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Devian666 posted:I want to bitch about increasing interest rates. I've been looking at currency forwards and it looks like the market is expecting an interest rate increase in NZ of about 1%. Which means our 4.5-5% interest rates will hit around 6% later this year if the market is correct. This is the one thing I hate about having a mortgage is being subject to interest rate fluctuations (and the Reserve Bank has a habit of running interest rates to 8-9% just prior to a crash). I don't know if they're an option in NZ, but in the States it's usually strongly recommended that you get a fixed-rate mortgage. They require better credit records and may have a slightly higher starting rate, but they insulate you against increases in the interest rate. Conversely, if the interest rate drops substantially, you can usually refinance your mortgage to take advantage of that drop.
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Jan 24, 2017 23:35
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Yeah, in the US you can get fixed-rate loans that are fixed for the entire duration of the loan, in addition to the "fixed for awhile, then floats" loans. I have a fixed-rate 15-year mortgage for example. Sucks to be in New Zealand, I guess. 
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Jan 24, 2017 23:49
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Cheesus posted:Forty years ago our property was part of a recently subdivided farm of 10 acre lots. You heard about the spite barn, right? Guy buys a house near a lake, but with no view because there's a stand of trees and the tail end of another lot between him and the water. Checks the property lines, discovers the trees are on his property, gets them taken down so he has a nice view. The owner of that other lot sees what he's done, goes out on the lake and looks back towards the house, figures out exactly where to build a gigantic gently caress-off barn to block the view, does so. The barn's grossly oversized for his needs and not conveniently located, but it hosed over the neighbor so who cares?
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Feb 1, 2017 21:37
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Talk about it with your fiance and try to figure out something that feels reasonable to you both. I mean, this is like asking who buys the groceries or pays for the kid's piano lessons or whatever -- there's always going to be expenses at a greater or lesser scale that need to fit into your budgets. If you can't come to an agreement together, couples counseling is probably a decent idea. Counseling isn't just for failing relationships; it helps people who are having trouble communicating with each other, and a lot of people are bad at communicating. When you're dealing with financially providing for your family, a lot of emotions can get tangled up into what would otherwise be a pretty straightforward budgeting process, so having a trained, objective outsider to help you out isn't a bad idea.
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Feb 23, 2017 23:24
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Intuitively I'd guess that your average landscaping stone can be moved with a cheap hand truck. They're probably not going to weigh in excess of 100 pounds, in other words, so with appropriate mechanical advantage you should be able to get them into position solo. You'd still need to get them delivered, of course.
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Mar 2, 2017 18:23
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Subjunctive posted:It doesn't have to stop the car forcibly, just present a deterrent that will have them turning around on someone else's lawn instead. Yeah, the rock should be high enough that people look at it and think "if I drive over that, it might hit the underside of my bumper". It doesn't have to be anywhere near 2' tall. Still, perhaps my handtruck suggestion was overoptimistic.
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Mar 2, 2017 20:22
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When I was a kid, my dad built a compost pile bin in the back yard. It was just a simple frame with 1x6 boards to hold the compost together, and when he wanted to get some dirt out, he'd remove one of the bottom 1x6s and shovel it out. Later he bought a fancy barrel composter that you could spin to mix, but he always did love buying gadgets.
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Mar 22, 2017 21:30
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MrYenko posted:Mmmmmm. Meat smoke. As noted, the problem with meat smoke is that it gets on everything. Have fun scrubbing your walls!
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Apr 2, 2017 23:53
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therobit posted:One wonders how people managed to cook meat indoors for loving centuries without a vent hood. Y'all have had too cushy a life if you have never had to smell dinner cooking. How did people ever manage to survive without furnaces, or electric lights, or canned food, or any number of other conveniences of modern life? Answer: they spent more time and energy on accomplishing the same things, getting (generally) worse results for more effort. And as has been noted time and again, the point isn't to keep the smell under control so much as it is to avoid having grease all over everything in your kitchen. Yeah, sure, you can scrub your entire kitchen down to clean up the grease...or you could just use a loving vent hood.
