The New "Home Improvement" Thread

[josh]

Just now, Keirik said:

Lol, I’ve been recommended a two level spinal fusion from an injury that is forcing my eventual retirement so I have a vested interest to try and avoid surgery. 

If it’s work related, make them pay for every thing. Between the company and the insurance, they can cover all costs 

[Cr00zng]

16 hours ago, Keirik said:

Lol, I’ve been recommended a two level spinal fusion from an injury that is forcing my eventual retirement so I have a vested interest to try and avoid surgery. 

 

Instead of buying your own sauna, you could just try infrared sauna in your local wellness center first. Type in "infrared sauna in your town/state" in your browser search engine, the chances are there will be a Restore Hyper Wellness center around you. If not, any other local wellness center with infrared sauna would do. One session usually cost 30-50 bucks and they offer monthly memberships as well.

 

All of these centers offers free consultation, where they will try to sell you other services, that you may or may not need. If you find infrared sauna beneficial for you, then purchasing your own is will probably cost you less on the long run. On the other hand, going to a wellness center does not require upfront investment...

[Cash or Czech]

Puddle around my water heater this morning. Thought a smoke alarm/co2 alarm was going off, but it was actually the flood alarm next to it. Didn't hit the carpet, just on the concrete. But boy oh boy do I love homeowning two months in.

[4EverRangerFrank]

On 2/7/2022 at 4:11 PM, Keirik said:

Lol, I’ve been recommended a two level spinal fusion from an injury that is forcing my eventual retirement so I have a vested interest to try and avoid surgery. 

My sister is a medical malpractice attorney who vets my doctors before a procedure. About 4 years ago, I was recommended for a fusion surgery in my lower back. (I had slept upright in a desk chair for 2 months due to pain when lying down.) She researched the topic and found that something like 70%+ fusions are 'not medically necessary.' How she finds this stuff, I have no idea. Fusion surgery is a lengthy recovery with plenty of downside risks. She suggested a 2nd opinion.

 

Dr. Jack Stern - Dr. Seth Neubardt at Brain & Spine Surgeons of New York provided a free consult and ruled out fusion 110%. I had a successful microdiscectomy and walked to my car after the procedure. (My wife drove me home.) Good luck Keirik - I don't wish back pain on anyone.

[Keirik]

1 minute ago, 4EverRangerFrank said:

My sister is a medical malpractice attorney who vets my doctors before a procedure. About 4 years ago, I was recommended for a fusion surgery in my lower back. (I had slept upright in a desk chair for 2 months due to pain when lying down.) She researched the topic and found that something like 70%+ fusions are 'not medically necessary.' How she finds this stuff, I have no idea. Fusion surgery is a lengthy recovery with plenty of downside risks. She suggested a 2nd opinion.

 

Dr. Jack Stern - Dr. Seth Neubardt at Brain & Spine Surgeons of New York provided a free consult and ruled out fusion 110%. I had a successful microdiscectomy and walked to my car after the procedure. (My wife drove me home.) Good luck Keirik - I don't wish back pain on anyone.

Thank you very much. I believe we had spoken about it before in a PM. Unfortunately for me, my issue is not a disc problem and after 6 different opinions, I’m more in that 30% rather than 70% . I’m leaning towards not doing it now because of all the risks  but I can’t really explain it too much as it’s work related and all that jazz. 

[Cash or Czech]

5 hours ago, Cash or Czech said:

Puddle around my water heater this morning. Thought a smoke alarm/co2 alarm was going off, but it was actually the flood alarm next to it. Didn't hit the carpet, just on the concrete. But boy oh boy do I love homeowning two months in.

 

False alarm. Water main broke and the pressure pushed a little water out. Mopped up, no further issues. Good to go

[4EverRangerFrank]

3 hours ago, Keirik said:

I believe we had spoken about it before in a PM. 

Oh, now I remember. Unfortunate for me, they operated on my back and not my head!

[Ozzy]

42 minutes ago, Cash or Czech said:

 

False alarm. Water main broke and the pressure pushed a little water out. Mopped up, no further issues. Good to go

 

Oh that's cool!

 

I have a funny one for you guys....

 

Last week when we had all that snow, I got my nephew to plow out my driveway with the big plow they use to clean parking lots.  He's a good dude, and I tossed him a C-note for helping out his good ol' Uncle Ozz.  So now my driveway is clear and I can get in and out no problem, right?

 

Nope....

