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Chevy HHR water leak passenger floor, HVAC fan dead

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After watching a number of youtube videos, I discovered there's a commonly worn out cover under the windshield cowl.  The rubber piece covering this hole (called the fan access) was completely damaged and sunk into the hole.  Water was just pouring in from windshield, then under the hood, then into this hole right into the passenger side behind the glove box. access hole under windshield cowl replacement cover with silicone seal installed cover, hopefully no more leaks here A terrible side effect of having water pour into the access hole is damaged HVAC fan and its resistor.  The 'resistor' enables the fan to have different speeds.  So, it looked like in the end, the water started leaking in, damaging the resistor and the fan would only run on high setting (no resistor).  Then after time, more water would cause the DC motor to fail (rusted brushes, bearings, etc.).  The last symptom was a soaking wet passenger floor carpet.   I replaced both the
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Paver Patio Part Deux

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 This project is taking almost a month.  I dug out the top layer of dirt, down about 6 inches.  I wanted to dig only 3 inches, but it became obvious while digging I needed to go deeper to get to some solid ground.   Once I had all the dirt out, I figured out I needed about 2.5 (cubic) yards of aggregate to fill back in 3 inches.   I had Chicagoland Materials deliver the aggregate and torpedo sand by dump truck to the alley.  I poured the first layer of aggregate into the patio area and used a Wagner compactor rented from Sunbelt Rentals to firm up the base.   The weekly rental price for the compactor was half the price of what Home Depot wanted.  I used gas pipes to lay down and flatten the 2nd layer of aggregate and the top level of sand above that.   Once the sand layer was down, I put down the Gator Base panels.  Much more about laying the pavers in  I'm going to go on a diatribe here about the Gator Base panels..  Alliance, the company that makes the panels, claims you don&#
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Up on the Roof, Down goes the old

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Our 2nd floor tenants here mentioned the ceiling in the kitchen was showing some water damage again after the last big snowstorm. I figured I had already patched that area above the kitchen with lots of tar last year, but apparently to no avail. I've know since I bought the building that the roof needed to be completely replaced, since much of it was rippled and many of the joints with the parapet walls were tearing.  I made the mistake of hiring some fly by night contractors to put a layer of paint-able rubber membrane on over 5 years ago, and I thought that would hold it for awhile, but the membrane already had started coming off in the same year.  At that same time, I did get some estimates for a 'modified bitumen roof' for about $10K.  Once of the estimators took a sample of my existing roof, and said there were 7 layers of roof, and what looked to be the original gravel roof! So, obviously, this roof needed to be completely torn off. I contacted a number roofing co
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