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Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

Multipart OP, 'cause gently caress this house. If you love people slaving away on hosed up houses, or you have a hosed up house, and want to go "oh, mine's not that bad" this thread is for you.

I will do my best to be coherent in this OP, I'll probably break it up. I apologize for any tangents not related to my lovely house.

Also, I WILL be posting pictures of cats.

How I Got This loving House: Late 2017, my dad died, I was evacuated from the submarine I was stationed on, and flew home from Norway. I couldn't go back to the boat until it pulled in somewhere, so I was stuck hom for about 45 days. During this period I got bored, as several weeks had past since my dad's death, and my family was already moving on/had burned their emergency vacation.

So, despite living in CT, I started looking at houses since I only had a year left on my contract with the Navy. My best friend was in the first year of his contracting business, and in a bad spot, so we looked together, with a goal of joint ownership, but since I had credit and whatnot I drew the mortgage and put the 20% down.

We settled on "the house" the description from the ad:


The only true parts of this are that the home is over 100 years old, the property is 2.33 acres, and there are nice evergreens ringing the property. And a bunch of lovely alders, and a massive maple that has to be 150 years old and is awesome. Here's pictures of the house and property from the Redfin add:



Compare this picture to the Zillow listing from the time before it was listed and delisted:








That ridiculous maple, it's impossible to catch its scale with photos.







Prison "3/4" bathroom upstairs


"Tastefully updated" full bathroom



Check out the awesome garage:



So, something that should have made me back out immediately: this property sends water to 5 other properties from a 1 ½" main from the city, so I am legally a utility, maybe, all the pipes are eased to a neighbor who receives water. Here's the creepy shack scabbed onto my garage where the magic happens



Brief history of this property, it was actually a lumber camp, built in 1909, the property used to be over 100 acres, some of the flooring and siding was probably milled on site,none of it is salvageable, since it was installed green and is horribly warped. In the 90's it was foreclosed on, and some piece of poo poo and his dad bought it to slumlord out, the dad died and the son sold me this pile of garbage it's very difficult to tell what was hosed up by the slumlord, and what was hosed up by the white trash that lived here before then.

I'm going to end this here, next post will be my actual involvement in the property.

Elviscat fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Aug 18, 2020

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Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

So, the first two things we did started before I moved in permanently.

1st, we had to have over a literal acre of loving blackberry bushes removed.

2nd, we found a $250,000 cat, who came with a free house, her name is Taylor Swift, and she's gorgeous. She was starving when we found her, living in the crawlspace, she was supposed to be my cat, because I took the time to coax her out, pet, and socialize her, but by the time I moved back she had bonded so closely with my roomate there was no taking her.



She socialized pretty well tho





Anyways, for remodel poo poo, we started with the important bit.

The deck. The deck installed on the house was super dangerous, painted with one coat of interior house paint, it was rotting through, and improperly built, I wish I had more pics of this poo poo, my roomate chainsawed and ripped the while thing apart in literally 30 minutes, an hour if you count him loading poo poo in his truck, here's the best pictur I have.




We set out to hang the ledger for the new deck on the house, and discovered that the wall for the downstairs bathroom was turbofucked, not only was it entirely rotted out, thanks to the lovely vinyl siding, it was so un-square to the main house and kitchen addition that 6x layers of sheathing had been used to make the siding loom not-dumb.

The beam it was sitting on was just a pile of rot, and the studs were hanging off the roof, which for all you wall experts, is the opposite of how that's supposed to work.

So step one of the deck project was build a new 2x6 wall.







I don't have any pics of the new wall, but trust me, it's nice, square, on a treated beam, got a nice big window opening that's still sheathed over.

This also started a trend of hauling way too much poo poo from Lowes with my poor 2x4 Ranger, that's my only inheritance from my dad.



Framing the deck:



We're stretching a bit with 2x6 framing covering a 7 foot gap, but it's fine, we would have had to excavate to do larger framing.



Here's a fuckin' owl scoping out the partially completed deck.



Decking done.




Picket railings are a pain to install, and cable railings are expensive, welders and steel are cheap, so I designed, machined, welded, and had powder coated my own railing system.






