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I put LED tap lights under my cabinets and in my closets. Install with a Command strip, tap on/off as needed, replace the batteries like once a year. It's not the absolute most luxurious solution, but it looks almost identical and it cost $15. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JQKZMD4/
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Jan 19, 2022 01:48
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i like nice words
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The Slack Lagoon posted:I have a gas oven on its way out, but I think I'd like to replace it with electric. I have 100a service - is that enough to do an electric oven? Other big power draws are a condensing heat pump dryer and a central ac. Probably? The correct way to add a high-demand circuit is to do a full load calc for your service, but, especially with electric car chargers, nobody seems to do them. Electric range circuits are usually 50A @ 240v, but it'll never draw more than about half of that, even in Thanksgiving mode.
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Jan 19, 2022 02:00
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In today's episode of "I should've listened to Motronic," starring yours truly: I fought with Amerigas for 4 months about the initial propane bill (they filled the tank before I closed on the house and billed me for it) before finally caving because my wife was getting nervous. I should have told them to gently caress off and bought my own tank. Now it's winter, my tank is at 5%, I've been waiting for a delivery for over a week. They were supposed to come today but apparently "It was scheduled but there were no drivers available." Guess if they don't get their poo poo together by the end of the week we will let it go empty then get an emergency fill. If we go without the water heater that will suck, the other propane appliances are just nice-to-have (auxiliary furnace that supports heat pump for downstairs, and fireplace). The propane furnace is a Trane and only a few years old. The manual online isn't helpful but it looks like I can just turn it off by using the power switch or breaker and then shut off the gas valve, to prolong the little gas that I have...any issues with doing that? The manual has some warning about powering it off manually, something about if it's off for more than 3 hours you have to kill the thermostat for a while when you turn it back on?
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Jan 19, 2022 02:12
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Jan 19, 2022 03:02
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tater_salad posted:The general rule is somethign like 30% of your gross.. Honestly I'd do 30% of your take-home as to not be housepoor.. 35 is probably the upper limit as long as you're smart about it / already have yourself an emergency fund set up and some padding for poo poo. Had to give the relator and builder a range and an upper limit on what we want, and we are meeting with them next week, but it looks like our upper limit comes out to around 35% of take-home pay. Def seems like a lot compared to the ~8% of my take home Im currently paying, lol. But I will no longer live in the boonies with nothing around
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Jan 19, 2022 15:02
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The Slack Lagoon posted:I have a gas oven on its way out, but I think I'd like to replace it with electric. I have 100a service - is that enough to do an electric oven? Other big power draws are a condensing heat pump dryer and a central ac. I cant answer your direct question, but I just to dip in and encourage you to look at induction cooktops over traditional electric. I hated cooking on electric forever, but induction has been fantastic in every single respect.
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Jan 19, 2022 15:50
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fyallm posted:Had to give the relator and builder a range and an upper limit on what we want, and we are meeting with them next week, but it looks like our upper limit comes out to around 35% of take-home pay. Def seems like a lot compared to the ~8% of my take home Im currently paying, lol. But I will no longer live in the boonies with nothing around Look at your current monthly expenses and figure out where that delta in housing costs will come from. You could more in detail and look at what your budgets have been the last couple of years to really determine where your money is spent/saved and figure out what you can adjust/cut to afford the home you want or to set a more defined max value.
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Jan 19, 2022 16:03
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brugroffil posted:Look at your current monthly expenses and figure out where that delta in housing costs will come from. You could more in detail and look at what your budgets have been the last couple of years to really determine where your money is spent/saved and figure out what you can adjust/cut to afford the home you want or to set a more defined max value. For the most part just been building up my liquid emergency fund the past few years and its ballooned to where I feel comfortable and. And then if something comes up I've just been buying it and not having a set budget. Def going to switch around my spending habits as before I would just buy whatever without thinking and updated my Mint account and setting budgets and tracking what Im actually buying.
