Author Archives: cstults

I think the banquette was the most exciting project of the year for me- even more exciting than the new garage. That’s mostly due to the fact that I designed it with the house plans back in 2020, and it finally came to fruition! My mom has been hyping up the banquette since I wasContinue reading “Banking On It”

A lot of progress has been made on our new buildings. Here is a quick update. The roofs are complete! The new roofs have the same diamond shingles as our shop/house. The siding on the shed is done! We used a standard PBR profile with exposed fasteners. It looks real sleek. We are leaving theContinue reading “Updating…”

Upon learning that the roofs of our new buildings will shed 140,000 gallons of water a year, we decided to collect some of that water. We researched all types of water storage tanks. Sam determined the above-ground plastic tanks had a high risk of collapsing under the snow load. We entered the world of buriedContinue reading “Down in a Hole”

With every new building, there comes a new drainage system. Similarly to what we did around the shop, we installed French drains around the new buildings. Drainage was a hot topic at the breakfast table for a number of days. There wasn’t a straightforward or easy solution. The garage is 120 ft long. Since theContinue reading “A Draining Experience”

While the concrete was curing, Matt set up shop. A lot of wood was delivered. As well as a trailer filled with tools. To add to our absurd amount of construction equipment, Matt brought over a boom lift and a scissor lift. And most importantly, a plastic throne was nestled in a shady spot nearContinue reading “We were framed!”

We were all set for concrete. Both buildings have three phases of concrete- the footing, stem wall, and floor. Matt began by setting up the forms for the footings. The concrete trucks arrived early the next morning before the sun came up. Halfway through, we had an unexpected visitor looking for a distressed calf. WhatContinue reading “The Design is Concrete”

We still had a few more things to do before Matt could pour the concrete footings. The main tasks were digging the footings and the electrical trench. The electrical trench was no small feat. It had to run from the panel behind our hot tub, across the driveway, through the woods, down the hill, pastContinue reading “Can You Dig It?”

The area around the shop is looking more and more like a junkyard. Plus, rodents are getting into many of our vehicles. Mice seem to think air filters are comfortable death beds, and I lost track of the number times squirrels have chewed through a wire in the scissor lift. So, we are building aContinue reading “All in a week’s work”

Please remove your reading glasses and don’t zoom in on the photos. I did not clean the steel columns and floors, nor did I touch up the walls before this photo shoot. Douglas was a tremendous help with the baseboards. He had the skills and tools (and knees) for baseboards. Similar to the pine windowContinue reading “All About the Baseboards”

The window and door trims are finally complete! It only took us two years. They look nice, but we would never make our own trim boards again. Never. Next time, we’ll look past a stack of beautiful free wood and head straight for the moulding aisle at Lowes. But, we thought it would be specialContinue reading “All the Trimmings”