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Finally picked out the tile we wanted this weekend and had the place over to give us an estimate. My wife way underestimated how much it would cost (even with me doing some of the demo, moving poo poo, etc that nickel and dimes you to death), looks like we're not putting in more hardwood and tile for a couple more months, gotta get that sweet 2% cash discount.
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Jul 19, 2016 19:53
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 20:33 |
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canyoneer posted:Depending on the house and tile selected, DIY tile install can range from "somewhat tricky" to "real easy". I did a ton in my house, but I did it over the course of many weekends. We're actually doing three different areas. Hallway bathroom gets some nice dark grey tile to kick off a bit of a remodel in there. Our garage entryway (where the washer/dryer is) which then leads into the kitchen is all this old, nasty linoleum that has tiny grooves in it, so no matter how hard you scrub that poo poo just never looks clean. Gonna take the portion from the garage entry door up to the pantry and put in a different lighter colored tile, then hardwood the rest of the way that matches the hardwood I installed in the office (officially dining room) a couple of years ago. A few years ago I would have balked at the labor costs and learned how to do it myself but at this point in my life I'm fine with paying someone to get it done right, especially since we'll likely only be in this house another 3-4 years.
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Jul 20, 2016 13:36
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Bozart posted:So we're about 20 years into a water heater that should last 10-15. Anyone have a recommendation for where to go and what kind to get? (Electric) Cheapest, most efficient you can get with the best warranty.
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Jul 29, 2016 17:38
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Piss on it. Eventually the corrosion will make the hive accessible from outside.
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Aug 1, 2016 17:51
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We budgeted for hardwood in the kitchen, saved, ordered it for install...then discovered we're gonna need a much bigger house sooner than we had planned. No more spending money on this house, we'll gonna need to move in three years. ...a house with what space we need at the entrance to our neighborhood went up for sale this week.
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Oct 24, 2016 17:43
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Hardwood flooring going in the kitchen! e: gotta get that sweet 6% cash discount. 
devmd01 fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Nov 4, 2016 |
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Nov 4, 2016 18:27
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Think through requirements carefully and pull extra cable. Have a receiver? Run an optical audio cable from your tv to your receiver, then you can get 5.1 via OTA.
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Nov 4, 2016 18:30
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Took me all day Saturday and Sunday, but I got all of the 1/4rd trim cut out, angled, trimmed, etc. Not hard to do but tedious and obnoxious to do it right. Got it all stained last night so hopefully I can spend some quality time with the nailgun after voting this evening. Hooray sweat equity!
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Nov 8, 2016 13:51
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Woo, got the trim stained and installed. Just need to touch up the nail holes and I'm done!
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Nov 9, 2016 18:01
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Not really. I just installed a new faucet so that's covered, and I bought new washer hoses before we reinstalled it. We also have a couple full boxes of replacement pieces. Should be enough to do the washer dryer area if something goes wrong there.
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Nov 9, 2016 18:36
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Wood never goes out of style. 
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Nov 9, 2016 19:26
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I wouldn't worry about it, it will fail and drain itself soon enough! At least ours was in the garage and still covered under warranty, just had to pay the $200 installed fee.
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Nov 18, 2016 18:45
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My raking has been far less this year after the goddamned Bradford pear in the back yard split last year and I took a chainsaw to it with prejudice.
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Nov 22, 2016 17:26
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If you just have an attic access hatch instead of a drop down ladder, put in a cheap harbor freight winch right above it, makes getting the bigger stuff swapped out when seasons change a hell of a lot easier. A $99 winch and about $20 worth of metal/bolts from the hardware store has saved me a lot of effort.
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Nov 25, 2016 20:17
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We put in engineered in the dining/office and kitchen. We were okay with the durability/price, because we only plan to be in this house 3 more years. There are two full boxes of spare pieces from the same batches for repairs of needed.
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Dec 2, 2016 19:08
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OSU_Matthew posted:Patch panel + dedicated 5e/6 runs to stuff like POE wireless access points, cameras, or entertainment centers is 100% the way to go. I uh, my have gone overboard with that sentiment when we bought our house.  Next house I won't go quite so overboard, but when the cable/keystone jacks/faceplates were free...
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Dec 17, 2016 01:30
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$6000 to replacement windows! Wooo!