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Jan 19, 2022 16:17
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brugroffil posted:Look at your current monthly expenses and figure out where that delta in housing costs will come from. You could more in detail and look at what your budgets have been the last couple of years to really determine where your money is spent/saved and figure out what you can adjust/cut to afford the home you want or to set a more defined max value. Some advice I've given others (and followed myself).. If your current housing costs are lower, start transferring the difference to a savings account for a couple of months to see how well you can live on it. This way there's no impact to your bottom line if you end up that it's too difficult to do you still have that cash and a better sense of what you can afford. If it works out, you know you can afford it, AND you now have a nice buffer for moving in costs (I spent like 2-3 grand on random poo poo when I moved in. (Oh hey I guess I need a string trimmer too, Man these blinds are starting to add up, oh that should get painted, I need this tool I didn't have to complete a fix).
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Jan 19, 2022 16:19
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tater_salad posted:Some advice I've given others (and followed myself).. If your current housing costs are lower, start transferring the difference to a savings account for a couple of months to see how well you can live on it. This way there's no impact to your bottom line if you end up that it's too difficult to do you still have that cash and a better sense of what you can afford. If it works out, you know you can afford it, AND you now have a nice buffer for moving in costs (I spent like 2-3 grand on random poo poo when I moved in. (Oh hey I guess I need a string trimmer too, Man these blinds are starting to add up, oh that should get painted, I need this tool I didn't have to complete a fix). That's a good idea, I will move over the difference in mortgages from what i paying into a separate account each month and see where I am. Just scheduled a monthly transfer thanks!
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Jan 19, 2022 16:40
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There's obviously some fortune-teller future thoughts to consider, which I have no doubt based on how much you are already thinking about this. When we signed our mortgage 11 years ago we would have been broke if we went with the amount our banks actually pre-approved us for. What I really didn't expect is how much more money I would make by this point in my life, but also how expenses would also rise almost just as aggressively (god drat kids got into the picture).
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Jan 19, 2022 16:46
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I remember my dad telling me about buying their house, and he was floored by the numbers he was pre-approved for. I think he ended up buying at half of what the banks told him he could afford. I have two entirely separate questions: 1. I built a wood gate a few years ago using 1x6 pressure treated planks as the face. Now I need to build a matching fence on the other side of the house. The one issue I had when I built the gate was that the planks didn't have straight edges. (See severely exaggerated image for reference)  How does one square these boards off so all the edges aren't swimming everywhere? I'm really hoping you don't say "table saw," because I don't own one. 2. We're getting some bids for blowing out an exterior wall of the house and putting in a sliding glass door and a couple picture windows, as well as adding a typical exterior door. It will be at least a 3-panel sliding door, but might be more, depending on costs. I'm starting with Anderson and Pella, but will happily consider others. Anything important I should know about window brands, glass treatments, etc.?
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Jan 19, 2022 17:58
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You could do it with a hand saw or a jig but that would take WAY longer than a table saw. You can get small, cheap ones now that are good enough for a project like this.
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Jan 19, 2022 18:04
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You want a track saw or a circular saw with a long straight edge. A table saw would actually be a poor choice for this, since you don't have a straight surface to to run along the fence. LOL answer is a jointer plane.
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Jan 19, 2022 18:15
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The Wonder Weapon posted:I remember my dad telling me about buying their house, and he was floored by the numbers he was pre-approved for. I think he ended up buying at half of what the banks told him he could afford. What you're trying to do is make a rip cut, specifically for edge jointing (you don't need them as straight as "jointed" implies, but that's the idea). The cheapest way to do it with power tools is with a circular saw and a shop-made edge guide, but that's gonna be tricky and annoying. A table saw is the easiest way to do it, if you can get access to one. If you spend some time (a lot of time) picking through the stacks at HD/Lowes sighting down boards, you should be able to get enough boards that are straight enough.
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Jan 19, 2022 18:17
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I'd clamp an 8' level on it and run a circular saw down it using that as a guide. Idk if that's moronic in a way I don't realize, it's just how I was taught to do it and has worked pretty good for me. Alternately, snap a chalk line and follow the line real carefully, depending on how good you are with a saw you can get cuts that are within like 1/32" of perfectly straight.
