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SpartanIvy posted:I mean how old is she? Because Asbestos takes a long while after exposure to have any health affects. mid 70s, but very healthy and based on the rest of the family she could easily have at least another ten years or more before we have to start worrying about mobility and such.
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Jun 9, 2023 17:32
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devicenull posted:Let me introduce you to transite ductwork: https://inspectapedia.com/hazmat/Asbestos_Transite_Ducts.php They really worked hard to come up with the dumbest possible ways to use asbestos didn't they?
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Jun 9, 2023 17:37
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SpartanIvy posted:I mean how old is she? Because Asbestos takes a long while after exposure to have any health affects.
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Jun 9, 2023 17:49
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Shifty Pony posted:They really worked hard to come up with the dumbest possible ways to use asbestos didn't they? Asbestos is a wonder material. Unfortunately, it kills us. We didn't quite know that second part until we put asbestos in drat near everything because it's strong, cheap, light, and resistant. Too bad it's deadly.
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Jun 9, 2023 17:49
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Arsenic Lupin posted:If asbestos makes OP worried about buying a house, rest assured it will be a problem when (eventually) trying to find a new buyer. You vastly overestimate most buyers. OP is way smarter and thorough than 99% of home buyers by just looking to the internet for answers. The "you can just spray paint it" comment from the general inspector would have smoothed over every other buyer looking at that house, if they even thought to ask about asbestos in the first place, which most wouldn't.
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Jun 9, 2023 18:23
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Most people don't fully realize the professionals they need to use are literally con men
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Jun 9, 2023 20:16
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Epitope posted:Most people don't fully realize the professionals they need to use are literally con men  are you saying that asbestos remediation people are con men?
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Jun 9, 2023 20:28
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Cyrano4747 posted:
Most tradespeople in my experience, although a few good ones seem to exist out there still.
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Jun 9, 2023 20:32
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We want to completely re-do the paver patio, make it stamped concrete, and cover half with a screened in porch. As part of this we also want to add a transom window to a bathroom and need to paint the entire house. Had a contractor over who we know does good work and just got the quote back. Surprisingly far less than I anticipated! Need to do some more back and forth but their schedule is open in august. Now to look at heloc rates…well that sucks!
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Jun 10, 2023 12:15
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SpartanIvy posted:Most tradespeople in my experience, although a few good ones seem to exist out there still. Most tradespeople that need to advertise, yes. At least that seems to be the thing around here. Anyone you have to know by word of mouth who is busy enough to fire customers who are unreasonable is pretty much who you want.
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Jun 10, 2023 15:35
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Many many many people try to turn their hobby/interests into their livelihood and know jack poo poo about running a business or even simple math. I constantly see it with gyms too. The big trade school around here at least makes business classes a requirement.
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Jun 10, 2023 15:40
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Also a good point - this is endemic in the trades.
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Jun 10, 2023 16:41
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Yeah, and it can be easy to slip from “didn’t plan well business-wise” to justifying shadier and shadier behavior to try to get out of the hole you’ve dug.
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Jun 10, 2023 16:46
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Cyrano4747 posted:
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Jun 10, 2023 17:52
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I would put most home inspectors very slightly above con men, maybe in the 'worse than useless' category but without much of the malicious intent a real con man might have. I've found that inspectors of many types - home inspectors, municipal code inspectors - are predominantly failed contractors.
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Jun 10, 2023 17:57
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StormDrain posted:Don't mind me I'm just obsessed with making sure everyone knows the clean way to install silicone caulking. NomNomNom posted:Wait is the ammonia free glass cleaner really the magic bullet? Does it work for clear silicone too? The name of the product we use at work is "Sprayway World's Best Glass Cleaner". And yeah, it's magic compared to everything else when working with silicone. Wet the surface of the silicone, and your hand with the spray, and be quick with touching the silicone. Even with the spray, the silicone will stick to your fingernails, and some other materials. But skin and cloth soaked in the cleaner are both pretty resistant to sticking. If you use cloth or shaping or texturing, soak a rag in the cleaner, and use quick dabs on the silicone. Fold the rag over once it starting picking up silicone, if a glob gets stuck to the cloth, more silicone will start sticking to that. Soapy water (dish soap in water, spray lots of it to keep everything wet) also kinda works, but the glass cleaner is better. I've personally used the cleaner with silicone, construction adhesive, and fire barrier caulking, and it's been great with all 3. Chemically, I think the isopropyl alcohol is doing the heavy lifting here, but I haven't tried using just 70 or 91% rubbing alcohol to test that theory. 91/99% isopropyl is good for helping remove dried silicone, too.
