wesgarrison.us

I’ve been mucking around trying to get iSync to sync my Google Calendar to and from my Sprint Centro.  Finally, I decided to skip going through iCal and just sync my phone directly to my Google Calendar using GooSync.

It works pretty well. I had to nuke a bunch of duplicate items from other calendars in iCal, but that was really my only issue.  Now Jessica can add events to my calendar and they’ll appear in my phone.  Email invitations get added to iCal, which syncs to Google, then to my phone.  Nifty!

Jessica and I own a lot (that is, a parcel of land) around the corner from our house.  It’s a full acre and we’re responsible for the upkeep, like mowing and such.

I tried push-mowing it once last year and didn’t get very far. After a couple of hours, I figured it would probably take another four or five hours to mow. Luckily, a friend gave me a riding mower for free; I only had to get it running.

I got the mower running, but the land is still a half-mile away. Once a week I drive the mower down the street, garnering strange looks.

So, I’ve started looking at sheds. 

Questions

Pre-built or build myself? It’d be nice for the building to appear magically one day and be ready to use, but is it worth the premium I would pay?

Materials? Wood. Plastic. Vinyl-covered steel.

Foundation? Do I put in a pad? Level off the ground and put in a raised floor? Install piers? The more permanent options mean that I wouldn’t be able to move the building later.

Size? Size and cost correlate, so I’m stuck between not wanting to run out of room but not wanting to spend $4K on an out-building.

Amenities? Seriously, I never knew sheds had so many options.  Lofts, skylights, solar lights, extra wide doors, and so on.

Next

I’ll be collecting options. I do want to get this done in the next few weeks as the mowing season approaches.

I'm ripping out drywall because it smells like pee.

I took this picture in progress. I ended up ripping out all the drywall along the stair to the left as well as some more on the main wall.

We’ve had an issue with the pee smell for several years, partly from our own cat and partly from the previous owner’s dogs, we believe. When it gets warm and humid: eww.  We’d tried painting the plywood, but that didn’t do the job.

After removing the drywall, I could see on the back where the urine had soaked in and spread up, which is pretty nasty.  Also, there was a lot of sawdust and hair trapped below the drywall, between it and the subfloor.  That sawdust absorbed some of the stink as well, so a good scrubbing with a wire brush knocked it off hopefully.

I’ve let it dry out a few days now and I’m going to apply a couple coats of Kilz soon, then I’ll patch-tape-mud-sand-paint the areas that I’ve cut out.