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Feb 16, 2017 20:05
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You would be surprised what you can get rid of in the Craigslist free section. A few years ago when we put in new carpet, I put the old carpet on CL free with pictures of the condition, stains, you pick up, etc, and had 20+ emails on a couple of hours. Saved me the disposal fees from the installers. Might be worth a shot if someone wants filler for erosion control or whatever.
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Apr 10, 2017 14:33
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Yeah, all the Ryobi cordless stuff I have isn't the best quality, but with as little as I use it I don't expect it to go out on me for a while. Just got hit with a $1700 estimate for a new water softener, ours is apparently hosed up and killing our water pressure. Time for a second quote too!
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Apr 21, 2017 17:12
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baquerd posted:Water softeners are super easy to install (if you're replacing an existing unit). Yep, I'm gonna take a look at the setup when I get home tonight and see what it will take, I already have the three-valve bypass from the existing kinetico. I'm hoping I can just get some short pre-terminated pex lines of the appropriate size to hook up.
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Apr 21, 2017 19:20
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Our neighborhood has consistent mailbox posts, so when one needs to be replaced due to getting knocked over, rotted out, etc, we just call the vendor and they come out and install it.
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Apr 23, 2017 14:17
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I've switched to electric for string trimmer/blower/edger and it suits my needs just fine. I'm already all-in on Ryobi 18v OnePlus lithium for all my other cordless tools, so I already had 4 smaller batteries plus I got 4AH batteries with the string trimmer and blower. You can pry my Honda Toro Super Recycler from my cold dead hands though, it's on its fourth season and has been absolutely flawless to start.
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Jul 13, 2017 18:14
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Ashcans posted:Out of curiosity, do people with corded mowers ever run over the cord? I've definitely severed a couple of extension cords with a hedge trimmer in my lifetime, which is why the first cordless yard tool I bought was a hedge trimmer when we bought our house.
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Jul 14, 2017 00:19
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I really wanna know how the gently caress ants are on the counter by the stove (which is practically in the middle of the house) without any clear trails leading outside. Time to do the spring spraying outside and in the crawl space! Already hosed down the kitchen perimeter and they’re still showing up, wtf. I’ve had good success with the Ortho home defense spray, any others out there worth trying?
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Apr 11, 2018 15:03
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This is why I just pay someone, I don’t have time to figure that poo poo out!
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Apr 13, 2018 14:45
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What is everyone’s opinion on the earliest time it is acceptable to start mowing on a weekend and not be an rear end in a top hat to your neighbors? 830?
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May 12, 2018 12:52
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There’s no way I’m paying town water rates to keep my lawn green, it can deal. God help us we are moving forward with our home addition/master bath/closet remodel idea, we sent off the initial design retainer and we’ll sit down with him next week to fully go over our ideas/priorities. The wife and I spent some time last week thinking through all the details and came to a general agreement on vision, and some specific notes on each area and what we wanted to do. If we pull this off right, we’ll gain a bonus room second level that will count as a bedroom (closet and half bath), then on the main level a larger pantry and a giant laundry/utilities/gun safe/storage/fridge/freezer space. Plus extra space in the garage from moving utilities/deep freezer out. And a brand new master bath and walk-in. Our HVAC is original to the house and since we’d need to do a redesign anyways for the 2nd level addition, might as well replace it with a high efficiency unit in the new space and get some garage space back. We love our house, location, neighborhood, and town. I have a 20 minute commute and she has a 10 minute one, we have it pretty good on that front. We just need a little bit more space for our family and we can live here for a long time. devmd01 fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jul 18, 2018 |
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Jul 18, 2018 18:33
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I was bored at work today and spent some time scribbling ideas on the asbuilts for our addition before we start discussion details with the designer. Existing kitchen footprint stays, anything left of that is basically getting gutted. Master bedroom footprint stays the same. Since our HVAC is original to the house we might as well consider a full replacement of that too while we're at it! We've got a long list of things we want to accomplish with this addition, but the key one is the 2nd floor bonus room. Darker lines are 2nd level/stairs. I'm sure the designer/contractor we're going with will have their own ideas, but I wanted to have some thoughts before we gave him carte blanche. There are definitely some detail items we will be doing as part of this, but what things have you found useful like outlet locations, how to set up closets, bathrooms, etc. The sky's the limit, we are in the ideas phase right now. We can easily prioritize what's a "now" vs. a "later," but if the later requires something now like running electrical we might as well consider that as we create the requirements. Already on the list:
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Jul 20, 2018 21:05
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God help us, we just had the initial ideas/design meeting with our architect for a home addition. It’ll probably be a couple of years before we actually kick off construction, if SA is still around I’ll definitely do a thread. Adding an entire new master bath/closet to the footprint and adding a room + bathroom up top over the master/kitchen area for a play room/family room/teenager hangout when the kids are older. We’ll take the existing master closet/bath space and use it for the stairs, a bigger pantry, and a large utility/laundry/storage room that we can also put stuff like the deep freeze, mop sink and safe to get more room in the garage. 
