Update on Katrina Cottage

Well its been awhile, I have most all of my studs. I am short on some of the beams. So I need to make some effort there. My lot got hit hard by Hurricane Ike, some clean up will be required down there. It turned out good that I had not been able to make more progress, or I would have probably had my work trashed.

I quit my job earlier this year, and started my own company. It has taken a significant amount of my time to get the ball rolling, but it is going extremely well.

In addition my first son was Born on August 8th, I am very pleased with Elias, and he weighed a whopping 11 lbs 4 oz.

I will continue to collect materials, I am still needing the rest of the beams, a few more windows, and roofing materials.

Katrina Cottage Plans

I purchased plans to build my lake house. It is designed by Eric Moser, and is provided by Lowes originally to provide affordable yet smart stylish housing in Katrina affected areas. But Lowes made the plans available nationally. I am modifying the plans to some degree, it calls for balloon framing and 2x6 studs, which is a bit over kill for my inland lake house. I am going to forgo the metal roof and go with traditional shingles. The materials sheets run the costs to be around $40,000 to build this. I am aiming to get the whole thing done for less than $10,000, which will be a hard feat to pull off, but so far I am about $365 into it and I have a sizable amount of materials.

Here are some images of the model home of the Katrina Cottage 697, which features A vaulted ceiling in the living room and sleeping loft define the open feeling of this plan.

High School Gym Floor makes great sheathing

I ran into a great deal on craigslist from a guy who redoes floors for school gyms, I picked up 90 7/16th inch OSB 4x8 panels, which will be enough to do all of my roofing, siding, and attic subfloors for $130, from Lowes with tax it would have been $564. This was a significant savings. These things weigh 44 lbs a piece or 3960 lbs total. Thus it was quite a job to load them into the trailer. Fortunately Skip, Judy, Janaya and David all helped me unload this monumental amount of lumber into the shed. Glad they had a pool too. It was hot

Stainless Sink

Being quick to watch craigslist on Saturday, scored me a stainless steel kitchen sink with faucet and spray for free. Not bad.

Free CRAPer

I picked up a new window off of Craigslist this morning, for $25, it's a nice double paned window.







Later I went scavenging for wood again today, but unfortunately the disposal service had cleaned up all my favorite spots, so I brought home very little, a few 2x4's of varying length. Maybe a dozen pieces total. Late in the day I got a big prize, I saw a free Toilet listed on Craigslist, best of all it was clean late model, and packaged into new boxes. That was a huge savings right there. To date I have spent a total of $25 on materials, I now have a toilet, a $200 window and about $300 in lumber.

Scrap Lumber

I've been scanning the scrap lumber at construction sites, It's tough work, mud, nails, sharp stuff, and not to mention it is hot, close to a 100. I've gotten off to a pretty good start. Removing the nails, and power washing some of the muddy boards took some time.

The Cabin that Craigslist Built

I'm building a cabin on some land I aquired in March of 2008.

It is a small lot in a community in South Texas near Houston. At the moment, there is nothing on the lot except for some tall pine trees.

I only paid about $2,500 for the lot, which I have paid off. My goal with this project is to build a decent sized cabin, with nice amenities for under $12,500, that includes the price of the land. I am going to utilize Craigslist, Amazon, Ebay, outlet stores and clearance items to reduce the cost of materials as best I can.

I have started off this project, by cleaning out my office, which had 10 years of computer junk stored up in it. I sold this stuff off, and have bought the following tools.


Dewalt D51321 Heavy Duty Roofing Nailer
Got this for a phenomenal $141 with Shipping off of Amazon
It is a highly rated Nailer, it Runs around $220 + Tax at the local Lowes.














Next I purchased this Flooring Nailer off of Amazon, based on it's 5 Star rating. It was $219 with shipping which is far less than what most good Flooring nailers go for. This is a Hardcore Tools pneumatic nailer.














I'm all in favor of good power tools, so I traded an a computer I wasn't using for this Hitachi NR90AE Framing nailer and a nice Hitachi air compressor. I also bought a $80 box Hitachi framing nails, 7200 3 1/4 inch nails for $5! Can't beat that clearance price.


















