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That sounds sane
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Jan 11, 2020 22:39
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Speaking of sanity checks... I've been having an idea to move the basement laundry to the first floor, and everyone I've talked to agrees it'd be a good idea, but I want to verify with The Internet that I won't be tanking the already fairly low value of the house further. House is 2 story colonial with unfinished basement, 120 years old. Washer and dryer in the basement. There's a first floor bathroom with small stand up shower, with all bedrooms and full bath upstairs. We haven't used the shower since we moved in 5 years ago when I was doing a little work in the upstairs shower. I'm thinking of removing the shower, removing a small closet, and there's a bulkhead that runs up the wall with all plumbing and the main waste stacks. I'm hoping when we break that open we can make the main part of the bathroom a little bigger, and then get the W&D side by side, maybe put some cabinets above it. I'm thinking removing a 1st floor shower for 1st floor W&D would be the better move? Anything I'm not accounting for?
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Jan 14, 2020 18:36
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Are there any bedrooms on the first floor? Old homes are a crap shoot since they were designed so long ago. My sister has a 1916 house so I feel your pain. It's your house, and putting them back in the basement and putting a shower back in wouldn't be the end of the world, so I guess if it improves your quality of life it might be worth the hassle.
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Jan 14, 2020 18:45
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MY WIFE and I have been thinking about replacing the bushes/shrubs in our back/side yard, maybe moving the hedges in our front yard a bit. Are there any quick ways to tell a bad landscaping company from a good one? Does anyone have suggestions on things they wish they did/didn't do? Do I just contact a few companies that neighbors recommend and see what quotes they give us? Is this something I can do for cheap?
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Jan 14, 2020 18:50
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I would be pretty cautious about winnowing down the number of bathrooms you have, old houses already tend to have fewer than the preferred number. How many bedrooms is the house? We have a 2 story with 4 bedrooms and 1.5 baths, and our long term plan is to put a shower/bath into the first floor half bath. If its a smaller house maybe that's less of a concern. One thing to consider is that having a full bathroom on the first floor is important if anyone living there has mobility issues and may be restricted/unable to use stairs easily. You'd still have the toilet at least, but it's something to think about. This also kind of depends on if the first floor is viable as a living space at all (ie, not if its all open plan common rooms) or if the house itself would exclude someone (ie, you have flights to even get in). If I were you I'd try to figure out if there was a way to get the laundry in without losing the shower, but maybe it's not possible. If not I'd rather keep the bathroom and the laundry in the basement, but there are a lot of variables going into that.
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Jan 14, 2020 18:50
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I love basement bathroom shacks like you see in post war boom houses. You can just absolutely destroy the shitter and no one cares.
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Jan 14, 2020 19:01
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Ashcans posted:I would be pretty cautious about winnowing down the number of bathrooms you have, old houses already tend to have fewer than the preferred number. How many bedrooms is the house? We have a 2 story with 4 bedrooms and 1.5 baths, and our long term plan is to put a shower/bath into the first floor half bath. If its a smaller house maybe that's less of a concern. 3 bedrooms upstairs, no bedrooms on the first floor. ~1700sq ft, and there's steps to get into the house no matter where you come in from, 4-5 steps on each door. There's the family room in the back open to the kitchen, formal dining room open to the front living room in the front of the house. Could probably do a makeshift bedroom, but it'd be pretty inconvenient for all involved I think. My parents are getting up there, so this is probably a valid concern. However, the shower is only about 30"x30", which I'd expect would cause a problem since you can't really wheel in or sit in the thing to shower. The bathroom overall is about 6'x6'.
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Jan 14, 2020 19:15
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A lot of the decision could also come down to what are you plans for the size of your family and how long you plan on staying in the house. If this is your forever house and laundry is a common annoyance, this could be a smart move for you. If you plan on having a kid of two however, you may want that second shower just to keep them out of your space as they get older. I grew up in a 1000 sq ft house with a single bath off of the kitchen, so my tolerance is a little higher. Though now I own a 3200 sq ft house with 2.5 bath and our master bath is exclusively for us.
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Jan 14, 2020 20:17
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Jealous Cow posted:I love basement bathroom shacks like you see in post war boom houses. You can just absolutely destroy the shitter and no one cares. 
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Jan 14, 2020 20:27
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Dunno if it's at all feasible but have you considered your options for putting the laundry up on the floor where the bedrooms are? Noise issues are low given nowadays you can get super quiet washers and driers, and depending on where you like to fold, it can be really nice not having to carry laundry up or down the stairs at all.
