In the garden, and RAIN!!!!
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, December 25, 2025 04:27
VIEWED: 1005090
PAGE 350 of 1154
Not sure about contractor payments there, but here it costs at least $2000 (labor only, not materials) to have three large windows installed. That includes patching the exterior stucco, but it was a one-day job for a crew of three. $1000 to patch three exterior stucco holes (two of them were less than 6"X6").
Maybe you could get an idea what kind of pay to expect by collecting a few quotes for the work that you're doing/intend to do. Just stay away from anything structural or electrical because you could wind up with all kinds of liability. But wood floor installation or finish carpentry ....? Far as I know, no permits required here for that, and CA is regulation-happy so if there are no permits here then there are prolly no permits required there either. Same with painting.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
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Yeah... I don't know how much people around here would have the kind of money to pay that. On the flip side, I know how much rent goes for in the big cities since my brother used to live in LA (or was it San Fran...?), so I know I'd have to be asking a lot less for my work.
I know with the right tools I could speed up the work. I'm also very good at finding the quickest way to the best results when I do something repeatedly, so even if I was slow at this at first I would get much faster at it over time.
I already know I wouldn't paint pre-primed trim before I put it up since that's essentially a waste of time and needs to be done a 2nd time. I'll have to see how my dad's stuff looks in his back porch that he did on his own years ago that way. I don't think he even had a brad nailer. I never noticed anything wrong with it over the years, but then again I never really paid it any mind either. There must be nothing glaringly wrong with it though, and that's what I would expect since even though he's a novice I get half of my perfectionism from him. 
And at the rate my step-mom likes re-painting rooms in the house, it probably has a brand new layer of paint over everything now making any imperfections even less conspicuous.
I'd also buy a few sets of really nice saw horses that are easy to fold up and tuck away. I've got one set of the ones you build yourself with 2x4's after you buy the brackets, but they are difficult to store anywhere without being in the way and are a pain in the ass to bring in and out through 30" doors without banging things.
It's been a long time since I painted anything, and I rarely ever paint anything with a brush this extensively. Whenever I get to the remaining 6 doors in my house, I'm going to do those differently too. I will put the primer on with a short nap roller first, which will be about 20 times faster at least, since I sand the doors down after the primers up anyhow. While I was primering the doors in the garage, the primer behaved differently than I've ever dealt with before.
I was going in a left to right pattern a few feet long, while taking time to give the tops, sides and bottoms a little cover as well. But when I'd start my next left to right sequence below the 1st one, it would not cover the original paint very well and in fact seemed to pull it up a bit if I wasn't careful. A few variables could have caused that... There was still veneer on the doors since they weren't sanded completely bare. It was anywhere between 35 and 42 degrees in my garage while I was doing it. The primer is 6 months old from back when I painted windows and the columns in the front of my house, but seems to still be good. I made sure when I put the 2nd coat on to overlap these areas where the brush strokes were apparent, and although it was doing it again the 2nd time, it was hardly noticeable at this point since a lot more paint was up and I made sure to cover the first occurrence with the second layer.
I think the trickiest part of a job like this is time management. Not necessarily worrying about how long something intricate is taking (because that would only make me screw up cuts and throw money in the trash bin), or worrying about how much quicker I'm naturally getting by doing it more often, but minimizing downtime by planning things out smartly and having other things that can be done while paint is drying.
I always thoguht that if I could get into doing something like this and have a somewhat regular stream of work, I'd be able to undercut the competition fairly easily because of my own financial situation. I've got quite a bit of wiggle room there to at least get myself started and not worry that I'm not making a ton of money per job while I'm honing my skills and building a portfolio of work.
But am I ambitious enough to do that and not just settle for a weekly paycheck doing work I hate?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Well... I got the first coat of paint on the two bedroom doors and the bifold for the linen closet. It looks awesome and at this point I can't even tell where the holes were that I patched up anymore.
Unfortunately, I'm going to be without a kitchen table or the table in my living room that I use for my mail and keys and such probably for a few weeks. Even after two days of drying, I had the doors stacked on the wall in the basement last night waiting for me to prep the area with a drop cloth and get the tables down there and I had the corner of one resting on the 2nd one and they were stuck so I pulled a tiny bit of paint off. So now the plan is to paint it all again tomorrow, and then possibly wait a week to 10 days to turn the two bedroom doors over and paint the other side. Fortunately, the bifold door I can just install where it's going a day after it dries so I can have my horses back as well as half of the room I'm doing the painting in now so I don't have to put painting the window casings on hold.
I'm going to miss those tables though...