 

Fucking town of Crook-haven sneaks through at 4am and continues to plow me in pushing these large ice chunks of snow right at the foot of my driveway!  Nice!!  LOL

 

Of course I'm fucking oblivious, and didn't even bother to check to see if there was any danger down below.  So, you guessed it!  I end up backing the Kia right over the shit at the foot of my driveway, and got stuck on top of a piece of iceberg!!   I looked the the damn Exxon Valdeez!!!

 

Had to call a flat bed to haul my ass off, then had to re-shovel all that heavy ice from the bottom of my driveway after all, since my nephew was at work for the day!   I guess it's never easy...even when it's easy!!  

[phillyb]

 

One of my staircases is carpeted and about 18 months ago, my ex took up the carpet on the bottom step. Surprisingly, at least to me, that step was a single piece of carpet...and it sat detached for these past 18 months. I have to keep something heavy on the bottom step in order to keep the carpeted piece down, but then...my gf and I got kittens. And the kittens LOVE to play with the carpet. One morning, the kittens were playing and by the time I woke up, the container of litter had fallen off of the step and the detached carpet piece was about 5 feet away from the step. 

 

That was it. I'd had it. Fuck that shit.

 

I started investigating what was underneath. Beneath the carpet, carpet pad. Beneath the carpet pad, mother fucking tile. Jesus christ. So I took off the metal strip on the tread nosing and started taking up the tile. 

 

 

Goji is very curious to see why I've fucked with her toy. 

 

 

 

 

Ok, wtf have I done? What have I started? I can't just leave it like this. Over the past week, I watched about 5 hours of content about how to do stairs. I got my tools ready and attacked these head-the-fuck-on. 

 

Rip that shit the fuck up.

 

 

 

 

 

Not sure if Goji approves...

 

 

 

 

 

Are we done? That didn't really require a lot of work, nor did I get to use any power tools. The metal strip on the nosing is still hilarious to me. During the preparation of this project, I watched one particular video for a product like this: 

 

 

I had one of these in my basement...18 months ago, it was bought to eventually do this. As I was researching what to do, the cost of 8 treads and risers, I ended up not using the pictured product. 

 

With that being said, the process to actually redo the stairs involves adding some wood. Here's a picture of the anatomy of a staircase: 

 

 

I ended up buying pine treads and risers. The treads were a retrofit product that had a nice round nosing and I bought raw lumber for the risers.

 

This is where I take a break from my project and tell you about how I used to have a fucking router...actually two: I had a fixed-base and a plunge-base router. Before using either of them, I either sold em, misplaced them, gave them to someone, or something. This was a long fucking time ago and I've been kind of bitter about those routers since then. I never really got to put them to good use. Now, if I had a router (I really want to adapt my table saw and like...retrofit a fucking router into it; I haven't looked up if this product exists for my Rigid table saw, but it'd be cool lol), I might have got raw lumber for my treads and made a really nice nosing, but I digress. 

 

I'm at the part of the project where I can call it quits, paint the steps and call it "done." Or I can go forward to where there is NO TURNING BACK. Here's why...

 

 

To go further, you must cut the existing nosing off of the existing tread. I suppose you could also remove the existing tread and go down even further, but I did not. Another note, I could have spent some more time thinking these next steps through. Take a look at the wall and the molding that runs up the wall with the steps...I could have planned to get some more molding (I still might), but I did not. Back to the project at hand...

 

Things started getting real fucking serious real fucking quick...and real fuckin messy. 

 

 

Bottom three treads have the nosing cut off for the most part. The right side of the third tread and the fourth tread still have a piece attached to the sides next to the wall. Getting at this was tricky, but I found that my jigsaw was my friend. I got as close as the jigsaw would get, then I'd attack it with a chisel and hammer (another note: I wish I had a file). 

 

You can also see the beginning of me trying to figure out how to attach the bottom riser - the molding on the bottom left has been removed. There is a gap about an inch thick in between the edge of the flooring and the first riser. 

 

 

There is also a fucking piece of existing molding in there, which I couldn't remove without damaging the floor. This left me with a problem. The piece of pine I was using was 3/4" which would leave me with a visible 1/4" gap. My initial thought was to use two pieces of pine, but that was too thick and would protrude out too far out into the doorway's molding. 

 

MY NEXT FUCKING PROBLEM: The old molding that I couldn't remove wasn't flush with my floor; the molding was about 1/8" higher than the floor. The 3/4" pine idea that I was initially thinking about wouldn't work and I needed to find another solution: something that's flush with the tread surface, would sit on top of the molding, and was 1/4-5/16" thick. 

 

Behold:

 

 

I could have used this product for all of my risers, but it was not as cost-effective as the raw pine. Alas, here is a picture of what I used: 

 

 

As I was just using it as a spacer for my riser, I didn't really care what it looked like and this was surprisingly less expensive than a piece of plywood. Back to the cutting the noses off. 

