Last time on Oh god, why did I buy This Old House... I'd removed 360 pounds of insulation from the addition. It was modern pink blow-in fiberglass, and a 450-500ish square foot area. I spent my free time this week vacuuming out everything in the old side of the house, roughly 1500 square feet, and it is old 50's era rockwool, non-asbestos thankfully. Compacted over the past 70 years to the height of the 2x6 ceiling joists, it offered almost no level of insulation, and for some reason it reeked of sewage and death.
It also kind of looked like the egg room scene from Alien when I had it all bagged, which was appropriate.
Loaded up. Last time it was 20 bags, they all weighed less than 20 pounds. This time it was 27 bags...
...and they weighed about 60 pounds apiece.
I've taken an actual ton of insulation out of the ceiling of my house.
Next step is to reinsulate. I have no desire to do blow-in over the ceiling again, I'd need 20-24 inches to thoroughly insulate it. Instead, the roof joists are 2x6, so I'm going to do R-19 faced roll insulation between them, and then put R-10 2 inch foam board over that. When I redo the roof, I can put R-10 foam board on top of the sheathing and under the roofing, and that'll get me to R-39.
If you're insulating your rafters, rather than your ceiling joists, you're bringing the whole attic into your thermal envelope. Does your attic not have any vents (box, ridge, gable, soffit, etc.), or are you going to block them off? If you aren't it's going to create issues in that attic with both heat and moisture.
Edit: not for the rain, for the rodent turds evidently some creatures (squirrels?) made a nest in the attic vent at the very top of the roof and point their feces out onto the deck far below
grill gazebos with a little built in chimney in the middle are rad
Seems like an awful lot of work for very niche uses? I guess if you want to practice hibachi with your friends. Otherwise when I'm grilling I want to remove the food from the heat when it's done so it doesn't get overcooked.
The knock-off brand USB charger adapter I bought seems to have killed one of my 2Ah DeWalt batteries. The battery is about a year old and now it won't charge.
Oh great.
Sometimes when I have a battery that won't get recognized by the charger, measuring its voltage with a multimeter does... something. Current moves in the battery and it will subsequently charge. I looked into why this might be and found a plausible reason that I've since forgotten, but it is worth a shot. Apparently sometimes you can resurrect a battery by charging it with an identical battery with alligator clips but I've never tried it and it might bode poorly depending on the exact circumstances.
I suspect the knockoff doesn't have any sort of "protection circuitry" (my term) to keep from fully draining the cells. Some YT vids I saw show how you can use another battery to "jump start" the non-charging one; which I think you're referring. Unfortunately, I'm on vacation this week, so the solution has to wait until we get home.
Update: after getting home and jury rigging some flat screwdriver bits with wire wrapped around them, I was able to jump/charge the drained battery enough for the wall charger to work again.
Seems like an awful lot of work for very niche uses? I guess if you want to practice hibachi with your friends. Otherwise when I'm grilling I want to remove the food from the heat when it's done so it doesn't get overcooked.
Why wouldn't you remove the food from the heat when it's done in that setup?
I guess if you built a counter or something that would work. In that specific example it seems like the food would just stay resting on the tray unless it was all moved off to plates. Maybe move it to the side where no one is sitting.
I guess if you built a counter or something that would work. In that specific example it seems like the food would just stay resting on the tray unless it was all moved off to plates. Maybe move it to the side where no one is sitting.
That's why I was confused, the grill is literally surrounded by countertop space
I love KBBQ so much that sitting around a grill with seats and a built in table around the grill like that sounds like so much fun. I like when everyone participates in the cooking process.
Seems like the benches are really far from the countertop to sit at and eat, and like it would be a pain in the ass leaning across the counter to set up stuff on the grill...
To answer the original question: I had a pergola thing that covered my grill at my old house. It worked pretty well for rain so I have to assume it would also work for rodent poop. You'd then have a gradually-accumulating layer of poop over your grill, though, so maybe do something about the rodents instead?
Floors on the other side of the house (the side we'll be renting out) have just been stripped, and jesus wept I had no idea you could just transform hardwood floor like that, holy shit. These floors look amazing now.
Looking forward to when we get that side finished and then I'll show some before/after pics.
My BiL's are trying to convince my wife and I to not let my brother move in and rent the place out for $1400/month but we're not having it. We've been helped out by family all our lives and now we're finally in a position to turn around and do the same. Sometimes they brag about this dog eat dog mentality so much I could slug them.
