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kastein posted:My lesson was 1. buy laser level (though I actually got mine for christmas. Probably one of the most useful gifts I've ever received.) I'm going to have to invest* in one of those. *borrow my parent's
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May 22, 2013 04:35
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I've been renovating my spare room and the biggest gripe about it was the tile ceiling. It had to go. I ripped it out, and started to replace it with drywall. What a freaking nightmare. Sloped ceilings, a 10' wall that is out of square, and a myriad of other things that make putting nice square sheets of drywall a pain. I've used about 4 gallons of drywall compound and have cut more 1.5->1" tapered pieces of drywall that I care to imagine (almost half a sheet). I've come up with an idea of how it is going to pan out eventually, but drat is it a pain trying to do things when nothing ends up being 90 degrees.
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Jun 7, 2013 01:06
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/\ Must have also visited Canada, because my kitchen had a very nice hanging light fixture that came down 3' in an 8' room. It was supposed to hang over a table, but do you really need it to be low enough to keep your food warm? Naturally I decreased the length of the chain so it now hangs ABOVE head height and not below.
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Jun 7, 2013 20:12
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Jonny 290 posted:Tree roots attacked our sewer line, and backed them up solid. This is an obvious Dufresne issue you have here. You can confirm that's the problem by the telltale signs (soapstone chess pieces, hollowed out bibles, boxes of old shoes, and large holes behind the posters in your house).
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Jun 20, 2013 01:29
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Bad Munki posted:Crappy construction tales, indeed. Don't stink up this thread with your lovely puns. 
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Jun 21, 2013 04:28
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Wild EEPROM posted:This is roughly what it looked like before, since I'm a bad person and didn't take pictures of the before. That's not a bad paintjob. . . it's just a missing texture for that particular wall. Just reinstall and it will probably fix the issue.
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Jun 28, 2013 02:25
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Wow! That previous page was "goldmine worthy"! I've never seen such a "wet and wild" water management system as that, and I've seen houses with 4 sump-pump holes and pumps all working in unison to keep the place from floating away! Would it be possible to dig a trench around the foundation (on the outside) and do the place properly*? *trench lower than the basement floor, with plastic cloth and a PVC drainage pipe taking water away, all covered with crushed rock or gravel? Naturally covering the outside of the basement walls with either tar or a waterproof membrane?
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Jul 26, 2013 14:19
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:Come on, you can't just mention that without providing pictures of this hilarious comedy sketch of a house. Sorry, this was back in 2002 when I was helping my uncle do masonry jobs and we were called in to fix a job that a guy had done himself. We went to the basement to take care of cracking in the floor so that the guy could turn it into a finished basement. We were given a tour and by the third sump-pump we stopped him and asked what the hell was the problem. We figured he built the place over a spring or something, but it turns out that he didn't know that a full basement means that there is a very good liklihood of running into water issued. Dude never bothered to have drainage pipe fitted and all the tar and membrane in the world couldn't stop the water from coming in through the floor. He finally "fixed" the issue by sinking an additional three sump pumps which were located in each corner of the basement. He told us that they all run steady for days when there is a decent melt or rain in the spring as his house was built below a hill. We gave him the same advice as the post you quoted. Dig a trench around the foundation and do it right so the water is taken away before it can soak through the walls and floors.
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Jul 27, 2013 04:10
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/\/\ Ok, what is with the giant red stars on the front of houses? I've been noticing them more and more all over the place and they seem to me to be some manner of "thing" as opposed to a common decorating trend amongst home owners. Is is some manner of "Freemasons/Chinese Communists/Astronomers live here" signal or do people really walk past a giant red tin star in a store and say, "that sucker needs to be displayed on the front of my house!"? Edit: I'm in Ontario and see them everywhere, my brother (lives in Calgary) just confirmed that this is something he has noticed there as well.
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Jul 27, 2013 22:32
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priznat posted:Calling bark "tree crust" from now on!! I usually peel off the crust as it is too dry and flaky.