 

 

 

I have used this table saw exactly ONCE prior to this project, so it was really nice to justify its existence in my basement. Time to start cutting the treads and risers and test fitting. 

 

 

 

 

 

My noses are too long. I looked this up and they can be 3/4-1 1/4" so I had to trim an inch off of each of the treads. No biggy. 

 

I didn't do another test fit after cutting the treads, so no picture of this process unfortunately. And at this point, I decided to paint and stain the individual pieces before attaching them to the home. In the several videos I watched, it didn't seem like there was a consensus about doing this step before or after attaching and I made my decision based off of traffic. We all use this staircase many times a day as do the four animals that live here. It'd be impossible to keep them off of the stairs for 24 hours for the poly to dry. 

 

2 coats of white paint on the risers. 

2 coats of special walnut on the treads. 

2 coats of clear poly on the treads. 

 

 

 

And when they were done, I got to use my nailer. My old caulk gun is covered in shit so I got a new one and used some Gorilla adhesive for the treads. The trim caulk is for later. 

 

 

 

Holy fuck! HOLY FUCKIN SHIT, after all this fucking work, I put the first riser and tread down and while the wood don’t match and I got exposed nail holes (can fill em later), I can look at this progress and finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

 

Here's another comparison pic of the wood tones (different staircase): 

 

 

I should have spent more than 6 seconds making the stain decision, but whatever. There's a white riser in between the two shades of wood and it's hardly the end of the world. 

 

 

Ran out of caulk and made it to Home Depot with 9 minutes to spare. I almost bought a shop light, but nahhhhh, lol, nah. 

 

BOOM!

 

 

 

I am so fucking proud of myself. I haven't done a lot of woodwork in my life (I've built a radiator cover, a stand for a portable washer, and a platform for what ended up being a built-in closet) so this felt like such a fucking accomplishment. 

 

I still have to cut the molding for the bottom left and attach it. I also want to fill my gaps with caulk. I also think I'll cut some molding for each of the treads, but undecided. All in all, super fucking successful project. 

Edited March 1, 2022 by phillyb
Moved picture

[phillyb]

Did a ceiling fan the other night

 

[josh]

how do you live with that wrinkle in the window plastic, though?

[phillyb]

I hate myself and want to die

[phillyb]

Any of y'all mother fuckers lay floor?

 

 

Carpet over carpet pad. 

 

 

Carpet pad over tile. 

 

 

Tile over subfloor. Tile is likely asbestos so don't fucking do this yourself...don't be an idiot like me. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got new baseboard trim which I'll be painting and installing today. 

[Pete]

5 minutes ago, phillyb said:

Any of y'all mother fuckers lay floor?

 

 

Carpet over carpet pad. 

 

 

Carpet pad over tile. 

 

 

Tile over subfloor. Tile is likely asbestos so don't fucking do this yourself...don't be an idiot like me. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got new baseboard trim which I'll be painting and installing today. 

Do mine next. 

[phillyb]

Dude I am so fucking sore from one day of this shit. I can’t imagine doing this for a living. 

 

I used engineered hardwood that installs using click-n-lock technology. No glue or nails required. Lay underlayment on subfloor on put wood on. With that being said, I did use my nailer to get the first row started as well as for the boards on the perimeter. 

 

For real though, it wasn’t that bad, just laborious. Both my mitre and table saws are extremely happy though. 

[siddious]

1 hour ago, phillyb said:

Dude I am so fucking sore from one day of this shit. I can’t imagine doing this for a living. 

 

I used engineered hardwood that installs using click-n-lock technology. No glue or nails required. Lay underlayment on subfloor on put wood on. With that being said, I did use my nailer to get the first row started as well as for the boards on the perimeter. 

 

For real though, it wasn’t that bad, just laborious. Both my mitre and table saws are extremely happy though. 

How thick is it? Click floors you can usually score and snap.

 

flooring work is by far the worst. Pretty much the only thing I hired people to do in my house which I’ll post pics of in the next 2-3 weeks ::fingers crossed:: 

[phillyb]

It's only 3/8". I'll try not to drop big heavy shit on it lol. 

 

I'll do floor again over most plumbing and electrical work. Plumbing is messy. I do not understand continuity. And I fucking hate painting. 

[The Dude]

7 hours ago, phillyb said:

Dude I am so fucking sore from one day of this shit. I can’t imagine doing this for a living. 

 

I used engineered hardwood that installs using click-n-lock technology. No glue or nails required. Lay underlayment on subfloor on put wood on. With that being said, I did use my nailer to get the first row started as well as for the boards on the perimeter. 