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Jun 10, 2023 23:41
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Can't believe I've managed to make it this far into home ownership before injuring myself during a project. I'm installing blocking in some of the kitchen wall gaps before the drywallers come tomorrow and just managed to stab a hole in the side of my thumb with my impact driver. It doesn't require an urgent care trip but will be tender for a couple days, just as I'm days away from the cabinet assembly stage, of course. I am now fully appreciating just how many tasks require two opposable thumbs...
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Jun 11, 2023 22:28
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Every complex project (and occasionally, not-so-complex) has a blood price.
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Jun 12, 2023 00:05
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Part of our screened in patio quote is to paint the house. The contractor uses Behr Marquee, or sherwin-williams. Which one is better?
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Jun 12, 2023 12:28
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devmd01 posted:Part of our screened in patio quote is to paint the house. The contractor uses Behr Marquee, or sherwin-williams. Which one is better? Which product from SW are they offering to use? If they'll use Duration or Emerald I'd take that. If we're talking SW SuperPaint or A-100 the Behr is gonna be a better product.
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Jun 12, 2023 12:39
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We've finally received a construction quote for the detached garage we've been trying to get designed and scoped out for over a year now, and it's higher than we thought it would be by quite a bit, and specifically many of the items do not include material costs. We have basically no barometer for what these things should cost but some initial gut estimates we received from the architect and others were like... half of this. I know there's been inflation and such, but I'd like others opinions on if we should get more quotes, tell this guy to gently caress off, or if it's fair and we need to decide if it's worth the substantial cost or not. There's no plumbing, no sewer, and no HVAC included.   And here's the floorplan and square footage for reference:  And here's how the detached garage would sit in relation to the house(the building at the bottom) and the old garage which is turning into a drive-through. An important note is that the giant driveway between the old garage and the new garage is NOT part of the quote. That is a separate project that we are going to try and avoid by using grass pavers instead.  Original Garage Do Not Steal SpartanIvy fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Jun 12, 2023 |
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Jun 12, 2023 18:57
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Nothing in that quote strikes me as egregious. Depends on what part of the country you are in. Some folks might think that's a bargain. Also I think it's a mistake to not put plumbing in a shop/garage that size. A utility sink and a toilet at least.
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Jun 12, 2023 19:25
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skipdogg posted:Nothing in that quote strikes me as egregious. Depends on what part of the country you are in. Some folks might think that's a bargain. Including sewer would be ridiculously expensive because of where the main is and obstacles in the way, so that's out of the question. Were planning to add a hose bib on the exterior but we'll either trench that ourselves or pay someone after the fact to do it. Same with a mini split.
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Jun 12, 2023 19:29
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Painting in that quote seems about 1.5k more than I'd expect for the sq footage, from a low balling contractor. Garages and extensions are expensive.
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Jun 12, 2023 19:34
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SpartanIvy posted:We're in the DFW Texas area. Nothing in the quote seems outrageous, you’re just doing a lot. Think of it more like a big detached addition to your house, since you’re doing full insulation and finish work.
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Jun 12, 2023 19:38
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Definitely get another estimate or two unless that estimate is from a super highly recommended by trusted friends and family contractor you’ve already basically decided to use. It’s really weird to me that materials aren’t included anywhere and I have no idea why they would do that except to make their number look smaller. Estimating materials is the easy part, the labor is the hard part. I can understand not giving a quote for windows or something where there is a huge cost range, but not including framing materials?
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Jun 12, 2023 19:49
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xsf421 posted:Nothing in the quote seems outrageous, you’re just doing a lot. Think of it more like a big detached addition to your house, since you’re doing full insulation and finish work. That's kind of what I was thinking, the biggest issue I have is that materials are not included and I have no idea of how much that's going to be. Is it going to double the cost? At a certain threshold, it makes more sense to just move to a bigger house. We didn't think we'd be there based on initial conversations, but with the quote above that is almost exclusively labor, it has us revisiting that option.
