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We're going to end up with concrete poured for the retaining wall that the driveway is supported with on the north end (our property is at enough of an incline to necessitate one), and replacing an old paver patio that's wearing out with poured concrete. The actual driveway part itself is going to be asphalt...I can't afford to pour a concrete driveway that long.
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Apr 9, 2021 03:38
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| # ? May 5, 2024 13:56 |
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Alright, a reply. I last updated with content about a year ago. Since then? Nothing too major, but some improvements. I got a new basement freezer! My neighbor was redoing his basement area, this was juuuuuust a bit too big to fit there, so I swapped him my shorter one for this much nicer one.  I have great neighbors, we help each other, we get along well....we are truly blessed with the neighbors we have. My parents give us a quarter cow for Christmas every year, so the larger freezer will be very handy for storing all that beef. As of writing, we have ~100lbs of ground beef in our freezer. In September, I replaced the last bit of metal fence (at least that's going to happen right now) with wood fence to match everything else. Random bag of Quikrete I had in my garage from another project.  Dropped my utility knife in a hole; that was a goner. It is in there forever (or until these get pulled out) mixed with concrete.  I put a 4x6 on the corner because I initially thought I'd attach a gate or some way to open that when I need to get larger equipment into my back yard, but I decided I'd rather just take the 5 minutes to take the panel off for the once in a blue moon stuff I'll have to do. A lot easier this way. My dad still things I'll regret it, but almost a year later and I haven't had to get anything big in my yard yet. Digging post holes sucks.  Done! If I were re-doing it, I'd have put the bottom 2x4 a bit lower - I've noticed the bottoms of the pickets are starting to warp. I need to put another 2x4 down there to keep them as square as possible.  This cut was kind of a pain to make, but turned out pretty well, I think.  The day before Thanksgiving, the motor/grinder in our ejector pit died. That was fun. I ran to Home Depot, got a replacement, and Thanksgiving morning, swapped it out and redid how some of the PVC was (poorly) connected. No photos, it was kinda gross. I was also on call with work that day and of course got paged for some VMware issues while elbow deep in an ejector pit. Good times, good times. January ish, I worked on some funky electrical in my basement, in our laundry area. There's an existing light switch on the wall, but it only powered one outlet with a light plugged into it, and of course not the one directly above the washer / dryer. I was asked to make this work better. Here's where I need to tap into. This is where the existing outlet is attached to go on/off. It's a mess.  I'm the random hot wire just doing its own thing.  I don't trust this mickey mouse poo poo, so I'm replacing it.  That's a little better.  The exhaust fan in our bathroom died in January/February - ish. It was in a location that was drat near impossible to get to, and the previous owners hooked it up to a pull chain from the ceiling instead of a switch, like a normal person. Well, my wife and I thought this was dumb, so let's do it a little better. I went with this model: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Panason...1RQC1/307887784 I went into the attic and I'm not small enough to access the old fan. I honestly don't know how they put it in there. I didn't want to have to do a ton of drywall work because we want to redo our bathroom in the next year or two anyway. I measured the fan I bought and said "Hey, perfect, this'll juuuuust fit above the shower!" I cut my hole.  And...it won't fit, because my bathroom ceiling is at an angle. If it would go in straight, it would fit. Much swearing ensued. A quick mud job to keep my house sealed up and not lose a ton of heat into my attic.  I really don't like this, but it's how it is for the time being. I had to cut another hole, and after I installed this, I thought to myself "You idiot, you could have just cut around the existing fan and removed it that way" and I could have, but it would have been a pain in the rear end with not much room for error or fitting tools up there, so....whatever. Laugh away, it's not permanent. If I still have the same bathroom in two years I will be disappointed in myself.  My washer was leaking a bit after running the load, and after some research, it seemed like the culprit was a faulty inlet valve. Ordered the replacement part, went to swap it, and one of the four solenoid connectors (I think that's what they're called) had the connectors backwards from the other one. The other three connected just fine! Pulled the old one off the old part, put it on the new one, no issues.  