To give you a ballpark, average rent in the area is $550, and is going up 29% year-over-year lately. This would be a 2-bedroom apartment that would give the renters full access to our side of the house, a prospect I'm not wild about when it comes to strangers. If we did more renovations down the road we could close off their side of the house and give them access to their utility stuff simultaneously, but right now you can't have one without the other. I also want the place properly coded for rent which apparently makes me a big dumb dumb in everyone else's eyes.
Floors on the other side of the house (the side we'll be renting out) have just been stripped, and jesus wept I had no idea you could just transform hardwood floor like that, holy shit. These floors look amazing now.
Looking forward to when we get that side finished and then I'll show some before/after pics.
My BiL's are trying to convince my wife and I to not let my brother move in and rent the place out for $1400/month but we're not having it. We've been helped out by family all our lives and now we're finally in a position to turn around and do the same. Sometimes they brag about this dog eat dog mentality so much I could slug them.
To give you a ballpark, average rent in the area is $550, and is going up 29% year-over-year lately. This would be a 2-bedroom apartment that would give the renters full access to our side of the house, a prospect I'm not wild about when it comes to strangers. If we did more renovations down the road we could close off their side of the house and give them access to their utility stuff simultaneously, but right now you can't have one without the other. I also want the place properly coded for rent which apparently makes me a big dumb dumb in everyone else's eyes.
I get that. We had a discussion with our BIL about that same thing. Like no we aren't going to rent out our house to strangers. We didn't buy this house to become land lords.
Anyone have suggestions for kitchen flooring? I am planning to rip out the existing floor but don't really know where to start on what to replace it with.
Anyone have suggestions for kitchen flooring? I am planning to rip out the existing floor but don't really know where to start on what to replace it with.
What do you have for existing flooring?
We just (like, this past weekend) finished refinishing our kitchen floor. It was pretty nice hardwood but had a thick gloss urethane coating that had yellowed a bit. My wife sanded it and applied a different grain enhancer plus satin sealant that lets you feel just a bit of texture and gives it a really nice clean look.
If the current floors are no good and you don't have anything salvageable under it (you would be surprised in older houses just how many linoleum floors cover up nice hardwood) probably the easiest solution is to go with a laminate flooring, or if you have the budget get a good hardwood installed.
I greatly dislike carpet in kitchens, and I'm not a huge fan of most tiled kitchen floors, but I'd start by figuring your budget and square footage as that'll give you a pretty good idea what your options are, then go to a flooring store or the flooring section at Lowes / Home Depot and get an idea what you might like.
Anyone have suggestions for kitchen flooring? I am planning to rip out the existing floor but don't really know where to start on what to replace it with.
What do you have for existing flooring?
We just (like, this past weekend) finished refinishing our kitchen floor. It was pretty nice hardwood but had a thick gloss urethane coating that had yellowed a bit. My wife sanded it and applied a different grain enhancer plus satin sealant that lets you feel just a bit of texture and gives it a really nice clean look.
If the current floors are no good and you don't have anything salvageable under it (you would be surprised in older houses just how many linoleum floors cover up nice hardwood) probably the easiest solution is to go with a laminate flooring, or if you have the budget get a good hardwood installed.
I greatly dislike carpet in kitchens, and I'm not a huge fan of most tiled kitchen floors, but I'd start by figuring your budget and square footage as that'll give you a pretty good idea what your options are, then go to a flooring store or the flooring section at Lowes / Home Depot and get an idea what you might like.
We currently have some kind of garbage "looks like wood" linolium shit. The house is from '54 so it's possible that there is hardwood under it but I'm not expecting that.
You could do LVP if you're worried about water, that's what I put in my last basement and will put in this one. Our old kitchen had some kind of laminate that was veneer over MDF and resisted scratches from dogs and so on but was damaged by any water left long enough to soak into the seams (e.g. dog vomit in the evening not noticed until morning). Current kitchen has engineered hardwood which dents more easily under the claws of my 70 lb dog than I'd have thought but otherwise has been holding up to the kids ok.
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MichaelLCIn what furnace was thy brain?ChicagoRegistered Userregular
Anyone have suggestions for kitchen flooring? I am planning to rip out the existing floor but don't really know where to start on what to replace it with.
What do you have for existing flooring?
We just (like, this past weekend) finished refinishing our kitchen floor. It was pretty nice hardwood but had a thick gloss urethane coating that had yellowed a bit. My wife sanded it and applied a different grain enhancer plus satin sealant that lets you feel just a bit of texture and gives it a really nice clean look.