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Apr 5, 2017 04:10
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Buca di Bepis posted:Having to smell cooked food in a home does not seem quite on the same level. People act horrified at the idea. If you've ever cooked bacon without using a vent hood, you'll know that the scent lingers for, like, days. And sure, it's bacon, bacon smells awesome, but that doesn't mean I want to be smelling it all the time.
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Apr 5, 2017 15:22
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All I really remember about paint is that the Consumer Reports test showed the Behr ultimate stuff holding up as well as the higher-end ones did. I'm pretty sure their test was multiple coats though. I don't think I've ever heard of doing a single coat and having it turn out well in the long run.
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Apr 8, 2017 01:03
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devmd01 posted:You would be surprised what you can get rid of in the Craigslist free section. A few years ago when we put in new carpet, I put the old carpet on CL free with pictures of the condition, stains, you pick up, etc, and had 20+ emails on a couple of hours. Saved me the disposal fees from the installers. Yeah, try this. "Used" concrete is sometimes used as fill under new concrete pours, for example.
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Apr 10, 2017 15:31
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Buca di Bepis posted:Has anybody gotten their dirt floor crawl space encapsulated? I had an estimate done with a quote of $3,000-4,000 to cover 900sqft and that seemed pretty insane. Since all I care about is setting up a moisture barrier I was considering doing it myself with some plastic sheeting but I don't know if there's some other aspect to it that I'm missing. Have you been into your crawlspace before? How much room to move is there? The ones I've been in have had maybe a couple of feet of clearance above my head, and I would really not relish the thought of trying to crawl around in one, on bare dirt and rocks, with just portable lamps for illumination, trying to maneuver a big, unwieldy sheet of plastic and a stapler. Some jobs are expensive not because they're complicated but just because they're really unpleasant to do.
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Apr 10, 2017 18:05
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ex post facho posted:I'm in the Denver area. Does that quote seem too high or reasonable for the work performed? Always get at least two quotes. I have no idea if that's reasonable, there's too many factors at play, but always get at least two quotes. If nothing else, different contractors will have different opinions on how much needs to be done -- there's always the cheap guy that will do the bare minimum (which leads to problems down the road when you discover he decided to drill through your sewer line to run a cable rather than reroute), the one that'll try to sell you on a gold-plated solution for four times as much cash as you wanted to spend, and hopefully several folks in-between. But when you have no familiarity with the domain, you have no real way of judging where a single quote lies on that spectrum. Asking for more quotes lets you compare and contrast the different offers, and then you can go back to each contractor and say "So why don't you think it's necessary to do X (that some other contractor suggested doing)?"
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Apr 12, 2017 19:20
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H110Hawk posted:I would pull a 3-6 month emergency fund out of your taxable market account. It's high risk / high reward to be in say a S&P 500 mutual fund. Capital One 360 offers 0.75% in savings (FDIC insured) or 1.00% on money market (FINRA insured.) Man, remember back around '07 or so when these were at like 4% interest rates instead? 
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Apr 13, 2017 15:55
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Rocks posted:i installed a garbage disposal yesterday, i'm awesome Congrats! Garbage disposals are a pain in the rear end to deal with. How's your back feeling? 
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Apr 18, 2017 18:41
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If you've ever wanted to learn to sew, making simple curtains is pretty straightforward. Making fancy curtains...gets more complicated, but simple ones are only marginally more complicated than "a rectangle of fabric with some loops on the top".
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Apr 21, 2017 04:35
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minivanmegafun posted:My tiny yard (around 625 sq ft) drains for poo poo, the ground is almost always moist. What should I start with? Core aerator? Does it have anywhere to drain to? If you're in a local depression the best thing you can do is dig a trench and run a drainage pipe out to a lower elevation.