This is taking awhile, and I have work tomorrow, so I'll catch up to modern day, and the real good poo poo tomorrow.

yaffle
Sep 15, 2002

Flapdoodle
The cat pays for all

Super Waffle
Sep 25, 2007

I'm a hermaphrodite and my parents (40K nerds) named me Slaanesh, THANKS MOM
This is awesome stuff man, love those rails!

MomJeans420
Mar 19, 2007



Elviscat posted:

The deck. The deck installed on the house was super dangerous, painted with one coat of interior house paint, it was rotting through, and improperly built, I wish I had more pics of this poo poo, my roomate chainsawed and ripped the while thing apart in literally 30 minutes, an hour if you count him loading poo poo in his truck, here's the best pictur I have.



Wow it looks like your roommate took your deck and installed it at my house, because that's my deck right now (complete with rotting beams). It looks so much better stained than painted.

Darchangel
Feb 12, 2009

Tell him about the blower!


In for the ride. Will be as... fascinating as kastein’s?

devicenull
May 30, 2007

Grimey Drawer

A+ hummingbird

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

Super Waffle posted:

This is awesome stuff man, love those rails!

Thanks, they're about my favorite thing I've ever made!

MomJeans420 posted:

Wow it looks like your roommate took your deck and installed it at my house, because that's my deck right now (complete with rotting beams). It looks so much better stained than painted.

I have no direct evidence he didn't :tinfoil: did you get yours patched up? I remember talking about it.

Darchangel posted:

In for the ride. Will be as... fascinating as kastein’s?

I hope not.

I do not have Kastein's patience or attention to detail.

My house might be even more hosed up though, since it literally wasn't intended to be a permanent structure.

He's moving close to me, supposedly, I plan on bribing him with beer for help.



devicenull posted:

A+ hummingbird

Pretty sure that's what I was taking a picture of, we have Anna's year round, and flocks of Rufus' like that girl in the spring and fall, it's awesome sitting out on the deck watching them be huge dicks to each other. The whole property is basically a bird sanctuary, some parts of the year there are literally hundreds hopping around and eating seeds and singing.

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

Couple random things before I get to the real poo poo.

The reason my house serves five properties with water, is that they all used to come off this giant 30' open casing well, so they just tapped into the existing poo poo at a convenient location. I use it to water my garden, currently, dropped a sump pump down there.



The plumbing is poo poo, the kitchen sink drains to the gorge, of course they couldn't even do lovely plumbing right, so they transitioned from 1 ½" ABS to 1 ¼" plastic water pipe right at grade, and used water elbows, so I have to blow that poo poo out with compressed air regular. This will be fixed, eventually.





The downstairs shower and washing machine are piped (with RV hose!) into the ground and buried, near the septic tank, when I noticed the suspiciously lush grass there, I freaked the gently caress out thinking it was septic failure. They actually passed the sewer stack with this poo poo. The drain field was failing before the previous owner took over ownership, and had about ½ the field replaced, so this may have been an old work-around to keep it limping along.

My crawlspace is horrible and has like 18" of room back there, so I've been lazy and putting off fixing it.



The whole downstairs bath needs to be overhauled, some fucker actually ran two new joists under the tub to keep it from falling through the floor, they could've just repaired it correctly.

I should get about 12 sqft back when I remodel it, since both walls are double walls, thanks to three generations of alcohol addition there's original siding in there.

Haven't gotten to the bathroom yet because sharing the prison bathroom (which is not private at all to my bedroom due to lovely pocket doors) between three people is a bad prospect.

Oh yeah, and the service needs to be re-done, it's a 200amp panel hacked onto the original #4 copper, that runs unsheathed from the old banjo meterbase, pretty embarrassing for a former electrician. Reason is, I was changing out the Zinsco subpanel in the kitchen addition, and found that THAT is also fed with three individual THHNs, so I slammed the new Square D in there, and put that on the back burner :effort:

The Zinsco sub was originally wired with aluminum, how it hasn't burned down escapes me. Aluminum dates the addition to the 70's, the addition is on a slab, and surprisingly competently built, proper sheathing, trusses etc.

Except they poured the slab after a couple cases of Old Milwaukee so it's unlevel as gently caress, like it varies by over 1"/1' in places.

Surprisingly all the branch circuits in the house are done correctly, color coded romex dates it to the early 2000's at the earliest. How an electrician could rewire this house but leave the service and subpanel escapes me.