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Jan 14, 2020 20:39
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Leperflesh posted:Dunno if it's at all feasible but have you considered your options for putting the laundry up on the floor where the bedrooms are? Noise issues are low given nowadays you can get super quiet washers and driers, and depending on where you like to fold, it can be really nice not having to carry laundry up or down the stairs at all. Yeah, this. All of my dirty clothes are on the second floor. All clean clothes need to go to the second floor. We have the technology (water pans, water sensing shut offs, etc) to make this no big deal. I don't know why so many new homes (at least around here) are still being built with a first floor laundry. If I'm even doing a major reno on this house part of it will be to figure out how to put the laundry up here.
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Jan 14, 2020 20:49
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Residency Evil posted:MY WIFE and I have been thinking about replacing the bushes/shrubs in our back/side yard, maybe moving the hedges in our front yard a bit. Are there any quick ways to tell a bad landscaping company from a good one? Does anyone have suggestions on things they wish they did/didn't do? Do I just contact a few companies that neighbors recommend and see what quotes they give us? It's not exactly rocket science to remove/plant some shrubs and bushes, but sometimes they don't take to kindly to being moved. You may end up needing to replace them if the moved bushes fail to thrive. Be prepared for costs to do this to be more than you might think. Good landscape labor is going to be $15+/hr/man, and then you add on all the business overhead. Unlike other home improvement work, you could reduce the cost significantly if you do most of the dumb manual labor yourself (like removing the bushes), and the only difficulty there is putting in the work.
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Jan 14, 2020 21:06
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Our master bath is directly above the laundry room in our house and I've seriously considered putting a laundry chute in so many times.
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Jan 14, 2020 21:55
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Leperflesh posted:Dunno if it's at all feasible but have you considered your options for putting the laundry up on the floor where the bedrooms are? Noise issues are low given nowadays you can get super quiet washers and driers, and depending on where you like to fold, it can be really nice not having to carry laundry up or down the stairs at all. I'd like to put them on the 2nd floor, but it just doesn't work. The rooms are fairly small to start with, and the closets are 1900s tiny. The main bath upstairs is maybe 15'x6'? It'd take some major reno and lopping off half a bedroom to get laundry up there. It's just me an the wife, and there will be no children. We've been here 5 years already, and I honestly don't see us moving for a long while, if ever, unless I need to move to Chicago or something for work. I appreciate everyone's input!
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Jan 14, 2020 22:47
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Our house went from four bedroom to three bedroom when the laundry came upstairs. Clothes only leave upstairs if I'm wearing them or on a trip. Could have easily gone to the basement, but it's much more convenient. Still don't do laundry past bedtime but I get a lot of loads in and keep the hamper low. Only regret is I didn't put a utility sink in there, as it would have been a lot more work. I could have done it easily in the unfinished basement.
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Jan 15, 2020 06:54
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StormDrain posted:Only regret is I didn't put a utility sink in there, as it would have been a lot more work. I could have done it easily in the unfinished basement. I installed a laundry sink in our laundry room earlier this year (ran plumbing and drain.) In my opinion, you can never have too many sinks, and the laundry sink serves a specific purpose for pre-soaking stained clothes or hand washing. Draining the washer into the laundry sink has another huge benefit in allowing a reservoir to buffer the massive amount of water dumped by the washer. I never had an overflow of my standpipe when it drained directly, but I've heard of people that had slow draining/clog in a standpipe, and the washer just DGAF and pumps 20+gallons of water all over the floor. Even if the drain is totally clogged, the deep laundry sinks can hold an entire washer drain dump. Also, you can put those filter nets on the discharge hose to catch lint (it's amazing how much they catch), which prevents clogs and really helps septic systems.
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Jan 15, 2020 15:03
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Any horror stories/cautionary tales/encouragement regarding heated tile floors in a kitchen? Our EIK's dining area was an addition, which was just built over a crawlspace so it's mighty cold in the dining space during the winter months. It'd have a thermostat to control it, so hopefully once the floor gets into the 70s it'll be closer to the house-wide thermostat temp of 68 at face level. The contractors I've talked to have said there'd be no problems, but it never hurts to check.
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Jan 15, 2020 15:17
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MJP posted:Any horror stories/cautionary tales/encouragement regarding heated tile floors in a kitchen? Our EIK's dining area was an addition, which was just built over a crawlspace so it's mighty cold in the dining space during the winter months. It'd have a thermostat to control it, so hopefully once the floor gets into the 70s it'll be closer to the house-wide thermostat temp of 68 at face level. They're awesome, but electric is really expensive. If you already have a hot water source for heating use that.
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Jan 15, 2020 16:28
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We have natural gas forced air heating. I'm guessing that a water-heated floor from just a normal household hot water heater is not the best option?
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Jan 15, 2020 16:32
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MJP posted:We have natural gas forced air heating. I'm guessing that a water-heated floor from just a normal household hot water heater is not the best option? No, that won't really work out well. But a natural gas tankless heater could be a good option for you, either specifically for the floor or one of the DHW/comfort heat dual units if you're anywhere close in in need of replacing your (presumably tanked) water heater.
