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Internet Explorer posted:Gee, I wonder why people don't like carpet. *slams buzzer* WHAT IS CAT PISS?!
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Feb 4, 2022 16:08
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Question for the thread: We’ve had some heavy rain this week, and sometimes i’ve noticed water in the garage before, but this is the first time I looked at it post-new door and during the rain. Looks like some of it is getting into the house from the outside where the neighbor’s dirt sits. Should I worry/how much to worry? What’s the solution? Does it just need a better drain put in there, caulking, or something more intensive? Also it’s not a lot of water at all, not a stream by any measure. But I know any water ain’t great, and this is the only part of the house below ground, everything else has cement clearance above ground. https://imgur.com/a/EoE2D8Z Nybble fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Feb 4, 2022 |
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Feb 4, 2022 19:10
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That's very bad. It's going to be touching the drywall and the wood too so you can already see some damage. To see the extent of dry rot, you will need to expose the area behind that wall. As to how to permanently fix that issue? YMMV but it could potentially be expensive or it could be cheap.
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Feb 4, 2022 19:46
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Just found the kitchen design tool on cabinets.com and it's pretty fun. You can put in a fake name and email, it doesn't verify to use the tool and save designs to open later. You'll have to put in something real if you want them to quote your design, but who wants that? I just want to see if my ideas look like they'll work. I think so:
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Feb 4, 2022 19:49
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I think if I ever got to remodel my kitchen, we'd mount the dishwasher 18-24 inches off the ground, so I don't need to squat to load/unload it, have it sit under a 47" counter top or something, or as part of floor-to-ceiling cabinets. I don't mind load/unloading the dishwasher, I hate squatting down to use it. Bonus points if the dishes sink is right next to it, so I can just open it, rinse off dishes, then load them directly into the washer, all while standing up My last fridge had the classic "stand to open top freezer", and "squat on the floor to view food in bottom fridge" which, gently caress that noise. I'm assuming that second dishwasher is a garbage compactor? Do you have two sinks?
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Feb 4, 2022 20:02
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That's easily the best kitchen modeling visual I've seen, not that I've seen many. Looks like a pretty realistic representation. The display shows his and hers dishwashers, optimally placed. My wife wants two dishwashers but I didn't let that happen. I still can't believe we run the drat thing every night and I'm the primary chef in the house. The refrigerators with the drawer freezer at the bottom are great. Highly recommended.
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Feb 4, 2022 20:26
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I would say the stove is poorly placed in that picture
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Feb 4, 2022 20:39
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I don't like the wall color. Needs more yellow.
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Feb 4, 2022 20:45
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Really glad we finally got our basement sill insulated (for free, thanks Massachusetts!) because there’s a ton of ice outside. Friendly reminder to look into your state or energy company’s rebates and subsidized work. Most of our recent home projects have been more on the design and organization spectrum. However, this spring we’re getting our siding and roof replaced (thanks, all you previous owners who didn’t do poo poo  ). A contractor kindly referred to the previous vinyl installation as “a, uh, cowboy job”. I want to be excited about potentially restoring or replacing the clapboards and decorative shingling underneath our lovely, rapidly deteriorating vinyl siding.But we also have daycare bills, so I’m bracing myself for just getting any needed repairs done and getting nicer, new vinyl siding put on. Early spring, our contractor is going to come take enough of the vinyl off so we can begin to assess what’s going on below and commit to a material. I’m nervous, home ownership thread. It’s tough to have a vision and a sense of stewardship but also a budget.
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Feb 4, 2022 20:56
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Motronic posted:Weren't you the person who was trying to save piss soaked hardwood not but a few pages back? Piss Acoustics is a good rereg for whenever I get banned again, ty
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Feb 5, 2022 02:05
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LloydDobler posted:Just found the kitchen design tool on cabinets.com and it's pretty fun. You can put in a fake name and email, it doesn't verify to use the tool and save designs to open later. You'll have to put in something real if you want them to quote your design, but who wants that? I just want to see if my ideas look like they'll work. I think so: Idea: Install a half floor above your kitchen to use all that wasted air space. you can install a tunnel into john malkovic and get eternal life
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Feb 5, 2022 03:04
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Insurrectum posted:you can install a tunnel into john malkovic and get eternal life Malkovic? Malkovic Malkovic Malkovic!
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Feb 5, 2022 13:37
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Upgrade posted:I would say the stove is poorly placed in that picture Yeah that's a pretty bad work triangle.