Current project is remodeling the entire downstairs, goal of leveling the floor, and fixing the fact that the house is unheatable, also the layout is loving dumb. So we started with the living room downstairs, that my roomates used as their bedroom, stripped it down to the studs. It had a fire hazard "drop" ceiling, lots of bizarre framing, some studs just fell out of the walls, windows are terribly installed, with just a layer of vinyl and wasp nest between the wall interior and exterior, we sistered all the old joists to make them level, put down rated subfloor, glued and screwed etc. We got through demo and the floor then kinda stalled out. Both my roomate and I have horrible allergies to mice due to years of construction, and can't breathe when exposed.

Plus it's summer and nice out.

Anyway here's where we're at there.









That ceiling coming out made for a great bonfire.

So, we were digging and making koi ponds and poo poo that we shouldn't be bothering with, when my roomate's allergy started getting to him through the sealed walls, soonafter we realized we had a mouse problem. I set about investigating sealing the crawlspace properly and calling exterminators to solve this.

Then I uncover this.



That's the beam that is supposed to support the South wall of the house, instead it's flying off rotted joists on a cantilever from the next beam over (5 beams support the house)


So, this house was built post-and-beam, kinda, more like literal-tree-stumps-resting-on-the-ground-and-beam. Except apparently this one, which was laid on-grade. At some point, probably while adding the second story, someone realized that the house was turning into a funhouse, and they poured piers and set proper posts for the middle of the house, they also poured a (lovely) footer and built a cinderblock wall to support the North beam (you're not supposed to fuckin' do this, but whatever) their attempted "solution" for the obviously already rotted to poo poo South beam, was to kinda pour some concrete near and kinda under it in some places. This just accelerated the rot, and now the beam is just gone

So I had the land in front of it excavated to 1' below the beam, and I've been manually breaking up the stupid useless loving footer with a jackhammer.

Progress as of yesterday:





Progress as of today



They poured it quite thick, of course there's no loving steel in it, oh except the ground-rod and the armored ground cable going to it, which is holding concrete chunks together like dingleberries out a cat's butt after it poops up yarn.



Bonus points: where they weren't pouring concrete directly up to a wood beam they blocked the concrete from going under with old tiles.

These tiles have the characteristic fibers on the broken sides that indicate they're made of Asbestos.

Yay!


Current plan is to break the rest of that concrete, dig down and pour a proper footer and stem wall, cut the ends off all the rotten joists, then we'll probably lay a 6×8 beam directly on a piece of treated lumber on the stem wall, this will give at least 1' clearance from grade.

We found an 18 year old kid, who's hopes of employment were shot by COVID, so I'll be paying him to do most of the digging, my back is shot from hefting that jackhammer around all day.

Here is a picture of my cat staring down at a stray we named Juliet, who has since been adopted by a loving couple.

Darchangel
Feb 12, 2009

Tell him about the blower!


Elviscat posted:

Thanks, they're about my favorite thing I've ever made!


I have no direct evidence he didn't :tinfoil: did you get yours patched up? I remember talking about it.


I hope not.

I do not have Kastein's patience or attention to detail.

I like those railings, though. I don't know if I'll ever have the opportunity to use something like that, but is the hardware to secure the cables common/inexpensive?

quote:

My house might be even more hosed up though, since it literally wasn't intended to be a permanent structure.

He's moving close to me, supposedly, I plan on bribing him with beer for help.

Be careful with that - he may talk you into a lot more than you bargained for, given his experience. :D

edit: I do like the garden you've got growing on the shingles, there... :P

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

Darchangel posted:

I like those railings, though. I don't know if I'll ever have the opportunity to use something like that, but is the hardware to secure the cables common/inexpensive?


Be careful with that - he may talk you into a lot more than you bargained for, given his experience. :D

edit: I do like the garden you've got growing on the shingles, there... :P

The cable railing stuff isn't bad, we were out about $500 in cable, ferrules and tools, $500 in steel, $200 in powdercoating, and $350 in welder. You can do it with wood posts too, it's pretty competitive with pickets, and less of a p.i.t.a.


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P5KDZX4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_p7BpFb0G0ZHYC

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0816CC7TF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Z7BpFbWNT7SC1

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V7BCK6H/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_d9BpFb3M1KZEG

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V6H6WHF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_E.BpFbMKQRQA2

By garden you mean the nice normal PNW moss coating? Helps seal the shingles.

