Home Improvement

Haus said:

There are only two of us living here. I take one shower a day. Mrs. Haus is a bath person instead. approximately a 2600 sq ft house. (actually around 3k sq ft now with the patio being a finished room)

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Are you on a slab or over a crawlspace? Plumbing leak underneath evaporating up?

So drywall. On the continuum of making things actually flat vs looking flat, what's the consensus?

I did a first skim coat on the ceiling and it turned out OK except for a few areas I will touch up in the second pass.

But ultimately it's not really flat. I realize that taping butt joints means that you have those rolling feathered in undulations in any surface, and a good drywaller should get it thin enough to simply look flat when it isn't.

My woodworking lizard brain has difficulty assessing this concept of just "looking good enough" as a success though, and mud is not forgiving with work time when doing a skim coat. I would appreciate any guidance by more experience drywallers.

Palum said:

So drywall. On the continuum of making things actually flat vs looking flat, what's the consensus?

I did a first skim coat on the ceiling and it turned out OK except for a few areas I will touch up in the second pass.

But ultimately it's not really flat. I realize that taping butt joints means that you have those rolling feathered in undulations in any surface, and a good drywaller should get it thin enough to simply look flat when it isn't.

My woodworking lizard brain has difficulty assessing this concept of just "looking good enough" as a success though, and mud is not forgiving with work time when doing a skim coat. I would appreciate any guidance by more experience drywallers.

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Look up "Level 5" Drywall techniques and see if thats really something you want to do. I personally.. dont think its worth the time/effort/money. But I understand and relate to what you're saying when you want something perfect.

Daidraco said:

Look up "Level 5" Drywall techniques and see if thats really something you want to do. I personally.. dont think its worth the time/effort/money. But I understand and relate to what you're saying when you want something perfect.

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Well I'm removing texture and wallpaper on these walls so skim coat is necessary to fix imperfections, not something I wanted per se.

Lanx said:

this is cute

tho my previous house i also had my pantry adjoining my garage and when i cut open a hole to put in my wall safe i found out it was insulated, so maybe the wall partitioning the garage needs to be insulated

but my current home the home partitioning the garage (leads to kitchen) there is no insulation, i know b/c the previous owner cut an acess hole for some unknown reason that befuddles me.

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Yeah, you can't do this in most places I've lived in because the wall between the garage and the main house needs to be a fire break. I guess you might be able to put in a special door?

Lanx said:

is a fire break the same as putting the horizontal wood on the studs so fire doesn't burn up so fast?

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That's standard fire blocking to delay flames getting to the attic/upper stories, but not what I meant. My understanding is interior garage walls need to be made of a material than can delay, say, a vehicle fire, from infiltrating the main structure, and be free of even small compromises.

Yep. I have the Ring Stick Up w/ Solar option. It only has night vision and daytime surveillance options, as thats all I really wanted on the corners of the house. But I know that Ring has some really strong flood light / camera models and the solar panels vary in size. You can check them out at Best Buy if one is close to you. My Lowes and Home Depot have shit for selection. You're gonna have to order from Amazon or Ring itself to get some of the models, or combo packs as the box stores dont even carry most of them.

Outside of that - I cant recall if its this thread or not - but Lanx , at least I think he was involved in the discussion about other cameras. Something more sophisticated than Ring, Nest, Arlo etc.

Koushirou said:

Yeah, was hoping Wyze would have something battery/solar like this, but they only have it on the small cams currently. Not sure if it’s paranoia or not, but I don’t really want to touch any of the Ring stuff (though I imagine just about any of these companies are scummy on the privacy stuff).

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If you don't want them using your data (and they will/are), then you need to set up local storage. If you have an old computer laying around, you could use it and pop in a new HD made for continuous recording (like the Western Digital purple line), but it will probably hog more energy than a dedicated DVR. Blue Iris seems to be the recommended software, but I have not used it, so dunno what to make of it.

Camera wise, I'm not sure how many professional level cameras are battery powered, but it's not toooooo hard to run a Cat6 out to a corner of the house, then power it through PoE (Power over Ethernet). Trying to rely on wireless signals/batteries seems silly and streaming 1080 or better puts more of a load on your wireless network. If you tap into your flood/exterior lights power, then the camera will also be on a switch, subject to someone flipping the switch and then missing whatever you wanted to record.

If you want to do a bunch of research on it, IPCamtalk.com is the forum to do it. Best place to start is their "cliff notes" FAQ type thing:

So I acquired a Level5 24" skimming blade with extension pole to try and get a better coat on the second pass skimming the ceiling. I will report back on the most likely inevitable failure as I lament my lack of skill in drywall once again. But damn it is a pretty sweet tool though.