Our dryer died shortly after that (early to mid March), so we had to buy a new one. By a stroke of luck I was able to find one that closely matched our existing GE washer AND I was able to get it in ~3 days versus waiting a few weeks for it. Maybe a month after that, my neighbor and I replaced my hot water heater. He used to be a licensed plumber and has moved more into general estimating for large construction builds, but still knows what he's doing and is a handy dude. He came over and helped me since my soldering skills aren't so great. Got it set into place next to it, sized it up, and we fortunately didn't have to move any of the gas line. I tried to buy one close to the same dimensions as I had, while still going from 40 gallons to 50 gallons, so that was nice.  Sorry, no photos of how lovely the old one was connected, but we got the new one ready to go in less than two hours. I burned my arm on the gas vent line, that was probably the worst part of the whole thing.  I did some soldering and was overall pleased with my handy work. Not amazing, but better than I remember being.   I also put a gate between my neighbor's yard and my yard. My direct neighbor to the south and our neighbor two houses down all have kids around the same age as mine, they all play together, and this way they don't have to go around the front of the house to get to the back yard. My other neighbors had theirs connected already, so this way when they're playing around it's a lot easier to see where they all are. No pictures there, sorry, but it involved digging yet more post holes. I might actually get good at that soon enough. That brings me to today and still unable to track down a concrete company to remove the old lovely retaining wall on my driveway and crumbling brick paver patio, and pour a new retaining wall + concrete patio outside my back door. I've got plenty of asphalt companies (and another neighbor three houses down on the other side of the road owns an asphalt company so that's nice) but no concrete. The hunt continues. I've also been trying to be a good person and good neighbor, and last summer I started mowing my elderly neighbor's yard. She and her husband are in their late 70s, early 80s, and their old lawncare person didn't treat them well and tried to raise rates halfway through the year. I saw her outside mowing one day, told her I'd help with it, and thought to myself "If my grandma was outside mowing while there's three able bodied men who live across the street I'd hope one of them would offer to help" so...yeah. It takes maybe another hour every weekend but I know they both appreciate the help. They walk with canes/walkers anyway and don't need to worry about that job. Besides the driveway, we'd like to replace our front door, back door + storm door, and sliding patio door, and remove the wood burning stove this summer but I don't know how realistic that is. I've got family I can call for help for one or two days, but my family farms so it all revolves around harvest season. I also should have ordered the doors and stuff ahead of time and just kept it in my garage; I don't know if that kind of stuff is as hard to come by as other things like appliances and lumber. Oh well. I'll figure it out.
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Jun 23, 2021 04:37
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You are missing a lot of things on that electrical. - you really need cable clamps of the correct types and installed correctly where cables go into boxes - that random hot wire is not ok - the outlet box is actually an extension ring and should be replaced with a box because there's a big hole in the back - I have suspicions the octagon box plus extension ring is over allowed box fill, though I haven't done the math - electrical tape is not an approved substitute for cable sheathing - grounding almost certainly not done right - it looks like you unfucked it some, but not all the way. Pipe soldering looks perfectly serviceable! Not OCD perfect but it'll hold water and no one will look twice, I've seen way worse done by "professional" plumbers. kastein fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 16:55
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Just to be clear - the random hot wire poo poo (with what looks like two black romex runs) is how it was before, not how it is now. That was removed and ran with new wire in conduit. The outlet box (the pic of it on my dryer) is what used to be up there (with what looks like part of an extension cord so at least that's gone) and was replaced with an actual box with a back and a cover. The majority of the stupid stuff has been replaced properly. Yes, you are correct, I need to fix the other stuff you listed. I'm not sure about the grounding off the top of my head. I also didn't know (but now that you mention it, it makes sense) that there are limits for box fill so I'll have to look into calculating and potentially fixing that. I don't know a great way to fix the short conduit/tape mess - I think my options are to open the wall up and see where it comes from and remove it entirely and replace with a run ran to length, or add another junction box to connect it to. The cable clamp, I don't know what I was thinking to miss that, considering all the new stuff I installed has clamps for the conduit. Thank you for looking at this and letting me know what is done incorrectly so I can fix it (or hire someone if I can't figure it out) - I do appreciate it!
