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Curious because I've never done it What's the over/under on just ripping the drywall down to studs and replacing that Drywall prices are probably way up but at ~$20/sheet seems like the labor to remove wallpaper is probably on par with putting in new drywall?
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May 19, 2022 16:39
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Hadlock posted:Curious because I've never done it I was going to make that comment, then I saw most of the posters had it on plaster. Six layers and painting in between? I'd be ripping drywall down, and use it as an opportunity to adjust the outlets too. Plaster I would probably suffer.
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May 19, 2022 16:45
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Hadlock posted:Curious because I've never done it Race for the bottom on my least favorite home ownership tasks: removing wallpaper and patching/installing drywall Just kidding, sanding is what I hate the most. There is always so much sanding. But you can get a sheet for about $10 these days. Just had to buy some this weekend for an attic project.
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May 19, 2022 16:47
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Plaster & lathe walls you're doing more than just tearing off plaster, yeah. Also, a lot of folks are comfortable DIYing a decent paint job, but are not comfortable DIYing the hang/tape/mud/sand/mud/sand process of drywall to a quality finish.
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May 19, 2022 16:48
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Worst I ever saw was a home my parents bought in the late 90s. POs were there from like 1971 and it was full of VERY 70s touches, like the “conversation pit” in the living room that they had torn out and turned into a normal floor before we moved in. Said pit had shag carpeting. In the room right off the kitchen (probably dining room on floor plan but we used it as a book room) the walls were papered in this textured abomination. Apparently it was VERY chic in the late 70s. Imagine yellow wallpaper but with reeds or thick grass or something in it. Like, IN the paper. All oriented vertically. The effect was kind of like what you see on a thatched roof but wallpaper. Yeah that poo poo came off in tiny strips no matter how much it was steamed or chemical bombed. The grass just acted like a natural tear like and there was no way to get the paper off anything like intact. I will never forget that two months of my mom scraping and cussing in that room. We still talk about it today, over 20 years later.
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May 19, 2022 16:49
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I mean I think you could come out ahead on the drywall. Charge your friend going through a messy divorce to come over and demo your old drywall. Use the money to pay a drywall crew to come in and put up new drywall From what I understand drywall crews are silly efficient, one crew can come in and do an entire house in a couple hours, not unheard of for a crew to do multiple houses in a day. Sharp knife and loaded drywall nail gun, do a room in a few minutes, assuming the drywall is already staged in the room
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May 19, 2022 16:56
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Yeah the difference between having dudes who just do that poo poo all day long hang it for you and loving around with it yourself on the weekend is goddamn huge. There is a ton of room for saving money with DIY but drywall is right up there with paying movers to haul your crap out (packing is another matter) in money well spent. Just so much aggravation avoided for a generally reasonable fee.
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May 19, 2022 17:06
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The PO in our house had clearly tried to remove a little section the wallpaper in the second bedroom and said gently caress it because they started to drywall over the paper/paint/plaster with 1/4 inch. They did a poo poo job taping and mudding (they left it at level 2) so now I get to somehow scrape out the bad areas and re-tape, skim coat. I am not happy about 75 year old wallpaper being entombed in my walls instead of getting it out of the house but I am not ripping out the drywall they put up.
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May 19, 2022 17:13
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Hey, I have a question. The guy the PO hired to paint the interior of our house before sale did a terrible job, including getting splodges of paint splatter in the crevices in the beadboard. I was thinking of taking a Dremel to them, then I realized. Lead paint was used for interiors as well as exteriors, right? The house dates to 1931 and has been painted many times. If there's a chance of layers of lead paint I'll just sigh and paint over the splodges.
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May 19, 2022 17:19
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Yes, absolutely. It's not a guarantee there's lead, you can't tell unless you test, but it's possible. Depending on the splodges, you might be able to scrape chunks off for disposal which would be quite safe, vs. turning them into dust. A chemical stripper could also help with that. Lead in solid form that you don't eat or breathe is totally safe, they still make roofs out of it all over europe for example. You just need to keep it out of your body and your soil/groundwater.
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May 19, 2022 17:29
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Yeah drywall DIY can quickly turn into: - Oh I didn't now how to shim that correctly because my house isn't plum - Oh wow I really need to mud the difference by A LOT - Wow I suck at feathering mud - There is dust EVERYWHERE - The paint texture will cover it up - Ohhhhh the paint makes the poo poo job look more obvious with sheen
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May 19, 2022 18:22
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Leperflesh posted:Depending on the splodges, you might be able to scrape chunks off for disposal which would be quite safe, vs. turning them into dust. A chemical stripper could also help with that. Lead in solid form that you don't eat or breathe is totally safe, they still make roofs out of it all over europe for example. You just need to keep it out of your body and your soil/groundwater.
