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I just found this thread after following your AI adventures from the start. You've got great taste in both cars as well as homes (and cats!). Nice work on the property.
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Oct 11, 2018 05:02
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Lutha Mahtin posted:man, what is the deal with the basement layout? is there some important reason that the hallway takes up so much of the floor space? or is your diagram not 100% to size in all the dimensions It is definitely not to scale! Mostly I added it as an illustration of the layout. We have the original schematics, but they are 30 years old and need to be scanned. However, there is an illustration of the typical "Block 99" house online:  These houses were not originally intended to be build on sloping terrain so there are some differences. In our house, this layout is also inverted. In the illustration, you see three rooms in the upper right "KLÆR", "MAT" and "SPORT". This means "Clothing", "Food" and "Sport" (duh). In our house, these three rooms make up the basement shed. The PO's didn't want clothing and food storage or a sports room, apparently. This explains why the shed has two doors. So, ironically, the shed at ~11m2 is actually one of the bigger rooms in the house. I'm getting the impression that this house model was quite popular back in the day. Among the obscure things I've found online is evidence of a model kit for our house:  Sadly, I have not been able to find anyone selling it. Terrible Robot posted:I just found this thread after following your AI adventures from the start. You've got great taste in both cars as well as homes (and cats!). Nice work on the property. Thank you! I am the more sensitive member of the household, which means I can only dig drainage ditches, while Mr. Pursesnatcher may work on his car (I was allowed to assist in excavating his smartphone from the engine).
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Oct 11, 2018 08:26
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The (Recent) New Home Owners are back to report. It has been a long and perilous journey of old lovely concrete - redoing the walls was a minor detail compared to the floor. After I removed the random old carpet pieces I realized that the floor - while having what seems like acceptable structural integrity - was shedding concrete dust whenever touched. I also found more evidence of aeons old rat poison (stuffed under the paneling as a sort of "better safe than sorry" approach I presume). Anyways, over the last couple of weeks, I cleaned out everything and painted. When the concrete was as undusted as it was going to get, I splurged on the first new flooring in the house.  My husband, who possesses normal human lungs, needed some gear to enable his respiration.  I am likely some sort of barbarian and am completely unfazed by airborne microparticles. Then we start our first floor-bonding activity...    Oh my, we have a floor!  Pictured: The materials required.  I never thought about how nice it is to have floors.  Flooring life lesson #1: If you use a manual saw you deserve your suffering. Just don't. We did. Other than the blisters from sawing, putting down laminate (yes, I'm not going to spend 5x the money for parquet - which seems to be the Norwegian national flooring standard - in a shed). A+ would do again! Before and after (I'll let you guess which is which!).  Voila - basement shed is tip top cat safe!  Since I accidentally opened a bottle of wine dated 1994 we are now officially celebrating our new room! lizard_phunk fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Nov 3, 2018 |
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Nov 3, 2018 23:29
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It was a long winter. We even had to clear snow off a roof (which is actually to the right, covered in about a metre of snow).  Outdoors work was complicated as by the time we got home from work, the world was dark.  Still, it's not all bad.  We got a G-wagon to handle our steep hill during winter and promptly almost lost it down the cliff. Hill 1 Homeowners 0.  The major improvement during the last couple of months has been the living room. Let's have a look at what it looked like.  Mm, the nice yellow textile wallpaper.  The PO enjoyed huge furniture - two people could easily fit in one of these chairs.  We eventually figured out why only a couple of walls had the sexy 70's paneling. The electrical stuff is integrated in these walls and can only be removed by an electrican. Thus, the tactic shifted to spackling. Everything. By hand.  Remove wallpaper.  Spackling. Everything.  Painting (yeah I needed those beers).  Spackling. Everything. Now for anyone who is inclined to do this, I will give some hard learned advice: Spackling is fun. Spackling every night for days is still fun. Sanding it down is not. Unless you have some heavy duty high quality machinery to do this, I would really recommend to just suck it up and do it by hand. We bought a decent tool to do this, and it very impressively both set off the fire alarm and spread spackling dust throughout all floors of the house. Yes, it had a suction attachment. Your vacuum is going to suffer. But was it worth it? I would say so!  (note that planning is key: one area under the stairs is almost impossible to access and glares annoyingly at us)  Grey walls are good walls.  End results!  My husband, who has taste, got three of these lamps for the living room. There are still some work to be done - finishing up the staircase, updating the tiled ceiling and most importantly, getting rid of the atrocious vinyl flooring. All in good time! Spring is on its way, and soon project "New Drainage On More Than One Wall" is commencing!  Meanwhile, Frida has been hard at work decimating a reindeer antler. lizard_phunk fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Mar 2, 2019 |
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Mar 2, 2019 14:21
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Excellent, that looks much more norwegian already. I like it. Also, lol at that poor Elendigwagen.