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Jun 12, 2023 20:05
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Definitely get another estimate or two unless that estimate is from a super highly recommended by trusted friends and family contractor you’ve already basically decided to use. Maybe that was something they started doing during the height of the lumber price spikes in the pandemic and then just never changed their quote style now that lumber is more stable (to my knowledge)? I was going to dig up my garage quote from 6 years ago but it was a very basic garage and this quote is a big addition as has been said, so not a worthwhile thing for me to dig up and post.
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Jun 12, 2023 21:15
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Just to follow up on my asbestos stuff, we had a guy come out and look at it and the formal estimate isn't in yet but I got him to give me a ballpark of $2000-$2500 to remove&remediate, and even if the final number comes in higher that's the right order of magnitude and one less thing to worry about. I'll likely be back in this thread with more dumb questions and bad ideas, but for now: thanks!
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Jun 12, 2023 21:32
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I think I’ve got carpenter ants. I’ve just been in this house a year and last year I noticed some smaller ants but didn’t do anything about them and they went away after a bit. Yesterday I started seeing big ants in the house…maybe ten of them so far. I’m going to look for any signs of sawdust or other stuff and I’m googling pest control companies. I was going to buy some stuff myself but apparently Connecticut is anti-pesticide and weed killer because a lot of things can’t get shipped here. First quote was a national company with $200 initial visit and then $65 a month for 2 years. That seems pretty steep, but I have just started looking. One thing that has me a bit concerned is yesterday I only saw them in the dining room by the sliding glass door to the wooden patio. Today I started a painting project in the upstairs bathroom (which is right above the sliding door area). I removed the baseboards in the bathroom the paint those and now I’m seeing a ton of the ants in the bathroom. Maybe a coincidence or maybe they’re burrowing around the sliding door area? Edit: cedar siding, wood porch, concrete basement nwin fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Jun 13, 2023 |
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Jun 13, 2023 00:25
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nwin posted:I think I’ve got carpenter ants. First thing: don't have a cow Second thing: get ready
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Jun 13, 2023 00:43
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My family used to own a concrete ready mix company and the old old mixer trucks used to have the phrase “Not a bite for a termite” on them. 
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Jun 13, 2023 00:58
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petit choux posted:First thing: don't have a cow Print this on my bathroom mirror
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Jun 13, 2023 00:59
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nwin posted:I think I’ve got carpenter ants. Are you for sure they're carpenter ants? We had a bunch of big black ants last year and they had little interest in our ant traps. I thought they were carpenter ants and was freaking out a bit but they really just wanted to eat the old marzipan my wife squirreled away.
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Jun 13, 2023 02:40
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We had citronella ants at one of our old houses. They smell good if you smush em.
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Jun 13, 2023 02:45
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a dingus posted:Are you for sure they're carpenter ants? We had a bunch of big black ants last year and they had little interest in our ant traps. I thought they were carpenter ants and was freaking out a bit but they really just wanted to eat the old marzipan my wife squirreled away. No idea. I’ve just read that carpenter ants are big and other ants are small.
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Jun 13, 2023 02:50
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petit choux posted:We had citronella ants at one of our old houses. They smell good if you smush em. We had the type of wants that like to make their homes in electronics and power outlets. Imagine our surprise to see a colony inside our WiFi router.
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Jun 13, 2023 02:55
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nwin posted:No idea. I’ve just read that carpenter ants are big and other ants are small. There's about a million "what the gently caress is this bug in my home" websites out there so I would take as good a photo as you can get and look at some of them. I imagine there's varying degrees of panic that you should have depending on the species. e: A Bad King posted:We had the type of wants that like to make their homes in electronics and power outlets. Imagine our surprise to see a colony inside our WiFi router. If you don't take the necessary steps to protect your network I'm not sure what you were expecting? 
VelociBacon fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Jun 13, 2023 |
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Jun 13, 2023 03:00
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A Bad King posted:We had the type of wants that like to make their homes in electronics and power outlets. Imagine our surprise to see a colony inside our WiFi router. WTF is up with that? I had that happen with an exterior outlet once. Do they just crave the juice?
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Jun 13, 2023 03:00
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Carpenter ants are very big, like the size of a dime. Get a couple quotes, and consider calling some termite companies who might be able to double up coverage for termites too under a general "wood destroying insect" plan.
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Jun 13, 2023 03:05
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