Home Zone: I see a baseboard and I want it painted black.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Hobbies, Crafts, & Houses > Home Zone: I see a baseboard and I want it painted black.

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

are lath and plaster walls backed by regular studs usually? or how does that work? my house was built in the 1920s and then got an addition added in the 70s and got "partially" remodeled sometime after that. I bought it in 2001ish. 1 of the rooms is lath and plaster with cheap faux wood paneling over top of it, which makes the walls all wavy, and I've been thinking about trying to fix it, but I've never messed with any of that stuff before. is this something that will be extremely annoying to replace/fix?

# ¿ Sep 20, 2023 16:00

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 02:16

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

Motronic posted:

Define "regular"? In the 20s depending on area it could be anything from true dimensional lumber to traditional finished lumber or anything in between and the spacing could be anything from "regular" 16" to something wider like 24" to nearly random no measurement devices involved.

I would plan for a complete removal of that wall including lathe, re-framing, and drywalling the new framing. If it ends up being less work than that, great! But for good results it probably will not be.

maybe a dumb question, but if I'm reframing the wall, I can just do that in small sections at a time while the existing wall is there, right? like put up a piece and then cut a piece out, and continue in that sequence?

# ¿ Sep 20, 2023 19:02

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

FISHMANPET posted:

Also depends on what "wavy" means. From my house I'd take that to mean the paneling is maybe loose and not perfectly flush with the wall, but it could mean the walls themselves are noticeably wavy.

there are gaps in waves, where the ceiling meets the walls, of about a quarter inch in various spots. I assumed it was because the plaster job was uneven, but I have no idea because I've never looked under the paneling.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2023 19:07

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

The Dave posted:

Uh sure but you aren't really going to be saving time unless you are demoing a section and leaving the mess everywhere until you demo everything. Plaster and lathe is pretty messy when you start loving with it and I'd prefer to do it once and do cleanup once.

I'm more concerned since it's an exterior wall. I don't want to just knock a wall out and then have nothing be holding it up. I'm not a contractor so I don't know if that's a misplaced fear, but that was the first thing I thought when considering the framing being replaced.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2023 19:09

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

PainterofCrap posted:

I have seen lath & plaster demo many, many times.

There is no piecework, and you will be dumbfounded at the volume of debris.

Position a 5-yard dumpster (or every trash can that you can find or steal) outside, under the window.
Open the window put in a cheap box fan facing out & running full blast. Collect your instruments of destruction and the largest wet-vac you can find.
Say goodbye to your wife & family, you won't be seeing them for a while.
Tape the door seams.
Don clothing you no longer want, a respirator and eyepro; gloves & boots. Don't bother covering the floor, it's gone.

Tear down as much of the plaster & lath as you can without burying yourself. Stop occasionally to dig yourself out/chuck debris out the window and question your life choices/existence of a supreme being.

Repeat until all of the big bits are gone. Shovel out what remains. Vacuum unto death. Then some more.

You will find plaster dust in the damndest places until you sell the house.

There is a reason I chose to spend $350 on diamond hole-saw blades to cut almost eighty 2" holes through asbestos shingle siding to blow in insulation from outside rather than attempt to breach my plaster walls.

I'll have my lawyer draft the divorce papers now in preparation

# ¿ Sep 21, 2023 05:02

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

Danhenge posted:

I wouldn't use a door to door company to do solar leasing. I wouldn't honestly do solar leasing at all! Some of these companies fold and then the solar panels stop working and nobody will service them or touch them, because they're not your property.

if the company folds, who owns the panels???

# ¿ Sep 21, 2023 12:51

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

Danhenge posted:

Great question.

It's possible that "nobody will touch them" is an exaggeration, but solar leasing puts you in a really weird spot where somebody else's property is semi-permanently attached to your roof.

Sometimes these companies also play weird arbitrage games where they only turn the panels on when it's particularly valuable for them to sell the energy produced so you don't even get the full effect of your panels.

someone should start a company that services orphaned panels. if anyone tries to sue, just fold that company too!

# ¿ Sep 21, 2023 13:19

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

VelociBacon posted:

The company would go into bankruptcy and the panels would become property of debtors.

so there IS a way to finally actually own the panels... 🤔

# ¿ Sep 21, 2023 15:38

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

Sirotan posted:

Would you care to share what terms you were given for this loan? I took out a HELOC for my deck/kitchen work and yeah, the interest rate is pretty high!!

how high is pretty high? I've got like 60k in equity in my home right now and there's stuff I wanna do to it....I don't wanna cash out refi because we're at like 3.6% currently and the last I checked (last year? earlier this year?) the rate was almost double that. apparently Chase isn't currently doing HELOC, at least that's what I also saw last I checked.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2023 16:29

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

Eeyo posted:

Ok I've been reading about insulation for a bit. I checked my attic, looks like we've mostly got 5-ish inches of fiberglass batts between the joists, some random wood slabs haphazardly slapped here and there (with cardboard under them for some reason?), and one more layer of batts piled up in about 1/3 to 1/2 the rest of the area. From what I can tell we should have like three times as much as that (going by https://www.energystar.gov/saveathome/seal_insulate/identify_problems_you_want_fix/diy_checks_inspections/insulation_r_values, we live near Chicago), so I'm going to look around for insulation contractors.

Do the insulation contractors usually also do air sealing? I've read that it's important to get the fixtures and such sealed before you slap on insulation.

What are people's experiences with the different types of insulation? Like blown vs batts? And material.

I trap the occasional mouse in the garage so pests are of moderate concern.

whenever you find/choose someone for this, if they're good, I'd love their info. I'm also a chicagoon.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2023 16:47

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

does a shower fan have to vent to outside? I have a bathroom that has an alcove thing above the shower, and there's a fan that goes into it from the shower, but it doesn't go anywhere but into the alcove and that's it. also the fan/light that's there is from the 70s it looks like.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2023 03:04

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

my house needs a complete rewiring and repiping. it sucks rear end.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2023 15:34

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

Arsenic Lupin posted:

I thiiiink they're waiting to hear from us on whether the denial from the neighbor is definite. Wall-building neighbor isn't a bully, he just doesn't listen to opinions other than his own. He thinks I'm a pushover, and he's right.

Tell him I'm gonna beat him up

# ¿ Jan 10, 2024 20:28

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

100 HOGS AGREE posted:

you got to think of some way to make him think it's his idea

"All my smartest friends love getting beat up! Would really respect anyone who was brave enough to choose to do that....just saying..."

# ¿ Jan 10, 2024 21:21

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

Is there a thread like this, but for cars? I tried to search but I'm on mobile and the search didn't pan out upon a cursory glance

Edit:nvm I found it

hark fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Feb 17, 2024

# ¿ Feb 17, 2024 18:34

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

steckles posted:

If you live in a place where you can get Synko Concrete Fill then repairing plaster, when the lath is okay or minimally damaged, is about the easiest wall repair you can do. If the lath is damaged enough that it's broken a bunch of keys, then you're in for a fun time. We just rewired our house which involved cutting an repairing a half meter high trench along most walls plus a million bonus holes, so I got to experience the whole plaster repair gamut from "blorp some quickset over it" to "cut the wall out and hang drywall". Very amusing, would not recommended.

My entire house is lath and plaster all around except for the addition they did some decades after it was built. I'd really like to get rid of it, but it's apparently a gigantic job and I'm very tired.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2024 21:32

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

Cyrano4747 posted:

Good news every one! We found the leak!

Bad news everyone! It’s almost certainly in the slab!

Edit: whoops that was for the other home thread. Whatever. Works here too.

What's the other home thread?

# ¿ Feb 23, 2024 00:15

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

I would like to make my house worse

# ¿ Mar 7, 2024 16:58

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

I had actually day dreamed about doing this (this ceiling thing) to a section of my house so I could easily access it for extra storage space and now that desire (to ruin my house) has been reawakened

# ¿ Mar 7, 2024 17:52

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

GlyphGryph posted:

Let us ruin our homes, together, in solidarity.

Hell yeah, way ahead of you, goon!

quote:

Anyway, this is all hypothetical far future stuff I'll probably never get to because I'm going to be spending all my money redoing chunks of the foundation anyway.

I will also be doing this in solidarity, just by chance. Gotta love living on what is now a flood plane. Thanks, climate change!

# ¿ Mar 7, 2024 18:31

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

It's true though. After becoming a homeowner, I can't yank it straight the way I used to. I need that sideways motion in order to finish.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2024 18:44

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

GlyphGryph posted:

This, exactly! Y'all are trying to convince me not to do this, when you could be getting content. What's wrong with you folks?

