New dock is (almost) done!

Over the past few months I have built and floated a gorgeous new dock! I will post some photos soon. I started last December by assembling the 8×20 frame (pre-drilling all the holes and mocking it up) in the garage:

(photo to be here)

Then, I dis-assembled it and a co-worker and my father-in-law and I hauled it down to the lake in pieces (on a cold winter day). We re-assembled it on the beach. First we put a set of 4 Ace floats on the rocky beach and attached the major 4×6 framing. The we pushed it into the water and attached the middle set of floats, then pushed some more and attached the remaining floats:

(photo to be here)

Then, I cut and installed some of the Geodeck decking. Over the next couple months I added the rest of the decking and build a 4′x12′ ramp, built using 2×8s and more decking. Just yesterday I re-positioned everything in the water and finished the decking on the ramp. I have a temporary anchor and still need to figure out a good way to keep it from floating away.

This sure beats the original dock we had which was fixed pier, rotting, tilted and very, very slippery in the winter.

This will be a great place to get into our canoe or swim from (after I add a dock ladder) or just sit and relax in the water.

First house call: broken WiFi

Three sets of guests have come and gone at the Duck House. There has been plenty of glowing praise for the house and the peaceful and beautiful location. But, I usually try hard to get some suggestions after their stay so that I can make it better for the next guests. So far, I have forgotten a few things: no foil, no veggie peeler, ran out of TP (woops), confusion about how to check-out, missing trash can outside. These seem like relatively minor things that I can take note of and fix after they leave.

Today was the first urgent problem: the WiFi was broken. This was after their second night, and I got an email asking about extending the stay and noting the WiFi problem. I called her back quickly and rushed to the house with my laptop and a spare router. The router at the house was a really fancy Actiontec DSL modem and wireless router combo unit that I bought at a local garage sale a few weeks ago for $10. I showed up and none of the correct lights were on, so I rebooted it and it seemed to connect to the internet, but the “wireless” light was still off. So, I had to go into the configuration and turn it on and rename the network from the default. This was puzzling, since I had already set up the wireless and the previous guest used it extensively. I’m not sure why it was off, but hopefully that won’t happen again.

Very exciting post, for sure. It just seems important to note the first house call.

Sly Fox (Dark red) is the new color! (exterior)

Whew… That was a ton of work. My exhauster painter (yes, just 1 painter) spent about 50 hours scraping the old flaky paint off house until practically nothing was left. He started about May 8th with 8 hours of power washing. Then, after a couple days on other jobs he came back in earnest and started scraping and priming. It seems this house was only painted twice in the last 75 years, so it was in pretty bad shape. Some siding needed to be replaced due to rotting, but 95% of it was quite good. Also, the design of the roof made for some extra abuse on the siding.

All in all, Mark spent 140 hours cleaning, scraping, priming, masking and spraying the house. We also found a nice guy to help out with some extra labor for two days. Furthermore, my father-in-law and I put in a couple days work at the end, in order to get everything done by Thursday night (May 31).  We still need to do about half the trim, but it looks fine for now.

When it was done, it took probably 200 hours of labor and $1500 of paint, supplies and equipment rental. Thanks, Home Depot (only 2 miles away). They always seem to have everything we need. Their airless sprayer (rented) worked great, and I kept having to buy more paint, late into the evening. Dark red (Behr: “Sly Fox”) needs a lot of paint to get good coverage. We used a total of 23 gallons.

Mark did a great job. He is a very experienced painter and really knows his stuff – he has painted industrial jobs, auto body and residential. He keeps a slightly shifted schedule than what I am used to, but he cares deeply about the jobs he finds and sometimes works 12 or more hours in a day if conditions are right. I found him on craigslist, advertising himself as the “$100 a day painter.” He painted (and prepped) all the interior rooms as well. Let me know if you want his contact info.

Our first guests showed up the day after we finished painting, and we (me and my in-laws) worked hard on Friday to clean up the house, inside and out, so it didn’t even look like the construction zone it was the day before.

Check out these before and after photos:

 

Before:

After:

Almost ready for guests!

The duck house is almost ready for guests! We’ve been working hard on furnishing, decorating and finishing up the last of the interior repairs. This past weekend, I installed a handrail to the basement (much safer now), put all the knobs in the upstairs bathroom, fastened the shower curtain rod to the wall so it won’t come down any more, installed a lock on the crawl space so our guests don’t accidentally end up in the not-so-pleasant crawl space, removed the 6 inches of dirt from the steps on the side of the house, and various other improvements.

I also had the pleasure of meeting one of our reserved guests who is in town for a quick visit, but will be coming for about a week in June to watch her daughter graduate from UW. She had many good things to say about the house and I think she’s very much looking forward to her visit. This should be a fun place for her family, since everybody can come and go as they please, and it will feel very comfortable.

Only 3 weeks until our first guests!