Now THIS



Might be a problem.




It was also impossible to see, because where I stood to take that picture was covered in an acre of blackberries.

E: Oh, deer!

Elviscat fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Aug 20, 2020

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

I need to get working on this footer ASAP, got the last bit of jackhammering done Friday, we had some rain and the sand-clay mixture just turns slippery as poo poo instantly, I can't wait for the rainy season.

I also need to stop working 6 days a week to make that happen.

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

Started digging the foundation out today.



Saw something sticking out, was like, is that a giant steel pipe?





Nope, just a coffee can full of concrete that was one of the house's original "footings"!

Darchangel
Feb 12, 2009

Tell him about the blower!


Elviscat posted:

The cable railing stuff isn't bad, we were out about $500 in cable, ferrules and tools, $500 in steel, $200 in powdercoating, and $350 in welder. You can do it with wood posts too, it's pretty competitive with pickets, and less of a p.i.t.a.


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P5KDZX4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_p7BpFb0G0ZHYC

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0816CC7TF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Z7BpFbWNT7SC1

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V7BCK6H/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_d9BpFb3M1KZEG

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V6H6WHF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_E.BpFbMKQRQA2

Thanks! Might be building a deck in the (not near) future.

quote:

By garden you mean the nice normal PNW moss coating? Helps seal the shingles.

Now THIS



Might be a problem.

I'm having trouble seeing moss on a roof as "normal", but, yeah. Then again, I'm from where 104 degF is a normal summer occurrence.
I hear you about the clay - I've got that like 1" below the topsoil. It's either rock-hard when dry, or stickier than a bad reputation when wet. I hate it.

LOL: "footing".

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

Darchangel posted:

I hear you about the clay - I've got that like 1" below the topsoil. It's either rock-hard when dry, or stickier than a bad reputation when wet. I hate it.

LOL: "footing".

At least we have some, most of the soil around here is "glacial till" which sucks for building on, it's sandy and porous, and you get a lot of weird settling.

Footing progress continues, it turns out that paying a teenager to dig, is much easier than digging yourself, I think we'll be ready to form and pour early next week.

I went to Harbor Freight yesterday, specifically to pick up jacks, to jack the house up with, and they are completely out of bottle jacks, so I had to order off of Amazon.

Darchangel
Feb 12, 2009

Tell him about the blower!


Elviscat posted:

At least we have some, most of the soil around here is "glacial till" which sucks for building on, it's sandy and porous, and you get a lot of weird settling.

Footing progress continues, it turns out that paying a teenager to dig, is much easier than digging yourself, I think we'll be ready to form and pour early next week.

I went to Harbor Freight yesterday, specifically to pick up jacks, to jack the house up with, and they are completely out of bottle jacks, so I had to order off of Amazon.

My Harbor Freight was completely out of chop saws, except the little 10” one that can’t cut larger than 1” - 1-1/2” stock, and the wee 3” or whatever it is. Weird random shortages.

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

Well, I've been too busy to do anything big on the house, until today, when we TRIED to start jacking it up, under the ambient light of a sickening blood red sun



It was actually going ok, until the old, rotten joists started exploding.

So now I'm stuck re framing the whole loving floor, and inserting a proper silplate under the 2x4s in that wall.

It's gonna be weird as hell when it's done, basic process:

-Sister 2x6s to the old ones, back to the next beam, with structural screws, cut out old joists and floor and add sill-plate to existing wall

-Jack new floor to approximately level with old beam

-pour footer and sill wall, the new joists will rest on top of 2 2x6s on top of the hip wall, no need for a beam, that'll let us pit in a proper rim-joist too

-(after the north half of the house is finished) demo the south side (side pictured) and sister 2x8s to the new floor we just made, to level it and bring it to the height of the re-done floor on the North half.

It's an iterative process, ok?

Here's some picture of the old beam remnants we knocked out once we jacked the joists off of it






-

Which is a project for next weekend.

On happier notes:

I grew an awesome chili pepper


My GF has a new kitten, it is cute, her other cat tolerates it.

Darchangel
Feb 12, 2009

Tell him about the blower!


Elviscat posted:

Well, I've been too busy to do anything big on the house, until today, when we TRIED to start jacking it up, under the ambient light of a sickening blood red sun



It was actually going ok, until the old, rotten joists started exploding.

