Out of town recently

One of the things that have been keeping me busy, and a little behind in most things, is that a friend of mine had begun the great process of paying a bank for a house. I continue to ramble on for some time.

Now first of all, the house is in Atlanta, so it costs way more that I would pay for it. Secondly the house needs quite a bit of work. However, its value should increase by approximately twice the cost of fixing it up. That makes it a good investment for him and a stepping stone to a larger house.

I’ve traveled down there a total of 3 times, each time spending a day or two. The first trip I helped remove a wall and clean some of the nastiest blinds I have ever seen. Apparently the previous occupant lived there for several decades, and chain smoked through all of them. The humidity in the bathroom is making the walls and ceiling leach out nicotine and tar. Nice.

The second time I went down on a Thursday and did some work while my friend was at work. I shaved some of the doors and jams so that the doors would shut properly. I also fixed a window sill that sloped into the house and then replaced the resulting rot that the incoming water had caused. Then I fixed two of the electrical outlets in the room. The boxes and the outlets would pull out of the wall several inches. I replaced them with renovation boxes at a standard 14 inch height above the floor.

The third time, this past weekend, I went down to meet some other friends who were coming to visit. There were two Halloween parties, one Friday and one Saturday, that we ended up going to. I dressed as an Army Corp of Engineers mine sweeper. I had the camo BDUs, face shield, camo knee and elbow pads, ground probe and digging tools, and I mocked up a metal detector. All in all the parties were a good time.

I had intended to work on my friend’s house Saturday morning and afternoon, but he had to go help someone move. He called us a few minutes later to indicate that the person moving had not received all the help she had expected. So another friend and I drove over to assist. We moved most of her stuff down 2 or 3 flights of narrow steep stairs. She built a lot of her furniture herself, so most of it was heavy and had never actually left the apartment. Several pieces had to be disassembled in order to get them out the door. She also had boxes filled with paper, ceramic tiles, and MDF blocks. I found out later we were under a time limit. We were able to unload the 20 foot Uhaul in 20 minutes at her new house. It was rather amazing.

On Sunday I did manage to fix two more outlets in another room, with the same problems as above. I wanted to add another outlet, but my friend was called to work. Frankly, I don’t know how he expects to have any time to get anything done at his house. I have this thing about making permanent changes to someone’s house without expressly talking about it. It would have probably been ok, but I set up the wiring so that it would be simple to do later.

We had wanted to set up for his new washer and dryer, but we didn’t get to it. This would have involved beefing up the structure of the floor, no small task for that location, and modifying the plumbing, much easier. I didn’t quite feel confident making structural modifications to floor without getting plan approval first. I think risking someone’s floor falling in under the load of several hundred pounds of water, warrants discussion of the support structure.

Anyway, maybe I can get down there some other time and actually do something useful.