Lots and Lots of Trouble...

I've been waiting six weeks for the County Building Inspectors Office to get to inspecting my plans, but an issue came up a couple weeks ago.  I was out at the lot and realized that it wasn't as large as I'd marked it on my house plan.  So I went and looked at the plat at the county and I realized that I'd gotten the dimensions written down wrong a long time back.  It meant I was very close to the edge of the buildable area, so I went out and started looking for survey pins and realized that there was a fence with the neighbor several feet onto my lot.  I wasn't going to say anything, but eventually I changed my mind when I realized that it would make it impossible to build an accessory structure that I was going to build before the house and use to stay in while I'm building the house.  Paying six hundred dollars a month for rent when is a bit of a drain on the savings when you have no income.

The red bit in the photo is the encroachment.

I contacted the surveyor who did the survey on file at the county and he found it in his records.  It indeed shows that the fence is seven feet into my lot.  This is because there used to be an alleyway, through the block between my neighbor's yard and mine, several owners back.  The fence was built one foot from the edge of the alley.  Then the county vacated the alley and gave the land up to the center line to the lots on either side.  The previous owner never moved the fence to reflect the new border, and the guy next door just used the space.

So I went out there yesterday and measured it just to make sure.  The result was clear.  He was seven feet onto my lot, so I took a letter with me explaining that I was going to move the fence.  This was on the advice of the people in the planning office, because it might lead to problems with the building inspector when he comes to measure setbacks when I'm getting ready to lay a foundation.  Also several people pointed out to me that I was paying property taxes for land I didn't have access to, which didn't make a lot of sense.

I was really worried that it was going to lead to litigation, so I talked to Mark LaRocco and Mr. Forsberg, who are both lawyers, about it, and they both thought I was legally ok.  They thought if the guy tried to sue me over it I'd win.  But when I went to the guy's door and explained things and gave him the letter he was really cool about it.  He knew he was encroaching, and had just asked the original owner of my lot if it bothered him, and he'd allowed it.  The original owner was using it as a garden for his deli, Collosimo's, down 90th west on main street.  So he wasn't too concerned about the seven feet when the county gave up the alley.

Obviously it isn't going to be a done deal until it is done, but I think things are working out without problems or bad feelings.  The guy said that he was going to get some friends to help him move his sheds this weekend.  I offered to help, and told him to email me if he needed me.  I'm planning on starting the new fence monday.    Anyway, we'll see how it goes.

Anyway, during the wait on the plans I've tackled a couple projects.  I cut down my motorcycle seat.  I said before it was too tall for me.  I saw a tutorial on the internet and decided to give it a go.  I thought that I could get a bit lower.  I found an upholsterer near by and went and bought some foam and vinyl from him.  I also found some rebond carpet pad by dumpster diving at a carpet outlet store.  I also bought a blue camp pad made of closed cell foam at Walmart for seven bucks.

It took about a month of experimenting, during which time I learned a lot about foam and ergonomics, but I finished it off.  I started out with just several layers of the rebond.  But it was too soft.  Foam is measured both by its density and amount of weight required to compress it by 25% of its unstressed size.  I think.  Anyway, the rebond was too soft and lead to back pain.  The closed cell was too hard by itself, and led to back pain.  What followed were several iterations of combinations of the two.  Eventually I figured out that I'd made it too low.  I took off about four inches, but it pulled me too far forward and took all the weight off my feet and wrists, which put it all on my lower back, which led to back pain.  Anyway, back pain and again and again, but finally I figured it out and got it to the point that it felt alright.  Putting a layer of soft, thin smoothing foam on top was good for comfort.

There are a couple things I'd do different next time.  One mistake is that while I was testing different configurations I covered it in plastic sheeting.  Doing different layer configurations I needed to be able to get at it, so I slit the plastic down the sides of the seat.  That meant that when I finished with it, before covering it in the vinyl I had to patch it up and put it together with a heat gun.  This left big melted plastic seams that show through the vinyl after I stretched it on.  The other was that I pulled the vinyl really tight so it would be smooth.  That compressed the thin layer of soft smoothing foam.  The result was that it wasn't as comfortable as it had been before covering it.

As for my other project, my lcd computer monitor went out after a power outage.  I'd been having troubles with it before, not turning on when I pushed the button after it went out from the power saving setting on the screen saver.  Eventually I'd just turned that setting off and forgotten about it.

But when it went out I couldn't get it turned back on for anything.  So I was looking for a new monitor online when I realized I needed the model number of the old monitor to search for a comparable one, I found out that this model was susceptible to this problem because of cheap capacitors.  I found a tutorial on how to replace the capacitors online, and went to an electronic components supply place to buy new ones.  Then I got a cheap soldering iron and some solder at Harbor Freight, and cracked the monitor open.  I was nervous because I'd never done anything like this before, never soldered at all, but I figured I didn't have anything to lose.

It took about four hours to dig the mother board out, remove the old capacitors and solder in the new ones.  I was quite anxious when I plugged it it and hit the switch, but it fired right up, better than new.  Good stuff.  I saved about a hundred and twenty bucks on it I figure.