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May 19, 2022 18:22
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The dust from missing the number 1 reason I paid for people to do it.
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May 19, 2022 18:23
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The Dave posted:Yeah drywall DIY can quickly turn into: Ugh. I'm halfway through sanding my ceiling and my mantra was "don't obsess" and you bet I'm going to go back up there to get the little scratches and lips that I can't sand away. Edit:I'm halfway through specifically because I said gently caress this my arms are sore.
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May 19, 2022 18:29
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Cyrano4747 posted:
There's textured stuff over here that was popular I guess in the 50s-70s which consists of wallpaper that has little chips of wood splinters in it on the back side of the paper like this:  and it's a loving nightmare to remove. It tends to tear at the chips and even when it doesn't the chips themselves stay glued to the wall when the paper comes off and needs scraped later, leaving this poo poo everywhere. It's also very popular with kids who love to pick the wood chips off the wall. Because it's so hard to remove plenty of people over the years have just painted over it, compounding the issue further when it comes to removal. It blows my mind that materials like this were ever popular.
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May 19, 2022 18:29
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dxt posted:This might work, some of the conduit is resting on the edge of the well, but there might be enough give to slide a sheet under it. Might have to turn the faucet so I can use it or just remove the cover when using the faucet. ope, nevermind there is in fact no give and the conduit is pushing down pretty hard onto the wall of the window well. Gonna have to either make out a cutout for the conduit in a cover or just go with my original plan and throw a dang tarp over it and call it good enough for now.
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May 19, 2022 19:44
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Thank you. Are chemical strippers still useful now that they've stripped out the possibly-fatal ingredient? Oh absolutely. I quite like citristrip, it smells nice, but there's a lot of options. You can even strip acrylic paint with undiluted simple green. By the way, never clean your acrylic paint surfaces with simple green, lol. This is why the paint on all my interior window sills looks like poo poo now. Even diluted 10:1, it's been gradually loosening the paint and now they all need to be re-painted. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:54 on May 19, 2022 |
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May 19, 2022 19:51
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Apparently scrap marble is really cheap and comes often in window sill sized pieces, relatively easy to notch to fit with a circular saw, doesn't need painting and highly water/condensation/heat damage resistant. Some rental we lived in, the landlord had done this in all his western exposure units and virtually eliminated window repair costs. Also looked super classy in an otherwise vanilla unit
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May 19, 2022 20:08
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Hadlock posted:Apparently scrap marble is really cheap and comes often in window sill sized pieces, relatively easy to notch to fit with a circular saw, doesn't need painting and highly water/condensation/heat damage resistant. Some rental we lived in, the landlord had done this in all his western exposure units and virtually eliminated window repair costs. Also looked super classy in an otherwise vanilla unit I used to live in a 50's bungalow with original aluminum windows also also original windowsills, which were all marble. Not at all fancy, just there to be condensated on without rotting and they were still doing their job after 60+ years. I think it was just a thing they did back then.
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May 19, 2022 20:29
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Ask me about my wood beam gutters still going strong after 100 years
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May 19, 2022 23:34
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Upgrade posted:Ask me about my wood beam gutters still going strong after 100 years I'd like to ask about your wood beam gutters.
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May 20, 2022 00:05
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Queen Victorian posted:I'd like to ask about your wood beam gutters. They're pretty cool. They're enormous wooden beams like six inches square where they've cut angled channels into them that terminate into downspouts that go directly underground into a water basin that drains into the storm drain.
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May 20, 2022 00:13
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Upgrade posted:They're pretty cool. They're enormous wooden beams like six inches square where they've cut angled channels into them that terminate into downspouts that go directly underground into a water basin that drains into the storm drain. Photos, please. Curious what climate zone you are in and how the actual gutter section has held up over time
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May 20, 2022 01:15
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Anza Borrego posted:Photos, please. Curious what climate zone you are in and how the actual gutter section has held up over time I don't have good pictures because I only saw them when i was on my roof which isn't easy to get to, but they've held up well. They're basically enormous hardwood beams that were hand channeled and the interior is sheathed in metal (probably tin originally? but got replaced when the roof got redone). They're on the front of the house - the roof itself is "flat" (gently slopes backwards, but is also sloped to one side where the drains are for downspouts). When we had a brick mason here to do some repointing we talked about the gutters, and basically how they were done is they'd ship in enormous wood beams, and then hand chisel a channel that tapers to a point to allow the water to flow. I live in the Midatlantic. The house is from 1913 and was a medium/high end build for then, so there's a lot of crazy, labor intensive work that was done (hand chiseled crown molding around the porch columns, for example). All the interior doors are rock hard hardwood, the exterior window trims (which were kept when they redid the windows, thankfully) is this wood that literally feels like iron. Upgrade fucked around with this message at 01:38 on May 20, 2022 |
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May 20, 2022 01:35
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Ok, having it flashed (basically) makes sense. I’ve never seen that detail before, please post it if you ever get a chance to take some photos!