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Aug 4, 2018 00:17
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Got the initial first floor concept back to start thinking through ideas. Adding on the new master bath/closet, and turning the existing bath/closet into laundry/storage. We definitely have enough room in the yard for the addition though we’ll need to move the playground about 20 feet. The bonus room upstairs is yet to come. 
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Aug 24, 2018 14:50
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Finally got some time to organize the new garage a little bit. I still have a long way to go but it was satisfying to set up this corner at least.
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Jan 12, 2019 23:39
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I ran 20+ network drops to a patch panel in the garage last house, as well as a massive antenna in the attic and coax everywhere it made sense off an amp. Hell, I listed that as a selling feature. The new house I’m being more judicious; eventually I’ll run fiber from the basement to the 2nd floor so I can run Ethernet to an idf up there. It also looks like we’re gonna need to move up the timetable on replacing the windows, they’re original to the house so ~23 years old. They are drafty as hell especially with the heavy wind the past few days. We knew they weren’t great when we bought the place but that would save us a ton on heating costs. 
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Jan 31, 2019 03:22
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Got our first window quote, $28k for the whole house. Time to save up and do the first floor soon at least!
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Feb 14, 2019 16:52
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Jealous Cow posted:I edge every week drat right, have pride in your work.
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Apr 17, 2019 13:55
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Having an outlet in the coat closet for a cordless hand vac is pretty great and a solid add. You can also make annoying things like wireless printers disappear, because who wants to always look at a hunk of plastic that gets used maybe once a month?
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Apr 30, 2019 16:53
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Nothing like a little insect genocide on a lovely Friday evening!
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Jun 15, 2019 00:03
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QuarkJets posted:Hey so those look like stake traps, but it also looks like you're spraying the ants with some other insecticide; you'll get a lot better results if you just use the stake traps without additional spraying, the idea is that the borax concentration in the traps is small enough for the ants to not die right away, so they'll bring the poison back to their nest and kill a lot more than just the handful of ants that you see Yep, for sure. Those stakes were out there for a good week, yet for some reason when I got home that night there was this massive bunch of ants just hanging about. Needed to spray down that area anyways, a couple of them have been making their way up to the room above the garage.
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Jun 16, 2019 18:42
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A letter isn’t a terrible idea, that helped us get an immediate acceptance on the house we bought last year when another offer was already on the table. Then again we moved just down the street in the same neighborhood and dropped enough hints as to who we were, so they were happy to sell it to us because they knew we would take care of it.
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Jun 24, 2019 15:51
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Chimp_On_Stilts posted:Have any of you had your homes wired with ethernet? What kind of person did the work? Who should I be calling? Search for low voltage contractors or home AV/automation companies as mentioned. Any interest in DIY at all? What sort of layout/configuration is your house, ranch, multistory, etc? Depending on the structure it could be dead simple or a huge pain in the rear end. You don’t need a ton of specialty tools beyond some fiberglass rods which you can pick up in the electrical section of any home improvement store. My first house was a single story ranch with a huge attic space so everything was incredibly easy to run. New house is two story with a basement but thankfully the basement is half unfinished, half drop tile so getting the first floor wired has been easy. I keep the modem/router in the basement and have my access point in a closet on the first floor, which is almost exact center of the house. Not in a hurry to wire up the second floor until I invest in a camera system as there isn’t any good path up to it. My options are either punch out of the basement and run conduit up the outside or remove a 50A sub panel on the exterior intended for a hot tub. The conduit path for that goes inside the garage and would make it possible to run a replacement conduit up into the attic space. devmd01 fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Jul 10, 2019 |
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Jul 10, 2019 19:27
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 20:33 |
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Or at a bare minimum leave pull strings everywhere so you can easily add more. But yes, always run n+1.
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Jul 11, 2019 19:22
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