If the current floors are no good and you don't have anything salvageable under it (you would be surprised in older houses just how many linoleum floors cover up nice hardwood) probably the easiest solution is to go with a laminate flooring, or if you have the budget get a good hardwood installed.
I greatly dislike carpet in kitchens, and I'm not a huge fan of most tiled kitchen floors, but I'd start by figuring your budget and square footage as that'll give you a pretty good idea what your options are, then go to a flooring store or the flooring section at Lowes / Home Depot and get an idea what you might like.
We currently have some kind of garbage "looks like wood" linolium shit. The house is from '54 so it's possible that there is hardwood under it but I'm not expecting that.
You'd be surprised. So many homes with hardwood buried under linoleum, carpet, sometimes multiples of both.
Now if you want to deal with wood is another thing. Resistance to water is not over of its selling points.
(Almost) any kind of planks will be better than linoleum, with cost matching quality.
A good install over a solid subfloor and underlayment will go a long way too. Get floor heating installed and cook your eggs right on the floor.
Anyone have suggestions for kitchen flooring? I am planning to rip out the existing floor but don't really know where to start on what to replace it with.
What do you have for existing flooring?
We just (like, this past weekend) finished refinishing our kitchen floor. It was pretty nice hardwood but had a thick gloss urethane coating that had yellowed a bit. My wife sanded it and applied a different grain enhancer plus satin sealant that lets you feel just a bit of texture and gives it a really nice clean look.
If the current floors are no good and you don't have anything salvageable under it (you would be surprised in older houses just how many linoleum floors cover up nice hardwood) probably the easiest solution is to go with a laminate flooring, or if you have the budget get a good hardwood installed.
I greatly dislike carpet in kitchens, and I'm not a huge fan of most tiled kitchen floors, but I'd start by figuring your budget and square footage as that'll give you a pretty good idea what your options are, then go to a flooring store or the flooring section at Lowes / Home Depot and get an idea what you might like.
We currently have some kind of garbage "looks like wood" linolium shit. The house is from '54 so it's possible that there is hardwood under it but I'm not expecting that.
We have two layers of linoleum and underlayment that I plan to tear up when we redo our kitchen.
Our designer recommends waterproof LVP, so that even if moisture gets past the lamination, it's still just hitting vinyl. I have some reservations about properly closing things up at cabinet faces and walls so that you don't get water infiltrating the subfloor but I think I'm going a bit too far. I also want to figure out some sort of clever solution to protect the subfloor under our dishwasher, once we start outfitting the kitchen proper (I'd prefer we extend the flooring under the fridge and dishwasher areas but I don't know how feasible either of those are; depends on timing of flooring install).
I'm thinking of adding some soundproofing foam panels to my office, both so that I don't disturb my household when I'm making phone calls, and also to insulate myself from distractions outside my office.
My question is, is it necessary to completely cover the wall in foam panels, or can I place them at semi-regular intervals to get an efficient enough result? I don't really want 4 walls full of foam if I can help it, but slightly spaced panels placed around the room don't bother me too much.
Spaced acoustic panels are more about stopping echos and other reverberations than they are about soundproofing.
It will have some effect though.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
We've moved in to our home and it's great but there's a few issues as expected.
1. House is pretty old but has a lot of redone stuff. New wiring everywhere but attic, newer plumbing, etc. Finding an electrician to come out and fix the attic wiring is proving to be a huge hassle.
2. Bedrooms are all upstairs and our master bedroom is hoooot. Any suggestions on ways to improve the airflow up here? Vents are in the floor and keep the ground floor a great temp but a lot of it doesn't get up to the second floor I guess.
3. Once I get the radon test back and it's okay, I'm going to turn the basement room into my office/workout room. It's unfinished but does have some drywall up. I've got a dehumidifier running down there but I'm not sure what to do about flooring. Just get a big rug and some horse stall mats for the exercise area? Start saving to put in some kind of flooring?
I'm very excited but also nervous to be finally owning a home. It is both awesome and terrifying.
Anyone have suggestions for kitchen flooring? I am planning to rip out the existing floor but don't really know where to start on what to replace it with.
What do you have for existing flooring?
We just (like, this past weekend) finished refinishing our kitchen floor. It was pretty nice hardwood but had a thick gloss urethane coating that had yellowed a bit. My wife sanded it and applied a different grain enhancer plus satin sealant that lets you feel just a bit of texture and gives it a really nice clean look.