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May 20, 2022 01:52
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Anza Borrego posted:Ok, having it flashed (basically) makes sense. I’ve never seen that detail before, please post it if you ever get a chance to take some photos! They don't look exactly like this, but kind of like this in principle (although in practice I don't have a sloped roof like this, and the drop off to the gutter isn't as steep as the beams themselves are basically built into the roof).  The water is directed by the slope of the wood channel, although on my house its more of a 'v' shape instead of a 'u', and the interior is sheathed in metal. Upgrade fucked around with this message at 02:38 on May 20, 2022 |
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May 20, 2022 02:35
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I've seen gutters made out of cedar plank. Cool, but they still rot - just take a lot longer.
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May 20, 2022 03:55
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Wood can last a surprisingly long time in wet conditions if you use the right wood. I've got a coworker who used to live pretty rurally in North Carolina and we got on talking about the poo poo fences around us (seriously, home depot tier pine that NO ONE PAINTS FOR SOME REASON. Holy gently caress they're all turning grey and rotting before my eyes  ) and he got to talking about the split rail fences you see in places like that. I forget what kinds of wood he was talking about, but there are a few trees in Eastern NC that just last a gently caress long time - like decades - in the elements untreated. High density wood and IIRC they're high oil content as well. Now, make one of those gutters out of a 4x4 from Home Depot and you'll be able to watch it disintegrate in real time.
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May 20, 2022 13:31
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Just found out the rotboards attached to my patio fence are not attached because the finishing nails used to hold them in place rusted through  Gotta learn me how to repair a fence, looks like! Thankfully it's just 4 spans
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May 20, 2022 14:23
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Cyrano4747 posted:Wood can last a surprisingly long time in wet conditions if you use the right wood. I've got a coworker who used to live pretty rurally in North Carolina and we got on talking about the poo poo fences around us (seriously, home depot tier pine that NO ONE PAINTS FOR SOME REASON. Holy gently caress they're all turning grey and rotting before my eyes Black Locust? The Corps of Engineers did an erosion project on a river near me and specifically brought in Black Locust as they said it would last 100 years on the edge of a river.
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May 20, 2022 14:31
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Yooper posted:Black Locust? The Corps of Engineers did an erosion project on a river near me and specifically brought in Black Locust as they said it would last 100 years on the edge of a river. That sounds right. It was a throw away lunchtime conversation months ago, I just remember he specifically mentioned three woods that are perfect for that and which farmers can just leave in a field for basically an entire person's lifespan.
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May 20, 2022 14:37
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My father was a professional full time drywaller, and as a result I was an unpaid semi-pro drywaller in summers. In the time I could hang and finish a closet (still looking nice), he could have an entire room done. In my opinion do the demo yourself, maybe even do the hanging yourself if you consider yourself handy. But absolutely pay someone to come in and finish. That is if you can find someone to finish the lovely hanging job you just did.
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May 20, 2022 14:41
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Cyrano4747 posted:Wood can last a surprisingly long time in wet conditions if you use the right wood. I've got a coworker who used to live pretty rurally in North Carolina and we got on talking about the poo poo fences around us (seriously, home depot tier pine that NO ONE PAINTS FOR SOME REASON. Holy gently caress they're all turning grey and rotting before my eyes Along the edge of my yard are old agricultural fence posts made from Osage Orange tree branches with some old barbed wire. Based on some local history, other agricultural artifacts, and satellite/aerial photos, the former farm hasn't had cattle since at least the 60's, and our neighborhood was built in the mid 80's. The fence posts are still solid and show little signs of wear.
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May 20, 2022 18:21
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We had this horrible drywall mud swirl pattern on the bathroom ceiling... no way I was sanding that out, and pulling it down would have screwed up all the attic insulation. So, we just put up another sheet of drywall on top of it and called it a day. We just used a regular sheet of moisture resistant drywall, but this is one of the reasons the 1/4 inch sheets of drywall exist!
