Home Improvement

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Draegan_sl

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Oh fucking god, this weekend was hell. I removed a wall. The wall was easy. The electrical? Suicide. I'm not an electrician, but wiring stuff up is easy, especially if you're just replicating it, or extended existing wiring. I wouldn't attempt to re-wire or add on additional circuits in my home.

So I took down a wall, it was a wall that separated the dining room and kitchen. There is a light in both rooms and the switches where in series with each other. The circuit looks like this: POWER > Dining Room Light > Switch > Switch > Kitchen Light > ... morelightsandswitches.

If you look at the picture, there is a half wall left as a back of a counter. To the right of that space was a doorway. The light switches were to the left of it. The wire is routed from my fusebox up into the attic, and follows the chain, the switches are dropped down through the ceiling and back up. I had to reroute the lines so they went through the half wall and up the (old) exterior wall and back into the attic.

Well fuck me if didn't learn the difference between 3 wire cable and 2 wire cable. I spent like 8 hours on Sat rerouting wire (the wire in the attack is in a space that has about 2 feet of clearance under A frames on top of beams. Fucking hurt getting in and out of that), and attempting to learn how to wire back to back switches. Didn't work.

Spent 2 hours on Sunday realizing I need 3 wire (red black and white) cable, ripping out old, stringing up the 3-wire (by the way, the space the wire comes up into the attic is like at the corner of the a-frame. I'm too big for this shit.) and then reconnecting it.

Got my 3 wire up, wiried the circuit properly and HOLY FUCK IT WORKED (dimmer switch doesn't fucking DIM THOUGH).

So when I went to install the boxes and put the switches in place, did more drywall, then went up into the attack to put the exposed wiring into a box and closed it up. Well fuck me if the old wiring didn't crack. There went another 2 hours finding the problem last night.

Finally it all works as up 11pm last night (dimmer doesn't work still). Went to go plug in the fridge? Oh right, 4 outlets don't work in my kitchen. I eliminated one socket on Sat, and just spliced the wires into a junction box in the basement. I fucking hope that is the problem since I didn't do any other electrical work this weekend. If it isn't, I'm in trouble.

But fuck if I'm not tired.

Spackle, build a counterspace and I'm good to go to phase 2. Wainscotting and trim.

rrr_img_67068.jpg
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

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Yardwork all weekend for me

-Borrowed the brother in laws pickup and got 2 cubic yards of dirt to put on our garden. Had to wheelbarrow it around from the driveway, since we can't get a vehicle into our backyard

-Tilled the garden, planted vegetables

-Power washed the siding on the house

-planted an assload of plants and flowers

-dug a tree stump out of the yard that was finally starting to rot, and I was sick of mowing around. The stump was big, and still a huge pain in the ass. took like 3 bags of dirt to fill the hole left behind.

Today, I am sore
 
Intrinsic

Intrinsic

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That's interesting mkopec.

Based on what our Energy Efficiency report at our house last week it looks like our main need is attic insulation. It was rated at an R13 vs. R38 recommended for our area. We talked about adding insulation to the open area to improve that, but there is another area of concern and that is the vaulted ceiling. The ceiling follows the roof line and there's only so much space in between. There are R19 batts in there now and it seemed like it would be very difficult to get a hose down in that area to even spray in, even if they removed them.

We have two big gable windows I guess you'd call them at either end of the attic, but because of the way the roof slopes I couldn't even check the soffits.

If we can do the flat open area of the attic ourselves I think we'd do that, but based on their feedback it doesn't seem like there would be a significant enough savings on the energy bill to justify doing it 3rd party.

No work for me this weekend. Was raining the whole time and my paint sprayer hasn't come in to start on the Deck.
 
Noodleface

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joeboo_sl said:
Yardwork all weekend for me

-Borrowed the brother in laws pickup and got 2 cubic yards of dirt to put on our garden. Had to wheelbarrow it around from the driveway, since we can't get a vehicle into our backyard

-Tilled the garden, planted vegetables

-Power washed the siding on the house

-planted an assload of plants and flowers

-dug a tree stump out of the yard that was finally starting to rot, and I was sick of mowing around. The stump was big, and still a huge pain in the ass. took like 3 bags of dirt to fill the hole left behind.

