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Elder Postsman posted:When my dad was trying to figure out why one bedroom in his house was always cold, he found a bunch of old chip bags all wadded up in the ducts going to that room. when my step-grandfather built his house he put a little slot in the bathroom wall to chuck his dull straight-razor blades in it. whatever, your house, etc. guess he patched it at some point when re-painting. when they opened up the wall to fix some electrical thing, decades later, there was like ten pounds of rusty razor blades in it.
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Apr 30, 2017 19:02
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SoundMonkey posted:when my step-grandfather built his house he put a little slot in the bathroom wall to chuck his dull straight-razor blades in it. whatever, your house, etc. guess he patched it at some point when re-painting. when they opened up the wall to fix some electrical thing, decades later, there was like ten pounds of rusty razor blades in it. That wasn't your stepgrandfather, that used to be a standard feature. Medicine cabinets came with a pre-cut slot for that purpose. http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,107732,00.html
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Apr 30, 2017 19:10
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Phanatic posted:That wasn't your stepgrandfather, that used to be a standard feature. Medicine cabinets came with a pre-cut slot for that purpose. i'll be god damned, i just thought he was crusty and weird probably because he was crusty and weird like i can see the convenience aspect but i mean drat, garbage cans exist edit: any idea when this STOPPED being a standard feature? in 102 and 93 year old houses i haven't noticed any sign of it SoundMonkey fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Apr 30, 2017 |
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Apr 30, 2017 19:12
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SoundMonkey posted:i'll be god damned, i just thought he was crusty and weird My parents house was built in '54 and had it in both bathrooms.
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Apr 30, 2017 19:16
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You throw straight razor blades straight into garbage cans?
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Apr 30, 2017 19:20
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I think the safety razor was popularized in the first part of the 20th century and I imagine a wall disposal feature would have popped up not too long after that. As for when it stopped being a feature, maybe when those homes started to be demo'd and people decided that was a little silly. Or maybe when molded disposable razors became popular in the 1970s? My 1967 era house doesn't have the feature.
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Apr 30, 2017 19:21
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The razor blade disposal into walls shocked me the first time I heard about it to but the more you think about it the more it makes sense. They collect in an inaccessible area that's vanishingly unlikely to fill up and don't hurt anything until the wall gets opened up probably decades later probably by a contractor who knows what to expect and has a better way to dispose of scrap sharps than the household garbage.
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Apr 30, 2017 19:25
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My grandparents house had it, it was built in the 50's I think.
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Apr 30, 2017 19:40
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FogHelmut posted:My grandparents house had it, it was built in the 50's I think. i'm becoming increasingly convinced that the only reason i'm not familiar with this from other grandparents is that my grandmother was way too picky to permit that sort of sinful sloth in her home
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Apr 30, 2017 19:47
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I'm in california and our breaker boxes are usually outside. It makes sense that you can shut off circuits or the whole house while you're outside after the earthquake has made it unsafe to go back inside. I'm sure the outside of my breaker box gets wet when it rains but it's been there since 1958, same as about a billion other houses in the bay area, and most of them haven't burned down yet so I'm thinking the concern isn't actually that high. It might be worth reiterating that freshwater doesn't actually conduct electricity that well. It's not an insulator, but it's a fairly crap conductor.
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Apr 30, 2017 19:47
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Leperflesh posted:It might be worth reiterating that freshwater doesn't actually conduct electricity that well. It's not an insulator, but it's a fairly crap conductor. this was indeed demonstrated when my piece of poo poo washer broke a hose connection and started spraying the dryer plug (which is right next to the hose connection) with a torrent of water and i didn't die trying to turn it off i'd still prefer not though, given a choice
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Apr 30, 2017 19:50
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Leperflesh posted:I'm in california and our breaker boxes are usually outside. It makes sense that you can shut off circuits or the whole house while you're outside after the earthquake has made it unsafe to go back inside. My main breaker is outside, but the individual circuit breakers are all inside. So you can shut off power to the entire house from the outside. quote:I'm sure the outside of my breaker box gets wet when it rains but it's been there since 1958, same as about a billion other houses in the bay area, and most of them haven't burned down yet so I'm thinking the concern isn't actually that high. This is only true if the box was designed to shed water correctly. Presumably a box that was installed outdoors is designed for outdoor use, but the original discussion was from a demolition project where a formerly-indoor box became outdoors because there was no indoors any more.
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Apr 30, 2017 20:05
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ohgodwhat posted:You throw straight razor blades straight into garbage cans? I dispose of mine in a soda can. They can easily fit through the opening if you bend them a tiny bit, but there's no chance they will ever come back out. I have yet to fill a single can, but when I do throw it out, it should keep those blades pretty unlikely to ever cut anything.