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Jul 28, 2013 22:22
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ntd posted:Have to ask...where does the hot water supply come from? The aluminum eave-troughs. Sun gets it nice and hot!
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Aug 5, 2013 13:54
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Sudden Infant Def Syndrome posted:At first I thought it was a brilliant idea. Two seconds later I realized that it would only be warm after flushing. Flush before you sit down.
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Aug 7, 2013 16:17
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Just finished fixing a 5 year old roof that had a peak that was shingled like this. . .  Hmmm, I wonder why there was extensive rot and water damage?
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Aug 28, 2013 15:13
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Detroit Q. Spider posted:I hope someone got (successfully) sued for that. They paid a guy to do their roof because he said he could do it cheap. . . nuff said.
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Aug 29, 2013 16:27
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So my cousin bought a house. It's a nice large one story 3 bedroom with a finished basement that has an additional full bathroom and another bedroom. Really nice place. I was over the other day and went downstairs and the first step on the carpet (I was in bare feet because I wore sandals there) I noticed a damp feeling. She was complaining that the dehumidifier was pulling a full bucket of water (nearly 2 Gallons) from the air a day. I went to her sump pump hole in the storage room and the water was an inch from the top. There were three sump pumps in the hole (one conventional, two submersible) and another submersible in the corner not being used. None of them were set up to drain properly, and would only kick in when the water was about to crest over the top of the hole. The horizontal pipes that run under the basement floor were totally submerged, and by my estimates, the water was touching the bottom of the concrete pad for most of the house. The previous owner was obviously very paranoid about flooding, but had all the sump pumps set up to only prevent water from flooding over, but not to keep it from soaking up through the concrete floor. Had I not pointed it out, I'm sure that all of that carpet and tile would have to be torn up and thrown away, and possible had to have the house treated for mold. Strange thing was that we have not really had much rain the past while, and I think the basement (full height) is just a little too low for the area.
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Oct 1, 2013 16:42
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Indolent Bastard posted:Fair enough. One plumbing question regarding the installation of an external sump will go to the plumbing thread. But I will ask about fixing my porch here. Most of your non-plumbing/electical questions can go here. Questions get answered pretty quick in that thread.
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Oct 1, 2013 19:24
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rekamso posted:Drywall damage up above from the floor sagging in the middle: Load-bearing Drywall!
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Oct 2, 2013 17:52
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That could also double for greece.jpg
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Oct 28, 2013 18:45
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Enter Char posted:Wouldn't that cause issues with rust? I can't imagine the buildings last as long as they'd like with rebar just poking out the top like that. If you can allegedly not pay full property taxes, I'm sure you could afford to just slather some tar around the bottoms so water doesn't seep between the rebar and the concrete.
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Oct 28, 2013 18:57
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Anyone in this thread will be able to do the exact same thing, just as accurate and fluidly as him after a few days of laying blocks. It's surprisingly easy. (this from a former mason's assistant)
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Nov 4, 2013 04:12
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:No joke, he would do that for his hourly wage. I've seen block crews slam up block during all the daylight hours, 7 days a week, for months on end. They just get good at being perfect. Mortar in the right consistency, with the right volume on the hod, with the correct number of bricks. 200' wall, 8 guys doing a course an hour; that stuff just flies up. They take breaks every couple of hours or so while the scaffold crew puts another level on. There's a whole other ground crew just counting bricks, cutting bricks for pipes/outlets/lights/doors, mixing mortar, getting scaffolding ready. But the guys up top just lay bricks like that dude, one after the other, nearly nonstop. Very impressive. A busy blocklayer who uses the same trowel for a whole season will gradually begin to take longer to lay blocks as his trowel begins to shrink and can hold less and less mortar. The last summer I was working I traced my brand new trowel onto a large piece of paper at the beginning of the season, and by September I had lost about 5mm all around the edge, and a good 1cm at the tip. I was only laying about 3% of the blocks we did that summer and mostly mixed mud and placed blocks and scaffold. My uncle who was doing 97% of the laying got to the point where he had to get a new trowel two weeks before the season was over because he had lost so much that the handle was worn to a nub of wood from tapping blocks down and the blade itself only held 1/2 as much mud as at the start of the season. You can also tell a really good blocklayer from how sharp their trowel is, as they are constantly sliding it along the edge of the blocks and sharpening it, as opposed to occasionally bumping them and dulling it again.
