Home Improvement

lurkingdirk_sl said:

Mind if I ask what that cost you? The Bosch is about 2,400$, and that's just too much for me to justify spending on a dishwasher when I got one that works well for under 300$.

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It was $700 originally. Looks like they got it for $475 after sale discount plus multiple appliance discount.

Deathwing_sl said:

lots of pictures and text

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That's helpful. I would say this:
1. If it were me, I'd get those stairs out, make it water tight, and replace with nice, easy to build wooden steps.
2. I don't think your problem is ground water. I am guessing it's more a grade issue. I think water must be moving toward your house, rather than away from it - during the heavy rain, when the gutters overflowed, was there more water under the stairs, or the same amount?
3. sealing from the inside will allow the water to saturate the block. This weakens it, and still allows mold to grow in the block, which can still release spores into the house.
4. have me out for a weekend, and we'd have this shit fixed.

I'll keep thinking on this.

Deathwing_sl said:

No sump pump.

EDIT: sorry, that's a useless reply. I hadn't considered a sump pump, I honestly have never even seen one in person. How much do they cost and how hard are they to install?

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Cut a hole in the cement floor of your basement in the right spot, make a leeching hole, run electric for an electric motor (20 amps is plenty), and tie the plumbing either into your existing out going sewage, or run it to a place where it can safely vent onto your lawn or some such a sufficient distance from your house to not cause other problems. Not too bad, can do in a weekend.

But if you have one place only in your foundation that's persistently leaking, and everywhere else is okay, I don't think a sump will help you. You need to address the problems at that point.

Burnesto_sl said:

Double up the wax ring.

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I was thinking exactly this. Some times, especially if people add tile to their bathrooms, the toilet doesn't sit low enough to seal with a single wax ring. You can either double the ring (may require some force to get seated), or look for the "double thick" ring. I know some big box stores like Lowes carries such a thing.

Eyashusa_sl said:

It was $700 originally. Looks like they got it for $475 after sale discount plus multiple appliance discount.

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Dang. That's cheap for a quiet dishwasher. Does it do a good job cleaning if you put in pots and pans?

lurkingdirk_sl said:

I was thinking exactly this. Some times, especially if people add tile to their bathrooms, the toilet doesn't sit low enough to seal with a single wax ring. You can either double the ring (may require some force to get seated), or look for the "double thick" ring. I know some big box stores like Lowes carries such a thing.

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I've always done it on regular floors as well. Can't really hurt.

Burnesto_sl said:

I've always done it on regular floors as well. Can't really hurt.

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With the extra wax it can take time for the toilet to seat properly, so you can have movement, or a rock, or an uneven seal. If you're going with the thicker seal on a regular floor, find your two fattest friends, get them to sit together on the toilet, then jump up and down on top of them.

Okay, I'm pretty handy for the most part. Installed doors and rebuilt furniture, am a mechanic by trade. So I have water coming into the basement through the fireplace that is down there. Fireplace in the room above is dry but below we get standing water which has destroyed the carpet that was down there. Basement is currently used only for storage but would like to use it for a game room just need to deal with this water first. Have a french drain and the rest of the walls of the basement are dry. Am I looking at a crack somewhere I can't see or what?

Deathwing_sl said:

Where in Canada are you?

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Not in Canada at the moment, but close to Detroit. Grew up near Kingston.

I've definitely considered replacing the stairs with a wooden one. I only worry that it might look weird. I drive by this gigantic house on the way to work that has this tiny 4-step stairs on their front door. Looks like a house wearing a banana hammock.

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That's a possibility, but if you think about scale, and add a landing, the scale will be right. You can make wooden steps as wide as you like, and you can increase the size of your outer step, then. Could look really nice.

By water tight, you mean bust up the stairs, haul out the tank, move back the cinder blocks(or get new ones, whatever, cheap as hell), seal them, and then fill in the remainder with dirt?