Today, I am sore
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Did a ton of yard work this weekend too, feeling sore as shit.

In the center of our backyard was this area with two small trees, a bird bath and a shitload of leaves. We raked all the leaves out and found that black vinyl shit covering the entire area that stops grass from growing up, you'd probably put mulch on it. My wife wanted a garden there so we ripped it all up. There was also a massive thorn bush there so we cut it down and ripped out all the roots. The thorn bush grew up into one of the trees, so we had to untangle it (left gaping holes in the tree from strangling it).

We noticed that it looked like our yard had never been raked in any point in history, so spent a lot of time raking leaves that were embedded into the ground.

Was disgusted with how high the grass around the fence/trees/rocks/edge of yard so I went to home depot and picked up a black and decker weed whacker/trimmer/edger. $100 for a rechargable model with good reviews. Worked great, lasted around 1 hour and my yard looks much better.

One of the neighbors saw us doing yard work and commented how nice it was to see someone taking care of the yard. She said the previous owners never mowed their lawn and consistently had over a foot tall grass covering the entire yard.

We also installed a mailbox. The guy that rehabbed the house never put one back up so we did it ourselves. Dug a 2 foot hole (after calling digsafe, and thankfully as water line was near where we wanted to dig) and put in one of those tubes for cement about 2 feet down. Checked this morning and it was settled enough that we could remove the anchor posts. Measured everything and we appear to be in code, so hopefully we're good now.

Next step is putting up a few lights on the back porch for the dog and getting a fencing quote next weekend.
 
Julian The Apostate

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mkopec_sl said:
As for the soffits, yeah they covered solid wood soffits with vents on the vinyl and no fucking holes in the wood. Durr... So now I have to cut holes in the wood somehow. I will try to remove the vynyl piece, cut holes and then put the vinyl back from the outside. As for the insulation, I guess the builder added wood there so the insulation would not go down to the soffit, so it made the job easier.
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Fucking bummer about the soffits. Usually there is a piece of aluminum fascia that covers the vertical faceboard behind the gutter and has about a 1" 90 degree bend at the bottom that covers the end of the vinyl soffit. You'll have to remove that piece aluminum fascia to be able to remove the vinyl soffit properly and you have to remove the spouting to be able to remove the fascia. Major pain in the ass.

Removing spouting is usually a 2 man gig, especially for longer pieces and sucks if you have gutters spikes fastening it to the faceboard instead of the newer hidden hangers(screws). Let me know if you need anymore infos.
 
Khane

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I hear all these stories about you guys doing all your own projects and I think "Yeah, I want to do that. Gives such a sense of satisfaction". Then I start to look at a project and figure out what it's going to take and go straight to HomeAdvisor.com to find someone else to do it for me. I'm so lazy.

For instance, I'm about to pay someone to power wash and water seal my 2 decks. The one deck would be a cinch since it's ground level but the other one is a second story deck and I'd need to bust out a ladder to get it all done. That's just too much work for me.
 
D

Draegan_sl

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I pay someone to powerwash my house. Fuck that noise. I'm also going to pay someone to do my deck this fall. I have no interest in doing that.

I do a lot of other work though.
 
Intrinsic

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Khane_sl said:
I hear all these stories about you guys doing all your own projects and I think "Yeah, I want to do that. Gives such a sense of satisfaction". Then I start to look at a project and figure out what it's going to take and go straight to HomeAdvisor.com to find someone else to do it for me. I'm so lazy.

For instance, I'm about to pay someone to power wash and water seal my 2 decks. The one deck would be a cinch since it's ground level but the other one is a second story deck and I'd need to bust out a ladder to get it all done. That's just too much work for me.
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My approach so far has been to give it the college try at first, determine what I'm looking at from a time, materials, and frustration investment, then weigh that vs. a contractor cost & my laziness. So far I've paid for everything except the torsion springs on my garage door and this will be the 2nd try on the deck because $1,700 just doesn't seem worth it to me. But that is more of a psychological hurdle and not actual money. If he had quoted $1,499 or something I probably would have cut the check.
 