Magres fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 18:26
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The Wonder Weapon posted:I remember my dad telling me about buying their house, and he was floored by the numbers he was pre-approved for. I think he ended up buying at half of what the banks told him he could afford. Back end DTI ((all of you debt service / gross income) x 100) standards used to be ignored or something like 75%, and front end ((mortgage payment / gross) x 100) approaching 50%. It's more like < 50% back end and < 28% front end in sane times. Just imagine 50% of your gross going to your mortgage and another 25% going to your credit card bills/auto loans. Gross, not net. There's really nothing left. Motronic fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 18:37
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NomNomNom posted:LOL answer is a jointer plane. Sorry I didn't make it clear. The gate boards are installed and done. That's not changing. The new fence I'm building I want to avoid the same problem. I haven't even purchased the boards yet. This work doesn't need to be done while the boards are attached to the fence already; I expected to do all this prior to installation. Does that change the answers? Using a long level sounds reasonable enough, but could be annoying to go through it all. (It's about 32 boards, both edges, all roughly 8' to 10'.)
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Jan 19, 2022 18:47
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The Dave posted:There's obviously some fortune-teller future thoughts to consider, which I have no doubt based on how much you are already thinking about this. Yeah we actually got approved for alot more but she said she will put down a lower amount for us. So leaving my 401k at max contribution and hsa at max contribution, the upper limit put me at 35% of monthly takehome pay for the PITI (mortgage monthly payment). I think I feel comfortable with that. But with moving the money to a different account while we wait will make me feel better.
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Jan 19, 2022 19:08
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The Wonder Weapon posted:This is violence With the power tools at the disposal of your average weekend warrior, the best operation would be to rip one edge using a circular saw and guide, then flip the board and run the newly straight edge along the fence of the table saw.
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Jan 19, 2022 21:19
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cheese grater
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Jan 20, 2022 00:29
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Well we ran out of propane today, that got a truck out pretty quickly. Not looking forward to seeing the bill though.
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Jan 20, 2022 00:31
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Tyro posted:Well we ran out of propane today, that got a truck out pretty quickly. Not looking forward to seeing the bill though. Out of curiosity are you in a community that signed some kind of contract with a propane supplier? When I was house shopping in Austin, I learned about these sorts of places being built that bar the home owner from installing electric appliances (I guess to try to cover the cost of the propane for the entire neighborhood, but also to line the pockets of the suppliers, imo). My coworkers at the time had shown me their heating bills in the winter and they were horrendous vs my natural gas bill. I know it would be pretty expensive, but long term would upgrading your electrical service and getting a heat pump and electric appliances be cheaper or feasible?
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Jan 20, 2022 00:59
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MetaJew posted:When I was house shopping in Austin, I learned about these sorts of places being built that bar the home owner from installing electric appliances (I guess to try to cover the cost of the propane for the entire neighborhood, but also to line the pockets of the suppliers, imo).
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Jan 20, 2022 01:21
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MetaJew posted:Out of curiosity are you in a community that signed some kind of contract with a propane supplier? Nope, no HOA at all but we are in a neighborhood where natural gas is not an option. Lots of folks have propane for various things. Most of my neighbors have contracts with less lovely companies though or own their own tanks. My primary heat is actually electric heat pumps, the propane furnace is supplemental.
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Jan 20, 2022 01:23
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Weird things happen when Hank Hill runs the HOA. And builders either don't want to pay to extend natural gas service or the service cannot extend to them. Either way, some coworkers had heating bills of $300-700 for propane when I think my natural gas bill was under $100-- maybe slightly more. I can't recall.
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Jan 20, 2022 01:26
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MetaJew posted:And builders either don't want to pay to extend natural gas service or the service cannot extend to them. In many areas it's the latter. Especially new developments. It's hugely expensive to upgrade mains and they just don't have the capacity and don't see the payout/legislated on their ability to build new infrastructure. Seems like a dying industry/fuel source. It's hard to commit to projects that only pay out after 30 years in this climate when you're the dinosaur.