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Feb 5, 2022 14:22
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I like to think my spouse and I are pretty non-paranoid people among the sea of NIMBYs and Nextdoor people in Seattle. That said, we just bought our first home after renting in large apartment buildings for 20 years. My coworkers are pushing hard that we need a security system and "aren't we worried about our house being broken into." Is this something we actually need? Do security systems actually do anything? My assumption has always been that they're security theater. We live in a residential area of Seattle city proper, and sure there are lots of people ranting on Nextdoor but it feels like it's overblown. Involuntary Sparkle fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Feb 5, 2022 |
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Feb 5, 2022 21:17
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Things like simplysafe are so cheap that it is easy piece of mind. I would be interested on the rate of home invasion and burglary because I can’t remember hearing about it for a long while.
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Feb 5, 2022 21:30
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Check crime rates and types in your area. Your local PD probably has it available in map form somewhere. You should also check with your insurance company to see if they'll give you a discount, and if that discount will offset the monthly cost. In reality the "protected by" sign out front will provide most of the benefit for crime deterrence, but having a monitored smoke detector can save you from losing your house to fire.
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Feb 5, 2022 21:55
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Get a dog if you don’t want to get robbed.
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Feb 5, 2022 21:58
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And also to make door to door sales people go away. They get the hint real fast when I’m holding Pongo by the collar and telling them no thanks. He’s 83lbs so a pretty big boy. Jokes on them he just wants to lick them to death.
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Feb 5, 2022 22:16
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Involuntary Sparkle posted:I like to think my spouse and I are pretty non-paranoid people among the sea of NIMBYs and Nextdoor people in Seattle. A system that makes noise as a deterrent might be the best practical solution. A camera system is only going to help you see what's happening after the fact. The ones that call the cops for you .. it's Seattle, we're plagued by property crime. Our police don't show up quickly unless it's gun related. When my house was broken into (I had just got home) it took the cops 30 minutes to show up. I told the operator I didn't feel comfortable going in and I had my dog with me. She actually said ... "You can send your dog in..." Thieves have started looking for ring cameras and just busting or spray painting over them. My guess is our house was burgled in less than 5 minutes. They grabbed a few high value things and took off. They didn't make a mess other than breaking our back door off the hinges. We were at work. If we had a camera or a system that notified us it was happening, we couldn't do anything about it. We might have got video of it happening but they were probably wearing gloves and a mask. A loud noise drawing attention to the house would likely have alerted the neighbors and drawn attention to them but that assumes neighbors are home to notice. Money is spent in better places. Better solid doors, secured with long screws going into the studs, audible door and window alarms. If you want a camera, that's fine if you just want to see what happened. I kind of wish I did but I know it wouldn't have prevented anything. Maybe they're dumb enough not to wear a mask but that's not likely going to end up catching them, getting your stuff back, or getting your place fixed.
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Feb 5, 2022 22:37
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Involuntary Sparkle posted:I like to think my spouse and I are pretty non-paranoid people among the sea of NIMBYs and Nextdoor people in Seattle. Probably doesn’t apply to you but if you have young kids and a pool, security systems that announced BACK DOOR OPEN are incredibly great. Obvs this is part of a layered approach to include a fence and other stuff. In my gun toating castle doctrine state home invasions are rare. So many kids here die or become vegetables because of pools tho. I use ring cameras externally that trigger at our entrances and am very happy with them.
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Feb 5, 2022 23:37
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Eufy is a good system that stores all the videos locally. Mainly like it because I’m on the third floor working and want to know who’s at the doorbell without trying to rush down the stairs each time. Could be the neighbor, could be a delivery that doesn’t need me. We also had a guy try to open up car doors, and he showed his full face until seeing the camera doorbell. lol. But the locked car door prevented the break-in, not the camera. Also been meaning to get motion lights, especially for the backward entrance, as they probably wouldn’t try it at all in that scenario.
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Feb 5, 2022 23:45
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Motion sensors that trigger the tommy gun gangster movie scenes from home alone.
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Feb 5, 2022 23:53
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It's going to depend on what your goals with the security system are and how much you're willing to pay. That said, it's only one layer of effectively trying to discourage people from breaking into your home. There are a LOT of other things that probably need to be done first, like making it difficult and inconvenient to get at ground-floor windows, making sure things are well lit, not having valuable poo poo visible from the street (dont have a giant TV visible through your giant front window from the street for example) that kind of poo poo. TFR's actually a pretty good place to ask about that if you're looking for info. There are a fair number of people there who know about that kind of stuff and, contrary to it being the gun forum, the first suggestion you get won't involve firearms. Hell, neither will the 2nd - 10th. There have been people come in there before and ask about home security who explicitly say that they're not interested in getting a gun, and they've gotten helped in productive ways. Drop a line in the general question thread (it's stickied) and chances are you'll get a bite. Tl;dr, though, is that most of it is about not making your place an attractive target for opportunistic crimes.