I'm not sure if water is moving toward the house. I mean that would be a huge problem, no? Much more so than just water getting into this small room. But if water was moving toward the house and not draining, wouldn't the dirt in that one picture be at least damp? You can see about a foot away, the dirt changes in shade. That's not mulch or anything, it's just always damp compared to the closer dirt. Maybe it's something inbetween: the water just plain isn't moving. You'll notice in the first pic with a good shot of the fuel tank, there are cinder blocks that extend inward farther than the stairs. Those have never leaked water and I would have expected them to if water was sitting against the house. Or those are sealed and the farther back ones aren't. In which case, fuck whoever built this stupid room, bad decisions all around.

That day of the rain was the worst. Dredged out almost 3 gallons of water that day. Hard to tell where it was coming from because I hadn't yet discovered it was coming in through the cinder blocks. Where are you going with this? I was expect heavier seepage through the concrete stairs and cinder blocks during heavy rains, but I don't see how that's diagnostically useful.

Good point on the spores, I will abandon that idea. Don't want to end up as a future Dr. House mystery patient.

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I think the issue is the stairs. Those are precast steps that are not intended to sit over a foundation. Those are made to add to the exterior of a house. They aren't intended to keep moisture out. I can think of a couple of possibilities, all/none of which could be true:
1. there are types of cement intended to wick moisture through them - steps are often made of these, so moisture doesn't stay in the cement, and break them up when they freeze.
2. where the steps were joined to your cinder blocks they might have used a porous mortar. They should have used an hydraulic cement, and wood should never be used in structure in conjunction with blocks. They decay at different rates, sag happens in one more than the other, and seam cracks are inevitable. Water could (likely is) getting into the blocks where there are seams up at ground level, and then seeping through the blocks at floor level inside.
3. Yeah, it seems more and more likely that what you need to do is bust up the steps, eliminate the tank, bust up the blocks that encased the tank, and make the wall of your foundation straight across under your door, as though that tank room never existed. Then, waterproof the dickens out of that, gravel/soil back fill, and add whatever kind of stairs you want over the filled in area, without any "basement" under the stairs.

I don't think you're ever going to make these stairs water tight. Of course, I could be entirely wrong, but that's what I'm thinking.

lurkingdirk_sl said:

Dang. That's cheap for a quiet dishwasher. Does it do a good job cleaning if you put in pots and pans?

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unsure. I wash our pots and pans by hand.

Burnesto_sl said:

Double up the wax ring.

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Explain?

I caulked it up last night but that did absolutely nothing. I'm planning on ripping it up this weekend and re-doing it. I might of fucked up the seal my uneveningly tightening the nuts on the toilet.

Instead of using one wax ring, just use two. I do that with all toilet installs just to be on the safe side. You just have to set it properly. What I do is buy one ring with the plastic flange on it and put that on the bottom and set the other ring on top of it, set both rings together on the toilet, and put that shit on.

I suppose you can buy a ring without a plastic flange? Do you mash them both on the toilet prior to setting the toilet down onto the plumbing or put the toilet down onto the wax seals on the flange plate?

Yeah the rings come in a few varieties. With flange, without flange, extra thick, normal thickness, strawberry flavored, etc.

You put the ring down on the closet flange, and then put the toilet on top of it.

Advice time!

So, now that I can do whatever I want to my house, I'm thinking about cha-cha-cha-changes!

One thing I've always hated is the carpet. I don't like it, I don't want it. BUT, what to do instead? Here is my living room. The carpeted area is about 17 feet by 14 feet.

This first shot is me standing in the dining room, with the kitchen to my right.



And here is one from the front door looking back towards the kitchen and dining room.



And here is a slightly blurry shot standing in the same place, but taking a picture straight back, just so you can see how the tile is sort of a walkway. The shitty looking doorframe on the right isn't done, it's part of my current/last project.



So, I'm trying to decide what to do with the area. Honestly, I would love to tear up all the peach tile that runs through the whole house, and replace it with some nice large tiles, but I have a feeling that would be some $20,000 project or something, so I'm trying to put that out of my head. Also, you can't see in the pictures, but the room has a vaulted ceiling and pot shelves up above all the walls except the TV wall, and the kitchen dividing wall.

I'm all for re-painting. Currently the walls are a sort of tan-peach color, which does look nice with the floor, and the brown furniture I used to have, but I've always thought it would be nice if they were darker. The pot shelves up above are a slightly darker color, and the two tone thing looks good, although it's so subtle, most people thing the pot shelves are just darker because of the shadows, so even that could probably be more pronounced.