So now I'm stuck re framing the whole loving floor, and inserting a proper silplate under the 2x4s in that wall.

It's gonna be weird as hell when it's done, basic process:

-Sister 2x6s to the old ones, back to the next beam, with structural screws, cut out old joists and floor and add sill-plate to existing wall

-Jack new floor to approximately level with old beam

-pour footer and sill wall, the new joists will rest on top of 2 2x6s on top of the hip wall, no need for a beam, that'll let us pit in a proper rim-joist too

-(after the north half of the house is finished) demo the south side (side pictured) and sister 2x8s to the new floor we just made, to level it and bring it to the height of the re-done floor on the North half.

It's an iterative process, ok?

Here's some picture of the old beam remnants we knocked out once we jacked the joists off of it






-

Which is a project for next weekend.

Yeah, it sounds convoluted, but without demolishing the house, that's what you gotta do. That sucks.

edit: That first pic is so surreal it hurts my eyes. I want to white balance it so badly.

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

Yeah, it's super creepy out here, you can stare straight at the sun, it's gross, I can't stop coughing and sneezing.

Darchangel
Feb 12, 2009

Tell him about the blower!


Mask up and don't die, my dude. There are going to be lingering respiratory issues for years out there...

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

Short day at work, so what does that mean? Back-breaking labor at home!

Removed the very last bit of the old footer, the 70lb Bauer was... a Bauer so it was mostly ineffectual, even against unreinforced concrete, so most of it was broken up with a 12lb sledge. Feeling a little swole right now.

Found more steel in the concrete, my water line!


How old is that water line? Well about as old as this 3' diameter 70' tall fir tree, whose root ball it runs directly through the center of I assume! (I had it magnetic resonance located awhile ago)



I'll probably stub 1" PEX through the new footer for later water line replacement.

While I was at it, I cut out a section of walkway that we ran a Mahindra tractor over and cracked, so we can just dump a wheelbarrow of concrete in to fix it while pouring the footer. We did these walkways on impulse, because this property turns into a mud pit in the winter, not only do we get all the rain water, water sheets down the hill, and blasts out of our lawn in artisan springs from hydraulic pressure, upgraded drainage has largely solved this, but we wanted to be able to walk between the bizarre giant concrete patio, deck, driveway, and front door without tracking mud in the house, so we poured this network of 1 ½" thick steel mesh reinforced walkways in a marathon 2 day session in the dead of winter.

Picked up a 7" angle grinder, and a cheap $20 Amazon diamond wheel for cutting on this and the footer, works an absolute treat! While being very dangerous. I want to cut more concrete now.

Please ignore the morning glories we need to deal with, they grow so fast.









I am displeased with my Craftsman wheelbarrow, I know carting huge chunks of concrete is not in its job description, but the whole narrow is smashed, warped and deformed, despite being made out of AMERICAN SUBMARINE STEEL that GM told me was puncture-proof in their commercials.



All this was done on a "sunny" day, where it looked like dusk all day because the AQI is still 180.



That's all until this weekend.

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

Oh cool, thunderstorms.





gently caress

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004


Out here, everything hurts.




At least it's not sewage?

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
I'm sorry, I laughed at that last picture. How the gently caress do you even deal with something like that? Put a sump pump in it and tarp from outside the work area to the eaves until you're done? I've been so lucky to live on the side of a steep hill, it's basically impossible for my place to flood barring a major realignment of planetary gravity... so I guess I better finish before December's monthly apocalypse rolls through?

I'm totally down for stopping by to help once in a while after we get out there... it looks like no matter when that ends up being, there will be plenty left to help on. Is there still time for me to recommend bulldozing it and starting over? Because I feel like it would be remiss of me to not suggest that. You're basically doing the same "change the house's underpants without taking the pants or shoes off" hell march I have, but with more people trying to live there.

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

I love that analogy, "trying to change the house's underpants without changing the clothes" is exactly what we're trying to do, even my roomates got a laugh out of that.

How do you deal with the water infiltration? Pump it out.





All my studs are rotten, I was gonna be fancy with my cutting, then I saw this poo poo, so gently caress it, I'll send it.



The blade locking mechanism on my DeWalt reciprocating saw broke so I had to switch to my roomate's Rogid, which is a piece of poo poo and the front oillite bushing is hosed, and gets insanely hot, and let all the grease out. Oh well.