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Feb 6, 2022 00:07
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Thanks for the input everyone, especially Verman for the Seattle focused aspect. My spouse and I will think it over. I think the main thing that gives me pause is when we travel; we have a cat sitter come by once a day but that's it. And sorry, I don't like dogs, so definitely not going to get a dog. No kids, no pool, no garage, no driveway. We do have large windows but they're not visible from the street. And we have started installing Nest CO/smoke detectors.
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Feb 6, 2022 01:41
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Involuntary Sparkle posted:
This is a thing? Is this a thing???
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Feb 6, 2022 01:43
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Involuntary Sparkle posted:And we have started installing Nest CO/smoke detectors. Can you uninstall them? These things suck. Be sure if you’re doing it you do every alarm because they don’t interconnect with other smoke alarms.
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Feb 6, 2022 01:55
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That was a thing people asked when we got broken into. "Was your dog home?" He wasn't and honestly I'm glad he wasn't. He's already got stranger danger issues and that would have undone the years of work we've done to help him not react aggressively towards strangers. Maybe the barking would have turned the burglars away but what if they broke into the house and either hurt my dog or left the door open and he got out? Even if my dog bit someone and chased them away, now he's going to think that's good behavior. Stuff is stuff. It can be replaced. Just make sure your renters/home owners insurance is up to snuff. If you have any specific valuables, tell your agent you want them covered for actual replacement value, not estimated value. It will cost you a bit more but it's nice to know they're covered. As said above, everything is just a deterrent. A committed burglar will get what they want if they want it bad enough. It's just a matter of time and effort. Making it more effort/time is the goal. Making sure valuables aren't visible from outside. Not leaving garage doors open for extended periods of time, not closing blinds occasionally. Even just sheer curtains to create a buffer can help. Putting window film over door windows so people can't see inside without monotony the natural light allowed. Bushes in front of windows to make it more difficult. Every exterior door should have a deadbolt. We put a lock on our outside fence which is 6' tall and a wireless doorbell. Taking the effort just to get inside the yard is one extra step in prevention.
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Feb 6, 2022 02:37
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Recently, there was a string of burglaries/car thefts in my town. Every ‘successful’ crime involved someone leaving their car or house unlocked. Unless you have something that really stands out as worth the risk, a lot of the time a criminal is just looking for something easy and quick, and your best bet is to just not be that.
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Feb 6, 2022 02:54
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I leave my car unlocked so they don’t break the windows out. I puts $5 worth of Pennie’s and nickels so they run out of ability to carry stuff it works better then any alarm and makes them feel like a tomb raider.
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Feb 6, 2022 15:10
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Is there any path to replace plaster walls with drywall? We have a fair number of cracks in the plaster throughout, but only one room where the plaster is legitimately jacked up - probably because it hasn’t been touched in what’s likely sixty years. Nothing “serious” - all cosmetic - but you could definitely go in and peel big chunks off. Should I just have someone replaster the area? It’s around a window, outside a sill (the window has been replaced) and along a wall.
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Feb 7, 2022 02:29
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Also going to enjoy getting estimates on chimney repointing. Hope it’s something like $500, a chimney, know it’d going to be a lot more. (If it helps it’s a slightly sloped roof and they won’t need a ladder to work on the chimneys)
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Feb 7, 2022 02:31
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I need the top of my 1980 built chimney done too (in Norcal.) None of the actual brick masons will even bother to call back  and the "chimney" type guys just want to squirt more goo into the cracks for $500.
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Feb 7, 2022 02:37
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Keyser_Soze posted:I need the top of my 1980 built chimney done too (in Norcal.) One thing that’s nice about being in an old East Coast city is there are a lot of brick masons. We also have a lot of people who specialize in plaster or crown molding etc.
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Feb 7, 2022 02:39
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Edit: sorry, wrong thread
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Feb 7, 2022 04:36
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We are selling our house and having a stressful time of it, as I am also pregnant and we're about to relocate to the opposite coast by the end of this coming week. Got into an argument with my mom over whether a real estate attorney is necessary since we're not going to be present at closing. My understanding was that the title company would be able to represent us, and my father was in agreement. His qualifications: was in commercial real estate for several years and has a ton of real estate friends. But then he started yelling at me about how I should sit on any offers we get and wait for a whole week to give other prospective buyers a chance. He flat out refused to listen to the fact that houses are being snatched up off the market in less time than that, and I'm pretty sure any offers are going to come with built in time limits. Help me, are my parents being dumb idiots or am I the dumb idiot here?
