Construction: The Punch List

And a deadline.

On May 20, 2014, I began blogging about the construction of my new home in Malaga, WA. You can read all of these posts — and see the time-lapse and walkthrough movies that go with many them — by clicking the new home construction tag.

About two months ago, I was driving a rental car down a perfectly straight dusty dirt road alongside an irrigation canal in California’s Central Valley when my phone rang. It was a woman named Susan who writes for The Good Life, a lifestyle magazine for the Wenatchee area. She had been to the Wenatchee Home Show (which I’d missed because of my trip to California) and had seen the time-lapse video of my home construction that I’d given to Western Ranch Buildings to show off in their booth. She’s spoken to Tanya about the place and learned that it wasn’t just a typical pole building. It would be a home and a garage and a place to store big toys like a giant RV and a helicopter.

She decided that she wanted to do a story about it for Good Life.

I was flattered, of course — who wouldn’t be? But my home was far from finished. The kitchen cabinets had just been delivered and would be installed the day after my return. Then the appliances would come. The countertops, floors, bathroom fixtures, and so much more still needed to be done. And all those wires sticking out of the walls needed attention.

I told her it would be ready in May. She promised to call back. I figured I had a 50-50 chance of her remembering.

She remembered. She called early this week. We set a date for her and a photographer to come visit and see the place. I put the date on my calendar. I had just over three weeks to finish up and move in.

Holy cow, was I going to be busy!

Still, I work best and fastest and produce the most when I have a deadline Susan had given me one. If I wanted my new home to look the best it possibly could when when and her photographer showed up, I had to stop procrastinating and get finished.

In an effort to stay focused, I’ve come up with this punch list of items that need to be done. They fall into two categories: inspection items and finish items.

Inspection Items

Although several people suggested that I build my home inside my building on the sly without getting inspectors involved, I didn’t think that was a good idea. Maybe I’m being naive, but I believe that inspections and housing rules exist for a reason — safety — and that having an inspector (or two) look over my work would help me keep my home up to standards. With that in mind, my building permit has two parts: my main building (which has been approved) and my living space inside it (which has not yet gone through final inspection). To legally live inside my building, I need to pass all inspections and get a Certificate of Occupancy (CO).

I should add here that my property will have much greater value if it includes a legal living space. I’m thinking of the future, too.

There are two inspectors:

  • The electrical inspector makes sure my electrical system meets standards.
  • The building inspector makes sure my building and home meets standards.

The good news is, I’m almost done with all items needed for the inspections. I’m pretty sure this is a final list:

  • Close up drywall in garage ceiling and fire tape. My bathroom is immediately above one of my garage bays. In order to complete the plumbing work, we needed to leave part of that ceiling open. The drywall guy provided precut panels to close it back up. I need someone to help me hold those panels in place while I screw them in. The entire garage ceiling had to be drywalled and taped to meet county fire codes and the whole thing is done except this one place. I estimate it will take about 2 hours and I’ll need a second set of hands for about 30 minutes.
  • Deck Rail
    Using “hog panels” as a deck rail solution was suggested by Bob, further developed by me, and executed/fine-tuned yesterday by the two of us. A low cost, rustic solution that doesn’t look trashy.

    Finish deck. Because two doors open onto my deck, the deck must be finished for final inspection. That includes not only the floor, but a rail and barrier around the edge with openings not larger than 4 inches. The deck is 600 square feet and the rail is 104 linear feet so it’s quite a job. Other than some assistance getting me started the first day, I’ve been doing the deck floor myself. I have about 400 square feet laid. Yesterday, a friend came by to help me work out an idea we had for the rail and barrier. I suspect I have at least another 4 to 6 full days of work on the deck, which could be shortened up with some dedicated assistance from a friend.