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May 20, 2022 18:26
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Cyrano4747 posted:Wood can last a surprisingly long time in wet conditions if you use the right wood. I've got a coworker who used to live pretty rurally in North Carolina and we got on talking about the poo poo fences around us (seriously, home depot tier pine that NO ONE PAINTS FOR SOME REASON. Holy gently caress they're all turning grey and rotting before my eyes Old growth cypress My childhood friend has a play house her grandfather made for her before she was born out of rough hewn cypress. It's been standing now for like 45 years in the back yard, unpainted. It's sun bleached but otherwise looks about 5 years old https://www.wood-database.com/cypress/#:~:text=Rot%20Resistance%3A%20Old%2Dgrowth%20Cypress,with%20Cypress%20to%20avoid%20tearout. Unfortunately old growth cypress was so good, that they basically clear cut all of it to build the entire east coast through the 1930s. Two acres of land would yield enough lumber to build a full size family home. Some still exists but it's rare Redwood is also highly rot resistant, but it's brittle styrofoam compared to stuff like pine or Aspen an be particularly oak. My dad put up a fence of redwood slats in the early 1970s unfinished wood, my mom replaced the fence about five years ago (age 45) because the posts in the ground were rotting due to overagressive weed eater trimming, the slats themselves were in serviceable shape And yeah pine will rot if not tested. Takes like five minutes to spray a sealer or stain with a pressure sprayer, will easily
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May 20, 2022 18:41
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Hadlock posted:Apparently scrap marble is really cheap and comes often in window sill sized pieces, relatively easy to notch to fit with a circular saw, doesn't need painting and highly water/condensation/heat damage resistant. Some rental we lived in, the landlord had done this in all his western exposure units and virtually eliminated window repair costs. Also looked super classy in an otherwise vanilla unit I’ve got marble that matches my countertops on my kitchen windowsills from my PO. It looks excellent and I’d do it again if I was remodeling.
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May 20, 2022 19:05
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Upgrade posted:They don't look exactly like this, but kind of like this in principle (although in practice I don't have a sloped roof like this, and the drop off to the gutter isn't as steep as the beams themselves are basically built into the roof). Sounds like an old style box gutter, though I had no idea they made them with single pieces of wood. We have original box gutters on our back porch and I think one side of the house, and being lined with metal and painted over, you can't tell if it's one or multiple lengths of wood. I guess I'll find out whenever we get around to restoring the back porch and relining the gutters. Also kinda want to restore the front porch to box gutters because I want the gutters and molding to the one in the same and not have this ugly transition where some rear end in a top hat's sawed off the molding/original gutters and installed crappy vinyl gutters. Hadlock posted:Redwood is also highly rot resistant, but it's brittle styrofoam compared to stuff like pine or Aspen an be particularly oak. My dad put up a fence of redwood slats in the early 1970s unfinished wood, my mom replaced the fence about five years ago (age 45) because the posts in the ground were rotting due to overagressive weed eater trimming, the slats themselves were in serviceable shape Redwood is kind of ridiculous. We went to go see the sequoias for middle school outdoor ed, and there was a fallen one in the grove we went to. It was incredibly massive, like you could walk through the hollowed center without bending over. The councilor had us guess how long ago it had fallen. We spouted out a bunch of guesses in the vicinity of 10-50 years ago. Nope! It had being lying on the ground, dead and exposed to the elements, for around 600 years. My dad built a nice arbor roof using hundred year old redwood grape stakes and fence posts he'd scrounged up from somewhere. You don't want to use those pieces for anything structural, but they're great for things like arbor roofing/topping or fence slats (totally coulda reused the slats). One reason why redwood is so rot resistant is because because it's toxic. When I was carrying around those old grape stakes during the arbor projects, I'd get rashes on my arms from the splinters. Those compounds or whatever keep working for a long time and kill any microbes or fungus or plants that would otherwise break it down. It's why the redwood trees stay red and don't have much in the way of moss/lichen on them, despite growing in damp, foggy areas where literally everything else is covered in moss. Somewhat relatedly, the dead trees in the Red Forest (not to be confused with the redwood forest) are just.. not decaying due to microbial life being suppressed by the radiation. Goes to show how much of decay is microbes and and stuff working to break down the wood rather than the wood just breaking down on its own.
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May 20, 2022 19:44
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Queen Victorian posted:Goes to show how much of decay is microbes and and stuff working to break down the wood rather than the wood just breaking down on its own. This is also where a good chunk of the earth's coal comes from. In the aptly-named carboniferous era trees developed lignin and a few other substances that resisted microbes well enough that dead trees accumulated in huge numbers, enough to eventually become fossilized as huge as gently caress coal deposits.
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May 20, 2022 19:49
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We got a wooden deck with our house, and the wood is 'ok' but definitely showing signs of not being cared for. What is the easiest (I have 2 kids and not much time) way to care for a clearly uncared-for deck? like, do I varnish it or something?
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May 20, 2022 21:40
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Power washer to get the grime off and a thick paint that will cover up the defects in the wood (cracks etc) and seal it up. If the wood isn’t that hosed up just power wash and stain it.
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May 20, 2022 21:45
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