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Mar 3, 2019 20:17
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Love the gray, might see if I can use those photographs to pursuade my wife to use it upstairs.
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Mar 4, 2019 14:32
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lizard_phunk posted:
Those beers were the single biggest line item.
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Mar 4, 2019 18:45
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Hey OP I didn't know if you were done with this thread so I never responded about my relative who did drainage stuff in their basement. I don't remember all the stuff they explained to me but I can try! One thing they did was install some kind of drainage system all around the perimeter of the basement floor. This involved digging a trench (which might have tubing or something in it, idk) and then re-covering the trench with some kind of drainage tile that lets moisture go down into the trench. The water that goes into the trench then drains down to a single point in the basement where a sump pump is installed. Another big thing was to dig a trench outside the house, similar to yours. This was done just on one corner of the house, because it was the main problem area. I don't know if they used the weird filler materials you did, but they did use some kind of plastic sheet. The sheet is apparently some kind of fancy heavy duty thing that will last for a long time. The way it was installed has two purposes. The first is to act as a barrier between the foundation of the house and the soil. The other is to act as a funnel for any water that does get by, and to funnel the water down into the basement drainage/pump system. Finally there was general cleanup and re-insulation of damaged and inadequate things in the basement. For example a lot of areas of the basement had cheap wall paneling covering the (cinder block?) foundation. I helped with removing that stuff, which was SO GROSS. We had to take a break right away when we started removing it, so we could run to the store and buy dust masks and extra eye protection for everyone, due to all the dead bugs and questionable moist areas on the back side of the paneling 😷
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Mar 4, 2019 18:50
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Nice piece of fish posted:Excellent, that looks much more norwegian already. I like it. I guess Scandinavians have a typical style of interior design. I usually prefer white, but this grey is quite nice. To be fair, nothing wrong with Capital G, it was just the snow under it that moved sideways.  cakesmith handyman posted:Love the gray, might see if I can use those photographs to pursuade my wife to use it upstairs. I just realized my photos were ridiculously badly lighted. This is a little more representative.   We will have drapes, it's just slightly delayed due to an IKEA-mishap...
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Mar 5, 2019 19:13
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Lutha Mahtin posted:Hey OP I didn't know if you were done with this thread so I never responded about my relative who did drainage stuff in their basement. I don't remember all the stuff they explained to me but I can try! Thanks for replying! I'm not exactly a quick responder here myself. But I will probably never be done with this house so I will endeavor to keep updating the thread. quote:One thing they did was install some kind of drainage system all around the perimeter of the basement floor. This involved digging a trench (which might have tubing or something in it, idk) and then re-covering the trench with some kind of drainage tile that lets moisture go down into the trench. The water that goes into the trench then drains down to a single point in the basement where a sump pump is installed. This sounds pretty exotic to a Norwegian. I don't think we ever do this over here, but I guess it's useful in humid and wet environments? I'm fascinated by the concept of sump pumps, I think having water under my house would take some getting used to. quote:Another big thing was to dig a trench outside the house, similar to yours. This was done just on one corner of the house, because it was the main problem area. We replaced the drainage in the main problem area (where the terrain slopes dramatically down towards the house). We also have 40 year old drainage around the rest of the house, which we need to replace, but it's not critical as our property slopes downwards on those sides. quote:I don't know if they used the weird filler materials you did, but they did use some kind of plastic sheet. The sheet is apparently some kind of fancy heavy duty thing that will last for a long time. The way it was installed has two purposes. The first is to act as a barrier between the foundation of the house and the soil. The other is to act as a funnel for any water that does get by, and to funnel the water down into the basement drainage/pump system. Yes, this is the classical way to do it! That's probably equal to the bumpy black plastic sheet you see in our photos. We also have another sheet that goes on top of this, and as a bundle around the drainage tube. This sheet is also extremely long lasting, but stops smaller particles from getting into the tubing (probably a good idea, since the 40 year old tube was completely clogged and this caused the system to fail). However, many people simply smack on the sheet you describe to keep water away from the foundation. Since Norway can get pretty could, adding insulation (either polystyrene or the fancy stuff we used) makes the basement warmer. Insulating the basement on the inside is a really bad idea as you get into below... quote:Finally there was general cleanup and re-insulation of damaged and inadequate things in the basement. For example a lot of areas of the basement had cheap wall paneling covering the (cinder block?) foundation. I helped with removing that stuff, which was SO GROSS. We had to take a break right away when we started removing it, so we could run to the store and buy dust masks and extra eye protection for everyone, due to all the dead bugs and questionable moist areas on the back side of the paneling 😷 Yeah, this sort of thing is a huge problem over here too. You're really not suppose to put paneling directly on the inside of the foundation. There will be moisture, which is a huge risk for mold and rot and other fun stuff. People really like paneling in their basements over here, and it can be done properly if there is enough space between the foundation and the paneling. Before we bought this house, we actually went to a showing of a very cheaply priced house. It had a huge basement with a very nice fireplace, lots of wood paneling. When we went further into the basement, we found some rooms with non-paneled walls. We turned on some (weak) lights and I was surprised to see that they had painted the walls black. We had a friend along with us, and she immediately collapsed with an asthma attack. Upon further inspection, the walls were not painted - they were covered in black mold!