  • Install safety rail around loft. This is a bummer and I’m hoping I can get the building inspector to give a little on it. I have a loft over my hallway and laundry room and bedroom closet. Because it’s tall enough to stand up in the county requires a rail around it like the barrier around my deck. But I don’t even have a ladder to get up there (yet) and won’t be using it. Such a shame to be delayed for this space. It’ll take about 2 days to get this job done — once I figure out how I’m going to do it.
  • Finish electrical work. Yes, there are a few fixtures remaining to be wired. They’re all on the deck. I need to climb a ladder to do them and I figured I may as well wait until I had a deck floor to put the ladder on. There are six light fixtures: two spotlights and four sconces. There’s also the outlet I need to install for my air conditioning compressor; most of the wire has been run and I just need to put in an outlet. (Note to self: call HVAC guy to ask where he wants the outlet. And maybe encourage him to take his man-lift home?) Total time for all electrical work needed to be finished: 3-4 hours, mostly because of some additional conduit I need to run.
  • Install hand rail for stairs. I keep forgetting this one. I suspect I’ll use the dowels that were curtain rods in my old home for this job. So glad I packed them and took them with me — it’ll save me a bunch of money. Total time for this job: about 2 hours.
  • Install doorknobs and locks on fire doors. I was required to have 20-minute rated fire doors between my garage and my living space. There are two of them in the entrance vestibule at the bottom of the stairs. A friend helped me install them well over a month ago and I bought the doorknobs. Don’t know why I haven’t installed them yet. Total time for this task: 1-2 hours.
  • Finish shower stall. I’m actually not sure if this is required for the county. The shower plumbing works, but there’s no enclosure to keep the water in if I used it. This is going to be a bit of an involved task that will take at least 2-3 days. Not only do I need to erect the acrylic block walls I bought, but I need to tile the back wall. And I hate doing tile work. If this isn’t required, I’ll shift it to the list below.

Finish Items

Finish items are the things I need to do to make the house more cosmetically pleasing or functional. They’re not required for final inspection and, therefore, should be done after those higher priority items. This list is extremely long, but I’ve managed to list the ones I want done before the Good Life crew come visit.

  • Doors. Right now, I don’t have any interior doors. Even my bathroom has nothing more than a curtain — and that’s just because I assume my guests would want some semblance of privacy when using the facilities. I need the following doors: bathroom, linen closet, coat closet, bedroom closet. I would also consider doors for the laundry room and pantry, although I think both could be handled with a nice curtain. This will require me to order the doors, wait for them to arrive, pick them up, and install them. I have no idea how long this will take or whether it’s something I can do on my own.
  • Windowsills. I have eleven windows that are deep set into the walls and need window sills. I’m going to make them out of wood. I figure it’ll take me about 3 hours to measure and cut them and then a total of 3 hours to apply stain and two layers of urethane. And then another 2 hours to install them. Of course, none of the wood working projects can be done at one shot — they all need time for the stain and urethane to dry.
  • Ledge around stairwell wall. My stairs are open on top with a wall around them. The top of the wall is unfinished. A woodworking friend will be making a custom ledge to top the wall. He’s coming tomorrow to measure and discuss his ideas with me. With luck, he’ll have them finished and ready to install in a week or so.
  • Wood trim. There’s a gap of 1/8 to 1/2 inch between the Pergo flooring and the walls. That has to be covered with wood trim. I’m using 1×4 lumber that I stain and urethane. I really need to get my act together and get this done. I’m probably looking at a total of 3 days worth of time to prep the wood, measure, cut, and install. A friend loaned me his nail gun so installation should be relatively painless — if I measure and cut right!
  • More wood trim. If I don’t put doors on the pantry and laundry room, I’ll need to trim out the openings. I’ll use ripped 1x6s with 1×2 or 1×3 framing. All this wood needs to be prepped, measured, cut, and installed. I’m thinking a whole day’s worth of time for this.
  • Move in furniture. I don’t think I’m allowed to move my furniture in until I get my CO, but I could be wrong. I’ll find out for sure this week. I’d like to get most of the furniture in so the place actually looks like a home. Most important: bedroom and living room furniture.
  • Get the front yard in shape. I need to reseed and mow the lawn, put in irrigation, and plant vegetables in my front yard planter boxes. I really should get that done soon so it looks good for photos.

These are the important items — the ones I need to make my home look like a relatively finished home for the Good Life crew. There are other things I need to do as well: ladder for the loft, window treatment for the bathroom, shelves/rods in the bedroom closet, shelves in the linen closet, towel rods in the bathroom — the list goes on and on. That’s one of the best things of putting together a new home: the little projects that come with it. Once cherry season starts, I’m pretty much stuck here so I’ll have plenty of time to get these things done. My goal is to be 95% finished by September.

And, as any homeowner can tell you, you can never be more than 95% finished with a home.

Construction: Deck Overview Video

A Periscope video captured and shared.

On May 20, 2014, I began blogging about the construction of my new home in Malaga, WA. You can read all of these posts — and see the time-lapse and walkthrough movies that go with many them — by clicking the new home construction tag.

I’ve been experimenting a bit with Periscope lately. That’s a Twitter-owned app that makes it possible to do live video broadcasts. Although the vast majority of what’s on there is utter crap, there are a few accounts with live broadcasts of very interesting material. (My personal favorite is the Department of Interior (@Interior), which seems to have embraced Periscope as a way to show off our national parks and monuments.) Like Twitter, it’s all about who you follow.