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Apr 26, 2017 01:41
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Sab0921 posted:We need to buy a new refrigerator for our house and the process is relatively daunting. There is a ton of conflicting information on which brands are good and which ones are not. Which features are needed and which are dumb and superfluous and of course the people who are like "just get a sub-zero". I've generally been happy with Consumer Reports for these kinds of issues. They'll give a nice breakdown on all the relevant features, give their opinion about how effectively the fridge uses its space (e.g. they'll note if a particular area is hard to reach or if containers are awkwardly-sized), and of course measure its energy use and ability to maintain temperature. A subscription to their site for a year costs peanuts in comparison to the cost of a fridge.
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May 21, 2017 15:49
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Tricky Ed posted:The good news is most refrigerators right now are perfectly fine. Consumer Reports is great for telling you what models to avoid based on repair history. I repeat myself when I suggest going to a Sears Outlet, but my most recent refrigerator purchase listed at $1700 and I got it for $800 there. Plus you get to look at the exact appliance you're buying, without having to guess about how high a shelf will "feel' to you or whatever. Yeah, absolutely do not buy a fridge without seeing it in person first. And if you have to fit it into an alcove, remember to measure the alcove, write down the measurements, and bring a tape measure with you to the store so you can be certain it'll fit.
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May 21, 2017 19:53
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MrYenko posted:There is no such thing. Concur. After much effort I've managed to arrange my yard so that I never see skunks, possums, and stray cats in it, but I've still seen the occasional raccoon.
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May 27, 2017 02:12
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Charles Mansion posted:I'm going to be getting some estimates for a solar installation on my home and I'm curious if anyone has any general advice, warnings, etc. I know very little about the topic and I'm wondering if there's anything I should watch out for. How old is your roof? Having an existing solar installation makes it a lot harder to repair/replace the roof, so this may be a good time to consider replacing the roof as well.
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May 30, 2017 16:13
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Not all trees are good. My PO put a bunch of Leyland Cypresses along the back fence. These trees grow very quickly, but have a shallow root system, so when we had unusually strong storms this last winter, they all tipped over. Now that they're gone, my back yard gets so much more light. I guess in your case you already have too much light. Some of us aren't so fortunate.
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Jun 5, 2017 03:51
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Use a broom IMO, then follow up with vacuuming if necessary. I have a super-sheddy dog and if I just vacuum then the vacuum's bag fills absurdly quickly.
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Jun 5, 2017 23:23
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Sab0921 posted:I feel like the turd content of my floor is minimal, but I take your point. This is more an issue for those with small children or elderly/poorly-trained/sick pets.
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Jun 6, 2017 23:01
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Thesaurus posted:Briefly considered going with douglas fir instead of cedar to save approximately $500, but the thought of staining and sealing it all, only to have it last a lot fewer years changed my mind real quick. Wouldn't pressure-treated douglas fir last more or less indefinitely? Maybe don't use it for the pickets, but it's great for anything structural that'll be in contact with the ground (or with concrete).
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Jun 10, 2017 01:06
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Steve Yun posted:OK, so I guess I'll go with the tank. Have any of you replaced the water heater yourselves? Do you think that it's within the realm of a normal person's ability to do? It's doable, though you'll probably want help for maneuvering tanks around because they're pretty heavy and big. Otherwise, the rest is mostly just following directions and thinking things through. Shut the water off, close the gas valve, and drain the old tank before you try to remove it (go figure, tanks are easier to move when they aren't full of hundreds of pounds of water). Different states have different rules for how the tank has to be secured, how you have to install the emergency drain line, etc. For mine (California) the tank had to be on a stand and strapped to the wall a particular way, plus I had to solder copper pipe to run the drain to the outdoors; PVC wasn't permitted and the PO had just left the emergency drain to go to the floor. Which is honestly probably fine since the drain shouldn't be activated except in emergencies, but whatever.
