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Everything's looking great! Too bad they're putting a well so close to your house. You had a really pretty view.
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Aug 30, 2014 08:32
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fork bomb posted:Everything's looking great! We shouldn't actually see anything, I think the helicopter moves supplies / seismographic instruments around from site to site. If anyone knows the industry feel free to chime in with what they were doing. The well will not be visible from our yard, but it'll be close enough that when they're drilling we'll have noise and extra light. Oh well. On Saturday my wife and I called the room done! I finished up my caulking and paint touchups. I finally took some pictures with our nice camera:      Bed moved in, blinds up  Amos the cat glad to have a new place to hang out  Today I had my wife's cousin come over to teach my how to tile. The hardest part was figuring out where everything was going to go and then making the cuts. Laying the tile was not too bad. I learned a lot! Later in the week I'll tackle the grouting, so between now and then I'm going to have to do my homework. (sorry this one is a lovely cellphone picture, I'll get a better one later)  Happy labor day, ya'll
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Sep 1, 2014 21:10
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dreesemonkey posted:We shouldn't actually see anything, I think the helicopter moves supplies / seismographic instruments around from site to site. If anyone knows the industry feel free to chime in with what they were doing. The well will not be visible from our yard, but it'll be close enough that when they're drilling we'll have noise and extra light. I don't know enough to know what they would be using the helicopter for, but I'm pretty sure it's not seismographic instruments. They generally use large, specialized trucks for that, and if they've already picked the well site they should already have enough seismic data anyway. Once the well is completed, it should just be a few feet of pipe & valves sticking out of the ground.
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Sep 1, 2014 22:04
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So do you have really tall doors or a really low (7') ceiling? Good job either way. After the bathroom is finished are you going to start on anything else or wait until spring?
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Sep 2, 2014 18:12
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Zhentar posted:I don't know enough to know what they would be using the helicopter for, but I'm pretty sure it's not seismographic instruments. They generally use large, specialized trucks for that, and if they've already picked the well site they should already have enough seismic data anyway. http://www.wetzelchronicle.com/page/content.detail/id/501194/Helicopters-Used-In-Seismic-Testing.html?nav=5001 Turns out I was partially right, according to the article they're used for (eventually) getting the seismographic data setup. MH Knights posted:So do you have really tall doors or a really low (7') ceiling? Good job either way. After the bathroom is finished are you going to start on anything else or wait until spring? Ceilings are lower than 8' yes, I think probably around 7'6" or so. There are a bunch of small projects around the house I'll likely putter around with, but nothing major on the landscape. 2 more months until we have a second kid so that will kill off any remaining free time / money I once had.
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Sep 2, 2014 19:40
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I'm very impressed with your patience - that room looks great. I went mad sanding the drywall when I did my office (because I'm crazy OCD). I ended up throwing in the towel and just dealing with it having flaws. It didn't help that my house is super old and nothing is square.
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Sep 3, 2014 02:39
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Jared592 posted:I'm very impressed with your patience - that room looks great. I went mad sanding the drywall when I did my office (because I'm crazy OCD). I ended up throwing in the towel and just dealing with it having flaws. It didn't help that my house is super old and nothing is square.
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Sep 4, 2014 03:59
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adorai posted:Here's the thing that will save most people from perfectionist insanity: look at the nearest wall. How far away is it RIGHT NOW? Go to another spot in your house that you spend a lot of time and stand in the most likely spot for you to stand. How far away is the nearest wall? From now on, keep those two distances in mind when finishing the walls of your home. You only need to pass a visual test from that distance. I decided that 3 feet was a reasonable distance for me, so if I cannot spot a blemish from 3 feet away, then it's not worth spending any more time on. That's reasonable advice, but I'd just like to point out that after the first few it's really not hard at all to finish a wall perfectly. Hell, I figured it out. The pain in the rear end that will make your arms sore are ceilings. And unfortunately, they tend to show a lot because of the angle light goes across them from windows (or light fixtures).
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Sep 4, 2014 12:39
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Echoing adorai and motronic, it's all about expectations. I'm fortunate in that our house isn't that old, so everything is pretty square. A few general tips I've learned for everyone: - Avoid butt joints as much as you can, I hung my drywall vertically on the walls so I could avoid all butt joints. - Add water to your mud to thin it out for your finishing coats (after the tape coat) - I learned from a guy who used a hawk vs. a mud pan. I could see it might be easier to keep your knives clean with a hawk, keeping the crud off your knives will give you a better finish and less sanding. This is a complete guess. - When you must have butt joints, this is the process I used (turned out great) http://www.drywallinfo.com/butt_joints.html - I use a big 500W work light when I'm finishing and sanding, you can throw the light along the wall or ceiling and see imperfections easier. Also it throws out a ton of heat, so if you have some places pretty thick with mud it will help dry it faster. - I sand everything by hand. Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment but my drywall yogi master told me you should be feeling imperfections, not looking for them. Very zen. - I sanded between finish coats (but not the tape coat), some people do not. - The darker and glossier your paint, the more you'll notice imperfections. This is why ceiling paint is flat. My bathroom is a dark grey, and that coupled with the surface mounted vanity light means I can see all the imperfections.
