Home Improvement

I am going to have my room repainted next week. I got ideas from reading magazines and the color combinations were really nice. I hope it turns out well. It will be always less expensive if I can do it by myself to get away from labor fees. A payday loan has always been helpful to me especially when I badly need urgent cash to pay for service fees that were really beyond my estimates. Get more info at: Get help for House Repair Costs

Or bots.

Picasso_sl said:

Oh, tuco.

Converted a switch to a 3 way for the stairs, god damn i like to consider myself a genius but i don't think i would have ever made it through that without an internet wiring diagram. They used double gang handy boxes in the walls for switches, probably to give themselves room to branch 2 extra lines off from every switch. I dont know why they couldn't just be normal.

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3 way switches are magic. I have the intellectual knowledge of how they work. I have wired them. I can make them work. Really, they decide on their own if they work, though.

You made a switch into a 3 way switch? You're a genius. (That's the point of this post.)

Did a lot of work this weekend. Used my new Craftsman miter saw and did crown molding in the new nursery. Did the paint a few weeks ago, and the trim on Friday. Finally finished late last night.

I love new tools and for anyone doing Crown Molding or trim remember this: Caulk is your friend. Use it liberally.

Edit: Picture below is with the crown molding without it's 2nd coat of paint. It got really beat up when it was being hung.

We are redoing one of our bathrooms and I forgot to take pre-demo pictures to share

Draegan_sl said:

I love new tools and for anyone doing Crown Molding or trim remember this: Caulk is your friend. Use it liberally.

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nice work.

Pro-tip, use low shrink spackle (not the vinyl garbage) on the joints and for spotting the nails. it applies tighter, dries quicker, is sand-able and holds up better over time.

Caulk is not your best friend. If you have trusses after a few winters/summers it will either expand and suck it up leaving a gap or compress and smush it out leaving folds at the ceiling and wall.
Room does look nice though!
( 26 years building/remodeling ).

Hmm all the calk has done ok during the hot summer and cold winter here so far. Couple spots it shrank in, but it's easy to fix.

I just got done putting up crown molding on my lower bedroom. Fuck. Can't do the top because the pieces are like 10ft long, gotta wait for the wife to give me some assistance.

I'm going to be doing Crown Molding soon, and it is going to suck donkey balls. I'm going with stained oak, so no caulk to fix the oops. Oh, and it's a half-cathedral ceilings, so the corners meet at something like 123 degrees, rather than 90. There will be a lot of practice cuts.

On the other hand, how do people feel about the corner blocks? This sort of thing:

http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?productId=100054211&storeId=10051&l angId=-1&catalogId=10053&ci_sku=100054211&ci_kw={keyword} &kwd={keyword}&cm_mmc=shopping-_-googleads-_-pla-_-100054211&ci_gpa=pla#.USka71ccXYA

It would certainly make my life easier. I do like the look of them, too, and they would suit the room. Thots?

lurkingdirk_sl said:

I'm going to be doing Crown Molding soon, and it is going to suck donkey balls. I'm going with stained oak, so no caulk to fix the oops. Oh, and it's a half-cathedral ceilings, so the corners meet at something like 123 degrees, rather than 90. There will be a lot of practice cuts.

On the other hand, how do people feel about the corner blocks? This sort of thing:

http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?productId=100054211&storeId=10051&l angId=-1&catalogId=10053&ci_sku=100054211&ci_kw={keyword} &kwd={keyword}&cm_mmc=shopping-_-googleads-_-pla-_-100054211&ci_gpa=pla#.USka71ccXYA

It would certainly make my life easier. I do like the look of them, too, and they would suit the room. Thots?

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For stained/ natural wood , they look great imo,

I just finished up crown molding this weekend in the bedrooms. Not too horrible. My house is old so the corner never meet up properly. I also trimmed out an entryway in the bedroom and it looks awesome. I'll snag a picture later.

I am going to be putting in crown molding in my living room/dining room that has 8'ft ceilings that transition into 10' ceilings on a slight curve. I'm going to be doing layer molding so I'll be running tracks of trim and then put molding on top of those tracks and I have no idea how i'm going to get the curve stuff.

BTW, fixed my toilet without buying a rubber pump shit thing or messing with the hangy chain. Turns out the handle wasn't screwed in to the porcelain and just fell off one day. I screwed it in and it works great now. Even after eating 2 pounds of taco meat, the toilet still flushed down my shit. If that isn't a victory, I don't know what is.

Carry on.

in regards to the guy with the french drain. that flooded when you got 9" of rain (well beyond 100year storm)

easiest solution would be to take a roof leader or two and divert them to a subsurface leaching chamber to ensure that it does not happen again.

i am going to assume you do own the house/own the land - ie not a condo/rental.

layman version of figuring out where to put.- unless you have a walkout basement.
walk around the house, your first floor sill should be level -measure down to ground from sill the lowest point is the largest distance to ground.

sewer or septic system? if septic, make sure you are not working @ the septic system location.

what is your ground like? gravel? sand? dirt? ledge? ie easy to dig into or not. lets Assume(ya i know what assuming does) it is not ledge and is not clay (ie pretty permeable) and the ground is ok for perculation rates.

pick a spot that is ~10ish feet from the house near the lowest point and a decent distance from the property line- ie front yard or back yard, sides are ok if you have ~20+feet to the property line- also direct distance from 1 or 2 downspouts.

buy two of these(or similar) with 2 ends and hook them both together per instructions:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/t/1002106...specifications

make a 4" hole in the end- there should be pipe holes in the end ..top of the end is where it should be bottom of inlet should be ~5" from the top of the chamber/end.

this item will store (1.33x6.33x2.83) about 23 and a half cubic feet of water or about 175.5 gallons of water (7.48 gallons per cubic foot) each.

buy enough 4" pvc drain pipe to go from your downspouts(one or two of them) to where you are going to dig.
buy enough filter fabric to fill the bottom & sides of the hole you are about to dig.
buy~150 cubic feet of 2" gravel to surround the chambers + enough to line the drain line trench bottom

make your trench you are digging 5'wide ~3.5foot deep and 17' long to enable you to use 2 of them for groundwater recharge also make a 12" wide trench ~2' deep from the downspout location to the end of the hole. put filter fabric into recharge area bottom and sides. put 6" of stone on bottom of trench- make it level-
place both chambers into the hole according to the instructions,. centered so that there is 1' on all sides of space

fill hole with gravel- barely compacted- you want the space(voids) between the stones until you are where the invert of the pipe should be (~5" from the top of the chamber) place your pipe into the invert and run it to your downspout at a minimum 0.01 slope(pipe should go from the chamber invert up 1" per 10' section

fill main trench with stone until the chamber is covered with ~6" of gravel- you SHOULD be about 12" from the top of the hole now. fold filter fabric over gravel. fill hole with dirt
fill drain line trench with dirt.

@house connect downspout to drain. tada done.

now this is a SMALL system i have no idea how large your house is, but this system should be able to store and drain into the ground 465 gallons of water when full. if your perculation rate(rate at which the water absorbs/drains into the ground) is say 10 minutes an inch then every 10 minutes about 25 gallons of water is leaving the system.

using city of boston regulations of 1" of runoff stored and recharged, it is good for a 746 sq.ft. of roof.(31'x24') since you have a french drain and other possible factors draining your roof, this is a good system size for supplemental roof runoff storage and infiltration requirements and taking some of the roof runoff away from your foundation.