Khane

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I got quoted at $1040 for the 2 decks. Which is still more than I expected, and is making me question whether or not I should pull the trigger.
 
lurkingdirk

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I haven't paid anyone to do anything on my house for years. I have the time and I know how to do most everything, or I can figure it out. I'd rather spend the money on traveling or dinner out with my family. Everyone has their way!

I'm getting set to do a bit of a kitchen renovation. I'm doing it in two stages, and the two stages will be split by about 10 years. This first stage will improve all appliances, change in wall ovens from 1977 to a gas, six burner range, take the cook top off the island, make the island bigger, and replace counter tops. In 10 years, I plan to gut the whole kitchen to the studs, and change everything. I'm doing the first stage in a month, or so. Should be able to get it mostly done in a week.
 
mkopec

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Getting R38 is tough. I mean with that cellulose crap I did you're looking at at least 10" compacted, so you would have to blow like 12-14" of the stuff? I think, if memory servers me well, its 10" for R38. And that would of probably took like 70-80 if not more bails to achieve that on my attic. ( I used 35)

I got what seemed to be 6" (its tough to tell how much you blow in) on approximately 1870 sq ft of attic. I already had about 6" of blown in fiberglass, so a total of about 12" which should come to about R25ish? If things went better for me (the fucking hose plugs which took hours of my time) I would of probably went back and got 20 more bails and did some more. But I was getting tired and frustrated. The thing that was bad was actually getting up there and back down. I had access in my garage that I used and had to crawl like 6 ft through another access hole in the attic to get to the main house attic. Then in order to get back down, you had to crawl in reverse (lack of room to turn around). So it was a total pain in the ass. So every time the hose plugged, I had to keep getting down and then back up, ugh. My house is a ranch with not a lot of slope to the roof, so not a lot of room to maneuver. At the highest point of the roof I could not even stand so its less than 6ft. Im fucking 41, out of shape, and I fucking hurt yesterday and today. I used muscles I didnt think I had, lol.

The reason the hose kept plugging (I think) was that I had to use 2 sections of hose together. One was not long enough to do it but two was way more than I needed. 1 1/2 would of been perfect but what are you going to do? So when I got the shit from home depot, they gave me the two sections of hose, but didnt give me the metal part nor the hose clamps to join the two sections together. So I had to use a piece of 2" PVC pipe for the joint ( the hose was 2 1/4 in dia) So I think thats where the hose kept plugging. I also figured out that once the machine was on and everything flowed it was all good, but once you turned off the machine, that shit inside of the hose would clump up a and start to compact. Then when you turned on the machine again, it would plug up. Not to mention the bends in the hose which, again was too long. So when I was running the machine I would never turn it off until the hopper was empty and the hose was empty as well and this finally worked and we got the last 15 bails up there with no problem.

My wife got stuck up there, lol. she didnt heed my advice to back out of the attic onto the ladder and she could not turn around. She is claustrophobic to compound the problem. Hehe, her ass was stuck up there for like 15 min before she finally maneuvered into the correct position to come down. She was all in panic mode at that point.
 
Frenzied Wombat

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Khane_sl said:
I hear all these stories about you guys doing all your own projects and I think "Yeah, I want to do that. Gives such a sense of satisfaction". Then I start to look at a project and figure out what it's going to take and go straight to HomeAdvisor.com to find someone else to do it for me. I'm so lazy.

For instance, I'm about to pay someone to power wash and water seal my 2 decks. The one deck would be a cinch since it's ground level but the other one is a second story deck and I'd need to bust out a ladder to get it all done. That's just too much work for me.
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I'm the same way but sealing my decks was one of the few projects where I felt the process was simple enough and the "manual labor level" was low enough that I did it on my own. You can buy a power washer for a few hundred bucks that will also come in handy for washing the car and cleaning your driveway, and depending on your deck size we're talking a few hours work. The power washing actually takes the lion's share of time. In retrospect if I had to do it over I'd find a local Texan slave laborer (Mexican) and swap out his leaf blower for the power washer and have him do that part, then I'd do the sealing part myself.
 
mkopec

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Julian the Apostate_sl said:
Fucking bummer about the soffits. Usually there is a piece of aluminum fascia that covers the vertical faceboard behind the gutter and has about a 1" 90 degree bend at the bottom that covers the end of the vinyl soffit. You'll have to remove that piece aluminum fascia to be able to remove the vinyl soffit properly and you have to remove the spouting to be able to remove the fascia. Major pain in the ass.