Size 14 boots collect a lot of mud from the grunge pit.



There are mice nests on every stud bay, now I can't fuckin breathe. AQI is good today though, we're back below EPA limits, and you can see blue sky between the rain clouds.



Also, I have a horrible rash, the blow-in fiberglass seems to propel the mouse allergens into my skin. And the sawzall aerosolizes all that poo poo, even after I clean it out with gloves.



How did they level the floor to make this house saleable?





Like that, awesome, huh?

Final product, sill plate for the wall installed, tomorrow we'll get all the new 2x6's for the floor installed so we can get back to jacking.





Kastein: I'll gladly share this and labor with you, I'm sure I'll need help here, especially if my roomates leave for Idaho, and I'm sure you'll need help at your new place. I have a toolbelt and tools, just don't trust me to cut any wood to better than 1/8" tolerence. Metal I'm good with.

E:
You have no idea how many times we've seriously tried to figure out bulldozing it and starting over, ideas for campers parked and whatnot, hell the thread title's an omage to the many jokes we've made about committing insurance fraud.


I also have a Mr. Cool split system on order, I need to draw out the plan with that and run it by the HVAC thread, but I'm excited to get it in.

Elviscat fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Sep 20, 2020

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

Liquid Communism posted:

At least it's not sewage?

That comes out the other side of the house (grey water, technically)

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
I can't remember if you've got AC tools but I have all that.
What a loving disaster. Man, at least I didn't have to dig all the way down to footings, just recap the lovely foundation I already had. Those walls look pretty much like my wreck, too.

Do you lose the ability to breathe from getting it on your skin or just inhaling it? I've found that wearing a half-face mask with n95 or p100 filters helps with my allergies to old house garbage immensely. Not that that really helps right now with that stuff backordered to infinity, but I had a stash of spare filters and poo poo when the pandemic began, maybe you have something sitting around and haven't considered using it as allergy relief? It's an extreme measure but... Totally worth it to have functioning sinuses and the ability to breathe through my nose the 2-4 days after a project.

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

I don't have AC tools, (even though I've used, and am EPA qualified to use them).I just ordered precharged linesets because I'm lazy, I'll deal with serviceability when the gaskets on those dessicate and start puking R410a.

I have a full 3M P100+organic vapor respirator, I wasn't wearing it because I was outside, I'm asthmatic and it turns out 5 years of exposure in crawlspaces and attics plus 10 years without it has given me a terrible allergy, and even a slight exposure triggers respiratory issues.

The rash/hives was thanks to blow-in fiberglass delivering the mouse particles straight to my bloodstream.

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

Jacking begins again, we sistered all the joists, jacking went ok, lots of pressure on the 20 ton bottles, I think we're going to do another round with the big jacks, we got the house pretty level, but once we removed the jacks it settled back about 1" onto the, uh cribing in places.

Before jacking:


We exerted a lot of pressure.




Our cribbing method probably isn't the best, but 2x4s are a million dollars a piece, and we spent 8 hours loving around with the other stuff, soooooooo



Don't judge, it's an authentic period-correct construction method.

Here's a picture of my GF's kitties reaction to that method.

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

Oh yeah, we had to rip the new joists down, because the old joists were crushed by about 1/2" at the beam from having most af a house cantilevered 9 loving feet off of them, and we burned the motor on my roomates poor Rigid table saw up, tripped a 20 amp breaker that feeds nothing but 1 outdoor GFI we were powering the saw from, thought that was odd, it tripped again, the motor emitted much smoke and refused to do anything but buzz and emit more smoke after that.

I looked up how much a replacement motor is, and lol, it costs as much as a new Rigid table saw, with stand

Pulled out my old (C)Ryobi table saw, and it ate that 2x material like nothing, I don't think I've used it in 6 years, it's about 8 years old, pretty good for a cheapass saw.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
You were supposed to burn the house, not the saw!

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

We should have bypassed the breaker, flipped the switch, and thrown it under the house, tell the insurance adjuster that we left for lunch.

I burned up his Rigid sawzall yesterday, well, it still works, it just smokes when running and the reciprocating shaft gets hot enough to cause serious burns, like as hot as a blade you've been using for 30 minutes straight to cut wood, I was gonna add grease, but I saw the front bushing had about 3/8" radial play in it, and figured the grease wouldn't last long anyways.