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Mar 10, 2019 11:07
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lizard_phunk posted:This sounds pretty exotic to a Norwegian. I don't think we ever do this over here, but I guess it's useful in humid and wet environments? I'm fascinated by the concept of sump pumps, I think having water under my house would take some getting used to. Doesn’t have to be hot or humid, just a high water table. We have two in our house, one at each end. Here’s the one in the mechanical room:  And here’s what you see under the cover  The gray box on the top is a water main powered emergency backup. It wastes a TREMENDOUS amount of water to use, but it drains the sump when there’s no power. The other one in the garage looks the same (but mostly is dry)
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Mar 10, 2019 22:22
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beep-beep car is go posted:Doesn’t have to be hot or humid, just a high water table. We have two in our house, one at each end. This is super interesting! I like technical stuff. Good point about the high water table. Does it drain whatever whatever fills up regularly? Does it drain into the same pipes as your normal water (from toilets, shower, etc)? And just because I'm curious, does it smell? Because the drains in our "washing room" (utility room with a drain in the floor in case the water mains explodes or something) can smell pretty funky during summer - I've noticed this in apartments as well. Or maybe you clean that "access point" once in a while with disinfectant or something? And why is it necessary to have two? (sorry for the weird questions, this is alien technology to me!)
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Mar 11, 2019 18:43
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lizard_phunk posted:This is super interesting! I like technical stuff. Good point about the high water table. Does it drain whatever whatever fills up regularly? Does it drain into the same pipes as your normal water (from toilets, shower, etc)? The white bit on the green case in the sump itself is a float switch. Float..er...floats up, switch turns on, pump drains sump until switch turns off. Sump fills up, repeat until heat death of the universe. I never hear it day to day in the house, but once a month or so I go test it and make sure it works. The speed with which is fills depends on the season (spring thaw goes way faster than high summer for example) but there's almost always water in the back one. We're one of the lowest houses in the development and our back yard is pretty wet. I'm looking into improving the drainage this summer actually. It does drain into city sewer, but that differs based on municipality. Some allow you to go to a drywell, some allow you to go to sewer, and in the old days, you'd drain into the storm drains but that's forbidden these days (doesn't mean people don't do it, just that you're not supposed to) quote:And just because I'm curious, does it smell? Because the drains in our "washing room" (utility room with a drain in the floor in case the water mains explodes or something) can smell pretty funky during summer - I've noticed this in apartments as well. Or maybe you clean that "access point" once in a while with disinfectant or something? Nope, doesn't smell at all. I mean, if you stick your head way down there and take a deep breath, it'll smell like a basement, but no sewer smell or moldy smell. The water drains out and fills up too fast for that (and really, it gets filtered by all the soil around the house that is saturated). If it smelled that would be a bad sign! It would mean that something was really wrong with the ground water! quote:And why is it necessary to have two? No need to apologize! I love explaining stuff. We have two because we live in an area with a really high water table. The one in the garage is more of a storm overflow. If we got a whole lot of rain or snowmelt or whatever it might overwhelm the main sump pump and then it would flow into the backup one and prevent a wet basement/garage. We have a raised ranch house which means that our basement is living space (but taxed like a basement! so we have a 2100sq/ft house that's taxed like a 1500sq/ft) so a little extra insurance (in the form of the second sump and the mains powered backup) is worth it.
