float for easy gathering.






















This shit is so resilient. Every ounce of wood extracted is a miracle. I can't shop laterally either since I'm in a hole, so I have to chop vertically. Things are going sloooowly!


At least this is all good for starting fires.






I think this is where I was after one week of chopping and digging after work each day.

Looks like they installed a smart meter to the premise. You should get better readings with it. Nice shovel and axe.

_

Stump #1. Week #2.







This thing just goes straight down. It was all tap root apparently.




















One tiny part down. Still have the thick bastard to go.
















Just a bit more to get and I'm calling it quits.


Time to fill that hole in.


This is about all the dirt I had to put in. Gunna have to buy some sand and top soil to finish it off.




Getting there.


Random divot #1. Week #2.

This is where someone must have dug up a bush or something a while back. There was just a decent ditch here, so I'm filling that in now that I have some top soil on had. It was right in our walkway path to the front door.



I got some a small bag of really cheap grass seed ($4) at Lowe's and will be using that for spot cover. I think it is some type of ryegrass. I later found out our grass is centipede grass, so that'll need fixing. The next cheapest bag of grass seed was $30 though, so I just got what was cheap. =(



While I was boxing up the wood from the first stump, I stumbled upon another in the middle of the front lawn.

Stump #2. Week #3.



This one was thankfully rotted and not resilient. Although it was filled with huge termite queens. Part of the reason why I wanted to dig these things up and get rid of them.



Filling in the hole left by stump #1 some more.






I am soaking in sweat. =/


This day I was pretty exhausted, and sunburt from being outside for a few weeks.



Miles checks out stump #2.


Top soil and grass seed for spot #1.








I'm done with spot #1. Yay. =/