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Sep 4, 2014 13:37
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When you people are talking about drywall finishing do you finish the joints then immediately paint on the flat sheets? Because around here it is VERY common to have your drywall textured with orange peel and ceilings are knock-down textured (Pacific Northwest). Is it a regional thing? When my wife's half-brother visited from the Midwest he was amazed that everything was textured and it didn't seem very common there. I've lived here my whole life and never thought twice about it, and don't think I've ever seen non-textured walls in residential dwellings here.
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Sep 4, 2014 17:06
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sbyers77 posted:When you people are talking about drywall finishing do you finish the joints then immediately paint on the flat sheets? Because around here it is VERY common to have your drywall textured with orange peel and ceilings are knock-down textured (Pacific Northwest). While you will find popcorn ceilings in cheap homes and hotels (because you can hire unskilled labor to throw sheetrock at the ceiling and barely get tape on the joints) and textures in some homes/businesses that are going for a particular look, most of what you'll find in the areas I'm most familiar with (east coast from NY to GA) is flat finished painted drywall. It's definitely a regional thing.
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Sep 4, 2014 18:06
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Just chiming in with a few words of encouragement. It's amazing how much you've been able to improve on a modular home and everything you've done so far looks really professional. I'm planning on moving (back) to Pennsylvania within the coming months into a fixer-upper and I'm hoping I can find some people who are as knowledgeable about DIY as the people you know. Keep up the awesome work and keep us updated on it!
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Sep 4, 2014 21:10
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Outside of around your window(s), where did you end up caulking? I feel like I'm missing out on some knowledge.
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Sep 4, 2014 21:48
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metallicaeg posted:Outside of around your window(s), where did you end up caulking? I feel like I'm missing out on some knowledge. If you are doing white trim, there is no reason not to white caulk where the trim meets the wall to get rid of any gaps.
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Sep 5, 2014 00:37
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adorai posted:If you are doing white trim, there is no reason not to white caulk where the trim meets the wall to get rid of any gaps. White trim or not, there is no reason not to. It's your final air barrier and you just paint it trim or wall color as appropriate. Some caulk and some paint makes a carpenter who ain't.
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Sep 5, 2014 00:43
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Motronic posted:White trim or not, there is no reason not to. It's your final air barrier and you just paint it trim or wall color as appropriate.
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Sep 5, 2014 01:49
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adorai posted:Eh, the fact that it makes the job more difficult if you aren't using white trim is at least one reason not to do it. It's not like you can't do it later. If you find a lot of cold air coming from the window trim this winter, you know what you can do and it's just a matter of some quick paint touch ups. Houses are all temporary, and doing things the "best" or "right" way is all a matter of degrees in what makes sense now, what you have around at the time and what you're comfortable with.
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Sep 5, 2014 02:38
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Motronic posted:Houses are all temporary, and doing things the "best" or "right" way is all a matter of degrees in what makes sense now, what you have around at the time and what you're comfortable with.
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Sep 5, 2014 04:15
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adorai posted:I explained finishing to my daughter as such: All I'm doing is hiding what was wrong with the last thing I did. I'm stealing this line.
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Sep 5, 2014 04:32
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The bathroom is getting pretty close. I took Friday and Monday off work to get some stuff done around the house. Friday I grouted, and it turned out great (crappy picture, I know)  Saturday I did 70 miles on this old girl. Did great overall, but it doesn't have enough gears to comfortably ride that distance.  Yesterday I got the bathroom fixtures in place  The toilet works 100%. The sink works, but I'm getting a very slow drip from the hot supply, I either need to tighten the shutoff valve or where it screws into the faucet. I was also getting a slow dribble down the wall where the p-trap extension goes into the drain in the wall. I don't know if that joint should be glued maybe? We're not really using it right now until I figure out the problem. The shower was hooked up yesterday but when I pressurized the hot water line the shower would "leak", which is a problem since I still don't have the shower drain attached to anything. I finally figured it out, I forgot a rubber gasket when I re-installed the cartridge after we had to remove it to get the shower unit in.  My curved shower rod is just too big, with the drywall the room is about 47 1/4" and the shower rod needs only goes down to 48". I was just thinking maybe I'll cut it with the angle grinder since it's adjustable and I can just hack and inch or two off one of the sleeved sections and drill new holes. I'm not sure if that will work or not, I'd have to see how it works. All I need to do yet to sign off on this project is: - Shower drain - Fix sink leaks - Figure out shower rod thing - Caulk around shower, toilet - Hang some towel hooks - Install some ducting to bathroom vent
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Sep 9, 2014 13:57
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I have to say this is looking awesome, a very neat and tidy job. Amos the cat seems to be happy with it and you have done wonders with the design. Love it.
