What home improvement work did you do today?

Replaced 3 sprinkler actuators with Rainbird actuators. The old ones were leaking like a stuck pig when the water was on. Now all the lines are at full pressure when they're on and the heads are working as they should be.

 

Homemade firewood rack that doubles as a 3 shelf rack for the wife's plants when we won't need it for the firewood. Still have to cut the shelves and stain them. But not bad for my first time welding hah (many are much much uglier than this, but they're stout). Simple Flux core cheapo Chicago wire feed welder. Made from the steel supports you see in the first pic for farm field hose reels.

 

Just a little more demo for today.

 

Changed out both hanging pendant lights since one if the 2 got banged up from the hurricane and couldn't find the match. Straight forward job. Now onto working on a playset for the kids since that got ripped away too

Ignore the dead plants, the recent freeze we had killed them off pretty quickly

 

A few updates...Framing started in the master bathroom for the new shower. Still waiting for the plumber to get out here to move the pipes which is planned for tomorrow. Electrical is planned for today. Next week the ac guy will be here to install new flex duct for the bathroom since we removed the soffit to raise the ceiling height. new baseboards throughout the house are now installed. Still need to fill in the nail holes and caulk before interior paint is scheduled. We went with a 3 1/2 inch baseboard.

 

Not yet but getting quotes for roof, windows and extending our deck. House was built in 1988.
We bought it around 22 yrs ago. We had the roof shingled 20 yrs ago.
Nothing leaking right now, more for preventative maintenance.
We had the furnace AC and water heater replaced in October.

 

Only in Louisiana would someone apologize for having dead plants in February...

 

Our daffodils are already a few inches tall.

 

I'm a lil upset that the rest of our landscaping took a hard hit too and that's a few grand.
Maybe next time I'll just go plant all fake plants

 

We're getting more snow today.

 

One of my neighbours has Astro turf. I wouldn't do it but his lawn is always green and never needs mowing.

 

Right now, it looks like I have 6 citrus trees down, including our big ass orange tree. I'm going to give them a few weeks before I replace them with something hardier.

 

I've been building a little 4x6 storage shed to get the mower and lawn tools out of my garage. It's crazy to me how much a little shed costs to build. I made the wood platform out of 4x6 weather treated and it was about $170 to build

Clear and level the site


Frame


Weed block



Compacted river rock



3/4 weather treated ply

 

Doesn’t help that the price of wood has quadrupled in the past four months...

 

I’ve been finishing the basement of the house I had built a few years ago. I teach and coach so I’ve been doing it throughout the year when I’ve had time. Started to stud it out over the summer. Ran electric over thanksgiving break and hung the drywall & did the plumbing for the bathroom over Christmas break. I will do everything except finish the drywall and my guy started that today. It’s about 1200 square feet that will be finished with another storage room that is about 700 square feet that will stay unfinished.

 

Makes me wanna start finishing my basement but I can’t feel right about doing it with these lumber prices so high.

 

Makes me want a basement.

 

Uggg....I’ve been (tele)working in my (unfinished)basement since 3/22/2020, (I fixed the foundation wall by pushing it back in April. You stare at the basement long enough you be like “I can do this this and this”
I’m just torn between doing the basement or adding a garage / family room addition! If money was no object I would always do home improvement projects.
But I come here watching this thread to keep me from staring another project. My wife thinks I’m crazy because I get bored not creating/building/learning.

 

I'm the same way - I have to have some kind of project every few weeks or I get bummed out. It's gotten to the point where my neighbor will bring stuff over for me to put together for him.

 

Started working on the flower gardens today, cutting the rose bushes, trimming the crape myrtles, etc. I didn't take any before pics and the after pics would be nothing special. I always thought roses were kinda weak and dainty - turns out they are badasses. It's a little over a week after the horrible freeze we had here in Texas and they are already sprouting out new growth.

