Yeah, I'm definitely going to have to refer to this thread whenever I feel like I need a good cry.


(Nice!)

Nick, are you doing close to 90% of this work yourself? It's a pretty big project for a 1 man show.

Looks like you making steady progress.

I have done pretty much everything myself. I even started the whole thing by breaking up almost 2 tons (literally) of concrete to relocate the bathroom to a new location. What I haven't done was the underground plumbing, and connecting the shower. Part of the "package price" includes them connecting up the toilet and sink when we are to that point.

We are pretty much set on hanging the drywall now too. We need to get the price down a little bit, so we will be working that. I have done mudding/taping/texturing in the past, but it takes me forever to get it all done to a point that I am happy. So for time reasons, we will still have someone do that.

I will do the tiling in the bathroom and just inside the sliding door that goes outside, but I have never installed carpet.

I will also be building a wet bar at some point, but it might get back-burnered while I finish a new deck this spring.

Ah, new deck.... I build a pergola last may... same, but not the same...

DIY network had a pretty cool drywall tool to help installing drywall with 1 person..you might be able to google it..


I have 5 tons of pavers i need to lay in the back yard, just waiting for the ground to dry out so i can move 4-10 yards of dirt to get ready.... Down here (Dallas) we go 100 days without rain, and 10 days before the date i want to dig, we get 10 days of rain!!!.... grr.

I say quit your day job, and finish the project faster!

Nick, this is just fantastic. I am SO impressed by the quality of your work and ability to manage a million details. Moreover, your efforts to document the project will certainly help many others in the future.

Thank You, Nick. Salut!

I'm impressed as well Nick. I'm continually jealous when I read about your sound proofing plans. It's amazing how many projects you're tackling!

Back to a derail for minute - I was at my brother's place on the weekend and liberated my old Tamiya Fox from his basement. Looks like it's in good shape though I have not tried to plug in batteries and check servos yet. At least I have it in my garage to work on when I find the time.

Oh, I also ran across this today - how does +100 mph out of the box sound?

Starting at $999...

And that $999 will disintegrate in the 1st 80mph accident while trying to get to 100 mph! While very cool, where can you actually get to those speeds and keep the little bugger in sight to control it?

On-topic, I spent hours, and I mean HOURS, measuring for the clips/hat channel ceiling. It is amazing the variance in distances of a ceiling joist from one side of the room to another. I must have monkeyed around with 6 different scenarios of where I could (attempt) to place my recessed braces (the 2x4s that I would put up and recessed perpendicular to my joists so that I can recess all but the last half inch of the clip/hat channel depth). It seemed like no matter what I tried, my spacing would at some point line up with a joist. Not good when you are trying to recess. While I could make some areas narrower than my 24" spacing between where the clips would go, I wanted it as even as possible.

SO I got that done, and then I needed to make another 156 measurements just to mark out where my 2x4's will go in each row with some rows having four 2x4s and some having five to make a staggered pattern which is supposed to yield up to 5db better performance at "certain frequencies" (whatever that means in real life) vs. putting them all lined up with each other and with the same number of 2x4s/clips per row. Those measurements also include the lengths of the 2x4s that I will cut tomorrow.

I also measured that I will need to cut 5/8" x 3/8" off of each end of the 2x4 pieces so that they sit at the right height in the I-beam joists. As mentioned earlier, I will be using liquid nails, 3.25" nails from my framing nailer, plus the fact that it will be somewhat resting on top of the bottom of the I-beam. Again, reference my diagram earlier. I think that will make it pretty darn solid.