Deck Construction
My front deck is just about done.

While I don’t think my broadcasts are so interesting, they are a way for me to share what’s going on in my life with folks who might be interested — and to answer questions that they type in while the broadcast is going on.

Although Periscope only saves broadcasts for 24 hours, the video I record is also saved on my phone and can be copied to my computer. From there, it can be edited and shared to non-Periscope users. That’s what the following video is.

In this video, I offer a narrated overview of the work I’m doing on my deck. The front deck, which measures 10 x 30, is just about done; I still haven’t started the side deck, which is 6 x 48. I haven’t done the railings yet, but hope to get them started this weekend. In the video, I discuss the materials and tools I’m using and why I made some of the decisions I made. The wind machines in nearby orchards were going while I recorded and you can hear them in the background sounding a lot louder than they really do.

The only drawback I see to recording in Periscope and then sharing is that Periscope seems to severely limit the resolution of what it records. As a result, any Periscope video I share on my blog is at only 240 pixel resolution which, quite frankly, sucks.

Spring Day from My Deck Time-Lapse

A windy spring day.

I set up my GoPro on a tripod on the deck outside my bedroom door for a time-lapse on Monday before dawn. Unfortunately, Monday was a rather ugly day — cloudy and kind of dreary. The resulting time-lapse would not have been share-worthy.

So I left the GoPro running and captured enough images for a 4 AM to 10 PM time-lapse on a much prettier — but windier — day. Can you see the point where the wind blew over my tripod? (I deleted the shot of my deck roof.)

Should have set this to music but I didn’t. Sorry!

I’ll try this again in a few weeks with the image zoomed in a bit. I thought I’d set it right for this one, but apparently I didn’t.

On Keeping a Neat Desk

And conquering clutter.

I am — or, hopefully, was — the Queen of Clutter. And I’ve always hated it.

The Clutter

The clutter seems to come into my home with me. Sometimes it arrives by mail or UPS or FedEx in the form of junk mail, bills, account statements, and items ordered. Other times it arrives in my car or Jeep or truck in the form of items bought at a store or given to me by a friend or family member. Other times, I have no idea where it comes from. It just seems to appear.

My procrastinating nature — and yes, I am a confessed procrastinator — causes the clutter to pile up on any horizontal surface readily available. That included my dresser, night table, kitchen table, and desk. I would go through the piles periodically, pull items out — for example, a bill or a letter — to deal with them, and then keep piling. When the piles needed to be hidden to neaten up a room, they’d be shifted to a pile elsewhere, sometimes in an empty box that would be piled with other previously empty boxes. The situation was completely intolerable and embarrassing, to say the least. And I know I’m not the only one who was bothered by it.

My desk and office seemed to be the ending point for most of the shifted clutter. In my Arizona home, I had a huge L-shaped desk where I often had several computers and monitors and printers set up. Back in those days, my primary source of income was writing books about how to use computers and I wrote several a year. The huge desk gave me plenty of space to work and accumulate clutter. The rest of the room, including the floor, was for overflow. It was so awful that after a while, I preferred working with a laptop at the kitchen table than in my own office.

Fast Forward to Today

It’s been more than three years since the last days I worked in my home office.

These days, I’m putting the finishing touches on a new home in a new place. My living space is considerably smaller — half the size, in fact — but I don’t have to share it with another person. And it has a simple floor plan with just two rooms, a bathroom, and a loft. Rather than having an office in its own room, I’ve given myself a small corner of the great room, just under 4 x 7 feet, for my office space.

I had a second desk when I lived in Arizona. I’d bought it on sale at Pottery Barn in Phoenix and set it up in the bedroom of the Phoenix condo I lived in for a short time. When I moved, I brought it and its matching file cabinet to Washington with me. It has since become my primary desk while my big, old L-shaped desk became a workbench in my shop downstairs. It fits remarkably well in the small space and looks rather nice there, too.

I became determined not to let it become the resting place for the same kind of clutter I had in Arizona, and, so far, have done very well.

Lessons from my Sister

My sister was a corporate banker with Citigroup for a bunch of years. I remember visiting her a few times at her office on Wall Street in Manhattan. The one thing that always amazed me was how neat and clean her desk was. There was never anything on it that she wasn’t working on at that moment. And, at the end of the day, it was always completely cleared off.

I was jealous of her ability to do that and, for a long time, thought it was beyond my own capabilities.

I’ve since realized that it isn’t that tough. The trick is to never let anything accumulate on the desktop. And the best way to do that is to make sure that at the end of each day, the desktop is completely cleared off.