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Apr 30, 2017 20:06
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My wife and I bought our first house in February, a split level five bedroom built in 1977. I've been replacing outlets older than I am that have left the wiring burned and charred, to illustrate what we've gotten ourselves into. When we moved in, the master bathroom had a drop ceiling that was the only one in the house. My wife got sick of looking at it, and tore it out. Here's what was underneath it. This appears to be a fluorescent fixture that had the bulb brackets removed from the housing, screwed into a wood beam, and then wired into the wall. For whatever reason a previous owner just slapped a drop ceiling up there instead of removing that weirdness. I'm guessing that it's still live too, I'll have to figure that out here soon.
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Apr 30, 2017 20:29
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mycomancy posted:My wife and I bought our first house in February, a split level five bedroom built in 1977. I've been replacing outlets older than I am that have left the wiring burned and charred, to illustrate what we've gotten ourselves into. they installed a convenience light for when you're fishing wires in your ceiling, as one does daily or at least weekly, and you tore it out?
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Apr 30, 2017 21:44
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SoundMonkey posted:they installed a convenience light for when you're fishing wires in your ceiling, as one does daily or at least weekly, and you tore it out?  Depending on if that...thing is decommissioned or not, I may fish the wire through the ceiling properly and install a badly needed exhaust fan.
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Apr 30, 2017 21:55
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mycomancy posted:I'm guessing that it's still live too, I'll have to figure that out here soon.
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Apr 30, 2017 22:22
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Welp I had the Crappy Construction Thread dream. I was staying in a dreadful Midwestern hotel with American flag quilts instead of yacht art. There was a structural column in the middle of the room that someone's potato-shaped wife hot glued bronze-color mesh onto to make it look classy. GIS can't match it but I found this instead.
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Apr 30, 2017 23:50
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please do not post pictures of the curtain rods i just replaced
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May 1, 2017 00:40
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No pictures but story time! I stayed at a hotel in weekend which came with an iPad to control everything in the room. From lights, to drapes and sheers I could do it all from this marvel of technology. The only downside was that all the bedroom controls effected the living room and no matter what button you pressed (even the temperature) it would open the shades in the bathroom.
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May 1, 2017 00:50
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Nuevo posted:What are the chances you'd notice if they knew what they were doing and "bypassed" both? If I'm understanding it right, that would theoretically cut their power bill in half. Yeah, we would not have noticed anything in that case. If you cut out the meter entirely we notice due to unexpected power cycling, but if you halved your consumption there's currently nothing to notice a sudden and continued drop in usage and schedule a visit. SoundMonkey posted:they installed a convenience light for when you're fishing wires in your ceiling, as one does daily or at least weekly, and you tore it out? My old house had a light bulb and a little platform in the attic crawlspace to make it infinitesimally less uncomfortable to light the central air pilot.
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May 1, 2017 03:40
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~Coxy posted:Yeah, we would not have noticed anything in that case. what DOES it take for you to think people are growing weed because when i switched my heating system this year i was suddenly using 4kW pretty much at all times and i figured i'd at least get a visit
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May 1, 2017 06:39
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SoundMonkey posted:oh heck i went and started a derail and didn't even post a decent picture of anything, i should ban myself probs I see the idiots that painted my apartment painted yours as well. Literally every single piece of trim on every window and door (and the chair rails!) has wall paint all over them. It's almost... impressive, how poorly this was painted. And all the trim is natural wood stain, so you can't even paint over the gently caress ups.
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May 1, 2017 15:51
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~Coxy posted:Hah, I measured my fridge several times in the shop and even then only barely managed to get it in. A friend of mine bought a new fridge a few months ago without bothering to measure. He had the dumb thing sitting in the middle of his kitchen until I helped him remove a little bit of trim under the above-the-fridge cabinets. Even still, the fridge rubs against the cabinet bottom.
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May 1, 2017 16:56
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SouthShoreSamurai posted:Literally every single piece of trim on every window and door (and the chair rails!) has wall paint all over them. It's almost... impressive, how poorly this was painted. And all the trim is natural wood stain, so you can't even paint over the gently caress ups. My wife and mother-in-law helped as I've never painted interiors before. But between boning up on it on my own and learning from them, the angrier I got at the previous owner and her sheer laziness for not masking in the other rooms. I think it took me 15 minutes tops to tape the ceilings when we painted the. I'll admit that I got off slightly lucky in that all of the trim was off but even if I had to do that, maybe it would have take another 30 minutes? Hell, even a full hour would be worth it to avoid those stupid looking "oopsie" brushstrokes of paint where they weren't intended to be.
