Home Improvement

BrutulTM

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I would definitely let the power company take care of it if they're willing to. The tree will probably live but it will be years before it has a nice shape again if it ever does. That said, it might be a prime spot for a tree house if you were to have children.
 

Vinen

God is dead
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IIRC your neighbors insurance will pay for any damage that incurred from the tree falling onto her property. Your insurance will just cover damage on your own.
As in a tree on your property falls and hits her roof. Her insurance pays for the damage to the roof... not yours.
 

Lanx

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Just finished moving it off her property, guess I'll make firewood, it's so much tree!
 
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Crone

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Figuring out that owning a home is a marathon, not a sprint. There's so much shit I want to do to this house!

Some cool news. I have no gas to the house, and thought the neighborhood didn't have it. I'm in a small 2k people town, so figured it just wasn't up here, but pulling out for work the other day I see some gas trucks doing work and I'm like huh, that's weird. Call 'em up and sure enough, they have gas customers all over my neighborhood. So now I wanna quote a plumber to plumb the whole house for gas. There goes my new kitchen remodel...

Suggestions on best appliances to switch to gas? Everything? This small town electric company seems pretty cheap. First 23 days was $58. I Lol'ed. I'm used to $400 summer time bills from Phoenix AZ in a not well insulated house with the A/C blasting all day/night.
 

Erronius

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Did you guys run off the Canadian Plumber or something?
...fucking Eomer Eomer , took me while to remember. Looks like dude vanished around the time I did.
hopefully the power company will just take away the whole broken thing, my neighbor said maybe they have to take out the tree??? i mean it looks bad but it's still has half of it looking good.

Generally, no. They'll clear what's on the line but I think it's uncommon for them to do more than that. That's why you tend to see so many janky, poorly cut trees around powerlines (unless it's high voltage transmission lines, where they'll grind every tree within a hundred feet to the ground). And while they're technically responsible for the overhead run to the point of attachment at the weather head (triplex, usually), the hot legs on the triplex are insulated so they're even less inclined to trim trees back in your backyard. And in my experience, even when a limb does take out your overhead service, they'll restring the triplex to your house, and MAYBE cut a limb or two here and there, but you're generally on your own.

I was going to tag @Lyrical, but did he change his name to Shonuff Shonuff ? I thought he owned a tree trimming business. Maybe he finally nutted himself to death.

Also, tree trimming is why I'm not a fan of acreage with trees anymore. You spend so much fucking time dealing with it, it's insane.
 
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Vinen

God is dead
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Figuring out that owning a home is a marathon, not a sprint. There's so much shit I want to do to this house!

Some cool news. I have no gas to the house, and thought the neighborhood didn't have it. I'm in a small 2k people town, so figured it just wasn't up here, but pulling out for work the other day I see some gas trucks doing work and I'm like huh, that's weird. Call 'em up and sure enough, they have gas customers all over my neighborhood. So now I wanna quote a plumber to plumb the whole house for gas. There goes my new kitchen remodel...

Suggestions on best appliances to switch to gas? Everything? This small town electric company seems pretty cheap. First 23 days was $58. I Lol'ed. I'm used to $400 summer time bills from Phoenix AZ in a not well insulated house with the A/C blasting all day/night.

In terms of money saved overtime.
Heating > Dryer > Kitchen Stove / Oven.
Kitchen Stove / Oven can be moved to first if you are really into cooking. Beats the ever living hell out of shitty electric or induction.

Garage should be completed this week. Also getting the houses foundation + all retaining walls repointed + a new Generator installed (KOHLER Generators | 20RESC | Generators | Products | Home Generators) + New AC system for 2nd/3rd floor. 4K for repointing, 10K for generator, guesstimate of 5K for AC.

Hoping to get amended estimates for exterior work + addition of first floor renovation (only had 2nd floor in initial quote) this week.

~80K will have been put into the house as of the repointing, generator, garage, AC and misc. Budget for 1st and 2nd floor Reno is 150K.

This will put the house into a state where I don't need to do a major renovation outside of the 3rd floor. Not sure what we want to do there and no rush as we don't really need the space at this time. Will require an architect to figure out how we can fit 1 bathroom and 2 bedroom into it.
 
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Siliconemelons

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Next door neighbor is getting 3k sq ft of pavers put in - his driveway, walkways, replacing current front and back decks with stone pavers etc. I figure that often when they are in the area multi jobs can yeild discounts - I have always wanted a paver drive way and it is currently asphalt - I give the driveway another 2-3 years of staying /decent/ and I was getting ready to do its yearly seal coat and rash patching - the driveway is yuge, its a a big J/L shape driveway that is from the street to the garage double car width - simple measurement myself is ~910 sq ft.

What is the general cost this should be - said and done - remove old, install new. I know the $ per sq ft my neighbor got- and it seems damn good.

The company he is using has 4.8/5 on home advistor with ~100ish reviews - seems damn good comparatively to other paver comps in the area.
 

BrutulTM

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Well you get to watch him do your neighbor's drive first so you can see if he does shitty work or stops for 3 months in the middle or any of the other shitty contractor tricks. Just don't let him start on yours while the neighbor's is still in progress and then both of you are stuck with him good or bad.
 
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Lanx

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In terms of money saved overtime.
Heating > Dryer > Kitchen Stove / Oven.
Kitchen Stove / Oven can be moved to first if you are really into cooking. Beats the ever living hell out of shitty electric or induction.