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Mar 11, 2019 21:01
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beep-beep car is go posted:The white bit on the green case in the sump itself is a float switch. Float..er...floats up, switch turns on, pump drains sump until switch turns off. Sump fills up, repeat until heat death of the universe. I never hear it day to day in the house, but once a month or so I go test it and make sure it works. The speed with which is fills depends on the season (spring thaw goes way faster than high summer for example) but there's almost always water in the back one. We're one of the lowest houses in the development and our back yard is pretty wet. I'm looking into improving the drainage this summer actually. It does drain into city sewer, but that differs based on municipality. Some allow you to go to a drywell, some allow you to go to sewer, and in the old days, you'd drain into the storm drains but that's forbidden these days (doesn't mean people don't do it, just that you're not supposed to) This makes total sense and is really cool. Thanks for explaining. My SO and I were discussing if there are any places in Norway where people have this sort of ground water situation - we think probably not. So we're fascinated.  Slightly related: Back in the day (80's/90's) the new innovation here was to plug the rain gutters collecting water from the roof directly into the drainage around the foundation. It looks a lot better than water splashing freely into the garden. Unfortunately people didn't realize that along with rain water, you eventually stuff leaves, bugs and whatever small sticks can fit into your drainage system. So that is one of the things we have to undo this summer.quote:Nope, doesn't smell at all. I mean, if you stick your head way down there and take a deep breath, it'll smell like a basement, but no sewer smell or moldy smell. The water drains out and fills up too fast for that (and really, it gets filtered by all the soil around the house that is saturated). If it smelled that would be a bad sign! It would mean that something was really wrong with the ground water! Right! Is getting drinking water from local wells a thing in your area? It's still pretty common in the countryside here. quote:No need to apologize! I love explaining stuff. We have two because we live in an area with a really high water table. The one in the garage is more of a storm overflow. If we got a whole lot of rain or snowmelt or whatever it might overwhelm the main sump pump and then it would flow into the backup one and prevent a wet basement/garage. We have a raised ranch house which means that our basement is living space (but taxed like a basement! so we have a 2100sq/ft house that's taxed like a 1500sq/ft) so a little extra insurance (in the form of the second sump and the mains powered backup) is worth it. A ranch house sounds like a lot of fun (and projects, I bet). One of the reasons I really got busy redoing (to be fair, renovating is a better word) the storage room in the basement was that it was not taxed as living space (so our house has a larger total area than actual living space). Same goes for the loft in the top floor. It's not difficult to change this if we can prove that we have turned it into actual living space (ventilation, flooring, etc). The loft was built in the late 80's (they put in a staircase and made a nice little room out of the loft), but it seems they never got it registered as such. So getting this done will be positive for our economical situation (house worth more on paper) and obviously for our quality of living as well.
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Mar 17, 2019 09:04
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Well water is very common in the US. If you live outside of a town, you will have well water. Even if you live in a town you might have well water due to various circumstances.
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Mar 17, 2019 17:33
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Ms Cookies's grandparents have well water. In God drat Brooklyn. That's all I have to contribute.
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Mar 17, 2019 18:27
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Lutha Mahtin posted:Well water is very common in the US. If you live outside of a town, you will have well water. Even if you live in a town you might have well water due to various circumstances. Ours is from the aquifer which is effectively municipal well water. It’s also super duper hard! About 22mg of salts per gallon, which is high enough that: A. You can taste it (tastes salty) B. If you’re on a reduced salt diet you have to filter it C. Water spotting is endemic.
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Mar 17, 2019 20:58
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lizard_phunk posted:This makes total sense and is really cool. Thanks for explaining. My SO and I were discussing if there are any places in Norway where people have this sort of ground water situation - we think probably not. So we're fascinated. Rain barrels. It's the ecological choice. We've fitted two 200l barrels to our houses downspouts, but in a way that doesn't disrupt the regular drainage.
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Mar 18, 2019 09:22
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Lutha Mahtin posted:Well water is very common in the US. If you live outside of a town, you will have well water. Even if you live in a town you might have well water due to various circumstances. Very common here too, outside of the cities/major towns. Seems like it is ever so slowly being replaced. My dad (who lives in the middle of nowhere) had well water until quite recently, and it was great. beep-beep car is go posted:Ours is from the aquifer which is effectively municipal well water. It’s also super duper hard! About 22mg of salts per gallon, which is high enough that: Whoa. I'm sure it does wonders for your hair. His Divine Shadow posted:Rain barrels. It's the ecological choice. We've fitted two 200l barrels to our houses downspouts, but in a way that doesn't disrupt the regular drainage. We are borderline preppers in spirit and my husband's gonna like this one. This could be a good system for watering parts of our garden too - we basically have a raspberry forest that will need some love in the coming years.  ---  We're getting close to the end of winter, with a lot of surprise snowfall.   Since I'm teaching classes and doing my normal work in the lab at the same time, it has been some long dark days.  Even our waterfall froze. At least we could put out some food for the birds, right. But every morning, the nuts, seeds (and even a coconut) had disappeared without a trace. One morning, I identified the culprits through the kitchen window... (couldn't get the BB code to work, but I guarantee you want to click this link!) https://vimeo.com/325030438 These guys are burrowing and hiding their loot in tunnels! lizard_phunk fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Mar 18, 2019 |
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Mar 18, 2019 18:36
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lizard_phunk posted:Whoa. I'm sure it does wonders for your hair. I am becoming a wizard at using white vinegar to clean everything, that's for sure. Now that we're on city sewer (our previous house was septic) we're looking at a whole house RO filter. If you care, here's the (publicly available) Water report for my town last year: https://www.niskayuna.org/sites/niskayunany/files/uploads/2017_annual_water_quality_report.pdf I was wrong, the salt is 30mg/l (turns out mg/l and ppm are interchangeable, long live the metric system!) so it's even more salty than I let on.
