Instead of building out the extra building we recently roofed and painted into a guest house, we decided to make it into a storage shed/garage. Being from Texas, not having a garage or shop (or both) was a huge thing to get used to here. Where do you store your stuff? We will be moving to Puerto Rico soon for Aaron to finish graduate school and will need to rent out the house for about a year. Since half of our upstairs has been our storage for tools and supplies and looks like a disaster zone, we need to relocate these items and make this room into an actual room. I am just guessing nobody wants to rent a house with a room full of crap...

The old storage container that we had things stored in for the last two years is badly rusted, has termites, and everything gets wet when it rains. We found someone that wanted to remove the storage container for us this week and that meant we had to get all of our stuff out of it. Yuck.... Luckily most of the good "stuff" was organized into containers (thankfully I thought to do this 2 years ago) and didn't get water damage or termite infestation. This was easy to remove and store elsewhere. The other items were no fun to remove. Termites and cockroaches everywhere! We both did the cockroach dance many times (jumping up and down so they don't crawl up your leg). How do you carry something calmly without dropping when termites are crawling on your arms??? And did you know that termites can bite? Yes, yes they can. So glad this portion is over and these items went straight to the dump. 

After we removed everything out of the storage container, we started moving all of our tools and supplies into the new building. We had three shelving units from our house and three from the storage container, so organizing was easy. Well, I say easy... Aaron doesn't really like to organize anything so I kind of started from scratch and labeled a bunch of plastic containers. Now, we have things in easy to find bins. For a while now, we have just been buying construction items for our remodel since we know there is no way we would find them when we tried. Here is our upstairs before this relocation project. 

I know what you are thinking. That is a room? This has been our "disaster zone" for a long time now... I really wasn't kidding. This project has been one that I have looked forward to for the last few months. Everything is now in the storage shed and is organized! This is a HUGE change for us and I can't tell you how awesome it is to know exactly where the item you are looking for is actually located. Oddly enough, I am one of those strange women who likes tools and now that I can easily get to any power or hand tool I am super excited :) I used to say "I need a hammer. Crap. Where is the hammer?" when we have four, yes four, hammers. Now I can say "I need a hammer. Sweet! I know where all four of my hammers are" Oh the sweet sweet joy of organization :) 

And, look at the room in our house now! After cleaning (and boy did it need cleaning!), it actually looks like an indoor room. Now I just need to figure out what to do with this room. Sewing room, office, extra bedroom, yoga area... The list can go on and on :) 

After painting our casita, Aaron started building the doors and windows. The doors and windows were built with a layer of 3/4'' plywood, 5/8'' T-111, and framed in 1x4s. He is very meticulous about making everything super square and exactly perfect. This works out well when the building is also square and perfect. However, the previous owner of this house did not build much of anything square and/or perfect. So.... maybe this extra attention was not needed. Aaron had a lot of fun trying to make the doors and windows (which were square) fit into the non-square frames. 

Prior to building the doors, he framed out the doors and windows with 2x8s that were bolted to the concrete using tapcons (concrete anchor bolts). The 2x8s used for this project were reclaimed from the deck and balcony we tore down. Once built, he primed everything before hanging. He even gave the hinges an extra coat of Rustoleum so they last longer (trying to overcome the tropical forces and delay the rust). Notice the chickens next to the freshly painted doors? These are the ones that we previously posted about that got a little to curious about the painting project. 

Once hung, the doors and windows looked great! The double front door is four feet wide! Talk about heavy! I wasn't feeling too well when we hung the doors and was glad for the strength in my foot since I rested the door on top of my feet for the first door. Aaron built some blocks to fit after this one :) 

We still need to caulk the frames and add thresholds to ensure the casita is waterproof, but the majority of the project is complete. At least now the chickens can't sneak in the casita and peck at their bag of corn all day :) 

After completing the roof of our small casita, it was time to paint. Before painting, we had to remove all the junk that had piled up in the house and then pressure wash the entire structure, both inside and outside. We had multiple 4 foot tall stacks of old lumber, rolls of wire, and a bunch of random items that had to be relocated and/or sent to the dump. While removing the wood, there were tons of cockroaches and centipedes! Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! I hate centipedes! The chickens were very happy with all the goodies from this job though :) 

Once the house was pressure washed it looked like a brand new house! Completely different! Maybe we should have done this a long time ago... I even thought about moving into this little house :) Once cleaned, we applied a coat of primer to the ceiling, rafters, inside walls, and outside walls. After this dried, we painted all the rafter beams and fascia boards a dark chocolate brown. It looks great! 

Next step is to build the doors and windows so our chickens stop hanging out in this house.

It has been a while since we have updated our progress on our guest house/ storage shed/ work shop. Our last post was after we framed and decked the guest house roof. We then added the fascia (2x8x30) boards to the front and back of the roof. After framing, sheets of wood were added to enclose the gables. The next step was to add purlins to the roof so that the galvalume sheets could be screwed into secured boards. We used 1x4 boards for this part and added three rows on each side of the roof. This part was pretty simple and only required a mitre saw, a drill, and some screws. 

After the gables were enclosed it was time to add flashing all the way around the roof. This is quick and easy, helps protect the roof, and looks pretty sharp when complete. Next we fasten the metal sheets to the roof. The 14ft long sheets of galvalume had to be cut individually to fit the mismatched sides of the roof. Cutting sheet metal is easiest using a circular saw with a regular wood cutting blade turned backwards. It cuts the metal like an ol' hot knife through butter but it makes the most awful screeching noise you ever did hear! Any time we do this we wear ear plugs and wrap a bandana around our heads to drown out the noise. Be sure to wear eye protection and shoes too because metal shavings in the eyes and bottom of your feets ain't no fun.. trust me.. I know from experience..

Now, when you are screwing your sheet metal down be sure to screw yer screw through the top of the ridge into the purlins, and don't add too much torque or you will  bust a hole through the metal! (no holes for us!) 

Once all the sheets of galvalume were fastened a ridge cap was applied along the top to keep the rain water out. 

And there you have it! A roof over your head! All of the sheet metal was put on in ONE day! (Back in MAY)

Note: Theresa is a statistician and I am a registered nurse. If we can do it, you can too!

This post is long overdue... We had our guest house roof framed and decked a few months ago. When we bought the house, it came with the beginnings of a  "guest house" which was really just a foundation and four walls. We had a contractor lined up to lay the bond beam and frame the roof in June 2013. He had the bond beam completed in August and then kept telling us he had other projects to work on for months. Yes, you heard that right. It is difficult getting projects done quickly here. That is one of the reasons why Aaron and I chose to just do them ourselves. 

In January, we finally decided it was time to find another contractor so we hired a neighbor of ours that could start on the project soon. With Aaron, a day laborer and the contractor working, the roof was framed and decked in four days! Now we just need to add galvalume to the roof and the roof will be complete. Once we get a day of no rain when we are off work, we will get this roof finished.