Anyway, the carpet. I hate it and want to remove it. The question becomes, what to do instead? My initial idea was to try and match the current tile, and just have it be one continuous floor. Almost no one I've talked to has thought that was a good idea. I had someone say that I should do a decorative narrow border along the edge of where the carpet is, and then go with something like a grey tile for the entire living room, so it's all tile, but the rooms are still distinct. The other popular opinion is to lay down the fake wood flooring. Maybe that would look good? Anyone have any opinions?

I imagine I will get another large L shaped couch, or possibly just a curved one, and a dining table in the room. The Tv is mounted to the wall, and I put a surround sound system in which all wires to the front of the room, so the layout will probably stay pretty much the same.

Now let me show off my game room!

Remember that shitty doorframe I talked about? Here it is from inside the living room. I cut a massive hole in between the living room and the garage, and installed french doors. I still need to sand the frame, fill the holes, and paint it, plus paint the doors, but here's what it looks like while standing in the living room. The doorway is exactly centered to the middle of the living room, as is the TV on the opposite wall.



As you can see, I painted the room a chocolate brown, painted the floor with garage epoxy, installed a ceiling fan, recessed lighting for brighter lights, and wall lighting for dimmer. I also build a wall to the right to cover the garage door entrance, and a wall to the left to create a 5ftx15ft storage hallway not shown in the pictures. To the left is an arcade machine I bought a few years ago with the intend or gutting it and making it a MAME cabinet, then to the right you can see my 6 person LAN desk which currently almost never gets used for anything but my personal PC, which is that 30inch you can see basking the nice chair in light, ha!



And looking further to the right is my newest addition. A projector and smartboard, both wired back to the LAN desk.



So, thats my game room that I'm super happy about. Well, minus the fact I have no pool table, air hockey machine, etc! I need more garage!

But, back to the first question, What do I do about my living room?

I want your game room, and your LAN table. I'm jealous sir.

Replace the carpet with hard wood. If you don't want to pay for full on hardwood, find a good laminate (online prices will be far, far better). If you're looking for something that you're hoping someone other than you will install, I have no idea. Carpet will be the best price, but then you're replacing carpet with carpet.

Plus, I don't think the tiles are so bad.

Door is nicely done, by the way. Sand that shit up, and paint it right, and it's gold.

If you do have to re-tile that is one of the easier DIY projects and it's relatively cheap as well. You'd be surprised how many tile options places like Home Depot or Lowes have that are under $5 a square foot. You can definitely spend a lot more than that, especially at a specialty tile store, but there's a lot of stuff available for cheap that still looks good. I have absolutely zero DIY skills, I'd never attempt to put down a hardwood floor or carpet myself, but I've done tile. Tile has like 3 steps to it and it's damn near impossible to fuck it up. (believe me, I'd find a way to fuck it up if you could)

I would tear down the wall in your second picture and make that one big room. Then I'd expand the kitchen a little into your "dining room" area to make up for the lost wall space, but it seems like there is a hallway back there so that might not entirely work...

PLUMBING HELP!

Ok so I installed a new toilet this weekend, everything went fine. There is still a trace odor in the bathroom, that isn't sewer gas. I've been to laser focused on the toilet that I never checked the overflow drain in the sink. Last week, before all these issues popped up, my wife cleaned all the drains with baking soda/vinegar and I think this might of kicked stuff up.

Now my over flow drain is completely jammed. Due to the shape of the drain (horizontal entry, 90 degree turn down for 1/4" then 30 deg turn toward the drain I can't get an auger down there. The drain is part of the sink, and not an actual pipe. The sink is also part of the whole top of the vanity so I can't take it out and clean it manually. Plus the drain channel is actually a molded part of the basin underneath and I would be able to get in from the bottom of the sink.

Anyone have any tips of getting in there and cleaning it? I've done draino, augers, hangers, pipe cleaners and wire, baking soda/vinegar and nothing can get in there proper due to the angles.

I've see some WaterDrill thing on the net, but I don't see it available locally.

I'm tempted to get my air compressor our and shoot air down it to knock things loose or pick up one of those keyboard cleaning things to blow some air in there.