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Mar 18, 2019 20:21
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Gorgeous house, great photos
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Mar 23, 2019 18:47
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beep-beep car is go posted:I am becoming a wizard at using white vinegar to clean everything, that's for sure. Now that we're on city sewer (our previous house was septic) we're looking at a whole house RO filter. Holy poo poo. I would go for that filter. That can't be good for your kidneys long term, and bottled water isn't exactly free either. I tried to find values to compare, but it doesn't seem to be available (or I'm bad at googling). Risky Bisquick posted:Gorgeous house, great photos Hey thanks - This was the small hallway you would walk into when entering the house.  While we really want to conserve that rad red and gold fuzzy wallpaper for as long as possible, we are eliminating the yellow walls. This is the photo from the sales ad by the way, so the lamp and the hatstand were gone when we moved in. We are going for the black and grey look. The Twin Peaks look starts in the basement with the red and gold combo.  First, wallpaper removal. Since I really couldn't reach the top, this was done by my husband standing on his toes wielding a sander (he assured me this was completely safe).  Then I could ground the wall using a paint brush taped to a long stick.  Right now the paint is drying. The next step will be to finish the staircase. I will be happy when I never have to use a brush taped to a stick again...  Frida has informed us that she wants a renovated bathroom with heated tiles.
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Mar 24, 2019 19:50
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Enough about stairs and interior. Now for GLASOPOR ADVENTURES. Last summer, we replaced the drainage under the patio by hand. If you remember, we used glasopor. No one really wanted to deliver to us and it was flipping expensive. Our estimate for how much we needed was really not close to enough either - that ditch sucked up 3 cubic meters (3000 liters) of the stuff. By this time it was november and we had to wrap it up - which is what we did, literally. So the ditch has been covered during winter, waiting for the elusive glasopor. Yesterday, we found an ad saying a semi-local man wanted to get rid of 3000 liters. Since the Capital G (our G wagon) is currently on medical rest (see Pursesnatcher's excellent AI thread if you like cars), we had to think quickly. Most of our friends live in the city and do not have cars - Oslo is extremely unfriendly to automotives. But we got hold of one friend, left at 10AM to get a trailer for his 2000's Mitsubishi, and reached the man's house at 11AM. Here we had a deadline - 3000 liters of "I just want it gone" glasopor had to be collected by 4PM - price: less than half price. Well, let's think back to last year. That year, we got it dumped in bags at the bottom of the hill, and we moved it to black garbage bags. This took all of Friday evening and pretty much the whole of Saturday. This time, we had learned. Armed with heavy duty bags and shovels, we collected the glasopor in bags in just two hours.  Pictured: 1500 liters of glasopor. We were out of the guy's hair before his 4PM party.  Back at home, attempting to back up the hill caused our friend's cars to explode black smoke through the interior air wents (not pictured).  So we decided to leave it at the bottom of the hill and transport by the "brute force carrying" method. In others news, our elderly neighbor is moving - so we will get new neighbors in our one neighboring house  . He kindly gifted us his snow thrower, which we enthusiastically drove up our hill. Where it midways promptly stalled, out of fuel. Obviously this is a brakeless thrower, which was fun (planks are a must for hillside driving I suppose). My exhausted husband procured gas for it, which helped 0% - so now we have some hundred kgs of snow thrower in the middle of our hill.  The procurement of loads of glasopor is great news to us, because it means we can start digging - and most importantly: start digging much earlier than last year.
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Apr 28, 2019 10:00
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What is glasopor exactly? It just looks like rubble / stones.
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Apr 28, 2019 11:44
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wooger posted:What is glasopor exactly? It just looks like rubble / stones. Pursesnatcher posted:Ah yes, Glasopor! It is truly a magical material. Ton bags they are, but tons they do not weigh. A full cubic meter of this stuff only weighs 180 kg, which comes down to roughly 11 lbs per cubic foot. Gravel is roughly ten times heavier by volume. tldr: it's a very good alternative to pebbles, made of something like 10% glass and 90% air. It's also insulating. It has been pretty warm lately, but after we shuffled the glasopor we found a thick sheet of ice under where the big bags had been sitting over winter.