 

I had roses at our last house. This yard doesn't have a good place for them.
They are badass, so many varieties. Aphids and June bugs were the main issues, but you could buy bulk ladybugs from Southern States, they took care of the aphids. Bag traps for the Junebugs and all was good. Pictures when you have some blooms.

 

We always trim ours back in January. They’ll be sending up new growth here soon. Around here, you’ve either got rhodies or roses, but rarely both.

 

Mowed the yards. But before that I kept the house from literally burning down.

I live on a private street and it’s pretty much just two alleys that come together at an odd angle.

This is from my front porch.


After seeing this I called 911. A truck was already on the way. So I grabbed a hose and started hosing down anything that was close. As you can see there is a fiberglass hulled boat between the fence and the trees. I knew if that went up the trees would be engulfed. In front of the boat was a Chevy S10 pickup and in front of that a Ford F-250 with a service bed.



The bed liner of the S10 caught fire but there were fellow neighbors with their garden hoses on that property hosing it down.



it took the firefighters a while to get here as they were already on another call. But they showed up and did their thing.


After it was all out it’s no wonder it started in the first place. The guy had a little metal shop back there. MIG welder, chop saw, soldering iron furnace hooked up to what looked like a 40 gallon propane cylinder (silver). And all of that surrounded with bamboo.



So I think keeping your neighborhood from burning down counts as home improvement.

No one was hurt.





Edit: Went out there to check on it with another neighbor. It was still smuldering so he grabbed a hose and watered it down. Also met the owner of the property. It's a landscaping masonry business. Turns out there was a metal forge back there. One of his guys lit it up to do some work, there was a leak and it just caught everything on fire. He got second degree burns on his hand and was taken to the hospital to get treated.

 

It certainly does.

 

Yep. That one qualifies

 

Will do - I have a few pics of roses from last year. I have them all over the place but lost a few varieties that I had planted later in the season and the horrible mid summer afternoon sun torched the hell out of. I found a nursery in a town nearby that has really good prices and he gets antique roses. I'll be heading there soon.

 

Nice. My dad got me into them when I bought my first house. He advised that I should get a combination of looks and fragrance. So I did. It seems, at least back then, that the plain Jane ones smelled the best and the striking ones lacked fragrance.
That one on the fence is awesome.

 

Thanks - the one on the fence is called a "Peggy Martin" or the "Katrina Rose." Peggy Martin is/was a lady in New Orleans that had an amazing rose garden. She couldn't remember where she got this particular climbing rose but when Hurricane Katrina hit, her rose garden was under 12 ft of water for 2 weeks. These roses survived. They were the first roses I bought - I figured if they could survive Katrina, they'd survive whatever I do to them.
Pretty cool little roses - they have small flowers but they bloom in clusters. They are less climbers and more like "leaners" so I put some cattle fence panels up to help them stand. No real scent but they are thornless. I have them leaning on our gazebo too.
The purplish looking one is a "Blue Girl" but between the extreme heat and then the cold, I think I lost it. I also had some Quicksilver climbers that I was super excited about but I planted them late in the season and I'm pretty sure they burned up. I planted a pretty large crape myrtle this winter where most of the sun damage was done in the hopes that it'll cast a little shade.
My grandfather had these amazing roses growing on the side of his front porch in Lansing, Michigan but I never paid much attention to them. Looking back, I wish I would have asked them what they were and learned how he took care of all of his plants. Hindsight, right?

 

Made 2 adjoining closets into 1 and textured/primed the walls.

 

Some more small delays...

Electrician was out today and got the electrical all done. Shower area slab was cut and jackhammered out in order to move the plumbing to the other side. Plumber will be here on Thursday to do his piece. Think we are going to do a small step down into the shower instead of doing a curb. The toilet plumbing is being moved to the other wall and the vent will be relocated as well. Toilet will be moved about 4" back in the end. Had trouble with our security system not communicating with the carrier this week, so they are coming out Friday and upgrading our system which is about 12 years old. This stuff never ends. Getting an estimate on Friday to also have the pool replastered or possibly go to pebble tec. Hopefully only a few more weeks before everything is done.