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Jan 15, 2020 17:19
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We just replaced our heater with a new conventional one last year. I'm a bit gun-shy about upgrading it to tankless. How much does it cost to buy and have a tankless heater installed, anyway?
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Jan 15, 2020 19:55
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I'd be looking at insulating the floor via the crawl space rather than floor heating. A few inches of closed cell foam down there should help out a ton. Improving the insulation of the building envelope is a better solution than throwing expensive heating/cooling at the situation.
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Jan 15, 2020 20:04
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skipdogg posted:I'd be looking at insulating the floor via the crawl space rather than floor heating. A few inches of closed cell foam down there should help out a ton. Improving the insulation of the building envelope is a better solution than throwing expensive heating/cooling at the situation. We had this looked at some time ago when we insulated the attic. I forget the reasoning, but our contractor - who's actually trustworthy - had some good logic as to why we shouldn't do it. The one big thing was that the entrance to the crawlspace was only a 12"x12" square in the basement, and there wasn't any insulation he'd trust that could get in there. He was referring to batting, mostly, but I don't recall if the vendors and contractors mentioned throwing closed-cell foam in there. Since we have a basement that gets moist in the summer, even with a dehumidifier I think the issue was that there'd be some kind of moisture and mold problem down the line.
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Jan 15, 2020 20:13
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Re: insulating your crawlspace, here is a post I made awhile back on that topic.Anonymous Zebra posted:I'm going to be silly and answer my own question. I spent the last 24 hours researching this question and came upon a lot of analysis back and forth on how crawlspace insulation should work. The best site to summarize the whole thing is this one: https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-009-new-light-in-crawlspaces?topic=resources/cond-crawlspaces
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Jan 16, 2020 22:10
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Has anyone here ever installed their own water heater in an existing house? I have an electric one so my main concern is how much of a bitch copper pipe soldering will be.
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Jan 16, 2020 22:18
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I replaced the water heater in my house when I moved in. It's a two-person job to install the heater though, and the exact rules for how it needs to be installed / secured and where its emergency drainage goes varies by location. Soldering copper pipe isn't hard. Scour the pipe, apply flux, join the two pieces, heat with a torch, and feed solder into the gap. The main way I would screw up is by overheating the copper and burning the flux, which prevents the solder from adhering everywhere and results in leaky pipes. So just don't do that and you're fine. If you do end up with a leaky joint, you can reheat it, pull the pieces apart, clean them, and try again. You'll have to get the water out first though; you can't heat copper very well if it has water to dump heat into. I did all of my copper work with 45 and 90 degree fittings and straight pipe. It works, but does add extra soldering that you could avoid if you have (and know how to use) a pipe bender. I have no experience there but I doubt it's all that hard. The big problem is that if you screw up you can ruin the pipe by creasing it.
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Jan 16, 2020 22:31
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I replaced the water heater in my house when I moved in. It's a two-person job to install the heater though, and the exact rules for how it needs to be installed / secured and where its emergency drainage goes varies by location. My plan is to pre-solder a vertical copper pipe stem, ball valve, and attachment for the expansion tank on the cold side, then solder a threaded connection to where the old valve is and run a flexible copper fitting to form a heat trap between them. The hot end will just be a short pre-soldered stem with ball valve and flexible copper fitted to the hot line. I just am unsure how good a job I can do on the blind side of the fittings, but I suppose even though it's cramped I can do that after I remove the hot water tank.
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Jan 16, 2020 22:42
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one caveat to pay attention to, particularly in older homes: sometimes the cold water pipe is being used as a ground for your household wiring. If you have removed an old water heater and that involved removing a grounding clamp, you may have just un-grounded your outlets. Also pay attention to e.g. dielectric joins if you are joining copper to old galvanized (which you shouldn't, it's better to rip out old galvanized, but you may not have a choice if for example the galvanized is embedded in your concrete slab foundation and doing foundation work is outside your budget).
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Jan 17, 2020 00:07
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Leperflesh posted:one caveat to pay attention to, particularly in older homes: sometimes the cold water pipe is being used as a ground for your household wiring. If you have removed an old water heater and that involved removing a grounding clamp, you may have just un-grounded your outlets. Nah all the piping is all copper and I recently did electrical work including new grounds/clamps. The main annoyance is the space (72" tall and with only 2" of lateral play for the water heater).
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Jan 17, 2020 00:29
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Leperflesh posted:one caveat to pay attention to, particularly in older homes: sometimes the cold water pipe is being used as a ground for your household wiring. Cross posting: Sirotan posted:
Sirotan posted:Sorry the quality is poo poo because dude couldn't figure out how to send this to me any way but via MMS:
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Jan 17, 2020 00:56
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Consequently, I'm now sitting here in my house that has no water or power.
