Spider!

So I was doing the laundry last night when I noticed this gal hanging around outside my backdoor.



There's nothing in the picture to get the scale correct, but her leg span is nearly 2 inches! According to the internet, she's a Black and Yellow Garden Spider. My first impulse was to grab the bug spray and take it out, but as I was watching it last night she caught and cocooned two other annoying insects. As far as I'm concerned that's enough to make her rent, so I'm going to leave her be for now.

How time flies.

I currently have family visiting, so there's not much progress on the house being made. However, I was able to move that wall over about a quarter inch. Once that was done I started filling in the gaps with drywall.



As I've mentioned before, the trim around the doors was actually put down before the drywall. Since that makes it hard to paint and looks a little sloppy, I went ahead and pulled the trim off from around the doors, so I can build up the drywall beneath it.



Interesting discovery. There's not much holding the door jamb in place except for the trim. I may have to reinforce that some how.

Interesting...

So I was curious how much of an offset there would be between the old and new wall.



There's no way I'm going to be able to be able to hide a quarter inch drop with just joint compound. (At least, not without adding a quarter inch of compound to the entire new face.)



To top it off, the gap widens as it goes out.



I sort of expected that actually. A slightly angled wall probably won't be noticeable.... but since I may have to move the wall to close the gap, I suppose I could try to straighten it at the same time. Fortunately, I used screws instead of nails, so it shouldn't be too hard to partially disassemble the structure and shift it over a little.

Building Walls

My task for the weekend was accomplished! Sort of...

I did succeed in framing, and dry-walling my little three-quarter wall.



I put down a layer of OSB to make it level with the other wall, which has a layer of pine planing under the drywall.



The finished product:





I say it's "sort of" finished, because my plan called for setting down a strip of 1/4" drywall on the narrow piece of exposed pine planking between the old and new sections of all. Home Depot had run out of that type, so it will have to wait until next weekend.

It's okay, really. It gives me a chance to prep the rest of the hallway for patching as well. The existing door trim was put down before the drywall, so replacing it will probably involve adding a layer of drywall underneath the new trim. I'm sure there are other options, but I'm not sure if they would look any better in the end.

Taxes

So after another fun drive out to Killeen and back, I was greeted with a letter from the IRS. I had hoped it was my tax refund, but no such luck. Apparently they decided that I should have completed a Schedule SE. I disagree, and not just because it means that I'd owe more money.

What's frustrating is that there seems to be no clear cut answer as to how I should be filing. I could declare that the extra income was from a sole proprietor business, in which case, I'd have to amend my tax return to include a Schedule C and Schedule SE. Alternately (and preferably), I could argue that because I undertook the money making activity "sporadically", it doesn't constitute a business. If I'm not a business, then I don't file a Schedule C, and the values in Schedule SE are all zeros.

It seems like a sound argument. I just wish there was a more solid definition of what constitutes a "business". As it stands, I feel like I'm trying to weasel out of paying. When really I'm not...after all, if I had known I'd have to file as a business, I would have kept track of expenses for the purposes of deducting them later.

The irony is that I'm only having to worry about this because I reported the income in the first place. I received no 1099, so had I not mentioned it, they'd probably be none the wiser. *sigh*