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Feb 7, 2022 04:43
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You’re an adult. You don’t have to do what your parents say anymore. Do whatever you think is best. Personally I took the first offer I got on my house when I sold it. (All cash tho). I didn’t want to deal with showing it or having my life disrupted any more than necessary. If you get a strong offer sell the drat house and move on to the next thing. You have enough stress and things going on in your life. Things have changed in the last couple of years and your parents advice might not current anymore.
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Feb 7, 2022 05:27
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I think it depends on the market but for an area like Seattle or some other competitive location, anything up longer than a week is an anomaly here. I'm not sure what you would miss out on by waiting an extra week to review. Some people might put a deadline on their offer. Others might not submit. I can't imagine it would really change much though.
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Feb 7, 2022 05:46
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I just needed a sanity check. Most of the time my parents are pretty smart about stuff but sometimes it's yelling at a brick wall. I'm in the Pittsburgh area and 2 comparable homes that were listed the same day we did are already under contract. We chose to only hold an open house over the weekend with a review on Monday. I don't think this turn around is typical for this region in general but it absolutely is the trend for covid times. Anything else on the market similar to us right now has been around for like 2+ months. So why the hell would a serious buyer wait to put an offer in when there's nothing else to look at?
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Feb 7, 2022 06:04
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Upgrade posted:Is there any path to replace plaster walls with drywall? We have a fair number of cracks in the plaster throughout, but only one room where the plaster is legitimately jacked up - probably because it hasn’t been touched in what’s likely sixty years. Nothing “serious” - all cosmetic - but you could definitely go in and peel big chunks off. Should I just have someone replaster the area? It’s around a window, outside a sill (the window has been replaced) and along a wall. I got decent results on cracks by chipping the crack wider, dusting it out, filling with joint compound and painting. Sand between steps as well. We had a couple of bubbly/peeling spots as well and those didn't go so well. There weren't enough to justify mixing up an entire thing of plaster so I went with some mesh tape and compound as well. I tried a couple of patch kits as well without much luck. The smaller areas with the tape look pretty bad but the kits went poorly. Luckily all the worst areas are places you can hang pictures over so this is the way.
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Feb 7, 2022 12:54
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Dazerbeams posted:We are selling our house and having a stressful time of it, as I am also pregnant and we're about to relocate to the opposite coast by the end of this coming week. Got into an argument with my mom over whether a real estate attorney is necessary since we're not going to be present at closing. My understanding was that the title company would be able to represent us, and my father was in agreement. His qualifications: was in commercial real estate for several years and has a ton of real estate friends. I'd recommend an attorney, I've used one every time I've bought or sold a house because they make the process easy and I don't have to do poo poo. I can't say the title company will assist with the entire sale but no clue how it works with your title company. You're trying to save ~$500 on a transaction worth 100's of thousands of dollars. Even in a simple sale, it's easy for them to deal with all the required paperwork etc. Story time: My RE attorney has been worth their payment nearly each time. 2 times it was like 450-550, one year (2 transactions) It was 11 dollars a month for my "legal insurance" through work (I paid in for that year because I knew I was buying/selling a house in that year). Why were they worth it? I was selling a house, I had a closing date, buyer had the mortgage pre-approval etc. It kept getting closer and closer to closing date, no word that anything was amiss. Paid for movers, paid for truck, continued on with closing on other house. 2 Days prior to the closing date we learned that buyer had had a medical issue 4ish weeks before the notice, and that the medical issue would put their ability to work (and to buy a house in jeopardy). My RE attorney was able to negotiate that we were able to keep the good faith deposit because of the lack of communication from the buyer and the fact that we'd need to re-list, and lost a month of time. I could have probably done this on my own but dealing with this would have taken up an assload of time to research president and dealing with the buyers attorney. My RE attorney when BUYING a house was able to identify and work with the seller/bank etc to deal with lien that was stalling the closing. It ended up that it wasn't going to be cleared up by the time of sale / when we needed to be out of our current residence. They were able to work to negotiate holding the Lien amount in attorney's escrow account in order to cover the lien in case it was a valid Lein. This meant I wasn't trying to store my poo poo in storage unit and living in a hotel / friends house until it was cleaned up. I could not have done this without an attorney as I don't have an attorney escrow account. Also my attorney spent their time dealing with it, I didn't spend my time doing anything other than signing papers. when selling a house my attorney got to deal with a lein placed by my ex's attorney for the divorce fees, guidance on the required permits / requirements for Sump pump bubbler installation, distribution of wealth pursuant to a 2 year old divorce agreement etc. Again well worth the 550 or whatever I paid. That said.. I had a poo poo attorney once. No communication I had to chase all the time, I had to chase for documents and papers after closing, I had to chase for a closing date etc. So Make sure you get a good recommendation, from people before selecting one.
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