It was shooting flaming grease balls from the front when I used it anyway ago.

I was using that POS because the blade capture mechanism on my dad's old DeWalt broke (fixed now, soaked it in PB blaster overnight and excersized the mechanism) and I can't find my giant beast mode 15A Bosch reciprocating saw.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
It really sounds like you need a reseller account from ereplacementparts.com, honestly.

Darchangel
Feb 12, 2009

Tell him about the blower!


Egads. To all of that.

I think I missed it back there somewhere, but once you have it level, what are you going to do? Concrete perimeter foundation?

MomJeans420
Mar 19, 2007



I'm not sure being able to ride a dirt bike in your back yard makes up for all of this, but it's close

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

kastein posted:

It really sounds like you need a reseller account from ereplacementparts.com, honestly.

Does a reseller account get the prices down to a sane level? That's where I found the more-expensive-than-a-new-one motor.

Darchangel posted:

Egads. To all of that.

I think I missed it back there somewhere, but once you have it level, what are you going to do? Concrete perimeter foundation?

Yeah, a footing and a hip wall is in order.

MomJeans420 posted:

I'm not sure being able to ride a dirt bike in your back yard makes up for all of this, but it's close

It helps! Especially with the troubleshooting the old pieces of poo poo my roomates buy, I would've passed on this pile of garbage without the amazing lot.

What's really scary is the guy I bought it from was renting it out, and when I tried to hardball him down a few thousand more when we realized (what we thought was) the extent of how hosed it was, he said he'd just go back to renting it out.

He likely would've manslaughtered some tenants when the joists holding this wall up in midair gave way, and dropped the wall and second floor.

We don't know exactly how much he knew, but we can date the hosed up floor "fixes" and the plumbing to him, at least.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
I don't even know if they do reseller accounts. I was mostly joking :v:

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

:argh:

New roof going on next week, and my heat pump arrives.

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

Haven't updated in awhile.

TL;DR, my roomates are Nazis and moving away someplace where hate speech is tolerated.

It's been emotional, and leaves me kinda pissing in the wind, since I don't know poo poo about construction, besides electrical work, and poo poo rolling downhill.

Oh well, I can probably learn.

Oh yeah, and tile, I can do a mean mediocre tile job.

Anyways, couple weekends ago I got the weekend to myself, due to something of an emotional hangover, I mostly cut up Alder logs into lovely planks for "rustic" furniture with my ultra-dangerous free chainsaw (handle is broken, so it pulls the throttle continuously).




Got my Heat Pump, 3 ton Mr. Cool with 10kW emergency heat, 18SEER, no-vac lineset because I'm fuckin lazy (even though I'm certified to handle refrigerant, and routinely evacuate and nitrogen purge 200+ ton AC units at work) pretty excited about it. I'll be asking q's in the HVAC thread because I don't know what I'm doing LMFAO.



The cleanup crew I hire to pick up all the buggy fruit I get from my orchard was late this year, which is annoying, they finally showed up, and have been hard at work since though. Worth every penny I pay them.



This last weekend I went on a little vacation with my GF for her birthday, the roofers came by while I was gone, put on a new roof in 30yr architectural shingles. Kastein made fun of me for not doing this myself, but they were done in a day, they did a great job, and it was pretty cheap, beats the heck out of scrambling around a 12/12 pitch roof for three weeks myself. I plan on contracting out drywall to the same company, everything else I'll do myself, probably*




Today I knocked off work early and got to cuttin' and weldin' some supports for my new heatpump's condenser, since the best place to put it is right over the septic drain field, I figure I'd play it safe and wall mount it.

Welding .125" thick 2" square tube, 3/32 7018 rod, about 95 amps.

Off to a rocky start:


Eh, a little better, I kinda wanted appearance grade welds. Too bad I suck at welding:



Oh well grinder and paint, right? That minor pitting is no big deal, especially since these welds won't really have any load on them.


(Ear-splitting screaming):


I don't know how I hosed up that bad, the one closer to the camera is correct.

Guess I'm cutting and butt welding the other one. That is a good signal to stop for the day.



Elviscat fucked around with this message at 02:59 on May 17, 2021

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Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

Thanks for reading my horrible mega posts, I offer a Rosie as penance.

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