If the current floors are no good and you don't have anything salvageable under it (you would be surprised in older houses just how many linoleum floors cover up nice hardwood) probably the easiest solution is to go with a laminate flooring, or if you have the budget get a good hardwood installed.
I greatly dislike carpet in kitchens, and I'm not a huge fan of most tiled kitchen floors, but I'd start by figuring your budget and square footage as that'll give you a pretty good idea what your options are, then go to a flooring store or the flooring section at Lowes / Home Depot and get an idea what you might like.
We currently have some kind of garbage "looks like wood" linolium shit. The house is from '54 so it's possible that there is hardwood under it but I'm not expecting that.
We have two layers of linoleum and underlayment that I plan to tear up when we redo our kitchen.
Our designer recommends waterproof LVP, so that even if moisture gets past the lamination, it's still just hitting vinyl. I have some reservations about properly closing things up at cabinet faces and walls so that you don't get water infiltrating the subfloor but I think I'm going a bit too far. I also want to figure out some sort of clever solution to protect the subfloor under our dishwasher, once we start outfitting the kitchen proper (I'd prefer we extend the flooring under the fridge and dishwasher areas but I don't know how feasible either of those are; depends on timing of flooring install).
We're getting this in our townhome. I liked that it's 100% waterproof and it has nice texture to it for LVP.
EDIT: I've also had ceramic tile in my old kitchen. It was ok, but we needed a foam mat as it was hard has hell and cold in the winter. It was tough as hell, nothing chipped it but that also meant things broken when dropped.
I'm thinking of adding some soundproofing foam panels to my office, both so that I don't disturb my household when I'm making phone calls, and also to insulate myself from distractions outside my office.
My question is, is it necessary to completely cover the wall in foam panels, or can I place them at semi-regular intervals to get an efficient enough result? I don't really want 4 walls full of foam if I can help it, but slightly spaced panels placed around the room don't bother me too much.
Can you do tests with music playing and then moving to other parts of the house to see where the noise is leaking? A lot of the time it's the door that leaks the most and upgrading to a solid core with a stopper under it and foam seal in the frame can help a lot. If it's coming through the walls or ceiling that can get trickier. If your ceiling is really high, you could install acoustical paneling, though that tends to look ugly ha. For walls, not sure what you can do other than maybe getting someone to spray insulation foam in there. I've seen where they only have to drill a small hole in each section to do it.
Origin ID\ Steam ID: Warder45
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
One of these days I'm finally going to replace the busted-ass flooring in my place. With COVID still raging I don't want a crew in my house for that long. There are massive gaps, some large enough to fit a dime into, between most of the floorboards downstairs. IDK who installed them but they did it wrong. It was like this when I moved in but didn't really notice until I'd been here. It's wood planks installed directly on concrete so it's always cold and hard. I want carpet in the living room and some kind of insulated soft vinyl for the entryway and kitchen. The carpet upstairs is pretty fucked too. Its over 10 years old and was clearly the cheapest that was available. It has nearly worn to the mat in some places and the padding has turned to dust. I suspect that the washer overflowed on the previous homeowner and soaked the carpet in dirty soapy mess.
Once this whole covid mess is over I'll get a lowes card and finally get some nice stainmaster carpet upstairs and see about unfucking the mess downstairs.
We've moved in to our home and it's great but there's a few issues as expected.
1. House is pretty old but has a lot of redone stuff. New wiring everywhere but attic, newer plumbing, etc. Finding an electrician to come out and fix the attic wiring is proving to be a huge hassle.
2. Bedrooms are all upstairs and our master bedroom is hoooot. Any suggestions on ways to improve the airflow up here? Vents are in the floor and keep the ground floor a great temp but a lot of it doesn't get up to the second floor I guess.
3. Once I get the radon test back and it's okay, I'm going to turn the basement room into my office/workout room. It's unfinished but does have some drywall up. I've got a dehumidifier running down there but I'm not sure what to do about flooring. Just get a big rug and some horse stall mats for the exercise area? Start saving to put in some kind of flooring?
I'm very excited but also nervous to be finally owning a home. It is both awesome and terrifying.
2. Ceiling fans. What I also did was close half the vents on the ground floor, close all of them in the basement, and open all of them on the top floor. I reversed that for the winter when I switch to heat.
You can also have a HVAC company come in and perform a flow balance. They may add some dampers to different lines in the house to help force air upstairs.
