Home Improvement

So I mentioned before that we're doing an addition. This guy comes out from Company X. He's the project manager, and he's laid back as fuck, but he's straight up with us. Which I really appreciate. Well we got all our money together and called them back to set up a for real estimate. They send the sales guy this time. He's basically busted our budget by more than 20k, just based on visual inspection. And is offering some "discount" to get it back to right on our budget, but only if we sign by today. Giving us no time to shop for other builders or even see preliminary drawings/plans.

Maybe I'm wrong and this is just SOP, but it seems to me like this guy thought he could push my wife into signing some shit if he created urgency. I'm pretty sure that if I had been the one handling communications with the company he wouldn't have pulled that. Really soured me on the company. So I'm handling the communications from here on out, have about 6 more companies scheduled to come out.

Our budget is about 120k. We're looking for a pretty no frills addition, we can worry about improvements later. We have a typical 3 level home for Northern VA, exposed basement plus 2 levels. Our tenative plan was too put the in-law suite on the main level and have it be very basic: room, bath, closet. The top floor right now has 3 bedrooms including the master bedroom. The master bedroom is on the end of the house, taking up the whole width of the house along with the bathroom. Our plan was to make the entire space above the in-law suite the new master bedroom, cutting the existing master in half to add a new bedroom for the kids and a hallway, leaving the new master as kind of an L shape when you include the existing bathroom. If we can, we'd also like to redo the existing bath, not to anything super fancy just to get a nicer shower and a double vanity in there.

I know that's a tall order for our budget, but we've had multiple companies say it's possible for less, given that we're focused on necessities over luxury. We will see. The next 2 weeks will really determine the project's scope as we should have multiple actual estimates in hand before Thanksgiving.

Hahahahhahaa tell that retard to go back to car sales.

Does VA not have a right of rescission law anyway for those size sales contracts?

It seems a pretty in-depth project and a lot of money. Are you sure it's worth it over upgrading the house?

Yeah 3 days. It's just weird to me that a guy thought he could bulldog us with that kind of money on the line.

Our main driver for doing the upgrade is to get the in-law suite, since my dad actually moved in with us and of course he's not used to small kids and the total lack of privacy etc that comes with that. It's a big project, but if we get it pulled off we will be golden for the forseeable future. In-law suite, each kid has their own room, nice master bedroom and our current master bath is bullshit.

Lanx said:

I've bought a schlage connect for the front door. It's not an upgrade, in terms of security, it's going to replace an existing schlage, just that now it'll have kepad and wifi ability, for the convenience factor.

I still have a high-end medeco lock on the door, so I'm not worried. Also I finally found a good schlage keyway lock for my storm door, so that one key can open, storm, lever and deadbolt.

Again convenience factor, I don't expect any of these locks to stop lock pickers, an experienced thief can pick a schlage, they'll give up on the medeco, tho.

Even still, they'll skip my house since it's impossible for forced entry, and my neighbors have pathetic locks.

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You seem to be obsessed about your house being broken into. I thought you lived in Orange County? And, do you really think that thieves are going to creep around your house, see the lock brand and analyze it compared to your neighbors? Thieves are 99% retards and aren't going to be picking locks. If the window or door is UNLOCKED, they go in. Otherwise, they move on. It's insanely unlikely they'll smash glass too, because it makes too much noise. You don't live in a Robert Ludlum books, brah. No black-suited ninja lock picks in the OC.

It's more efficient to maintain a temperature via one or the other (heat or AC), but running both will always use more energy. Unfortunately here in NC it seems like there are stretches of time where you kinda have to do both if you want to be comfortable. I set my spread a bit higher - I have heat set to 69 and AC set to 75. Right now neither seems to kick on too much which has been nice on my power bill.

Adebisi said:

I'd like to work in my garage in the winter. Any recommendations for forced air heaters? Have a double car garage.

Will I die from carbon monoxide?

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Do you have natural gas run to your house? If so, get one of these:

https://www.ruralking.com/heater-ut...MIwtCN1Kmh1wIVDW5-Ch1jsg38EAQYBCABEgLPL_D_BwE

I have something similar in each of my pole barns, and they get the place from freezing to comfortable in short order, and use little energy to maintain the temperature for as long as you're in the space.

The units are pretty reasonable, and installation should be under $500 if gas lines are already present.

Lanx said:

Looks like I'll be buying an air compressor soon to blow out my sprinkler lines.

Any advice?

Also I guess this will be for nailing and painting later on

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I've owned every kind you can think of from the small 3 gallon all the way up to massive stationary tank ones for auto/car painting.
You are going to need considerable size/gallons if you want to blow out sprinklers and paint with it. Painting requires a lot of air and constant pressure. Sprinklers require a large tank to create enough force. Neither that size is good for nailing as that is more of the 6 gallon range.
I would go with the 16/17 gallon+ which are about $120 on sale on Harbor Freight. You can spend $300+ for better brand one but I find those cheap ones do quite well for light to moderate use. This size is pretty large for nailing but will provide enough volume for sprinkler lines and large enough to paint with. You may be able to get away with a 10 or so gallon. You have 3 different tasks with 3 different air needs. One need is small, one needs large volumes of air and one needs moderate volumes of air but cannot risk running out to remain consistent for painting.

Lanx said:

Cool, guess I'll wait for 20 off harbor freight

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20% off is up right now and holy shit I think I got cancer from looking at that site. Worst UI design I've seen in my life.