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May 1, 2017 17:20
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https://twitter.com/i_zzzzzz/status/857844761490857984
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May 1, 2017 18:32
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No Man's Lease
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May 1, 2017 19:02
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The Sexual Shiite posted:House of leaves adaptation looking good. I poop at the end of a five and a half minute bathroom.
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May 1, 2017 22:46
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Cheesus posted:We re-worked a 12x12 bedroom into a nursery. One of the bigger tasks was removing the wallpaper from unprimed sheetrock and priming/painting. the walls and ceiling. I had to paint an office to get my deposit back. Came in with blue painter's tape so I could mask off the trim, and the owner said, "Oh, you shouldn't have. I already got tape." He handed me a roll of 3" wide clear plastic packing tape.
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May 1, 2017 22:56
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Deposit on an office?
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May 1, 2017 23:02
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Depends on jurisdiction, but unless you actually trashed the place, you probably didn’t have to repaint.
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May 1, 2017 23:04
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I mean, like, a single office?
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May 1, 2017 23:16
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:I mean, like, a single office? Yeah, it was a space above a print shop we used as a music studio. I dunno what the details on the lease were, but the only thing we had to do was repair the damage to the walls from putting up soundproofing and curtains.
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May 1, 2017 23:34
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I missed power stealing and breaker chat, but here's my contribution. My South African relatives love to share this story/urban legend about a guy who tried to steal power for his lights and TV from the traffic control signal next to his house. He screwed it up, and wired it up in such a way that his TV and lights were constantly switching on and off with the red light/green light cycling. I don't know enough about how those work to know whether or not it's true, but I expect it's probably an urban legend with some dog whistle(vuvuzela) racism added in I live in a neighborhood with external breakers, and there was an epidemic 2 or 3 years ago during the summer of rascal youths switching off the A/C at the breaker as a prank. I would probably strangle a teenager if I had lived in 100+ degree heat in my house for hours or days waiting for the HVAC guy to come troubleshoot it.
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May 1, 2017 23:35
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Those rascally youths could have actually killed someone. Elderly, newborn infants, people with serious diseases, etc. Like my brother in law is in very late stages of MS, confined to a bed, unable to move much, and his ability to regulate his body temperature is seriously shot. As a result there are temp monitors and backup power supplies and alarms and poo poo but not everyone has the right equipment etc. If he was stuck in a 100 degree room for a couple hours he might die.
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May 2, 2017 01:20
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canyoneer posted:dog whistle(vuvuzela) racism
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May 2, 2017 01:22
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P40TP1ughek
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May 2, 2017 02:38
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Is it strange that I am not at all bothered and actually strangely comforted by a B# note and the noise of vuvuzelas?
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May 2, 2017 02:40
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okay so here's one that doesn't involve me not knowing how my grandpa disposed of his razor blades when i moved in to my new place i had to get the water supply line from the municipal supply replaced with pex because it was hundred year old galvanized steel and like once a year someone on this street has it crack under their lawn and spends a lot of money. it reminded me of the godawful water issues at my mom's place. the development she lives in is at the bottom of an extremely long extremely steep hill. the water pressure from the city when it gets to them is loving outlandish. the city has a massive pressure reducing valve (the maintenance of which is the city's problem) installed outside the development, but what's coming into the development is basically the maximum allowable water pressure that the city can give them. so there's a non-city water main that goes in a loop around the development and everyone's supplies for their house comes from that. every unit has yet another pressure reducing valve (which is the strata's problem) before it goes into the house. at these pressures, they were told that the residents' valves should be inspected every 5 years and probably replaced every 20. so a few years later they start failing. usually gloriously. caved-in road, geysers of water. they bust up the road and dig down to work out what's wrong and it turns out there's not really anything under the pipes. like... construction waste. random drywall and insulation and probably cigarette butts and poo poo. so they're completely unsupported and there's a road on top of them. now the recommendation is 'inspect every year, replace every 5.' someone's failed this year during christmas and they had to shut off the water for two days and get everyone to turn on all their taps in the meantime so the huge crack in the pipe didn't get even bigger. every time this happens it costs about $30,000. fixing the problem would cost about $400,000.
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May 2, 2017 03:03
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Suspect Bucket posted:Is it strange that I am not at all bothered and actually strangely comforted by a B# note and the noise of vuvuzelas? You better believe it.
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May 2, 2017 03:02
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