Garage should be completed this week. Also getting the houses foundation + all retaining walls repointed + a new Generator installed (KOHLER Generators | 20RESC | Generators | Products | Home Generators) + New AC system for 2nd/3rd floor. 4K for repointing, 10K for generator, guesstimate of 5K for AC.

Hoping to get amended estimates for exterior work + addition of first floor renovation (only had 2nd floor in initial quote) this week.

~80K will have been put into the house as of the repointing, generator, garage, AC and misc. Budget for 1st and 2nd floor Reno is 150K.

This will put the house into a state where I don't need to do a major renovation outside of the 3rd floor. Not sure what we want to do there and no rush as we don't really need the space at this time. Will require an architect to figure out how we can fit 1 bathroom and 2 bedroom into it.
damn, those gas generators are like 5k, it costs just as much to install?
 

Lanx

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Well you get to watch him do your neighbor's drive first so you can see if he does shitty work or stops for 3 months in the middle or any of the other shitty contractor tricks. Just don't let him start on yours while the neighbor's is still in progress and then both of you are stuck with him good or bad.
a few months ago my neighbor redid his driveway, it cracked and messed. The contractors did a nice job! and did this oval gravel thing with the tree next to it i kinda wanna steel(the design), then they put the house for sale a month ago and it's now sold.

Guess they redid the driveway, just to sell the place

seems like a waste

What're ppls thoughts on renovating cuz you want it and to enjoy, or just reno to sell(which is what they obviously did)
 

Dandai

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I definitely wouldn't renovate anything but known deal breakers if my intent was to sell the property in the near future.
 

BrutulTM

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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I definitely wouldn't renovate anything but known deal breakers if my intent was to sell the property in the near future.

Same here. It will not pay for itself 90% of the time. Personally I'm not a fan of worrying about resale value on your house unless you're going to sell it in the next couple years. It's the building you live in. You should make it the way you want it, not the way some self proclaimed real estate expert thinks a hypothetical future buyer will pay a few extra bucks for it. Sure maybe you'll have to convert the sex dungeon back into a laundry room before you sell but until then it's your damn house.
 
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Siliconemelons

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Realtors and "Paint and landscape!"

Why, 90% of people are just going to repaint - those other 10% generally don't give a fuck what color it is.

I mean sure if your walls are nasty but "Beige is so bla, paint them *new name for beige* then the buyers will love it!" is bullshit.

The place doing to pavers has 4.8/5 on home advisor so that is crazy for almost any construction place to get that good and consistent reviews.
 

Siliconemelons

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Sigh, so I have a sun room / back room that is "not part of the houses rated sq ft a typical thing at least in Florida, is is indeed the "Florida room" - I am turning mine into a craft room - it was all windows, I took a window out and framed it and put plywood up - as that is what the bottom was (rest of the house is block) - the house has stucco on the entire house with a texture that I think is refereed to as "heavy lace" so its kinda nasty imo... AYNWHO.

So I am going to stucco the new outside wall to match, talk to my next door guy and get some advice etc. ask his handyman helper guy how much it would be to do it - as he just re-stuccoed all his top roof trim thing area... he said 2-300, I was like mmm no, ill do it myself.

So I frame it, but the lath up- the backing stuff bla bla bla - I do not have much time so I was going to do the first coat this weekend... I said, maybe as I dont have exp - I would pay him to do the last layer and max texture - it takes some finesse to do it etc. So I come home for lunch and hear work going on- he just went back there and did the whole thing... so I didnt get to do it :-(

rustled bc I kinda wanted the exp... but 100$ and its done.
 

Dandai

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We have very little storage space because our house is single story and only about 1,200 sq ft. The house sits on a pretty steep grade so the crawlspace is about 5’10” tall at the entrance (gradually shrinking to 4.5’-ish over head clearance).

I’ve been looking for a project and needed a proper shop/workspace, so I decided to frame in an 8’x12’ section at the entrance to the crawl and use plywood for walls. (I’m 5’6” so it’s a little claustrophobic but I’ve got plenty of head clearance.) I’ll run a small dehumidifier down there with automatic drainage and use the room for passive storage too.

So far I’ve used coarse stone and granite sand to level out the floor, laid concrete blocks along the perimeter of the 8x12 space, put a 6mil plastic barrier over the floor, laid 3 3/4” sheets of plywood for the floor, and hammered the frames together for 3/4 walls. The last wall I’m gonna put the same kind of door as the entrance so the rest of the crawl space is accessible. I’ll also need to replace the flex duct (that you can see hanging freely) with a longer, less direct run. I’m thinking about putting a wye in it and putting a vent in the room since my unit is way oversized for my small house.


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Lanx

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jesus christ, sounds like you're building a literal cave, also is it allowed to put walls where that tiny window is? cuz isn't that for escaping fires n shit? even tho that is not anywhere considered an egress.

heck my house in brooklyn has those windows, you can only squeeze yourself through if you didn't eat no lunch.
 

Dandai

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jesus christ, sounds like you're building a literal cave, also is it allowed to put walls where that tiny window is? cuz isn't that for escaping fires n shit? even tho that is not anywhere considered an egress.

heck my house in brooklyn has those windows, you can only squeeze yourself through if you didn't eat no lunch.
For some reason in the south they think crawlspaces should have vents. That's a crawlspace vent.
 

Lanx

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For some reason in the south they think crawlspaces should have vents. That's a crawlspace vent.
so your man cave crawlspace is super out of the ordinary then right? and usually it's mostly like this?
(i've only had basements)