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Jun 23, 2021 22:26
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Any time! I didn't realize some of that was already fixed and was "before" pics, glad to hear that. The grounding is pretty easy, you tie any and all ground wires together with a big rear end wirenut along with a bonding jumper to the box that's at least as big as the largest grounding conductor present. Your cable clamps not being connected to the box right is a 312.5 violation, but easily rectified. I'll be honest, I don't generally bother with box fill calcs at all. I just oversize the poo poo out of my boxes. Deep 4-11/16 squares everywhere! If you want to size them exactly according to the rules, it's covered in article 314.16 of the NEC and I've got a 2020 hardcopy here. There is also an online calculator at https://www.constructionmonkey.com/calculations/electrical/boxfill that will help. I gave it a SWAG based on eyeballing your work (3x 12/2 BX, 2x 12/2WG NM-B, 1x extra 12AWG THHN, plus grounding) and came up with 27in³ needed. If that's correct (or more than you have in there) a single 4-11/16 square 1.5 deep will cover you and so will the regular octagon box plus extension ring you have there if they're both 1.5 deep, which gives you 31in³. I personally consider box fill a fairly minor violation, but YMMV, I'm not code enforcement, just some guy on the internet who overbuilds things to avoid having to do math. Oh, looking at your pics, I just found a 250.68(B) and 250.104(B) violation on my own place. I don't have a water heater bonding jumper, or a gas main one either. Guess that goes on my list for home depot tomorrow... There weren't any in place when I bought it and I never thought to add any.
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Jun 24, 2021 01:53
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Holy moley it's been almost a year since my last post. I will effort post something soon, but holy poo poo concrete work has started today! Ripping out driveway from the house to the garage, ripping out the crappy retaining wall, removing the back stairs, and ripping out the crumbling paver patio! Getting a new concrete driveway, new retaining wall, new patio, new stairs, and a new landing coming off the garage. I'm excited, this day has finally arrived after over a year of trying to get this going!
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Jun 20, 2022 15:40
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Back in May, we had the super old pine tree cut down in our back yard. It didn't look the greatest and we got sick of cleaning pine needles up from everywhere. We had an autumn blaze maple replace it. We also got a smaller magnolia tree/bush planted in our front yard.  I also borrowed the neighbor's tiller and tilled up some of the low spots in our yard where there must have been bushes or trees and over time the roots had rotted out. They were low, had holes in them where someone could twist an ankle (or worse), and just weren't what I wanted in a yard with two young kids. If their friends came over and played, the last thing I wanted to deal with was an injury because of that. I tilled the spots to break up the dirt, added more dirt and fertilizer, and then put grass seed down and covered with straw. Overall, it's come in decently well, but I think will look better in about a year. I've noticed anywhere I've had to plant grass, it's taken 12-18 months for it to really fill out and look established. Before any concrete work could be done, I had to take down the fence in this picture, as well as the deck and roof off the garage. I saved all the fence pieces because I'll be putting them up once the concrete work is all done.  That's all done.  Also had to take down this small fence between our driveway and the neighbor's driveway. It was short, roughly 55' long. Picture is taken after I had already started removing it.  Out with the old    The rear stoop that was put on the house by the previous owners came off as well. It was solid concrete and brick the entire way down. That thing was not going anywhere. I could feel it in my bones when they were trying to remove it. They were able to remove some of it, and just poured concrete over what they couldn't remove. I think they put 6" to 8" of concrete on top of it.  Retaining wall, driveway, and stairs off the garage are all framed out.  Retaining wall poured.  Driveway poured.  Everything poured.   Materials to rebuild the fence between our driveway and the neighbor's driveway.  My neighbor said he'd help me with this project, but so far I've been the only one out there. Oh well, that's how it goes with some stuff I suppose. If he can at least help me hang the panels, I can dig the post holes and set the posts myself. At the end of the day today, I've got 5 of the 8 posts set. Going to put up some panels tomorrow after work, and hopefully Friday after work finish digging the post holes. I've also started putting the fence in our back yard back up. I'll have to relocate where the gate is, but I don't think that will be a super big deal. I'll be able to reuse almost everything that I took down, which is nice. A few of the fence pickets aren't in the best shape so they'll be getting replaced, if I need to reuse them. I've also been super super busy with life outside of home projects. I coached my oldest son in soccer in both the fall and the spring, got promoted, changed jobs, and I've now decided to coach my youngest son's PreK soccer team as well as my oldest son's 1st grade soccer team this fall. That should be.....something. Overall, super happy with the improvements we've made over the few months. There's some stuff I'd have done slightly differently with the concrete work after living with it for about a month, but I think that's any project. americanzero4128 fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 04:55