I already had a Porter Cable compressor, that I found was full of water, I didn't realize these allow water to condensate in them. Now that I know that, I bought a filter on clearance at Lowes for $11, that will remove the water from the line, so it will keep the tools from rusting hopefully, plus I now know I need to drain these things!

Here is my Porter Cable Finish, Brad and Crown Stapler.. The Porter Cable compressor didn't have enough power to keep up with the Hitachi Framing Nailer.



















Here is the Kolbalt inline Water remover I picked up from Lowes






















Next up I swapped a guy a bunch a SCSI cables, sold a bunch of junk on ebay and picked up this generator for onsite power. I got this generator from Amazon as well and it came highly recommended, it is a Chinese brand, but uses a clone of the Honda OHV engine, it should handle all the power tools I throw at it. Amazon shipped it to me for free, and no tax! It came surprisingly quickly about four days after I ordered it. I'm glad I didn't hold off on getting this, it was up $40 in price, when I went and grabbed the stock photo of it from Amazon.










I have plenty of hand tools and various drills, saws, that I already own. The only thing I am on the look out now will be a Duraspin Screwdriver, to help with the flooring and Drywall installation.

Idol Gives Back, But takes 2.5 hours

I was going to reply to you last week about AI, but I forgot to, or got busy, something. So I wrote this little bit over lunch.. I hope you watched it, if you didn’t then my recap won’t make sense. Okay so here goes:

David Cook is looking sooo much better now that he fixed his hair. He’s my favorite now. Glad that MicroAsian chick is gone. I think Sayesa is next. I don’t think Brooke had been very good the last few weeks so she is probably in trouble too. The Idol Gives back, had lots of awkward moments, it didn’t have the oomph that the one from last year had. I actually felt bad for Simon, despite how rich Idol has made him, I think Jimmy Kimmel making fun of Simon was not funny, nor was it very tasteful. It just seemed mean. I know, I know. But still, it somehow didn’t seem appropriate. I like Robin Williams, but I think all those serious movies he made, he has lost some of his comedic touch. He was kinda of funny. The broke back comment was funny, but now that I think about it, he might have been serious.

And we had to suffer through Miley twice. Again very poor comedic performance by Billy Crystal, I’m sure he didn’t believe in the skit he was having to perform. It was PAINFUL. And Miley can’t sing so good. I was uncomfortable watching a 15 year old be sexy. It’s just not quite right, she is in that tough adjustment phase, sure. But this is American Idol, which is about the most family show on TV.

I’m so glad I had Tivo, this still took forever to watch. When I was watching Maria Shriver, she sort of looks a little bit like her Husband.. You had to love Snoop’s massive bling, he could probably save a nation or two in Africa with that thing. What was up with Kobe Bryant’s face. Now the bit with Teri Hatcher, I kind of liked, it was cute and different. She sings just okay, but was fun to see the guy from Desperate Housewives, and Greg Grunberg (from Heroes) on the drums, I think there was some guy from House on the bass. It would have been better though if Carrie Underwood had taken over about midway through. But when Carrie did sing later, her dress and voice were both AWESOME.

I like Bono, now that he is not hiding out under his shades all the time, I wish he would bring himself/U2 and do a song on stage. Okay next I was wowed out by Fergie’s performance, she really sang great, and had those great summersaults. Not normally much of a Fergie Ferg fan, as most of her music is retarded.

They cut to Sayesa a million times, I was annoyed by it. I enjoyed the piece with the Mannings, LOL, those kids didn’t look like they knew who they even were.

Annie Lennox did a great job, she can really project! She is amazing!

Oh god Gloria Estifan she’s like been in her 40’s forever now, I think she stopped aging. But that song grates on me, Fast Forward.

Who else was there, I missing a bunch, I know there was the Beckhams, Keifer, Silverman (bleh), etc. But Reese Witherspoon is a nice person, she seemed kind of awkward, but I give her props for caring, she seems genuine!

Brad was wearing his stupid hats, but he gets mad props from me for what he has done down in New Orleans. I like liberals who actually put their money into the causes they want us to all support. I thought it was funny to see Bill Clinton with the shovel, he looked like he was searching for where the camera was for the photo op.

My tivo shut it off short of the end, but It probably was just as well.

Writer's Strike is Over, Elbo's Blog has been renewed

Hey all (2) of my fans! I'm back to putting stuff here again.