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Nov 4, 2013 19:17
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kastein posted:For some reason I thought mortar needed to be mixed much drier than that to avoid the wall sagging before it cured. I was pretty surprised by how wet the mortar he was using is. you can go up two or three rows on wet mortar, but any higher on fresh stuff isn't advised or you will get sagging or tilting.
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Nov 4, 2013 19:31
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Does the Russian language even have a word for alcoholism, or is it just easier and faster to have a word that describes people that are not constantly trying to get drunk in the most bizarre and desperate ways? Well my uncle that has jokingly made it his mission to buy, renovate, and flip every house in our town came across a beauty that a relative asked him to look at (he gets asked to look at more homes for potential buyers than the inspector does). Anyway, he shows up to the place and it's your typical cottage for this particular area of the lake. House is built in the side of a hill that steeply slopes down to the lake. In the basement there is an interesting setup which I will attempt to MSPaint based on his descriptions. It seems that there were issues with water coming inside the basement because of the hill and rainwater running against the foundation of the house. There was not enough/sufficient drainage, so it would seep into the basement, sometimes spectacularily from the visible water marks in it. Now this isn't a finished basement, but it's still a serious issue. Here is the "fix" they attempted.  For those of you who are having issues parsing that diagram. The previous owner* (who I'm guessing is Frank Lloyd Wright's hillbilly cousin) constructed a redneck version of Falling Water, so that water that hits the side of the foundation is allowed through it (the foundation walls) into the basement, then flows across the floor (which is slightly sloped) and is directed by the Ghetto Hoover drat (5" high walls of cement) into a larger hole that allows the water to flow out of the basement and erode the hill directly below the house. *current seller takes no responsibility for the state of the basement, but when asked why he didn't fix it, he replied that it works just fine. My uncle's suspicions are that the current seller actually did this.
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Nov 8, 2013 14:41
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There is a local spite garage about 15 minutes from where I live. Other guy (bottom right) buys a single lot that has been for sale for a while. He moves in and one of the first things he does is talks to the rear end in a top hat who owns the 4 lots between him and the lake and asks if the property line between them has been surveyed recently. The rear end in a top hat takes him for a walk and says, "the property line is here! (brown dashed line that cuts off one corner of other guy's property). The other guy says that the Realtor told him he had a square property and didn't mention anything about one corner being chopped off. He tells the rear end in a top hat that he is going to have it surveyed just to be sure he stays on his own property. rear end in a top hat tells him it is a waste of money, and not to bother. Other guy does it anyway. Turns out that other guy was right, and the surveyor says he has a square lot. Now in rear end in a top hat's mind, he just lost about 1000 square feet of his six acre property. The next year other guy says that the view of the lake during fall and winter is really nice, and that he wants to cut the trees that are on his property (in red) so he can see the lake year round. rear end in a top hat tells him that he still thinks trees are on his property, and that the other shouldn't touch them or else his lawyer might get involved. Other guy realizes that rear end in a top hat will never listen to reason and cuts the trees on his property so he can see the lake. He enjoys the view for March, April, May, Jun. . . rear end in a top hat starts building a massive fuckoff garage! He actually (this happened years ago, but I heard some more about it this year)went out into the lake on his boat and had his brother place big poles with flags so he could tell exactly where he would have to build, and how tall, to perfectly obstruct the other guy's view of the lake through his little doorway through the trees. The garage is something like 60' long and 20' wide, and nearly 2 stories tall and all it's holding is a lawnmower, a snowmobile, some winter tires, and some gardening supplies. To add insult to injury, rear end in a top hat planted a shitload of 20' tall cedars all along his treeline last year so that in a year or two the view of the lake will be totally obstructed in the winter as well, since the treeline is mostly maples and poplars. Now that's spite!
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Nov 14, 2013 15:49
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smackfu posted:Yeah, that's a tough spot for the other guy. Even if the guy didn't build the spite garage... he still probably would have planted new trees on his side of the property line and blocked the view. People DO NOT like it when you cut down what they consider their trees. The best part is that he couldn't even really see the trees that were cut down due to the angle to his house and the fact there were still trees there. From his place it would have still looked like an uninterrupted line of trees going across his property there, and he in no way could see the other guy's house from his property.
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Nov 14, 2013 18:47
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Here in Canada the vast majority of housing issues are municipal, so considering the municipality it's in, there is a 99% chance that there is nothing in the books to cover such a situation.
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Nov 15, 2013 03:56
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NoWake posted:Here about 45 minutes west of Cleveland, there's lots of cheap land with good views of the lake. Pretty nice place to live, wouldn't you say? OK, I think we found our "spite/inconsiderate rear end in a top hat" winner here. Unless you can think of anyone who has an actual "sun-blocking" machine on their property to screw over the neighbors.
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Nov 21, 2013 14:57
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High Lord Elbow posted:I doubt he did it to keep the neighbors from seeing the lake. He probably just wanted to cut the traffic noise from the busy road. Inconsiderate? Maybe, but I'm always surprised by how much people feel entitled to have control over land they don't own. I was basing my opinion on what NoWake said. Specifically... NoWake posted:Oh, he also built a 40-foot high berm around the whole property to block the view of everybody living south of him. It sounds like people had a view of the waterfront, then didn't after he had his way. If that isn't the fact, then I take it back.
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Nov 22, 2013 06:18
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kizudarake posted:They expanded the kitchen and knocked a thankfully not-load-bearing wall out between a spare room/bedroom and the kitchen. The sink used to be two feet further towards the camera from where the range on the island is now. The hidden window was a bedroom window, and 90% of the house has 10 foot ceilings. Another thing that the kitchen remodel did is make it so that, due to where the other window overlooking the back yard is, you can only see a very small area of the back yard from inside the house. How long did it take to rip the insulation out from under the stairs?
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Dec 7, 2013 15:58
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Hard to tell from the weird angles and distortion in the picture, but it looks like there is a roof running perpendicular to that one and that the closest section of the house was actually brought there from somewhere else. I'd guess that it was broken up, trucked there, reassembled, and then there was the problem with what to do with the water running off the roof from the new structure. That extra roof keeps water from running into the valley between the two houses, and I'd imagine it was cheaper than trying to remove the trusses from the addition and doing it properly. About 1/2 the houses in my town are from the 30's-50's so the second floors on a lot of them were small, cramped, and lots of sloped ceilings (mine included) and such there were a lot of "barn dormers" added (mine included) to allow for people to stand upright near walls, and to allow for bathrooms on the second floor. That architectual abortion looks nothing like an addition, and just a quick fix. Speaking of crappy construction (literal crappy). My uncle just sold his house that he recently renovated (third house he has flipped) and is planning to move into another one that's been vacant for about 10 years. He ripped the interior walls off the first floor and found the only thing insulating them is hundreds and hundreds of lbs of mouse crap. Seems that they took all the insulation from the exterior walls and moved it to the interior ones. So walls that were never insulated are now packed with chewed insulation, and the exterior ones are almost completely devoid of insulation. I'm going to try and get some pics before he insulated and covers it up again as it is a sight to behold.
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Jan 14, 2014 07:17
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If you GIS Groverhaus you'll get a lot of gems. I landed a ban for making references to construction techniques pioneered by Grover. This is a good one... 
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Jan 15, 2014 05:34
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I have some non-Grover related news . . . which coincidentally involves insulation. . but not stairs! I have a "junk room" at the back of the house. It's an approx 8x16' room that used to be an open porch, but was enclosed when the upstairs addition was added to the house sometime during its 85 years. It's freaking cold, and before the furnace was installed, this room managed to get cold enough to freeze the pipes in the bathroom above it. Now that there is a furnace it is much better, but still hovering around 5 degrees (Celsius) when the furnace is idling and it's below 20 outside. I figured it was just really poorly insulated and decided that I'd finally do something about it today. My mother wasn't busy and decided to bring her truck into town so we could make some dump runs and get rid of the trash we ripped out. We were about to start when my mom noticed that the west-facing wall was quite cold. We decided to start on that one. I got the skill saw and made a few cuts and then ripped the boards off. I was greeted by a blast of cold air! Not a spec of insulation in the bloody thing!  I mean not even a shred of anything! The only thing we could find was newspaper (flat) sandwiched between the wood siding on the outside of the house and the boards they were hammed to.  I ripped a few boards off the wall next to this one (right side, blueish-grey patch). And was relieved to be greeted with vapour barrier and fiberglass insulation. Next, we set about putting in some vapour barrier, then filling the spaces with R12 insulation (only a 2x4" wall).  I also ripped the first panel off the ceiling and was glad to see stripping and styrofoam insulation.  I forgot to take more pictures, but currently the wall has been covered in vapour barrier and the wall to the righ has been stripped of the wood paneling. I'm going to replace the ceiling and the other two walls with drywall. Eventually (when I get some money) I'm going to rip the wood paneling off the outsides of the house and put on some 1" foil-covered styrofoam insulation and then some nice vinyl siding, so I'm not worried about there only being 4" of R12 in the walls here. For the life of me I can't understand why the previous owners would go to the trouble of insulating the other two walls, but leaving this one completely devoid of insulation. There used to be a wood stove in this room, so they obviously wanted it to be warm, so why not take the 10 minutes (before they put on the paneling) and insulate the drat thing?
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Jan 26, 2014 04:34
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This whole, "Atoms will negate the harshness of winter" was never a thing in Canada, and especially not a consideration in 1928 (when my house was built). Houses here have insulation, be it straw/sawdust in the early days or commercially available solutions later.
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Jan 26, 2014 16:25
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A lot of people around my area buy smallish cabins built in the 40-50s that are super close to the lake (talking 50 feet or less sometimes). I'm not sure the exact distances, but I believe that any new structures have to be built at least 200 feet from the high-water marks. So what happens is they "renovate" the small cabins (under 700 square feet) and after the work is done they have 2000+ square feet McMansion-Cottages. I've seen instances where one 15' wall was all that was left after a renovation, and the entire thing was enveloped in a new structure. As soon as the walls surrounded it, it was taken down.
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Jan 27, 2014 17:23
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Well the backroom renovation is getting interesting. Seems that there was a wood stove in that room and they never bothered to seal the hole properly. I found an old masonry cutting disc covering the hole, so that's going to be another can of worms when I redo the outside of the house. . . whenever. The entire addition is so poorly made (walls with a mismatch of insulations, studs in random places, and an uneven floor, that I'm not afraid to take a bath (showers are still on the table) because the bathroom is directly overhead, and I have a large soaker tub. I'm just afraid that it's going to fall through the floor is the ceiling in the addition (have not revealed yet) is to the same standards as the rest of it. As soon as it gets a little warmer, I'm going to suit up, crawl under it, and see what I can do to get the floor flat. No sense mudding drywall if I'm going to end up cracking everything in the process. Old houses are a scavenger hunt of problems. Address one issue, and it leads you to the next issue to be resolved.
