Building a new Train Room

I feel your pain, I truly do. Wives just don't understand our plight!

 

Work continues, this morning the guys replaced some bad siding on the house. What had happened is the lady I bought the house from had a redwood deck nailed directly to the siding, and there was serious water damage where the deck ledger board held snow and water:


I had removed all the rotted redwood deck and replaced with a concrete sidewalk, and step. Then the guys built up a step out of treated wood for the time being, as next year I plan on replacing the redwood deck with Trex, which will last 25+ years and don't rot:


I hired a new crew today, (2 guys on the right) to dig a trench to run two runs of 12awg direct burial Romex, one for the mini split heat pump and one for my toys. I already have a single 15A run wired in, but the lady I bought the house from had tee'd into the master bedroom for that power run, so the breakers were tripping every time they fired up a Skill Saw, or Air Compressor. Since I had a 200A service upgrade this spring, I have plenty of breaker slots available. The guys also trimmed out the doors to match the windows:


And these guys are building a step down platform for this door out of wood scraps, to make it easier for them to get in and out. It's about 12" high so they said it was too easy to trip while stepping up. Today the plan is to get the texture layer of mud up. They still have to caulk the doorway trim and nail holes out here too:

 

I like the way Scott thinks...

Really good to see this progressing, quite a nice project!

 

Loving this build thread. Great work so far Ray!

 

I kind of like the "Train Shed" name best because it reminds me of all those Train Shed Cyclopedia booklets you used to see at the train shops.

There actually were planter boxes under those windows when I bought the house, but the lady did not line them with plastic planters, just dirt in the wood boxes, so it rotted the whole window areas, and needed to be repaired. NO WINDOW BOXES ALLOWED!

Also, thousands and thousands of dollar worth of tree chopping was needed. The piles of leaves were 2 feet thick in November, and took 37 Contractor Heafty Bags of shredded leaves to remove, each shredded bag weighed about 40 pounds. I was not going to do that many leaves every November, again, so I had 23 giant trees removed so far, some over 80 feet and yielded 3 cords of wood each. 3 more large trees are going down this winter, too many trees.



3 more large trees are going down this winter, there was WAY TOO MANY TREES, here is the jungle when I bought the house:

 

Yesterday's work included trenching for adding two extra 15A 120V circuits, one for the mini split heat pump and one for extra current capability, in case I want to move my laser into the train shed. I actually used two runs of 12/2 wire, so I can carry 20 amps on each, but my new 200A panel came with 2 spare 15A breakers, so I will just use those. I also ran cat6e direct burial ethernet wire while I was at it, so I can have wired internet in the train shed:


A couple weeks ago the concrete guys had cut the fiber optic internet, so the fiber people had to order line marking. Everyone came out and spray painted the ground in their colors, so I had a map of where electric, natural gas, city water, pressurized irrigation water, telephone, cable TV, and sewer lines run. We plotted out a route where we only had to go under pressurized irrigation lines to meet trench code, and they had the wires buried in one day:



The texture coat was also applied yesterday:


This morning they did a quick knock down then primed the texture. They will paint the interior this afternoon:

 

At the end of the work day today, the walls and ceiling were painted:


They also got the door trim installed, and next tomorrow is the flooring. We had been having an issue where the breakers kept tripping, and every time it happened I ran out and asked all the guys what the last touched, bumped, or shook. It's hard to find an intermittent electrical fault, but I happened to be there while a guy was painting, and he had touched the ceiling light dimmer, so at this point, I was able to isolate the ceiling light wiring from the electrical outlets wiring, and I should be able to fix the fault easily enough when I am adding the other two 15A circuits. I will have 3 separate 15A circuits in the shed:



I had the guys clean up the huge pile of construction debris too, now it's starting to look like a train shed. In case you guys don't know, I'm all about CAMO. I have camo seat covers in my truck, camo furniture in the front room, a camo side by side, I wear camo clothes all the time, and now, I have camo roof shingles on my house, train shed and the Victorian gazebo:



The guys also finished painting the replacement house siding, and they painted the hot tub power breaker box the same color as the house. I have a 2 tone thing going on my house, where the North and South facing walls are a shade lighter than the East and West sides, because i wanted my house to look a bit different than all the neighbors homes, just a bit:


And for those curious about all the trees i had to cut down, here is a picture of the front yard today, to compare with 2 posts ago showing what it looked like when I bought it. New paint, new camo roof, new side access driveway, and lots and lots of yard work were required to get this house back into shape. Now the HOA can finally stop harping at me for having a messy yard:


The Before Picture, the EX Wife's Dream Home:

 

Lots going on underground... Looks like the best is yet to come!

 

Today is the last day of all the contractors. Everything else I have to do myself. I budgeted out for the year, with plenty of cost overruns. Add to that, my house AC compressor exploded and dumped all the Freon. That compressor is only 5 months old as the previous compressor went out at only 3 years old with only two 3 month summer usages on it. In effect it died after 6 months use, and the second died after 5 months usage.

So what did they do today? They painted the inside of the doors, and laid the flooring:



They also painted, installed, then caulked the baseboards after laying the flooring. The painting company is my son's, "JH Painting LLC", and he has to paint 4 NAPA Auto Parts stores before he can come back and do the touchup work, so I have a few weeks to do all the electrical work myself. I may go ahead and put a 20A breaker for one of the 12/2 lines, and install a 20A duplex, but the other is dedicated to the mini split heat pump, so I will just leave it at 15A. Remember, I also have another 15A service previously installed, and had found the root cause of breakers tripping as something in the ceiling lighting wiring, so 15A and 20A circuits independent of the 15A heat pump circuit should be enough for a Z Scale train shed:



We also installed the door knobs with deadbolts, and the doors weather stripping today, but I still have to mount the upper and lower French Door center bolt striker plates. I also have to route out the striker plate insets to match the striker plates that came with my door knobs. I did buy the Kwikset Smart Locks, and was able to re-key them to match the main house keys easily enough. I'm going to take a couple days of rest now, since I have been Go Go Go for the past few months. At least It's starting to look finished now, 320 square feet of Train Shed :

 

A guy can spend his money as he wants when he is single, and as some of you know, I purchased this home as a retirement home for my ex wife, way back in 2016. This is a compromise home I purchased for her. She had to have trees, a creek, and a small house less that 1500 square feet because she said "I am not going to clean 3 bathrooms and a big house", after I proposed buying a 2800sf home on the Snake River, with it's own dock. I really wanted that house too, because it had a full daylight basement, sat 100 feet up the embankment of the Snake River in Homedale ID, and had 3 flights of stairs down to the dock, with a sitting deck at each flight. It was beautiful and was my dream home, but the wife said NO! NO NO NO!

Then to add insult to injury, 6 months before retirement, I come home from work one day to find her truck loaded up with all her belongings, and she only said one thing to me as I walked up, while she was hurriedly locking the front door to leave... "It's like this... I'm 62 years old and I deserve one more romance in my life", and she was gone! Poof! And I still had to buy her half of the house.

Since I budgeted out for the year, I have to save up till next spring for the yard work to continue, but the plan is to hire a landscaping contractor to remove 3 more offensive trees, chip out all the tree stumps, and grade the yard to the right of the sidewalks, then fill in and pack down 3-4" of "Black & Tan", Black & Tan is fractured oxidized basalt landscape rock, which weeds do not grow through, and it packs down tight, perfect for parking my camper, boat, and side by side on:


So grass on the left of the sidewalk, Black & Tan on the right: