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Here's my stupid drywall patching guide from the last thread: Hi, it's me, a Previous Owner, and this is my Drywall Patching Guide! I've been inexplicably trying to replace the ceiling fan in my kids' room for MONTHS. This is the kind of task that we POs specialize in, and this is why it has gone wrong in almost every way it could've gone wrong. I'll skip the part where the cheap fans I was buying kept failing due to defects and skip right to the part where I finally registered that the old fan was installed in a regular ol' ceiling electrical box and probably not a ceiling fan rated box. "Ah!" my DIY PO brain declared, "Easy! I can swap that out no problem!" There was a problem. The fixture box was likely not fan-rated, but it WAS braced into the joists with cross lumber. Except there was lumber on the side AND above the box, so I couldn't push it into the ceiling to loosen up the big gently caress off nails that were anchoring it. Instead, I had to yank it out downward. Through the ceiling. "You did nothing wrong and you are innocent," said my PO brain. "It was the PREVIOUS OWNER that screwed it up." Once I got the old box out, I used a drywall saw to clean the hole and trim it square. Only THEN did I start taking pictures because I can't even do that right. Here it is!  You can see the raw power of multiple layers, types, and vintages of wood elements. It's very wood up there. I'm set for wood. The genuinely nice thing here, though, is that I have a lot of wood backing to anchor a chunk of drywall. Still, I'd prefer at least 3 if not the whole outline of the hole for anchoring, so we'll address that later. But first! Let's slap an actual fan box up there:  So far I'm an expert. I actually don't like this box but I didn't learn that until I was all done so lol. Here's a wider shot so you can see the exact same hole but from farther away:  Good. Next, I need to fill the hole with ramen noodles. Or some spare drywall. Either one will work, probably. First I needed a template, so I employed the builder's grade Crayola marker:    Template made! Will it work? Previous Owners never know, we just saw someone do something like that on HGTV once.  I used a jig saw that I bought from a man in a parking lot but you can use a drywall saw because I will not let you borrow my jig saw or I can give you the parking lot guy's number, it looked like he had some more stuff in his station wagon, just let me know.  Long story short, my template was perfect. It was so perfect that I had to go back outside 3 more times to trim off parts of the drywall that were too big. Perfect! Ok, now for that 3rd anchor edge. For that, I used some scrap wood I had, a 2x4 or a 1x4 or something along those lines. Whatever looked like it was substantial enough to take screws.  You slide that guy up in there with the other wood, adding your own addition to the wood layers in your ceiling so the archaeologists can determine how old your house was by counting the wood rings. Then you use drywall screws to secure the wood hunk into your ceiling:  "But there are big black screws in my ceiling now!" you say. Yes there are. Let's put some more in there now as we install the drywall chunk:  You want to get the piece of drywall nice and secure in the space, and make sure the drywall screw heads are sunk in but not bustin' through. Try to get it as flush with the surrounding drywall as you can, but we're gonna pack it with my daughter's yellow Playdoh later, so that bit doesn't matter as much. As long as it's not inset or proud by some huge amount. Inset is better than proud.  Or at least, that's what I'm going with because MY drywall patch was inset by a bunch on one side and I'm a Previous Owner so I'm right. Next, you use some kind of drywall tape to tape the seams, and some kind of joint compound or drywall plaster to patch over the entire stupid dumb area. The main trick here is you need to tape and mud over MUCH larger of an area than you want to, ruining any kind of texture treatment and paint job. This is the required punishment you signed up for when you thought you could simply change out a fixture. How dare you. Here's my patch taped up with a mesh drywall tape. I think the mesh holds on to the joint compound better or something, who knows.  I used a bucket of All Purpose Joint Compound that's been sitting in my garage in a plastic bag for the past year from the last time I had to fill a ceiling hole. I'm sure it's still good:  Step one of the mudding process, slop a bunch of compound onto your gross dad foot:  Then spread the compound over the patch, seams, and all the way past the tape. Cover everything and fill the cracks. Smooth it out as best you can and pay attention to the outer edges where you need to feather it outward as best you can to thin it out and make the transition as smooth as possible. Basically, you don't want any really obvious terrain changes between old ceiling and new. Wait however long the container says to wait, then wet-sand it with a wet sanding sponge:  Then wipe it clean of dust, and do it again. Repeat the process for 2-3 coats. If you do too many coats, you'll start to build up thickness pretty quickly and you'll have some kind of strange mound shaped architectural feature and your MLS photos will get featured on ugly house blogs, which is the true stamp of excellence for any Previous Owner.  Once you think you have enough crusty poo poo up there (use your uneducated judgement), it's time to re-texturize. I thought I'd be clever and do this texture-in-a-can orange peel poo poo that I also had in my garage for over a year:  But when I tried to test it out by spraying it haphazardly into the air in my front yard, the nozzle failed, the stuff oozed out and then the plastic trigger cap completely broke in my hand. So I watched a YouTube video narrated by a woman who never showed her face who was fixing her own ceiling hole. She used joint compound and a plastic bag with her hand in it to dab peaks in the mud and then lightly knocked them down with a scraper. So I did that instead. Here's a shot of it before it dried:  The main point here is if you have some kind of applied texture, you gotta match that texture. If you're lucky, maybe you only have paint texture from the roller, in which case, just paint! Oh, that's right; you have to paint the whole loving ceiling or it will never match:  You can see the dried texture there. Since you know what to look for, you can see the edges of the repair, and that's because I did 3 coats of mud and THEN I did the texture on top of that. I probably should've just done 2 base coats and then the texture layer for the final coat and it wouldn't have been quite so raised. You can only see it if you're looking for it, though, and that's the Previous Owner Good Enough Guarantee! Here's the whole thing after I painted it:   And finally, after 2 failed units (don't worry, I left ENTHUSIASTIC 1-star reviews), here's the finished ~1 hour job that took me several weeks:  I loving hate ceiling fans.
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Oct 19, 2020 18:04
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 16:11 |
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tater_salad posted:Ceiling fan medallion. To commemorate the time you said fuckit I'm not going to deal with this poo poo. Yeah, that's fair enough. That is the TRUE previous owner fixit.
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Oct 21, 2020 00:43
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Check local codes where applicable, too.
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Oct 30, 2020 21:04
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Shower waterproofing systems and their pros/cons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0KkcorhcPM
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Nov 23, 2020 18:21
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Rhyno posted:So, back to this for a moment. My basement doorway is a fully finished frame Installing a prehung door is pretty straightforward once you are aware of the steps and once you pop the trim off and are able to see the actual opening. It's basically insert door, shim it plumb, screw it in, reinstall trim. I did my front door which had a few extra steps due to weatherproofing and wrestling with a threshold that was too deep and even then it was still pretty straightforward.
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Dec 8, 2020 18:43
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PENETRATION TESTS posted:Is there some way for me to trace out the HVAC ducting in my house without punching holes in walls? I'd think you of all people would be ok with punching holes in your walls.
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Dec 16, 2020 10:04
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Sounds like a replacement would probably be best. We had our 15-yearer die the week before Thanksgiving and apparently they're only expected to last 15-20 years anyway.
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Dec 20, 2020 04:25
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If you get pegboard, go out of your way to get the 1/4 inch thick stuff. Most of the "pegboards suck bro" sentiments are from people who just buy what's in stock at the big box place which is almost always thinner and easier to break. Obviously not applicable if you get metal or plastic.
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Dec 25, 2020 03:35
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The collar that butts up to the wall is most often just attached with silicone caulk and not actually mechanically secured. I would try to get the collar to move and see if that reveals anything? There's absolutely a way to dismantle it without grinding it to dust, but they do hide them.
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Feb 19, 2021 20:13
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Yeah, it's annoying that the valves in the wall and the fixture outside aren't hot swappable. Definitely a factor when choosing what to install. Either gotta pick a brand that's gonna last 15 years or pick a brand that has easy replacements available.
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Feb 20, 2021 00:54
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Is it just melted ice from when it defrosted while it was off? I believe modern fridges still defrost, they just drain into a tray underneath. It may just be runoff from that.
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Feb 24, 2021 04:15
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There are also in-line exhaust fans that are kind of able to vent 2 bathrooms at once. The Y connector happens BEFORE the fan, and the fan is in the attic.
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Mar 4, 2021 03:52
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A kiss.
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Mar 11, 2021 22:29
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I think he means nail it vertically into the ceiling but next to the tile. There is no way to hammer into tile without destruction.
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Mar 19, 2021 14:20
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I can't imagine trying to do anything more than small trim repairs without a nailer. If you're doing anything more than a single room, it's probably worth the cost, even if you just sell it afterwards.
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May 3, 2021 20:25
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I don't understand the question, what's wrong with it?
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May 4, 2021 21:05
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Used drywall anchors are to be pushed into the wall where they become furniture for the Borrowers.
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May 11, 2021 20:01
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Paint over all outlets and switches so they match the walls. Make sure to REALLY cake it on over screw heads to get paint into all of the nooks and crannies.
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May 22, 2021 23:35
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Sand it well, hit it with tack cloth, use a primer, and paint that bitch.
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May 24, 2021 14:26
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Wyze continues to be the least off-putting IoT company to me, but I mostly just have a couple exterior cams because people mess with our poo poo a couple times a year. I believe they have doorbells and other junk too, though. Edit: They're still IoT and therefore still gonna hand over your poo poo if asked, but you can also use them without a subscription and record locally and they're cheap. mutata fucked around with this message at 23:41 on May 26, 2021 |
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May 26, 2021 23:34
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We got ours because cars drive by and do poo poo, so I wanted video of the cars, but mostly because we have a neighbor who lets their untrained giant dog occasionally escape their backyard and she's charged us and gone after us before and if poo poo goes down I want evidence. They've had animal control called on them before (not by us, by other neighbors who have had encounters). The usual suburban nonsense, in other words. mutata fucked around with this message at 02:44 on May 27, 2021 |
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May 27, 2021 02:42
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We just got a door knocker. 
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May 27, 2021 20:32
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Recip saw is gonna be too intense, I think. Oscillating multi tools have grout blades you can get, or just a regular grout scraping tool would do fine with some elbow grease.
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Jun 8, 2021 02:34
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This is why Lego and Ikea have dumped a ton of time and effort into codifying and polishing the best possible way to present instructions without words and yeah, it's pretty hard and even they make confusing stuff all the time, lol.
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Jun 9, 2021 16:56
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lol yikes.
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Jun 16, 2021 22:59
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Sounds like lovely LED bulbs. Or you have some kind of super vision.
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Jul 9, 2021 20:30
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Quit pissin' into your AC.
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Jul 9, 2021 21:37
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You can also buy rollerblade style wheels for your chairs that are smoother and easier on floors.
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Jul 26, 2021 15:44
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Oh, lol. I misread what happened. Crazy.
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Jul 26, 2021 15:52
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See also: California patch. That hole is probably fillable with just a patch kit. It'll come with mesh tape to hold the compound.
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Jul 29, 2021 19:15
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The spray on can does ok, just don't let it sit for forever before you use it. You can try a thick-nap roller when you paint. My walls seem like they're orange peel textured but it's just paint with a 5/8ths inch roller. Also, what you lack in skill you can make up with lots and lots and lots of sanding before you prime and paint.
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Jul 29, 2021 19:25
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Chances are they'll just separate from the grout/caulk when you start moving the cabinets a bit. Otherwise you can get a grout removal tool, but then you'll have to regrout/recaulk that area. I'd just give it a try and wiggle that part of the cabinet carefully during demo and see if it would just separate. There's a thin little line of grout touching the cabinets, but a bunch of thinset attaching the tiles to the wall, so that's probably what's gonna win.
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Jul 30, 2021 19:41
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You could try automotive clear coat. You can get some in a spray can that are pretty close to the professional car paint stuff.
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Aug 23, 2021 18:02
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Very nice. I hope there are 6 different passports, all with different aliases and nations but your picture, $100,000 in cash in various denominations, and a burner phone stashed behind that picture.
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Aug 28, 2021 03:54
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If I had that many leaves I would be happy to give business to a local lawn care company. Thumbtack is great for finding such people. I bet it wouldn't even be that expensive.
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Dec 19, 2021 02:10
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Victorian England mansion?
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Jan 13, 2022 22:08
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Rip it off in a rage. Fashion it into a blade. Use it to exact your campaign of revenge culminating in the destruction of the contractor responsible.
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Mar 13, 2022 18:27
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lol what's goin' on in here guys?
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Aug 9, 2022 15:51
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Get a wired wall phone with a coily cord and install it proper.
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Sep 28, 2022 03:53
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 16:11 |
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There's a bit more wiggle to them in my experience, but they're good enough for pretty much everything except woodworking or finish work.
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Nov 12, 2022 21:04
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