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Jan 27, 2014 22:55
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/\ Wow! That's the shadiest thing I have ever heard! Insulation is pretty much the cheapest thing you can do in a house (assuming you're talking about fiberglass insulation). Speaking of my insulation woes. I finished re-insulating the back room of my house and just noticed that two of the windows are not properly supported. They are missing the headers and the 2x4's above them are being held up by the actual window frames! One of them is just a plate window with a 1x6" pine board, and the other one is a new window I installed two years ago that I couldn't see what was wrong because of the walls. Both have a noticeable sag in the windows themselves, and the last thing I want is one of my new windows cracking when I jack up the floor. I'm guessing that this addition was done by the owners and not a contractor given their liberal use of repurposed materials. loving old houses!
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Jan 29, 2014 05:33
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MrYenko posted:All the superior modern materials, engineering, and preparation in the world doesn't make up for the fact that construction crews now just give zero fucks about the workmanship on their sites. Biggest reason for this is that these are guys who are working on a crew, usually for a large contracting firm. So no matter how lovely their work is (unless there is a criminal investigation), nobody is ever going to know it was their lovely work that caused the roof to sag or the drywall the crack. Add to that schedules and budgets, and you have a recipe for lovely work.
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Jan 29, 2014 15:54
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Bad Munki posted:There's a chance I'll be building a house in the next 5 years. How do you avoid crazy poo poo like this? I mean, look for reviews on the contractor and all, but that only goes so far. Does it help or hurt that if I did build a house, it wouldn't be one that's going up in a tract of a hundred other matching houses being built at the same time? I don't have a problem with the "choose your blueprint" practice, but it wouldn't be an assembly-line home. Probably not a one-off custom deal, though, although that's also not outside the realm of possibility. If you are hiring a contractor yourself you are already sidestepping a shitload of issues! The best thing to do is find people he/she has built for and talk to them. Find the local building inspector and ask him/her about that contractor. Do a web-search and see if anything shows up. Ask another contractor if they are willing to talk about them. The construction industry is somewhat tight, so most contractors know the competition and their reputations, and are surprisingly honest and willing to share info. If you really want to keep a contractor honest, have the building inspector show up (if he is willing) on the day before your home is getting sheeted, so he can see all the studs and such. Hell, offer to pay another contractor a few hundred to do an inspection once of twice. If your contractor knows that you are keeping tabs on him/her, they will keep in line.
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Jan 29, 2014 16:25
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Bad Munki posted:How annoyed off would a contractor be if an owner he was building a house for showed up at the build site from time to time to have a look around? Maybe with a case of beer for the crew? I don't know what kind of crazy contractor you'd have to be to not expect the owner to be checking up and asking questions. Also, instead of a case of beer make it a large meatlover's pizza and some sodas around lunch time. Next week make it some subs, and if they are there for a third get some burgers. If you do that once a week they will love you! Also don't be afraid to ask questions, I'm sure they will have a few for you as long as you're not a sperglord or super annoying. If they like you, their work will show and they will ask you for input when it comes to aesthetic options or just preferences (you want this closet a little bigger, or further away from the door?). Many contractors (at least good ones) will be able to pick out issues with floor plans when they are building things, and if they like you they're more willing to stop and ask or phone you to get your opinion ("hey, this wall could be moved another foot to the side in case you wanted to put a king-size in there, you'll never notice it missing from the living room") etc. Blistex fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Jan 29, 2014 |
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Jan 29, 2014 16:45
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 17:14 |
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Bad Munki posted:I think it's more just that I don't really know where the line is between "checking in on things" and "god drat this guy is loving here all day every day." Just think of you doing something in your line of work for a client that is worth tens of thousands of dollars. What would you consider to be acceptable, and do the same with the crew. If you are satisfied that they are doing a good job then you can leave them alone for the most part. Also, like I said, if they like you they'll stop things and check with you if a problem arises or a decision needs to be made.
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Jan 29, 2014 16:56
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