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Apr 28, 2019 12:29
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Welcome to the early 90's. A professional photographer was actually paid to style and shoot this photo. This is the best he could do. The oil painting did not come included with the house, sadly. I actually not so fondly remember this color from my childhood. As a small child our kitchen had much the same design. We were debating whether we should do something about it or not. Is there really any reason to spend money on a temporary improvement? This bathroom sorely needs a full renovation. Redoing your bathroom will generally cost you $25k+ in Norway (at least if you want tiles). We are very serious about building codes.  So in this post I attempt to answer this question. First, lets get rid of the decorative fruit-border (I don't know what this abomination is called in English or Norwegian).  Let's roll!  Time to paint.  If you're itching to put up some fruity wallpaper in a wet zone of your own, I would invite you to reconsider.  Thankfully the mold hadn't (yet) eaten through the actual wallpaper.   Results!  The details in the wallpaper are actually visible with this color.  The floor can't be helped (the last vestige of yellow in this house). But I would say it's a definite improvement! At the cost of about a hundred bucks and a weekend.  The Cat is not really impressed (The Tub is her mortal enemy and should be avoided at all costs). lizard_phunk fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Jun 23, 2019 |
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Jun 23, 2019 14:03
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There have been other developments as well. Our elderly neighbor suddenly (to us at least) sold his house. This is relevant because through small talk we discovered that our property is: 1) much larger than we assumed (hard to find the markers) 2) this huge apple tree belongs to us! (approximately in the middle of the rest of our Scandinavian jungle)  It is also interesting in terms of Property Talk: our house is newer (80s) and we got it at quite a discount - there was little interest throughout the summer and we bought it in winter about six months after it was first listed. The neighboring property is older (50s), the house was valued quite a bit lower than ours but was sold at a much higher price the day after the showing. It needs a lot more work too.  I'm honestly really surprised by this - in the end I suppose it's good for us when it comes to getting our house revalued. lizard_phunk fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Jun 23, 2019 |
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Jun 23, 2019 14:20
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In America we call a strip of wallpaper like that a "wallpaper border", at least where I live. It was a very popular style here in the 90s too.
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Jun 23, 2019 17:58
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Much time, blood, sweat and tears later, I can report that this:lizard_phunk posted:The procurement of loads of glasopor is great news to us, because it means we can start digging - and most importantly: start digging much earlier than last year. Turned out to be very true indeed. We have dug, and more. Anybody care for an update?
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Aug 10, 2019 00:00
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Doooooo it
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Aug 10, 2019 00:31
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Pursesnatcher posted:Much time, blood, sweat and tears later, I can report that this: Yes!
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Aug 10, 2019 01:10
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Pursesnatcher posted:Much time, blood, sweat and tears later, I can report that this: yes because me and the missus bought a house just recently, and theoretical house terrors pop into my mind several times a week now
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Aug 13, 2019 04:40
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All right, cool – just hard to tell if anyone were following  Congrats on the house to the Mahtins, by the way – it's not so bad once you learn to stop worrying and love the insanity.Sometimes you need to cut down a bunch of big old trees, because they're becoming a hazard to themselves and others...  (this was by far the smallest of the lot) Other times, you need to get the old, decrepit mullions off of your windows, and them sand them down tremendously so you can freshen them up with a few new coats of paint.  But more than that, there's the digging. So you'll recall that last year we dug, dug, and dug some more. We did this underneath a ground terrace, in what was more a muddy and painful Great War reenactment than it was a reasonable, sane, doable DIY home improvement project. But man, did it ever pay off! After we put the lid on that project we've had a long, snowy winter, a sudden, wet spring, and most of a hot, humid summer – so pretty much three seasons tuned to wreaking havoc on a poorly drained foundation. But for all that, the wall we handled a year ago, which was just suffering from salting all over, is dry and beautiful. So now we've moved on to the next wall – the Jungle Wall, as I like to call it. Because that's what it was until lizard_phunk went to work with garden shears and bolt cutters. lizard_phunk posted:Before So with the ground cleared, our task was pretty clear-cut. Pick up that shovel and start shoveling...  Now this wall is kinda strange. As you can see, we didn't have to dig enormously far before we found the old drain pipe. Plus, the old sheet of protective plastic was still kinda mostly in place, at least on sections of the wall. Also, the pipe was only split in a couple of places, and wasn't even completely clogged. All better than on the previous wall. The reason for the open pipe, however, which is part of the strangeness, is that the pipe was covered up with a thick sheet of heavy duty plastic. And it was for some insane reason insulated with fiberglass wall insulation. The kind which acts as a sponge if you get it wet, you know? But we got that out of the way, and kept digging. And then we got to this point here.  "Where'd the pipe go?" Yeah, it went down. See they built this house on rock (and roll), which is great, except that at one point the gentle slope of the bedrock turns into a goddamn cliff face. It's a 90 degree straight-down drop, which, to be honest, we still don't know where ends. We're still digging, trying to uncover as much wall (and pipe) as we can, but it's hard. Because, as it turns out, the soil here is even harder clay than on the previous wall.  Seriously, this is a piece of the clay we're dealing with here. You could build a separate house with this stuff. We've literally brought out an axe, because we simply had to. It's also, as it happens, very, very poor in oxygen. Warning: strong imagery ahead:  Not sure how this literally mummified fellow ended up way down there, but we gave him a good burial elsewhere. RIP, Mickey. But anyway yeah, cliff face.  It just goes on forever down there. At this point you can stand upright in the ditch and just barely have your head peeking over the edge. Hope we'll get to the bottom of this eventually. But! We're making progress, and most of the wall is properly uncovered now. We can also see the results of 40 years worth of water erosion, freeze/thaw-cycles, and frost heave. Kids, when you build a house, pick a filler material which doesn't hold water (and then expands enormously once it gets cold) to put next to your retaining wall. Oh yeah and make a sturdy sole underneath the wall, please. One which slopes away from the house, so water doesn't dig its way in under the foundation blocks as it runs past.   But no worries! We've uncovered it, and there's no real structural damage yet, so that just means it's time to get a-fixin'!  There's very little that a generous helping of concrete can't fix.  Pro tip: For this, a sort of medium-scale repair job, you still want to apply your fixin' in portions over several sessions. Concrete hardens kinda slowly, and you don't want to apply too thick a layer anywhere all at once.  Pro tip 2: Unlike the builders, we think a watertight wall is better. To ensure this, you can see the expert applying the same kind of latex-enhanced slurry she put on the inside of the wall. This stuff needs a couple of layers, so this is first application. We're simultaneously filling in more of the cracks and crevices with concrete, which will be covered by later layers.  Like this block right here; it's been totally cracked by the frost heave, and then pushed inwards, underneath the house. So here we're not just filling it with concrete, we're also mixing in good-size chunks of solid granite for added strength.  At the very edge of the wall, another block had been cleaved in half, and one half just fell right out when we excavated it from the clay. But still, we're fixin'!  And it's working! 
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Aug 14, 2019 10:45
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What paint are you considering for the mullions. IMO you'll want linseed oil based paint here.
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Aug 14, 2019 11:03
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 and subscribed. Amazing job, great pics! Any updates on the indoor pensioner? Also, maybe Mickey was the wall scratching culprit???
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Aug 19, 2019 17:33
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This thread is more fun than playing House Flipper. I admire you guys's strength and persistence.
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Aug 28, 2019 19:48
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Arsenic Lupin posted:This thread is more fun than playing House Flipper. I admire you guys's strength and persistence. Thank you! It gets better, too; we've hauled 500 lbs of various grades of cement up our hill – by hand, as with everything, at least until I can get my truck back into shape – and are almost done applying it in the right places. His Divine Shadow posted:What paint are you considering for the mullions. IMO you'll want linseed oil based paint here. We used some kind of super-duper long-durability stuff; not sure if it's plant based or not since I can't find the can, but the guy said that was the absolute poo poo if you want something long-lasting and durable for that kind of application. Zoesdare posted:
Thanks! We're keeping busy, at least Not sure what became of our pensioner; I choose to think he's exceedingly happy in his new flat, being able to take the elevator right down to the grocery store while still wearing slippers and a robe. At least I know that's what I would do. As for Mickey, that is a very good possibility – though he looked a tad too mummified to have been alive and scratching just this past winter. But we'll see; winter is once again coming! Personally I'm betting on the accursed squirrels.That reminds me, I don't think lizard_phunk has touched much on our accursed squirrels. At one point they stole my pants. Edit: Oooh, you mean our indoor pensioner! I think it's easier if you see (and hear) for yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdiyOx-ldn0 Pursesnatcher fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Aug 31, 2019 |
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Aug 31, 2019 20:26