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Sep 9, 2014 23:14
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No big update other than the bathroom is now 100% functional  (sorry it's hard to photograph)   Last weekend my sister and her boyfriend came up and he helped me finish the shower drain, and he helped track down my sink leaks (there was a piece we forgot to glue way back when). The shower is working out great, we love it. The showerhead pretty much sucks, but we can get a better one down the road. We've been using it all week to get ready in the mornings. Despite the size constrains, it doesn't feel that small to me at all. I'm not cramped on the toilet, in the shower, or in front of the sink. Success! I have to give credit to forums user adorai because very early in the project he made me reconsider adding a shower because I thought many-a-time it was just too small. So thanks adorai - It was a lot more expensive and made me drag my feet WAY too long, but in the end it was worth it! It opens more opportunities for us by giving us another place to bathe, and it will have no doubt increased the value of our house even more than just remodeling what was there (not that we plan on selling).  We're now in "get poo poo organized for baby #2 mode", so nothing incredibly interesting is going on. It's kind of nice being able to laze about in the evenings, I will admit.
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Sep 19, 2014 21:25
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dreesemonkey posted:I have to give credit to forums user adorai because very early in the project he made me reconsider adding a shower because I thought many-a-time it was just too small. So thanks adorai - It was a lot more expensive and made me drag my feet WAY too long, but in the end it was worth it!
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Sep 19, 2014 23:07
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Great color choice, 99 out of a 100 people would be horrified if they saw that on the paper swatch, really looks awesome though. Also like the case / base combo. I think too many people go strait for the huge 5" base with too much profile.
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Sep 19, 2014 23:27
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Looks fantastic
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Sep 20, 2014 04:04
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Thanks for the kind words, guys. Saturday, my wife's cousins took delivery of our son so he could terrorize them for a change, so I spent the day tackling a project in the garage I've wanted to work on for a while. Here is where I wanted to add some shelves. The tricky part is that this is where I keep my wood pellets for the winter too, so I needed to take that into consideration. Also I'm going to have to be moving my garden tools.  To the left is where I'm planning to keep my garden tools and remove the two longer shelves so I can have a little more room to park my toys back there.  Cleaned up  Built the first shelf to be 48" from the ground, and go over the the main power disconnect.  First shelf hung  Through the magic of photographs, the second one is in place. Spacing between the two shelves is 20", which is large enough for any plastic bins that I have. All my other shelves are also like this.  At this point it was time to work on where the garden tools were going. Here is the first shelf removed  Utilitrack thing hung  All cleaned up, looking much better  ATV all tucked away  Panorama  At the same time my wife had me get baby stuff out of our garage attic storage so she wasted no time filling up the lower shelf. Yesterday I spent some time making our bathroom more liveable. I installed a glass shelf over the sink, the hand towel holder and some hooks for our bath towels. Somewhat annoyed about the bath towels, we tried command strip hooks and they didn't work for poo poo  
dreesemonkey fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Sep 22, 2014 |
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Sep 22, 2014 13:04
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I've been following for a while but didn't have anything useful to add. I love what you've done with the place. One thing I can add input on is a towel rack. I don't have a part number recommendation - make sure the finish is the same as your other metals in the bathroom: faucet handles, hand towel holder, glass shelf brackets, etc - but I like something like this, so you can have fresh folded towels near by, and hang two towels to dry. I find they dry faster when spread out, YMMV.  [url]http://www.amazon.com/Organize-It-All-Shelf-Towel/dp/B002YK4YHE/[/url] Keep up the great work.
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Sep 22, 2014 20:57
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SiGmA_X posted:I've been following for a while but didn't have anything useful to add. I love what you've done with the place. I think that's a great idea. We didn't want the towels over the toilet but since the command straps didn't work on the other wall (where the pocket door is) it's the only place left. I think a towel rack is a great idea. I'll run the idea by the wife, thanks!
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Sep 23, 2014 01:27
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dreesemonkey posted:
Gotta have the ATV on the carpet so you can go down and vroom vroom while drinking beer, barefoot, and not get yelled at for tracking dirt back in the house. I know what's up.
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Sep 23, 2014 01:28
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Understandable about not wanting towel hooks over the toilet. Could you find a towel bar like this where it screws into the wall high up and the towel bar hangs down, so you could use the header over the pocket door to mount it?
whalesteak fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 04:31
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dreesemonkey posted:I think that's a great idea. We didn't want the towels over the toilet but since the command straps didn't work on the other wall (where the pocket door is) it's the only place left. I think a towel rack is a great idea. I'll run the idea by the wife, thanks! 1) how often do people see your master bathroom (other than now when you are showing it off) 2) given the answer to #1, is function or form more important?