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Had to put the fence up between our neighbor's driveway and our driveway. Pretty straight forward, 8 posts, 7 panels. The same night I brought everything home from the hardware store, I was able to get the first and last posts in place. I did all the post hole digging with the chopper style post hole diggers, and this guy. Digging 8 post holes sucked, but it got done. After this, I've decided my limit before I decide to rent a post hole digging tool is 10.  Trying to balance making progress on this with cooking/cleaning up from dinner, playing with the kids, bathing them, etc. it was slow going. I was able to get one or two post holes dug a night after work. This is what I ended up with on Thursday night. The rest of the posts are in place, they're just not in the picture here. You'll notice one post is taller than the rest - I hit a big rear end rock around 36" deep which sucked.  Saturday after I finished mowing and string trimming, my neighbor and I were able to finish the fence up. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. We switched sides the last two panels were on because we'd have to dig down 8" or more on his side through rock, and find a way to trim back some concrete. Not gonna happen. Still looks fine, I suppose.  Not in the mood for a mud pit, or to pull weeds all the time, so I sprayed a bunch of weed killer, then put down some landscape fabric.  11 cubic feet of rock later, it's done. It looks better in person than in this picture. Also used some old pavers I had to make a spot to put my garbage and recycling cans.   It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than it used to be.
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Aug 1, 2022 04:02
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Basement bathroom is getting gutted in four days! I ended up hiring out the basement bathroom remodeling, since it would involve cutting into concrete to bury plumbing, and the bigger reason is I don't have nearly enough PTO at my new job to do it before the end of the year. The company we hired thinks it'll be a 3-4 week project which seems optimistic (everything seems to take longer than planned in this house), but what do I know I'm not the professional.
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Nov 11, 2022 15:51
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My bathroom has been completed! It actually got done a few weeks ago, and took ~7 weeks to get done. Took a little longer than we would have liked, but we are super happy with the results and prefer it taking longer versus rushing through it. Demoing my bathroom   Breaking up the concrete to bury the plumbing     Starting to frame it, put in new plumbing, and new electric   Concrete board and drywall and stuff  While they were working in my bathroom I took the wallpaper out of the laundry room and discovered they covered up cardboard on the wall, and used duct tape as corner bead. Awesome! This has now been fixed and done properly, but man, the stuff people cover with wallpaper.   Put in a new stained wood pocket door  The shower is pretty cool. We have a six way valve so we can run one or two of the following - the rain shower head, the removable wand/hose thing, and the shower head on the wall.  Finished product    I made the floating shelf that is above the toilet. First one I've ever made. It turned out OK. Next project will be the main floor bathroom, which I'd like to start in ~6 weeks, but we'll see how the finances are at that time. Other than that, been super busy with family stuff and work, so not many other big changes to the house.
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Feb 2, 2023 16:38
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gently caress me thats a bit 0-60 nothing went wrong?
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Feb 4, 2023 00:38
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| # ? May 5, 2024 13:56 |
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Nah, nothing major went wrong. Small stuff, delays getting some materials, but only delayed a couple days. Overall a smooth process, which was nice. I had a good idea of what needed to happen during the remodel, and I wfh and sat ~20' from where they were working so I could keep an eye on things and ask questions as they ran across my mind.
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Feb 13, 2023 18:06
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