 

For real though, it wasn’t that bad, just laborious. Both my mitre and table saws are extremely happy though. 

Might wanna pull those nails. You're gonna want that floor to expand and contract.. If you don't let it do that, you get edges on pieces in the middle of the room that start lifting up a tiny bit. 

 

You're doing a lot man. Good job.

Edited March 15, 2022 by The Dude

[phillyb]

Ahhh shit, I even know that it needs to expand. Ok, ty

[SaveByRichter35]

Looking for opinions here.  I had my driveway done back in the fall.  The guys built up the border pavers to match the level of the floor of my garage instead of leaving it with the 1.5” lip that was originally there.  Due to this, my garage doors don’t close all the way.  There’s a slight gap at the top since they’re not sealed to the gaskets.  My garage was normally in low to mid 50s over the winter, this year it got into the low 40s in there.  The bedrooms are all over the garage and you can feel it in the floors how cold it got.  My gas bill was significantly higher this winter as well.  

My garage door guy is pretty pissed about how the job was done as it ruined his job.  The company that did the driveway is charging me $450 to fixe it.  My driveway guy quoted me less to do the work but he, as well as 2 other contractors I know, think the mistake should be fixed free of charge.  

 

What would you guys do in this situation?  Ask for the corrections to be made free of charge?  Ask them to lower their price and match the garage door guy’s price?

[Keirik]

14 minutes ago, SaveByRichter35 said:

Looking for opinions here.  I had my driveway done back in the fall.  The guys built up the border pavers to match the level of the floor of my garage instead of leaving it with the 1.5” lip that was originally there.  Due to this, my garage doors don’t close all the way.  There’s a slight gap at the top since they’re not sealed to the gaskets.  My garage was normally in low to mid 50s over the winter, this year it got into the low 40s in there.  The bedrooms are all over the garage and you can feel it in the floors how cold it got.  My gas bill was significantly higher this winter as well.  

My garage door guy is pretty pissed about how the job was done as it ruined his job.  The company that did the driveway is charging me $450 to fixe it.  My driveway guy quoted me less to do the work but he, as well as 2 other contractors I know, think the mistake should be fixed free of charge.  

 

What would you guys do in this situation?  Ask for the corrections to be made free of charge?  Ask them to lower their price and match the garage door guy’s price?

Ask for free of charge for sure. You can calmly state that you’re just looking for a wrong to be corrected and how others are telling you to post this all up on social media, small claims court , etc but you’d rather not go that direction. You’re only looking to fix a situation they created themselves. They should have known this was going to happen. 

[josh]

they probably dont have enough labor to come out if there were getting paid, I cant imagine them jumping at the chance to do a job for free.

[SaveByRichter35]

They made the mistake so I feel it should be on them to repair.  However, I take some blame for not having it fixed right away from the get go.  I’m leaning towards asking them to match the price of the garage door guy. 

[siddious]

On 3/14/2022 at 5:34 PM, phillyb said:

It's only 3/8". I'll try not to drop big heavy shit on it lol. 

 

I'll do floor again over most plumbing and electrical work. Plumbing is messy. I do not understand continuity. And I fucking hate painting. 

 

no I meant when installing, rather than using a saw. but 3/8" might be too thick for that so nevermind.

 

And yes painting is the god damn worst. Have two large rooms left to sand and paint and its gonna take me forever because I hate it.

 

Also my damn vanity counter top has come in broken 3x now so we have no use-able bathroom vanity. I am just going to get a custom quartz counter top and be done with it.

 

 

[The Dude]

15 hours ago, SaveByRichter35 said:

Looking for opinions here.  I had my driveway done back in the fall.  The guys built up the border pavers to match the level of the floor of my garage instead of leaving it with the 1.5” lip that was originally there.  Due to this, my garage doors don’t close all the way.  There’s a slight gap at the top since they’re not sealed to the gaskets.  My garage was normally in low to mid 50s over the winter, this year it got into the low 40s in there.  The bedrooms are all over the garage and you can feel it in the floors how cold it got.  My gas bill was significantly higher this winter as well.  

My garage door guy is pretty pissed about how the job was done as it ruined his job.  The company that did the driveway is charging me $450 to fixe it.  My driveway guy quoted me less to do the work but he, as well as 2 other contractors I know, think the mistake should be fixed free of charge.  

 

What would you guys do in this situation?  Ask for the corrections to be made free of charge?  Ask them to lower their price and match the garage door guy’s price?

Have you tried installing a thicker garage door bottom gasket/seal? 

 

They should fix that though.