Removing spouting is usually a 2 man gig, especially for longer pieces and sucks if you have gutters spikes fastening it to the faceboard instead of the newer hidden hangers(screws). Let me know if you need anymore infos.
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Im going to get my father in law to come and take a look, he did siding before on his houses himself (he has the benders and all that jazz) so he knows WTF hes doing. I need him to take a look at it and come up with a plan.

Im not really worried about the summer time, its winter time that Im worried about and the ice dams that forms around my soffit and gutters. I have a huge ass gable end attic fan up there that helps in the summer.
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

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Power washing is honestly about as easy as yard work gets. It's time consuming, but it's not physically demanding whatsoever. No sweating your ass off or breaking your back, you're basically just using a hose for a couple hours. Put on some headphones, crack open a beer, and enjoy your afternoon. Plus you stay cool as you inevitably get a little damp from the splash-back (especially if you are power washing a house where a lot of the work is above you)

Staining, on the other hand, is a son of a bitch of a job. Water sealing isn't bad, but man I hate staining.

My only real issue with home projects is just having the correct tools. You can either spend a TON of time on a project trying to get it done with what you have available, or go spend a ton of money on the correct piece of equipment to get it done quicker and easier. After just 3 years in this house, I have a whole shed full of random crap, power washer, garden tiller, ladders, random trimmers and saws for trimming trees, etc. Stuff gets expensive quickly, it's nice if you don't have to buy it all in one year and can slowly collect it all over the span of a few years.
 
Noodleface

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We did a lot of weird work on my family home when I was younger and we always rented tools (power washer, tiller, jackhammer). Me and my brother learned so much about home repair and I forgot all of it. We had to:

- Power wash the entire house
- Rip up an old tiled kitchen floor from the 60's
- Rip the entire roof off the house
- Rip the wooden shingles off the house in preparation for vinyl siding

These are just a few of the major items. For the roof and kitchen floor when the workers showed up the contractors were confused because they were actually paid to do that work that we had done. My stepfather made me and my brother do it for free to teach us about life. He also made us help the guys on the roof for free and made us buy them pizza and sodas. Guy is whacked.

On the shingles the guy told us he had a special machine to do it. Took us 8 hours with about 8 people.

Sorry for the rambling, I just remembered all of this.
 
Khane

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It's not the power washing I'm concerned about. It's getting on the ladder to water seal the second story deck. I just don't want to do it.
 
Joeboo

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I guess I'm not visualizing this, but why are you on a ladder? Just to do the outside the the railing?
 
Frenzied Wombat

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Khane_sl said:
It's not the power washing I'm concerned about. It's getting on the ladder to water seal the second story deck. I just don't want to do it.
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Yeah, fuck that. If you have to stand on a ladder the whole time that blows and sounds dangerous. The power washer has kick to it and I'd want both my feet on the ground.
 
D

Draegan_sl

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joeboo_sl said:
My only real issue with home projects is just having the correct tools. You can either spend a TON of time on a project trying to get it done with what you have available, or go spend a ton of money on the correct piece of equipment to get it done quicker and easier. After just 3 years in this house, I have a whole shed full of random crap, power washer, garden tiller, ladders, random trimmers and saws for trimming trees, etc. Stuff gets expensive quickly, it's nice if you don't have to buy it all in one year and can slowly collect it all over the span of a few years.
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Prime example of me doing drywall work. You can laugh at your friends trying to cut strips of drywall (5" x 60" for example) with a razor and trying to measure out a line and free hand cut it or whatever. Motherfuck, go by a $12 drywall tee square. You just saved yourself 10 hours of cutting and 30 ours of spackling.
 
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