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Alright, time for an update on the drainage project! There's been a bit of stuff happening. Although we made good progress with the actual foundation wall, this is what the ditch looked like. Lots of big nasty places for water to pool in, instead of gently draining away downhill. That simply wouldn't do. So we got to pouring.  Again, concrete hardens slowly (the say the Hoover Dam is still hardening to this day), so to make sure nothing goes wrong, dries out too quickly, cracks or whatever, you want to do this slowly. With deep, tricky holes like the one pictured above, you want to first get as much water out as you can. Then stick some mortar in there, compress it well so there aren't air bubbles and stuff in there and so that it gets into every nook and cranny, and come back the day after for more.  Big surfaces like this one needs to stay moist, so you'll want to just gently spray it at least every couple of days. For us that wasn't a problem, since we apparently have rain seasons now. Thanks, global warming. Anyway, with the ditch now nice, smooth and gently inclined down and away, we still needed a, uh, cavetto (according to Google Translate). If you go back to my amazingly festive diagram at the bottom of this post, you'll notice a hot pink triangle at the bottom of the wall; a concrete slope. Or cavetto, I guess. It's there to make sure any water coming from above gets away from the wall, and any water coming from below has a ways to go before reaching the wall. So we made that, and then it was just up to lizard_phunk to start nailing the plastic sheet in place.  Now you'll notice there aren't any fancy-pants insulation plates between the plastic and the wall, like we did last year. lizard_phunk posted:
That's why. They are dumb and stupid and I don't like them anymore. Plus they're stupid expensive, which is a drawback when they break if you sneeze next to them, so this year we'll be using good old-fashioned extruded polystyrene plates instead. They don't breathe, though, so in order to let moisture escape the wall, they're coming up on the outside of these black plastic sheets. But before that, there's the slight matter of The Hole. See all the pictures so far in this update have been from the upper part of the wall, where everything is nice and easy.  In The Hole, nothing is nice, and nothing is easy. But we're making progress.  Pushing aside the pipe, I was able to get some fixing done on the damages 40 winters have wreaked on the wall.  After a lot more digging, we reached what appears to be the bottom(!), where there's of course more heavy duty plastic hampering progress. I eventually wound up cutting away at it with a small knife, which made things easier. I had to expand the ditch a bit in all directions to keep at it, but I'm now fairly confident we're nearing the end of this... adventure.  Of course, one of the problems now is that standing at the bottom, there's a good 8 feet up to the edge of the ditch. And everything is cold, wet, muddy and slippery, so that's, uh, making life interesting. But deep, cold, wet, muddy and slippery or not, there are still bits of broken wall to un-break! Before:  After:  Still going to need a little bit more polishing, but it's progress!
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Sep 7, 2019 20:00
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What were we doing this time last year? The cycle repeats itself. This time we wanted 4 giga-bags of Glasopor(TM) and actually found a semi-local supplier. We made arrangements for delivery a few days later ...and waited approximately 4 weeks. When we started out doing the drainage work on our own, we imagined the most difficult part would be the actual work – we had no idea ordering stuff while basically telling suppliers to take our obscene worths of money would be so hard. I suspect this means that close to NO ONE goes through with this sort of project in Norway without either having a related job or having connections for supplies. BUT NOW the Glasopor has arrived (of course delivered to the bottom of the hill and not our actual property like indicated) and updates on THE DRAINAGE will follow soon. To keep you entertained during this week long smoke break (where we will be transporting 6 cubic meters by hand), I would like to tell you about the shittiest room in our house. Now obviously the “basement shed” or whatever it is was the shittiest room in the house, in fact it was not even considered a room (if the definition of “room” is that people can spend time in it). One actual room that was not even included in the advert Was the lovely Room. I now realized I haven’t reported on this room previously, probably because just simply repainting barely improved the abysmal impression this room makes.  It wasn’t lovely because of the (admittedly pretty trippy) wallpaper.  It was lovely because of the red carpeted floor, which was impregnated with what the PO’s explained was “some pee from the puppies” (they had dogs for approximately 38 years). So I have been itching to have this carpet decimated.  Some moisture has obviously been trapped in this corner (the weird color is rusty nails). Having used this room to stash Things We Don’t Want To Think About for about one year, we decided that it would be repurposed to our Re-Dressing Room. You see, by confusing Norwegian law, a Re-Dressing Room is much higher valued than a “walk-in closet”. So we are working hard to change our vocabulary. In a Glasopor-abstinence induced psychotic state, I started ripping up the carpet.  Oh yes!  Then we spent about $400 on some flooring (it’s OK, I got a second job) and carried it up the hill. The closets were too big for the doorway and we couldn’t be arsed to dismantle them again (after already doing that once before carrying them up the hill …). So we basically worked around them.  Having borrowed a saw driven by electricity and not mortal anguish, we finished the floor in just 4 hours.  We also put up new curtains and insulated the windows, which was probably necessary since it immediately made the room warm and silent (we didn’t actually realize that we could hear the highway very clearly since we had spent as little time as possible on the red carpet). And of course, we carried a huge-rear end leather chair donated by the PO (in retrospect probably because it actually does not fit through the doorway of the house) downstairs and installed it to make the Re-Dressing Room complete.   Feline-traumatizing sawing and banging done for now! 
lizard_phunk fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Oct 12, 2019 |
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Oct 12, 2019 10:08
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It really is amazing what a difference insulating a window makes in the noise level of a house. Thanks for the kitteh update!
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Oct 14, 2019 17:45
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