Had a frustrating start to my day that I'm not going to get into, but I essentially "won", if you call it winning after wasting 2 hours on the phone. Long story short, I'm getting a $120 shop vac that is more powerful than the one that broke for $35 with tax after a sale, an online code bonus in-store points and a credit statement refund all take place. Since I have to spend nearly $16 of that in the store, I'm just going to call it a $51 shop vac with an extra filter, since that's what I'm going to buy with it. It also comes with a free car vacuuming kit with additional hose heads, so pretty much in every way this one is going to be nicer than my old one, and it's by the same company so unless they suck now it should last me another 15 to 20 years. :)
Anyhow, I'm done for the day. I didn't really enjoy the painting like I usually do since I was agitated from the crap on the phone earlier. There will be a bit of a glut with the painting since I can't do any more of it outside, so I can wait on making my windowsills tomorrow.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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First 6 days of January wet. Also 26/31 days of December weeeeeet
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Quote:If you're painting water-based over oil-based you could have a problem with adhesion
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Yeah... I don't know how much people around here would have the kind of money to pay that. On the flip side, I know how much rent goes for in the big cities since my brother used to live in LA (or was it San Fran...?), so I know I'd have to be asking a lot less for my work.
I know with the right tools I could speed up the work. I'm also very good at finding the quickest way to the best results when I do something repeatedly, so even if I was slow at this at first I would get much faster at it over time.
I already know I wouldn't paint pre-primed trim before I put it up since that's essentially a waste of time and needs to be done a 2nd time. I'll have to see how my dad's stuff looks in his back porch that he did on his own years ago that way. I don't think he even had a brad nailer. I never noticed anything wrong with it over the years, but then again I never really paid it any mind either. There must be nothing glaringly wrong with it though, and that's what I would expect since even though he's a novice I get half of my perfectionism from him.
And at the rate my step-mom likes re-painting rooms in the house, it probably has a brand new layer of paint over everything now making any imperfections even less conspicuous.
I'd also buy a few sets of really nice saw horses that are easy to fold up and tuck away. I've got one set of the ones you build yourself with 2x4's after you buy the brackets, but they are difficult to store anywhere without being in the way and are a pain in the ass to bring in and out through 30" doors without banging things.
It's been a long time since I painted anything, and I rarely ever paint anything with a brush this extensively. Whenever I get to the remaining 6 doors in my house, I'm going to do those differently too. I will put the primer on with a short nap roller first, which will be about 20 times faster at least, since I sand the doors down after the primers up anyhow. While I was primering the doors in the garage, the primer behaved differently than I've ever dealt with before.
I was going in a left to right pattern a few feet long, while taking time to give the tops, sides and bottoms a little cover as well. But when I'd start my next left to right sequence below the 1st one, it would not cover the original paint very well and in fact seemed to pull it up a bit if I wasn't careful. A few variables could have caused that... There was still veneer on the doors since they weren't sanded completely bare.
Quote:ALSO a problem. There are temperature limits on painting; it's not just evaporation of water that's happening but the little beads of acrylic (assuming water-based) have to meld together into a solid film, and that reaction might be delayed in the cold.
It was anywhere between 35 and 42 degrees in my garage while I was doing it.
Quote:Should be OK provided it hasn't frozen in between.
The primer is 6 months old from back when I painted windows and the columns in the front of my house, but seems to still be good.
Quote:
I made sure when I put the 2nd coat on to overlap these areas where the brush strokes were apparent, and although it was doing it again the 2nd time, it was hardly noticeable at this point since a lot more paint was up and I made sure to cover the first occurrence with the second layer.
I think the trickiest part of a job like this is time management. Not necessarily worrying about how long something intricate is taking (because that would only make me screw up cuts and throw money in the trash bin), or worrying about how much quicker I'm naturally getting by doing it more often, but minimizing downtime by planning things out smartly and having other things that can be done while paint is drying.
I always thoguht that if I could get into doing something like this aNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
If you're painting water-based over oil-based you could have a problem with adhesion
I'm not saying that isn't the case here, but it shouldn't be. Although I did not sand the doors down to complete bare wood for lack of proper tools and the temperature outside, I completely de-glossed them and was as thorough as I could be. I did a lot of research on what primer to buy and it just so happened that I already had half a gallon of it in my basement already. Zinsser does make gallons of primer that are even better for $40 and $50 as well, but once we get up to those prices it might have been a trigger for me to just look into brand new doors on sale instead.
Quote:
ALSO a problem. There are temperature limits on painting; it's not just evaporation of water that's happening but the little beads of acrylic (assuming water-based) have to meld together into a solid film, and that reaction might be delayed in the cold.
Yeah. This is the more likely culprit. The primer is rated to work as cold as 35 degrees, but it does say that drying/curing times will take longer if it's too cold. I had to find a whole bunch of other things to do in between the first and second coat because it took about 4 hours to be ready for a 2nd coat instead of the 1 hour that it was supposed to. If time between coats is 4 times as much, it's probably around that much longer to fully cure as well.
They were definitely dry to the touch when I brought them inside, but I should have just put something in between them when I stacked them up like an old rag. I did have the foresight not to put them flush together, but I wonder if that was my mistake as well. With all that surface area it would have hardly been any weight per square inch resting on the one below it. When I put just the top onto the bottom door, I distributed the entire weight of a leaning door to a very small surface area, which also happened to be an angle which likely had quite a bit more primer on it than the sides of the door as well.