Edit: Actually, something interesting to ask. Would the open ceiling idea even be legal? Like half the time when I come up with an idea for the house, looking into it I find it would be very illegal. Like, apparently looking into it, my idea for an attic loft area opening into the living room would apparently be illegal, which sucks!

Anyway, I'll post some pics when I'm done ruining my walls and y'all can rate my first ever paint job. Do not mock me for the terrible plaster work, that was the previous owner and I finally figure out the bulge is where a window must have been at some point. No idea why they removed it.

Unless you're getting inspected, I wouldn't really worry about the legality of it. How could they even know unless they went inside? Or saw the collapsed roof from outside???

# ¿ Mar 9, 2024 04:17

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

GlyphGryph posted:

Apologies for the upcoming rant, but this struck a nerve. Feel free to ignore it.

I've saved and scrimped for 28 years to be able to afford this place, and I recognize I'm lucky even then to have pulled it off. But the entire point is that it is now my home. Making it more like how I want it and better suited to what I would enjoy and how I want to live (assuming it doesn't cause essential structural or functional failures) is not, despite the opinion of most folks in this thread, actually ruining or "destroying' it, even if it results in a house that you would yourself not want to live in. I am completely okay with responses correcting me about how stuff would actually work, about how expensive something would be or how much work it would be, if something would be unsafe, and so on. That's fine. But a bunch of this poo poo isn't any of that, it's some variant of "wanting the kind of home you want is stupid and you're stupid for wanting it" and "you'll ruin the value of the house".

I didn't buy this place as a goddamn investment, and I know you didn't say it specifically but its sort of a running theme for the criticism I've been getting the last year. The absolute worst part of home ownership so far (because., I guess, it's the only bad thing I didn't expect going into it) is the number of people eager to tell me how much I'm ruining the investment that it isn't by turning this place into somewhere I'd enjoy living more. The "you're stupid for wanting the things you want bit" is, obviously, a criticism I've received regularly for my entire loving life. The whole loving reason I spent those years getting to this point is because I thought I'd finally be free of having to live in spaces designed for other people in ways I loving abhor, and it's actually incredibly frustrating to have people act like I'm still obligated to bow to tastes of others and I'm an idiot for liking or wanting the things I like or want. I don't want things to be done badly, I just want the things I like to be done well even if other people think liking them is bad. And poo poo, man, if you think this poo poo is stupid, you should hear some of the other plans I have for this place.

Anyway, sorry, rant over.

I very much want to hear the other plans you have for the place. Also, I have a fantasy of making a super not-up-to-code hidden alcove in my attic some day. It would be dumb and a lot of work and probably "ruin" a lot of things along the way, but it's something I've wanted to do since I was a little kid, and if I ever get the motivation to do it, why not? I'm at least physically an adult, and I own this house, so why not do whatever poo poo I want to it?

And now, on an only partially related topic;

I have an "attic" currently, that only has one (that I know of?) access point. The fridge sits in a cutout in the kitchen and it's the only place in the entire house that has drop ceiling above it. If you push the panels up, in the actual ceiling, there's a hatch to get into that area. I have only peaked my head in there once, but never really gone inside.

If I wanted to cut another hatch in a different room so that I could more easily access this area (potentially for storage?), would this be more work than I'm thinking, as far as just cutting out a square in the ceiling, cleaning that up, putting a small hinged door on there, calling it a day?

# ¿ Mar 9, 2024 14:06

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

Get a self leveling laser level! I have a great Bosch one. Don't remember the model. But it's great

# ¿ Mar 10, 2024 04:02

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

Hello goons!

So I have a concrete porch that sticks out of the front of my house. It's holding up it's own section of roof with wrought iron supports that are pretty rusted to poo poo in a lot of spots. Also, the concrete is cracking and separating in a section that starts from the corner and is making it's way around the front.

my questions is, what kind of person can/should I get to try to fix this? General contractor? Concrete person? Iron person? All of them glued together?

I have this nagging fear in the back of my mind that the whole front of the house is gonna fall down and I'm gonna have to move out because they're going to condemn it.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2024 17:24

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 02:16

hark: May 10, 2023; I'm sleep

Deviant posted:

unrelated, this looks almost identical to the house i grew up in and it is loving my brain *up*

Come home. We've missed you.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2024 22:05

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