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Hadlock posted:Looking at the terrain view (and, now, at Google Earth,), it looks like Avalon canyon is entirely north of that "fresh cut" off the parking lot Ohh, ok I think I see what you mean. That's largely lost surface vegetation so you can see freshly exposed sand, but it's not a huge cut. I don't think I'm qualified to judge whether or how much significance it has, but it could well be nonzero. I think the bigger issue is that, despite public protest and the clear statement from their own consultant that the property would be safe for "fifty years" they went ahead with their project, which really speaks to the general theme of "why the gently caress do people keep doing this stupid poo poo everywhere" that spawned this tangent. Despite all the information needed to understand why not to do this, people, seemingly normal people who have something to lose and actually care about their money and their stuff and what happens in the future, keep just plowing ahead with their plans. I think it's some kind of psychology closely related to the sunk cost fallacy; it's not even a sunk cost in terms of a lot of money yet, but sunk costs of time and effort and emotional commitment. They have a vision of their house (or church) or their future in this spot, and giving up on that future is too hard.
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Mar 8, 2024 22:52
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I'll basically guarantee that the thought process was "50 years is a long time away and by then surely science will have found a solution to this problem and the city/county/state will have paid for it." See also: subdivisions that take a "build it and they will come" approach to levees.
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Mar 8, 2024 22:59
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Cyrano4747 posted:Plumbing that doesn't piss water everywhere is pretty high up my "I'm glad I paid money to have this put in" list. Can you explicate this a bit? Just replacing old lovely pvc or?
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Mar 8, 2024 23:08
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Cyrano4747 posted:I'll basically guarantee that the thought process was "50 years is a long time away and by then surely science will have found a solution to this problem and the city/county/state will have paid for it." "In 50 years, I'll probably be dead, gently caress it."
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Mar 8, 2024 23:10
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:For people who have bought houses and renovated them, are there any features people have either especially regretted or been especially glad they installed? Fancy robotic toilets? High end insulation? Did a kitchen reno: Space for a wine Fridge in the kitchen. RO Water Filter. Pull out tray for the pots & pans with a stand-up divider from container store. PO did a owner's bath reno and put in heated floors. Between that + towel warmer & heated toliet seat bidet that I put in, it's a very-nice-to-have that'll be a focus point when we sell. New garage door that didn't let in cold air during the winter, which is great because it means that the garage is warm and also our 2nd floor (townhouse) living room isn't also colder to the touch because of an icebox below it.
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Mar 8, 2024 23:12
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Can you explicate this a bit? Just replacing old lovely pvc or? Copper pipes from the 50s that decided to give up the ghost in many places at once a couple years after we bought. Lots of pinhole leaks. Most recently the hot water line buried in the slab started leaking and bubbling water up through the floor, which is what prompted cutting them all and re-routing everything through the attic. I'm still working on drywall repair from that one, that will probably be another month or so of crappy weekends. The money going to this is money we had earmarked for redoing the kitchen, so that can is getting kicked down the road while we build up enough reserves to do it. edit: other things we've replaced that I"m glad for: 1) new water heater. This was expected, old one was probably 33% silt by volume. 2) new garage door. This was semi-expected, but failed at a really annoying time. Still, as the poster above said it seals in the winter well enough for me to work in there with a space heater so I'm calling this a net win. 3) new electrical panel. This was not entirely expected, but we ended up having a storm damage the aerial that the power line attached to, and since we were having the electricians cut power to fix that poo poo anyway we decided to replace the fairly old panel and get it upgraded all in one go. Happy for this because it let me add a circuit of its own to the garage. We've also got room to expand in the future if we get an electric car or decide to do whatever. 4) lots of painting. Just made the place feel so much cleaner. 5) replaced the shower heads with ones that don't suck. Minor thing, quick fix, massive QOL improvement. 6) added a fenced-in garden out back. This was a few years worth of weekend projects, first adding beds and later fencing them in. Right now it's just chicken wire and those metal posts that you see construction site netting attached to, but longer term I'll build a proper fence. I like growing a little food so big for me. 7) general home-depot grade landscaping. Un-loving some flower beds out front. Scraping decades worth of dirt and sod off some pavers that were probably laid down in the Kennedy administration, and then removing the pavers because the kinda sucked. Did a bit of fill with gravel and sand then put down new pavers that didn't suck. Still have more to do, but all that's off in the future. 8) built a table. Doesn't really count as a home improvement but we needed a table and gently caress me I wasn't paying what a table costs. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Mar 8, 2024 |
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Mar 8, 2024 23:23
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And I know this sounds like a bunch of griping but I legit love our house. Great location. Great neighborhood. Actually pretty good shape all things considered. Just, you know, this is the poo poo you have to do with even a place that you really like.