Getting Things Done

Getting Things Done
This is the latest edition of Allen’s book. I wonder if this edition takes advantage of more computer-based organization tools.

For Christmas back in 2006 — I know this because I searched my blog posts for the first time I wrote about it and it was nearly eight and a half years ago — I got a copy of David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done. This book was written to help people conquer clutter, fight procrastination, and get more done. In other words, it was written for people like me.

I read about halfway through it. It proposed an organizational strategy that used lots of paper and folders and labels to organize the clutter into manageable tasks. I admit that I wasn’t too keen on that part of the book — in my mind, it just created more clutter by adding to the piles of paper. But it also provided a good strategy for dealing with incoming paper — the stuff of future clutter. There was a flow chart and I found it so useful that I made my own version of it in a drawing program, printed it out, and hung it on the wall over my desk in my RV.

Getting Things Done Flowchart
Here’s my version of the GTD flowchart.

Of course, this cannot completely solve my clutter problem. “Incubate” is what causes clutter on my desktop. “Reference material” is another source of clutter — that paper has to be stored somewhere. I have a file cabinet with just two drawers and will likely use one to store stationery items like letterhead and envelopes. And I know from experience that any reference material I think is worth keeping is seldom referred to in the future. In reality, it’s “deferred trash.” I can’t delegate anything, either. I don’t have employees or a partner — which is a good thing, believe me — so I have to handle everything.

So, as you can imagine, this is of limited use to me.

The Joy of Scanning

I’ve discovered that the absolute best way to keep clutter at bay is to scan the documents you think you need and store them on a backed-up computer hard disk as PDF files. And that’s what I do now.

ScanSnap Scanner
My ScanSnap scanner is portable and efficient for the volume of scanning I do.

I’ve got a little ScanSnap portable scanner that can take as many sheets of paper as I need it to. I’ve created a date-based filing system on my computer with consistent naming conventions. It works like a charm — when I take the time to scan. The key, it seems is to scan something as soon as it hits my desk and then destroy the original paper and throw it into the recycle bin. No piles.

I try to avoid having to scan anything. This is easy these days with electronic bank statements and the like. Periodically, I go online and download statements, filing them into my existing system. I have a To Do list that reminds me to download for each account every three months. I tick it off when it’s done and I’m reminded three months later to do it again. The reminder stays active until it’s done; the three-month clock starts when I tick it off.

TurboScan
Some of this week’s receipts in TurboScan in my iPhone before moving them to my computer.

Receipts from traveling were a huge source of clutter in the past. But I’ve recently even resolved this with a $3 app on my iPhone: TurboScan. This app uses my phone’s camera to take photos of my receipts and then stores them. When I get home, I export them as PDFs to iTunes, copy them to my hard disk, and file them away in the appropriate folders. Not a single piece of paper comes home with me. Can’t make clutter if you don’t bring it in the house. Best $3 I’ve spent in a long time.

Back to My Desk

These days, I allow only the following items to live on my desktop:

  • My computer. It’s a 27-inch iMac that’s still going strong as it comes up on its fourth birthday. I have a 24-inch monitor I can use with it and there’s a slight chance I might bring it up — especially if I start writing computer books again. For now, the computer sits alone in the back corner of my desk.
  • My keyboard and mouse. I need these. Although my desk has a drawer that could be used as keyboard drawer, I prefer to use the drawer for small office supplies like clips and a stapler and the three-hole punch that was in the desk when I unwrapped it after the move. (A parting gift from my wasband? I doubt it.)
  • A mouse pad. The desk surface is a nice wood and I don’t want to ruin it by scratching a mouse all over it.
  • Backup hard disk. I use Time Machine to back up my computer automatically.
  • A pencil cup. It’s an oversized mug with pens, pencils, scissors, ruler, and other similar items in it.
  • Coaster. For my coffee cup or other beverages. Again, I don’t want to ruin that nice desk top.
  • Charging cables for my iPad and iPhone. I tend to keep them plugged in at my desk when I’m not using them so they’re handy when I need them.
  • USB Hub. I need the ports.
  • Tissue box. I always keep tissues nearby; I’ve had sinus issues my whole life, although they’ve been very minor since moving out west from the New York metro area.

My Office
This photo of my office was shot just moments after finishing this blog post. The only extra items you see are my coffee cup (on the coaster) and iPad (on a charger). And yes, the chair is temporary; haven’t brought my office chair up yet.

