Shin's Rant - 06/16/06

The American Dream

this, did away with the lower portion of the deck and kept the existing 4x4 supports, he could do the deck for about $5,600.  Pretty reasonable.  I asked that he put together the proposal and oh by the way, could you take a look at the front of the house?

My Deck

Ah yes, the American Dream - home ownership.  I'm not too far from owning mine.  Less than $10,000 to go.  Of course, that doesn't count some maintenance things. This is my deck.  I had it put in a long time ago to replace the one that was there when I bought the place.  It looks pretty cool, but once again it's time to clean, sand and stain.  The last time I had work done on it, the cost was over $600 just to wash it.  The big culprit was the guard rails.  those are the thin vertical things.  There are 65 of them.  The Building Codes said that I had to be sure my little rug rats (aka "little kids") didn't fall through. Don't have any rug rats?  Too bad.  And it turns out that these are by now too far apart and aren't really up to code anymore!  I tried doing this work myself once.  $600 didn't seem all that much, but I wasn't real satisfied with the way it turned out.  So when I saw Home Depot advertising that they build decks out of a composit material I was all ears.  Virtually maintenance free!  Just wash it off when needed and YOU'RE DONE! Of course, I found out that Home Depot doesn't install decks in the booming metropolis of Kensington.  But there were other contractors who handled that sort of thing.  One came out.  We talked about all the parties that I didn't have out there, and all the maintenance I didn't like doing.  It turns out that there's a newer type of guard that's like a thin plastic strip, nearly invisible, needs no maintenance, is safe (I guess I could have visiting rug rats) and is compliant with current code.  If I used

The Front of My House

Now isn't that the ugliest roof line you ever did see?  I asked the guy if he had any ideas.  He actually came up with about the same thing I wanted to have done 2 years ago.  That's when I found out that water had gotten into the wall and it had rotted out.  Mo' money, mo' money, mo' money and the original roof line idea was back-burnered. Anyway, some Q&D calculations and an estimate of about $9,000 came out.  Okay, maybe next lifetime.  (Yeah, Buddhism has its advantages!) Two days later I got the actual estimate.  If the supports were still good, $8,800!  What happened?  The cost of the composit stuff had skyrocketed due to much of it coming from down south where Katrina had trashed everything.  Life would have been easier if Katrina had just taken aim on my deck!!!  Oh, if the supports turned out to be less than what the original estimate assumed, the project would be more like $16,000. Well, maybe he can just replace the guard rails and do the short-term maintenance on the blasted thing. Great American Dream?  I suspect it really should be to rent.  That's what the guy woh wrote "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" recommended unless you can own outright.  Maybe even that's optimistic.  I'd say it's back to the old drawing board, but I'm afraid to look at the price of new drawing boards.

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