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Sep 23, 2014 04:55
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Nothing has really been happening around the house. Work is crazy busy and since the bathroom is done, I haven't felt like doing much home DIY. We solved the bathroom towel issue by getting one of these from IKEA, I just put it up yesterday and it's a good solution for our space I've done some more minor organizing with vacuum bags, some general cleanup in the basement and I built a quick and dirty lumber-type storage area in the garage to get the unused hardwood flooring out of the basement.  In pusedo-DIY territory, I spent a bunch of money building a new computer which has been long overdue. Thanks to the SHSC pc building thread I learned a lot and I'm very happy with the build: i5 4690 ASRock H97 Pro4 8GB PC1600 Samnsung EVO 250GB SSD Gigabyte G1 GTX970 Seasonic 550W modular PSU Phanteks Entoo Pro I way overspent for my needs (plex server, web browsing, maybe light gaming), but it should give me many good years of service so I don't mind paying for quality components. Other than that, work still sucks and 3 weeks to baby #2 and we're at our wits end trying to get our son to want to use the potty.
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Oct 20, 2014 19:29
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Small update to keep this out of the archives. Busy busy here in dressemonkey land. We had our daughter on 11/11 so between her and our 3 year old, we're keeping busy.  Although I'm still very busy at work, I can soon see an end to the madness. The huge project I've been stuck with is now "live" as of the 31st and I've been running around as much I can fixing bugs and adding features. Overall I'm very pleased things are working as well as they are, but there is still so much to do. But at this point I'm used to working pretty much all the time, so hopefully in a few weeks things will slow down enough that I can have a normal work week. In DIY news I've finally started insulating the band joist around the house. There had been R-13 half-rear end pushed up against the ceiling joists that were doing next to nothing. I bought some 2" rigid foam insulation and started yesterday. It's messy work sweeping up years of mouse poo poo, dirt, spider webs, etc, but I'm pretty sure it's going to make a huge difference. It's slow going though, there are a lot of joist cavities that need a lot of cutting or finagling. A few hours of work yesterday and I probably only got half of one side of my house done. Oh well, it will be nice when it's done.  Longer-range I'd like to maybe get another pellet stove for the basement, and with this insulation going up and maybe some new basement windows, I think I could keep it quite comfortable down there. Right now we're not heating it at all and it will get in the low 50s, so it can only be much nicer with a pellet stove. Happy new year, ya'll.
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Jan 2, 2015 21:02
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Am I seeing correctly that you have uninsulated masonry block walls there? If so, you're probably going to have to keep going a little further with the insulation to make a big difference.
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Jan 2, 2015 23:27
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Zhentar posted:Am I seeing correctly that you have uninsulated masonry block walls there? If so, you're probably going to have to keep going a little further with the insulation to make a big difference. It's studded out with 2x4s and fiberglass insulation. Eventually I'll take the paneling out and see what's what with the insulation. But that won't be for a while I'm afraid. I'm not looking to get 75 degrees down there, just make it more useable in the winter. It's a pretty cheap project so no harm no foul either way.
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Jan 3, 2015 02:19
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I just meant the bit between between the sill plate and the top of the paneling.
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Jan 3, 2015 02:26
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Maybe use some foam board insulation for that section?
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Jan 3, 2015 03:52
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SiGmA_X posted:Maybe use some foam board insulation for that section? Yea if I think it's an issue that's likely what I'll attempt. Most, but not all of the basement has insulation on the walls so it might not be that beneficial, either. I have a laundry room and furnace room that don't have insulation on them.
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Jan 3, 2015 18:31
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I can't see exactly what the wall construction is from your pictures, but that area is potentially less insulated than the rim joist, and without a good gasket, small gaps between the sill plate and sill can allow a lot of air leakage.
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Jan 3, 2015 21:25
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I worked a bit more on the band joist insulation last night and cleaning up. Progressing slowly. One nice thing is that my wife's cousin is a construction management professor at our local college and he said he'll bring over his thermal camera sometime, would be helpful to see what's going on with the basement. When I was working on it last night I put my hand on the exposed masonry and it was cool but not cold with the outside temp around freezing. I'm going to get a thermometer for the basement sometime just to see around what temperature it is. The next couple of days are supposed to be warmer, I think. I remembered last weekend I took a walk and took a picture of the gas well pad behind my house. Thankfully I can't see it from my property, but once they start drilling and have it lit up 24/7 and then flaring the wells it's going to be like stadium lighting for our house. I was stunned how much dirt they had to move, I don't typically need to go on the north side of my house for things, the one day I was coming back from that direction and was very surprised what they've done. 
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Jan 4, 2015 17:10
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