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Jun 13, 2017 02:35
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What makes you think the warranty would give better results than just banking the money and spending it directly on maintenance as things come up?
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Jun 19, 2017 01:54
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Higgy posted:Head on over to the DIY subforum for some amazing reads and to ask for help if you need it. In particular, Fix It Fast has your back for "help how do i house" questions. Even if you don't have any questions, it's a good place to hang out and absorb knowledge.
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Jun 24, 2017 02:42
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H110Hawk posted:Pile some in your front yard, Craigslist -> "FREE FIREWOOD", see what happens. Had a guy come knocking at my door once, trying to sell me some firewood that he'd taken from the free pile three doors down.
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Jun 26, 2017 22:05
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Sab0921 posted:Please make sure you have blinds first. The neighbors don't want to see you naked. This may be difficult because blinds are expensive as gently caress. You assume people actually look in through the windows. Unless you're standing right in front of the window with your bits on display, odds are nobody's gonna see anything.
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Jun 29, 2017 04:55
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Bob Morales posted:Should I even attempt painting the inside of a house or should I just pay someone to do it? 1400 sq ft, one floor. Am I looking at like $300 in paint and supplies? It's tedious and potentially messy work, but it requires no special skills, so anyone can do it.
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Jul 5, 2017 01:58
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Really what owning does is give you a more stable monthly cost, especially if you have a fixed-rate mortgage. Rents can swing wildly depending on what the market will bear, while mortgages are much more predictable.
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Jul 9, 2017 04:10
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LogisticEarth posted:What the hell? Owning is way more unpredictable. You can stumble your way into thousands or tens of thousands of dollars worth of repairs or upgrades. Repairs are one thing, but upgrades are entirely on you for not planning properly. I would still consider repair bills to be more predictable than the rental market.
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Jul 9, 2017 05:04
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Ixian posted:On the flip side, unless you are in a wealthy area non-HOA neighborhoods trend towards "where ELSE am I going to put my car up on blocks if not my driveway??" types. I would honestly, legitimately, rather see houses with cars up on blocks and random trash around the side, than I would the sterile cookie-cutter neighborhoods you get from HOAs.
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Jul 9, 2017 20:32
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Ixian posted:I'm not wholesale in favor of the ridiculous power most HOAs have over housing but come on. I'm talking purely in terms of aesthetics. I like having a neighborhood where people can have projects strewn around their property, while the typical HOA neighborhood feels lifeless in comparison.
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Jul 9, 2017 20:55
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And if you do drive over it, stop, unplug it from the wall, and make certain it's still in good shape before you continue.
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Jul 13, 2017 20:24
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When I hired contractors to put in the foundation slab for my workshop, I found a fairly sizable, empty tequila bottle in the yard afterwards. I consider myself lucky that a) they didn't gently caress up (I watched pretty much the entire process), and b) it was only one bottle.
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Jul 13, 2017 23:05
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Ixian posted:factor your own costs to replace it in your bid. This is what I'd do, personally. Find a contractor you like, get a quote from them, and ask for the quote amount to be cut from the house bid. You have far more of an incentive than the seller does to make sure the job is done properly.
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Jul 21, 2017 04:57
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MrYenko posted:A friend My first reaction to this was "How?", but on reflection, it makes sense. Plants can continue to grow even without sunlight, so long as their energy reserves (in the roots and so on) hold out. And plants can absolutely ruin rocks and concrete if they feel like it. So by pouring concrete, sure you deprive the bamboo of any future energy, but you haven't stopped it, just slowed it down. You'd have to have kept it covered until its reserves ran out and it starved to death if you wanted to kill it. My parents' neighbors planted a bamboo "privacy screen" against their fence, and once a year I have to come by and help them whack back massive amounts of bamboo that are hanging over the fence and obstructing their walkways. This year my dad just dosed the entire stand with glyphosphate; we'll see if that helps.
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Jul 30, 2017 05:32
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