Shed Finished

After recently painting and staining the shed, my 5x14 foot shed is officially complete!  I built the doors from scratch, put in a reclaimed window on the south side, and included a 2-foot overhang on the north side for wood storage.

The shed sits in the corner of our lot, so I envision the fence lines eventually tying in to the edges of the shed.

The north side also includes a small ladder door so I can slide a 24' extension ladder in and hang it on the back wall.  The shed is topped with a corrugated, galvanized metal roof.  It is built from about 70 percent recycled material, which largely contributed to keeping the total cost down to $961.

I had a blast building it from the foundation to the roof.  I love the way it turned out, especially considering that this was my first piece of new construction.  Now I don't have to carry the lawnmower up and down the stairs into the basement each time I mow the lawn!

Westward Ho!

As I eluded to in my previous post, Ava and I will be moving to Truckee, California in about a month.  I received an engineering job offer that was too good to pass up.  I'll start working on June 20 as a geotechnical engineer for Holdrege and Kull in their Truckee office.  H&K have a few offices, with the main one being about an hour away in Nevada City, CA.

The Truckee office is small, with about five to ten people depending on the season.  The people I met there while interviewing a couple of weeks ago all seem to have a great perspective on the elusive work-life balance that matches my own.

I find that I'm filled with equal parts excitement to move and resume my engineering career, and sadness for leaving Missoula.  It'll be great to be closer to Ava's family and I'll keep my fingers crossed that this works out and I'll finally get to settle in a place long enough to become a legitimate part of the community.

Bathroom Finished

Despite my lack of recent posts, I've been quite busy.  Between working 40 hours per week as a carpenter and putting in up to 30 more working on my own house, finding time to take pictures and write blog posts has been difficult.  Without further ado, here's the best before and after picture comparisons.

Before

After

Of course, that's just one side.  The shower took the most work.

Before

After

 And a little paint and pallet wood accent wall really spiffed up the toilet alcove.

Before

 

After

The major pieces of this project were re-plumbing everything, redoing all the lighting, installing cabinets, tiling the floor, refinishing the tub, tiling the tub surround, and building the accent wall.  If it wasn't for a handful of termites discovered in some of the pallet boards and the mank discovered in the wall behind the shower, everything would have gone real smoothly.  As it was, I had to rebuild both mirrors and part of the pallet wall.  I also used pallet boards as base molding.  Other than having an electrician help out with some of the wiring and the countertop supplier install the countertop, I did everything else.  The total cost of the bathroom remodel was $6,815, which includes all new appliances, and fixtures.

So, we've got a beautiful new bathroom, finished just in time to move to California and rent our house out (more on that in the next post).