I haven’t been doing much building lately as I’ve had a cold or the flu. I get tired easily and things feel three times heavier than they are, I’ve stayed home to do income taxes, and the final electrical plan. Aaron showed me this program called sketchup, it’s a free download from Google. It works like AutoCAD but it’s easier and very easy to do three dimensional drawings. I whipped up a quick three dimensional walkthrough of the house to see what it will look like inside. I haven’t shown it to anyone except Tre; he was very impressed. I highly recommend the program, it’s fun to play with, I think I’m going to use it to design the cupboards and cabinets for the kitchen with it.
Today at the house I installed the side and front doors, they were a bit heave and awkward, but they’re in now. I had to call Cory for the low down on shimming doors and the finer details of installation. He must have given me good instructions, I put them in without problems. And I installed the locksets and keyed them alike.
One thing that I learned about home wrap is that you absolutely must have it tight against the house or the wind will tear it to pieces, I got there today and the West side of the house was flapping, and the piece that we put on the north side was doing the same. The parts that were flapping were Tuck taped but the tape was gone and the ends were shredded. I’d love to tear it off and start over but the stuff is too expensive for me, it’s more than a dollar per linear foot, I’m even saving the scraps for doing the gable ends. I pulled it as much as I could and gave it lots of staples, I’m thinking that I won’t do the upper half of the house until we decide to install the vinyl siding, that way we can put the house wrap up and the siding will help hold it in place and protect it from wind.
I normally try to avoid mentioning brand names on the website, but I’ll make an exception today; I bought some Weiser locksets that have what they named, “smart key technology”. The deal is that you can re-key the locks in a matter of seconds. The way it works is you insert the working key (KEY A) and turn it clockwise 90 degrees, then you insert the special tool in a slot, then you remove the old working key (KEY A), and insert the new key that you want to work (KEY B), turn the new key counterclockwise 90 degrees and remove it. The result is that key B, now works and key A does not work any more. It works great, I re-keyed all the locks so that one key opens all of them, it took only the time that it takes to walk from one door to the next. It’s also good because I’m going to give my keys to contractors, when they’re all done I can easily re-key the locks, plus I’ll only need one key to open any lock on the property because I key them all to the same key. They’re good looking locks as well, they come in many styles. And they get the highest security rating for residential locks. I’m sold on them, they were easy to install for a first time installer, top marks for Weiser.
I found out that I have big concrete problems, all gravel roads and regular highways in our Municipality have road weight restrictions on them, our road had a restriction of 65% of normal axle loads on it, what this means is that I probably can’t get an empty cement truck to our house, and I definitely can’t get a full one, or a pumping truck there; so no concrete until June 1.