Not a huge deal... Just a little part came up, about 1/4 the diameter of a pencil eraser. It just makes me know to be a lot more careful with the final coats is all.
Quote:
Should be OK provided it hasn't frozen in between.
Yeah. No freezing here. I'm never storing paint in the garage again. What a waste of paint.
Quote:
The biggest problem is breaking into the field and finding customers. They won't just come to your door, you have to advertize and put yourself out there. Our sometime gardener does a fantastic job, and anyone would be lucky to have him work there, but just getting those first few jobs and building a rep is tough! I keep telling him he needs a T-shirt with a company name nd phone number when he's working here ... "XXX's Precision Gardening 213-XXX-XXXX" .... or some such. I've recommended him on NextDoor but so far no nibbles. That decision about which job to take? It might not be yours to make, you might be left with the weekly paycheck as the only choice!
Yeah. I'm just going to get a temp job to pay the bills for the mean time. I managed to put away quite a bit of money making next to nothing at the old job. That's not going to happen right now since I'm putting that into the house and my teeth, but if I can keep the work up on the house and somehow manage to break even by January of next year while also getting my teeth fixed I'll be happy enough.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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But yanno, keep the whole "finish carpentry" in mind. You might also do well being a one-person geek squad: there are a lot of people who need help just loading updates or cleaning heat sinks and replacing fans. Yanno stuff that seems so simple to you that you couldn't imagine paying anyone to do it.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
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So, over at this end ... the glyphosate concentrate finally started working ... sort of. We had a ouple of sunny days in the mid-70's, and some of the sprayed weeds started to die back. (I think that's about a week or so since I sprayed). But the weeds in the shade, and the grasses and sedges still look pretty happy, so ... not good enuf.
Mechanical weeding didn't work last year (I was hoping that if we weeded like maniacs last year, before seed-set we could get a jump ahead, but after digging/pulling up a dozen or so 65-gallon bins last year I'd say it didn't work.) I tried two different weedkillers: Natrizine (which has a more immediate effect) and glyphosate, and I tried them each twice and I'd say the results are underwhelming. Furthermore, I've had to keep the dog out of the yard so she doesn't chew on the wrong bunch of grass because it's obvious that the glyphosate is still there, and still active. So, on to plan C: Fire. I need the weeds gone by end of January because I have a bunch of flower seeds that need to be planted by then. I'll let you know how that all works out and whether the house burns down or not.
There is also insolation (tarping). I'll tarp in the back, but reluctant to tarp in the front because someone might walk away with it.
*****
Are still making progress indoors. Dear daughter has a bookcase that she wants to put back in, but it was stored outside and got a little damp in spots. Its kind of a piece of shit, (mostly made of furniture-grade plywood) so not putting a lot of effort into reviving it, but we sanded off the exterior in prep for refinishing and lightly sanded parts of the interior to clean it off and smooth out where the grain was raised, so the next thing to do is clean/ oil the unit and then do some more room-organizing to make space for the bookcase.
I also see some additional metal to recycle so after I add that to the bin we can haul one more load to the metal recycler. Still a LOT more work to do. After the big house-wide push in December... and then the holidays ... hubby and I have decided to focus on one room at a time. But when I think about everything that needs to be done I sure wish I was younger and in less pain!
*****
Did manage to add a couple new recipes to the roster. There are family favorites, but I can't keep making the same five meals over and over! There is a small chain of restaurants here called Norm's. They serve largish portions of American food. A pretty big step up from Denny's (but that's not saying much) but don't expect fine dining. But, they DO serve a chicken and sausage gumbo, which is pretty good as far as I can tell. So I looked carefully at the soup ... broth, a smidgen of chicken and sausage, celery, onion, green pepper, a polite amount of okra (but not enough to account for the thickness of the soup; clearly they thicken with cornstarch) and a little tomato. So I tried reproducing that at home, adjusting for the fact that I'm serving a meal and need to put in a lot more protein, and I think it turned out pretty well. At least the family liked it, and that's what counts!
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
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Snowed here last night and still snowing this morning. Boots and gloves along with umbrella when I go out.
Weather people were right. Surprise, surprise, surprise!
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
But yanno, keep the whole "finish carpentry" in mind. You might also do well being a one-person geek squad: there are a lot of people who need help just loading updates or cleaning heat sinks and replacing fans. Yanno stuff that seems so simple to you that you couldn't imagine paying anyone to do it.
Yeah. We'll see how it goes. I might have a gig helping a few old dogs do a gigantic big money bathroom remodel gig in the pipeline. Might lead to more work down the road.
About the computer stuff, I'm probably never going to bother with that. Everybody needs help with that stuff, but nobody wants to pay for it. At least in my circles, which are mostly people living on minimum wage or thereabouts. I've actually done a lot of freebies for people with computer and laptop related things at both of my overnight jobs. For me that kind of stuff is better for just building alliances and good will rather than a few bucks on the side, but that's just me. I just feel bad charging people making what I make per hour to do some stuff that I can do in my sleep.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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