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Jan 20, 2022 01:50
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Motronic posted:In many areas it's the latter. Especially new developments. It's hugely expensive to upgrade mains and they just don't have the capacity and don't see the payout/legislated on their ability to build new infrastructure. It really sucks because I love my natural gas stove, the furnace works well, and running any of it on propane would be 3x or more expensive. Guess I need to start developing that induction top retrofit kit on my vintage stove 
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Jan 20, 2022 02:14
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Not sure of the best place to put this but figure this is good enough. Can anyone recommend the right type of screw anchor for attaching something to the side of an Ikea Kallax shelf? https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/kallax-shelf-unit-white-80275887/ Seems to be hollow core fiberboard material so I'm not sure what the best anchor would be. I am building a small shelf to attach to the side of the unit and want to fasten it with screws.
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Jan 20, 2022 14:23
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That Works posted:Not sure of the best place to put this but figure this is good enough. If it's the hollow/honeycomb cardboard thing they use (like the tops of the Lack tables) there is no reasonable way to attach things to it with any kind of anchor. The way they attach things to this is by adding a piece of actual wood inside of the laminate in the area where things are to be attached. This is obviously pretty unpractical for you to do to an assembled unit. The only way I'd think you could pull this off in some limited way would be to "sandwich" pieces of wood on each side and both them together.
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Jan 20, 2022 14:57
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That Works posted:Not sure of the best place to put this but figure this is good enough.
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Jan 20, 2022 14:59
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:If where you want the shelf is attaching to something that feels like solid particleboard, any ole coarse thread wood screw should be fine. If you think it is thin fiberboard with 'Honeycomb structure paper filling' there, probably a through bolt with a big washer is best. No idea how much of a side load something like that can handle tho. I should think not much. The honeycomb construction is a pretty smart way to reduce weight and materials, but will only stand up to an evenly distributed load. Any force strong enough to pierce the top is going to go right through. Try to imagine putting weights on a pencil eraser: I feel like 20 pounds would break though. That's probably about 4PSI. In short, that honeycomb stuff isn't made to handle this application.
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Jan 20, 2022 15:14
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Could you do something like: Lay on side, drill out spots you want to attach item to, fill that honeycomb void with some thin running wood filler using holes created to then have something with more purchase?
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Jan 20, 2022 15:31
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Thanks all. The shelf isn't gonna hold much weight, its more of a step for a cat to climb on to get to a cat bed that's on the top of the unit. I think given all this I'll just put some large fender washers on each side of the piece and run a long bolt through and cinch it up that way. The shelf will have braces running down at a 45 angle to the piece so the weight will press in that direction against the side wall. Should be fine given the weight involved I think.
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Jan 20, 2022 16:01
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Yeah that should work. Especially if the shelf is supported and not floating.
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Jan 20, 2022 16:17
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Isn't the cat going to jump on to it? That seems like a lot of force. Also can't a cat just jump straight to the top?
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Jan 20, 2022 16:57
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MetaJew posted:And builders either don't want to pay to extend natural gas service or the service cannot extend to them. Many new developments around here (that can't/won't get NG) have shared propane infrastructure for the entire community, not individual tanks in yards. Since all new development pretty much requires an HOA anyway, the HOA can manage billing individual homes for their actual usage. In theory, the propane should be really cheap when bought in bulk like that. Multi 1000 gallon fill up contracts with a supplier, and the ability to shop around and fill mostly in Summer, should get it pretty close to natural gas prices. Of course, that assumes there's no collusion between the HOA board and their cousin Eddie's propane dealer.
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Jan 20, 2022 17:13
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B-Nasty posted:Many new developments around here (that can't/won't get NG) have shared propane infrastructure for the entire community, not individual tanks in yards. Since all new development pretty much requires an HOA anyway, the HOA can manage billing individual homes for their actual usage.
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Jan 20, 2022 17:18
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I put a bar of hat hooks on the side of a kallax. I used drywall anchors and filled the cell with gorilla glue foam to support them. It's been about a year and they seem fine.
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Jan 20, 2022 17:24
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| # ? May 31, 2024 19:40 |
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The sides of the Kallax shelf is fairly solid particle board, you should be able to use any old screws for a cat shelf. I've had 3 guitars hanging off mounts screwed directly into some kallax shelves for several years now and they're still snug and stable.
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Jan 20, 2022 17:27
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