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Mar 8, 2024 23:52
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Cyrano4747 posted:And I know this sounds like a bunch of griping but I legit love our house. Great location. Great neighborhood. Actually pretty good shape all things considered. Just, you know, this is the poo poo you have to do with even a place that you really like. I love my house and the PO has become the personification/name of all lovely POs on these forums.
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Mar 8, 2024 23:54
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:For people who have bought houses and renovated them, are there any features people have either especially regretted or been especially glad they installed? Fancy robotic toilets? High end insulation? They don't count as renovations, but adding storage especially to the kitchen is something I have never regretted. Fitting cabinets in everywhere possible, and when that's not possible, adding shelves. Maybe it makes the room feel more cluttered / smaller, but it's a kitchen, it should be practical first and foremost. Re: toilets, bidets are nice.
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Mar 9, 2024 00:05
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:They don't count as renovations, but adding storage especially to the kitchen is something I have never regretted. Fitting cabinets in everywhere possible, and when that's not possible, adding shelves. Maybe it makes the room feel more cluttered / smaller, but it's a kitchen, it should be practical first and foremost.
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Mar 9, 2024 00:40
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spf3million posted:The very first "major" thing we did was move the washer and dryer from the kitchen to an unfinished portion of the 2nd story and freed up a whole extra pantry. Plus now laundry is on the same floor as the bedroom. It was a nice two-fer. This is at the top of my list of things to do when I"m "already in there" doing somehting else. Laundry that's not on the floor your clothes are stored on/changed on/etc is such a leftover of plumbing issues that simply don't exist anymore (assuming competence).
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Mar 9, 2024 00:43
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Motronic posted:This is at the top of my list of things to do when I"m "already in there" doing somehting else. Laundry that's not on the floor your clothes are stored on/changed on/etc is such a leftover of plumbing issues that simply don't exist anymore (assuming competence). What were those issues? I’ve never head the explanation.
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Mar 9, 2024 00:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:What were those issues? I’ve never head the explanation. It largely comes down to the washer. Fear of flooding doing a lot more damage. We've had washers and dryers in apartments for a long time now. Including timber built multi story ones. There are pans, floor drains and various water shut offs you can use to mitigate these issues. They work, and this is just not a reasonable concern anymore.
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Mar 9, 2024 00:59
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:For people who have bought houses and renovated them, are there any features people have either especially regretted or been especially glad they installed? Fancy robotic toilets? High end insulation? I have never renovated a house, but I would like to get a steam shower. I am really glad that we renovated our master closet, it was simple wire shelving and a bar and we ordered a full kit of stuff from easyclosets including some integrated dressers and tons of shelves. It looks excellent. A normal closet is fairly inefficient at using space, this was an excellent mini-renovation I have added a number of shelves and things, especially in the garage and bathrooms. Installed a potrack in the kitchen. Built some garden boxes Really glad we replaced our old rear end wooden garage doors with an insulated metal one but the motors were dying anyway. Next planned upgrade: replace the gas furnace with a heat pump
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Mar 9, 2024 01:54
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QuarkJets posted:I have never renovated a house, but I would like to get a steam shower. I've thought about a steam shower too but I feel like I need to research them in more depth. I'll look over the easyclosets website, thank you.
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Mar 9, 2024 01:57
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Oh, a pretty trivial thing that is surprisingly nice: a new showerhead. Every single house/apartment I've moved into has had some ancient, badly-clogged shower head that barely puts out water. The difference between that and something that can deliver actual flow and pressure is substantial. And installation is a snap: unscrew the old one, put fresh plumber's tape on, screw the new one in, done. I also go for the type with a hose, so I can use it to wash my dog.
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Mar 9, 2024 02:36
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A showerhead that can pressurize the water as much as possible is a must for me. It's not a proper shower if I don't emerge feeling like I've been worked over by thugs.
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Mar 9, 2024 05:25
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:For people who have bought houses and renovated them, are there any features people have either especially regretted or been especially glad they installed? Fancy robotic toilets? High end insulation? finished the attic, then slapped on a metal roof to reflect the sunlight back up to space where it belongs, which dramatically helped regulate temperature up there
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Mar 9, 2024 05:34
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Eric the Mauve posted:A showerhead that can pressurize the water as much as possible is a must for me. It's not a proper shower if I don't emerge feeling like I've been worked over by thugs. Are you actually President Lyndon B Johnson?
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Mar 9, 2024 06:14
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:For people who have bought houses and renovated them, are there any features people have either especially regretted or been especially glad they installed? Fancy robotic toilets? High end insulation? I was in a in rental with a fancy robotic toilet and very hard water and the robotic bit had to be replaced twice in four years because the calc just kept filling it up. As a renter I was really happy about it, but it was absolutely not worth the cost. Actual renovation: Very happy with extra height drawers for plates/pots under the cutlery drawer rather than cupboards. We also put a few in-cupboard drawers in. They were pretty pricey when you're looking at them but I'm glad we have them f.x. under the oven because that space becomes much more usable. We went to a kitchen design place and talked through layouts with someone who knows what they're doing. We ended up fairly close to our initial plans, but it with no second thoughts because we felt we had explored the options.
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Mar 9, 2024 13:09
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hobbez posted:New Hampshire! Live free or die!! from toxic emissions Fellow New Hampshirite - have you lived here long? New build location really sucks, most of the newer builds are literally undesirable land, like that, or out in the boonies. In general I’ve had a lot of skepticism in the states ability to really prevent people from doing sketchy things like this. I’ve seen stuff slip through disclosures and super weird zoning rules because a lot of the towns were first little industrial hubs, then commerce moved in, and then finally people desperate for land built houses, so there’s a lot of undesirable mixing. I’m trying to basically hold out for some 80/90s house built in a good location and renovate. We’ll see Also pro tip - we have massive swaths of land with unsafe levels of natural arsenic in the water due to granite state and all. Get ur water tested! E: also if you are maybe looking near where I think you are, look at flight paths from the airport 
Crazyweasel fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 15:54
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:For people who have bought houses and renovated them, are there any features people have either especially regretted or been especially glad they installed? Fancy robotic toilets? High end insulation? I'm a huge fan of things that address minor but frequent inconveniences. You can't go wrong replacing basically all of your fixed lower kitchen cabinet shelves with slide-outs. They are absurdly convenient. I thought it would be only marginally useful but turns out Lutron's Caseta smart switches/dimmers own. Snug in bed but the bathroom light got left on? "Siri, turn the bathroom lights off." Sync up all lights in a room even on different circuits. Entryway lights automatically turn on when you drive up, etc.
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Mar 9, 2024 16:41
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Shifty Pony posted:I'm a huge fan of things that address minor but frequent inconveniences. Yes this 100%. The electrician I was talking with back in 2018-2019 when the Hue lights became all the rage was going over my idiot plan to replace all our ceiling lighting with Hue lights, and basically said that's dumb use a switch. They have worked since 2019 and are bomb-proof, probably my favorite home upgrade and wasn't that expensive all said and done. (actually was cheaper than my Hue plan by quite a bit and much less IoT controlled)
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Mar 9, 2024 17:43
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first house i put a bid on: 34 offers in 4 days, my offer for 55k over isn't enough. second house, on the market with no offers in 10 days: i put in a cash bid for 10k under. sellers think its too early to be discounting price.
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Mar 9, 2024 19:02
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What the gently caress is wrong with that second house?
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Mar 9, 2024 19:12
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It's priced too high, I felt like my 10k under was pretty generous too.
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Mar 9, 2024 19:17
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phosdex posted:first house i put a bid on: 34 offers in 4 days, my offer for 55k over isn't enough. Come back in 10 more days with a repeat offer, but this time 30K under. 
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Mar 9, 2024 20:15
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It made me wonder about how that will affect their response to the next offer they get. I don't know about the psychology of selling your house yet.
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Mar 9, 2024 21:04
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Sometimes sellers get precious about selling price and get offended by offers below what they listed. See if they'd go for an offer where you pay list price but they pay $10k (or whatever makes sense) towards closing costs. Might make it easier for them to say yes.
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Mar 9, 2024 22:54
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Oh, a pretty trivial thing that is surprisingly nice: a new showerhead. Every single house/apartment I've moved into has had some ancient, badly-clogged shower head that barely puts out water. The difference between that and something that can deliver actual flow and pressure is substantial. And installation is a snap: unscrew the old one, put fresh plumber's tape on, screw the new one in, done. I also do the new showerhead thing but I wanted to mention that sometimes those badly clogged ones can easily be made to shoot out water like they were meant to. Usually it's just hard water deposits that accumulate in the holes and can be cleaned with something like a small pick. Cleaning those out every few months has become something I just do now as part of cleaning
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Mar 10, 2024 04:17
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If you get the kind with silicone nipples, you just have to give it a little wiggle rarely instead of messing around with toothpicks
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Mar 10, 2024 04:56
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i like nice words
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You can also fill a Ziploc bag with vinegar and then stick the head in it and use a rubber band to hold it on overnight.
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Mar 10, 2024 05:44
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Anne Whateley posted:If you get the kind with silicone nipples, you just have to give it a little wiggle rarely instead of messing around with toothpicks Did you mean to post this in the Amusing Sex Toy thread in GBS? Easy mistake to make.
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Mar 10, 2024 07:47
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As a home owner you are the sex toy
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Mar 10, 2024 07:51
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Duck and Cover posted:Did you mean to post this in the Amusing Sex Toy thread in GBS? Easy mistake to make.
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Mar 10, 2024 08:46
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Crazyweasel posted:Fellow New Hampshirite - have you lived here long? Just moved out like 10 days ago! Yeah it's been a tighter market than I was anticipating. Thank you for the tip on the arsenic! We're now putting in a bid on a 2005 build, looks like a good lot, and the owners of this house actually disclosed the home previously did test positive for excess levels of well water arsenic. They installed a reverse-osmosis filtration system and that seems to take care of it, they produced a recent test. We'll verify with our own testing if we get it, but thanks for the heads up nonetheless
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Mar 10, 2024 15:43
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phosdex posted:first house i put a bid on: 34 offers in 4 days, my offer for 55k over isn't enough. 3 days later, second place came back and asked me to up my offer by 5k and change close date. I said the new close day was fine and I liked the place but I wasn't going to raise my offer. Signed purchase agreement last night!  Now I gotta figure out how to move all my stuff.
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Mar 11, 2024 13:53
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I've thought about a steam shower too but I feel like I need to research them in more depth. I put a new bathroom in my finished basement a couple years ago, and due to the weirdo shape and a brick chimney support the bathroom was going to be pretty good sized. I was actually not on board on doing the bathroom until my contractor said "You know, we can fit a 5'x6' shower pretty easy which is a great size to put a bench and make it a steam shower. Instant sell. I absolutely love it. The actual "Steam shower" parts weren't terribly expensive. You just want a decent sized shower to enjoy it. Honestly if I were to do it again I might have re-arranged the bathroom differently to give more space to the steam shower. I also got a rain-shower and hand-nozzle thing to make it a good option to bring the dog in to clean him up, so that's another plus. I also screwed up and said I wanted the thermostat on an outside wall and there isn't quite enough insulation so the actual readout is worthless since the themostat is like 20-30 degrees cooler than the room. I can get a little foam housing for it and fix it but I've been lazy and everything works fine. But yeah, I'm in MN so I'd say if you're in a place with cold winters and you have the space a steam shower is absolutely worth the reasonable uplift.
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Mar 11, 2024 16:21
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Hey do you have a whole house humidifier on your furnace in MN? House up there I'm buying doesn't but a few that I looked at had one.
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Mar 11, 2024 16:28
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Not sure why you would want to increase the humidity in the Midwest but I live in a glorious desert with no humidity and bugs. Growing up in the Midwest it was typically too humid and we ran dehumidifiers.
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Mar 11, 2024 16:31
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