Two items live on top of my file cabinet, which abuts the desk:

  • A printer. Right now, I’m using the Brother laser printer I bought cheap a bunch of years ago. It’s wicked fast and does a decent job printing. I have two other printers — a LaserJet network printer and a Color LaserJet USB printer. But how many printers does a person need? I suspect I’ll replace the Brother with the Color LaserJet when I move into my new home and get rid of the other two printers. Or maybe get rid of the LaserJet — which prints great but very slowly — and keep the Brother as a spare. I don’t print very often, but it would be nice to have the option of printing in color.
  • A portable scanner. It’s a ScanSnap and it feeds a sheet at a time. A great little scanner if you don’t need to scan often. What I like about it is that I can set it aside next to my printer when I’m not using it and, because my desk is always clean, pull it out when I need it.

There are a few other things I keep out in my office area, either on the hanging corner shelves or my oversized windowsill:

  • Router. The internet comes into the room behind my desk; the router needs to be nearby. Added bonus: I can plug my computer right into it rather than use WiFi.
  • Podcaster microphone. I occasionally appear on podcasts and video podcasts and have been thinking of starting a new podcast this summer. The microphone also works well for voice recognition, which I hope to start using more frequently. It’s easy enough to reach for the mic and put it on my desk when I need it.
  • UPS. I’ve always had my computer plugged into an uninterrupted power supply. Not only does this filter the power to make it cleaner, but it prevents sudden shutdowns in the event of a power failure. I keep it on the floor and have just about all of my equipment plugged into either the battery + surge suppression or surge suppression side.

At the end of the day, before I go to bed, my desk cleanup job is simple: just make sure the above-listed items are the only items on horizontal surfaces in my office area. Anything else must be dealt with and/or put away before I go to bed. Because nothing ever accumulates, its remarkably easy to do.

Oddly enough, when I mentioned this strategy to a friend yesterday, his response was, “How you do penalize yourself if you don’t achieve that goal?” My response was: “I always achieve it so no penalty is necessary.”

And so far, I have.

Stress-free Living

The biggest benefit of getting clutter under control and keeping a neat workspace and home is that it eliminates one source of stress.

For me, having those clutter piles around were a constant source of stress. Each pile represented a huge stack of stuff I needed to deal with that I’d already put off many times for many reasons. What made things worse is that when the clutter problem got very bad on my desk, I had difficulty finding things I needed to work on and lacked the space to spread out and work.

Getting rid of clutter is the first step to increased productivity and a stress-free lifestyle. Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself.

Construction: New Kitchen Video Tour

It’s about 95% done and I love it!

On May 20, 2014, I began blogging about the construction of my new home in Malaga, WA. You can read all of these posts — and see the time-lapse and walkthrough movies that go with many them — by clicking the new home construction tag.

After losing a full day to an unscheduled (but lucrative) trip to Sacramento on Sunday night through Monday afternoon, I finally finished up the shelves in my pantry. That enabled me to put away a lot of the things that were sitting around my countertops, thus making my new kitchen presentable in photos and videos. I thought I’d show it off now, before I start my next big project.

Because I only had 1200 square feet of total space to play with, I had to limit the size of the kitchen. Somehow, however, I managed to create a good-sized, highly functional space.

Kitchen
My kitchen is now about 95% done. Most of what’s left to do is just trim.

I designed the kitchen space from scratch, carving an area at the end of my great room that shared a wall with my bathroom. The idea was to minimize plumbing costs by minimizing the plumbing runs. With the sink on that wall and the stove on an island, the refrigerator would be set into the adjacent wall, completing the “triangle” that’s so important in kitchen design.

The countertop length was limited by the fact that there’s a window at the end of that wall, but it’s still a full 11 feet long. The island is 3-1/2 feet wide by 7-1/2 feet long. Frankly, I think I have almost as much counter space in this home as I did in my old Arizona home with its extremely spacious kitchen.

Anyway, I’ll let you take a look at it for yourself. Here’s my narrated video:

It’s not quite done. As you saw in the video, I still have these little projects ahead of me:

  • Install under cabinet lighting.
  • Install trim around walls and cabinets.
  • Install transition trim between appliance floors (adhesive vinyl on plywood) and main floor (Pergo laminated hardwood planks).
  • Wrap finish (with wood trim) pantry doorway and hang pantry doorway curtain. (This is temporary until I can get a custom door, likely sometime next year.)
  • Install white trim on pantry shelves and paint shelf support ends and screws.
  • Hang pendant lamps.
  • Hang fifth track lighting fixture.
  • Put decorative baskets and silk plants atop cabinets.

As one of my friends pointed out not too long ago, the work never really ends when you build or own a home. I don’t mind. I have plenty of free time at home in the summer months and always need a project to work on.