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Okay, so we realized that the whole radiant floor heat thing was just out to accomplish a goal: get that part of the kitchen warmer. My contractor said we can easily install a register in the floor or wall. However, that part of the kitchen is over a crawlspace - and I mean CRAWLspace. I don't know how a human can get into it seeing that the only opening is a 12"x12" hole from the basement. The contractor doesn't think it'll be a problem but how in the hecking heck is that going to work? Plus there's an intake register in the same area, wouldn't that just suck in the heat? The only other thing I can think of is that there's some ductwork in the garage for the existing register in the garage, they could probably install duct above the door for the garage and out to the wall for the new reg.
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Jan 21, 2020 16:04
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Looking at buying a condo that as far as I can tell is mostly non structural walls. The plan would be to leave the master bedroom as-is, and then the other bedroom would end up being the kids' bedroom. Since they would not be able to pay rent for at least 18 years, seems like if we want a bigger living room, delete one of their closets, move the shared living room wall back into their room, and then shrink the ridiculous walk in closet down to a normal sized closet to sort of reclaim some of the space. How insane is this? The current living room is 11' wide, pulling the bedroom wall back would expand it to 13'. Deleting the 2' deep closet on the same plane as that bedroom wall would bring tons of light into the kitchen/entry way, and make a straight line of sight from the front door all the way to the bay windows which makes way more effective use of the space between entry and living room. The walk-in closet is ~5' wide and 6' deep so we'd reclaim 3' and have the closet open towards the window. End result: Living room: 11x18 = 198 sq ft -> 13x18 = 234 sq ft Bedroom: 10.5x14 = 147 sq ft -> 8.5x17 = 144.5 sq ft Also what would that cost? There's no electrical in any of these walls. I figure we can demolish and paint the new walls ourselves, we just need a bonded guy to install the new walls put up drywall, probably do ~100 sq ft of flooring work.
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Jan 24, 2020 04:22
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Hadlock posted:How insane is this? That answer depends on why you can't find a home that fits your requirements and/or how far under market you'd be able to buy this one to make these changes worth it. Based on the fact you're asking about this and a condo I'm going to guess you have no reno experience to gauge how disruptive and expensive this will be.
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Jan 24, 2020 04:35
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That’s a terrible idea.
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Jan 24, 2020 04:48
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Yeah I've never done reno work before but it seems like a three day job max for two people, like it would take more time to get materials in and out of the building than actually build a new straight partition wall and put up the drywall. Looking at zillow at least one other unit in the building has done something similar in the last ten years. I don't want to say reno cost is not a problem, but the condo is definitely within our budget and meets a lot of other needs/criteria.
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Jan 24, 2020 04:53
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A coworker did something pretty similar last year in order to reorder their living space, but they had already owned the condo for 10+ years and it was explicitly because they could afford to move around some interior walls (they did a lot of the work) but not to buy something that actually met their needs in their neighborhood because all the prices have rocketed in that time. You would obviously want to get an actual professional to confirm you can move those walls if this is a requirement for you buying the place. Also from everything I have heard, condo renovations make your neighbors/condo partners hate you and drives everyone nuts, so there is that to look forward to.
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Jan 24, 2020 04:57
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Hadlock posted:Yeah I've never done reno work before but it seems like a three day job max for two people, like it would take more time to get materials in and out of the building than actually build a new straight partition wall and put up the drywall. Looking at zillow at least one other unit in the building has done something similar in the last ten years. lol
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Jan 24, 2020 05:09
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Actually answering your question for real, you are in the SFBA, where the market for renovation work is the most competitive out of any region in the entire United States. The price of a renovation will also be at least 30% above average, and at worst 50% to 100% above average. The quality of workers who are willing to deal with a project of your size is going to be complete and utter poo poo. So unless you already have a GC that you know, you're going to get obliterated by all of the people who will make offers for your project. Additionally looking into the bay area, it is no longer a sellers market and probably an even market. In bay area terms, this means that condo prices and townhouse prices are probably going down, because the even market is pretty much boosted by SFHs. There is a very large amount of condo/townhouses coming up the market this year, all of which are going to be competing against other sellers. So the risk of your house value dropping if it is a condo is not looking good. Finally, you are dealing with the CA permitting process in a region that is pretty strict. You are dealing with wall changes, which can drag on the remodel; you need somebody who can do electric work along with framing work and a structural engineer or architect to confirm the load bearing nature of walls before you submit. So the question: do you have somebody or connection that will help you establish the ins and outs of the construction and material industry, esp in a competitive market like the bay area? Are you good at determining pricing for construction and pricing the value of houses (meaning are you personally a real estate agent)? If no, then holy poo poo you should walk away right now.
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Jan 24, 2020 05:16
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Hadlock posted:I've never done reno work before
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Jan 24, 2020 05:18
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Hadlock posted:Yeah I've never done reno work before but it seems like a three day job max for two people lol
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Jan 24, 2020 05:19
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