Remember at the end of the day that you're fighting physics. I also have floor vents, and the cool air upstairs stays on the floor and generally flows down the stairs. You can close doors to try to contain the cool air but it doesn't gain you a whole lot
I'm thinking of adding some soundproofing foam panels to my office, both so that I don't disturb my household when I'm making phone calls, and also to insulate myself from distractions outside my office.
My question is, is it necessary to completely cover the wall in foam panels, or can I place them at semi-regular intervals to get an efficient enough result? I don't really want 4 walls full of foam if I can help it, but slightly spaced panels placed around the room don't bother me too much.
Can you do tests with music playing and then moving to other parts of the house to see where the noise is leaking? A lot of the time it's the door that leaks the most and upgrading to a solid core with a stopper under it and foam seal in the frame can help a lot. If it's coming through the walls or ceiling that can get trickier. If your ceiling is really high, you could install acoustical paneling, though that tends to look ugly ha. For walls, not sure what you can do other than maybe getting someone to spray insulation foam in there. I've seen where they only have to drill a small hole in each section to do it.
The ceiling is standard (slightly over 7'). Good advice regarding testing. I'll get on that later, thanks.
I take some pride in being able to fix my appliances myself and save the money of having to buy a new one. I managed to fish a broken plate out of my dishwasher's impeller pump and replaced the seal giving it a few more years of life until the casing started to crack. I also replaced the heating elements in my electric oven when the old one died.
Recently the plastic panel on my oven control board started cracking from age. So after researching online and carefully measuring and confirming against the model number, I ordered a new one and switched it out with the old one this morning.
It was only after I shoved the oven back in place and restored power I discovered there was one more thing I forgot to confirm before i installed it.
Can you guess what it is?
Old panel below for comparison purposes.
I am very smart.
DisruptedCapitalist on
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
I take some pride in being able to fix my appliances myself and save the money of having to buy a new one. I managed to fish a broken plate out of my dish washers impeller pump and replaced the seal giving it a few more years of life until the casing started to crack. I also replaced the heating elements in my electric oven when the old one died.
Recently the plastic panel on my oven control board started cracking from age. So after researching online and carefully measuring and confirming against the modelnumber i ordered a new one and switched it out with the old one this morning.
It was only after I shoved the oven back in place and restored power I discovered there was one more thing I forgot to confirm before i installed it.
Can you guess what it is?
Old panel below for comparison purposes.
I am very smart.
This is why you check if your stove is big endian or little endian.
I finished all the tile for the backsplash over the weekend and got the last coat of sealer on it yesterday. I also replaced the crappy old outlets with nice clean new ones and screwless plate covers. My wife got all the sealant down on the floor, and we got all of the cabinets back up and some of the doors on.
We need to finish putting doors on stuff, do a shitload of caulking, reinstall the over-the-range microwave, reinstall window coverings, I need to replace a few of the main lights on the ceiling, then its time to haul all the shit back into the kitchen and put it away.
It's nice getting to the end of a big project like this and seeing everything coming together the way we hoped. We're at $6000 on the project but $1000 of that was new tools - miter and table saw, nailgun, etc.
Here's a before:
And where we're at now:
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MichaelLCIn what furnace was thy brain?ChicagoRegistered Userregular
I take some pride in being able to fix my appliances myself and save the money of having to buy a new one. I managed to fish a broken plate out of my dishwasher's impeller pump and replaced the seal giving it a few more years of life until the casing started to crack. I also replaced the heating elements in my electric oven when the old one died.
Recently the plastic panel on my oven control board started cracking from age. So after researching online and carefully measuring and confirming against the model number, I ordered a new one and switched it out with the old one this morning.
It was only after I shoved the oven back in place and restored power I discovered there was one more thing I forgot to confirm before i installed it.
Can you guess what it is?
Old panel below for comparison purposes.
I am very smart.
Well at least you're ready to enter the next season of The Great Clock Off.
I'm tempted just to deal with it. Odds are I am going to be the only owner of this oven until it's finally dead for good so i might as well just keep the old panel around just for reference.
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
I'm tempted just to deal with it. Odds are I am going to be the only owner of this oven until it's finally dead for good so i might as well just keep the old panel around just for reference.
Anyone have recommendations for a decent cheap lawn mower? Our lawn is super tiny but the reel mower that came with the house isn't cutting it, no pun intended.
Anyone have recommendations for a decent cheap lawn mower? Our lawn is super tiny but the reel mower that came with the house isn't cutting it, no pun intended.
Define "cheap" and "super tiny". I would recommend looking at electric mowers - they're a lot less messy and noxious than the traditional 2 stroke engine models.
Anyone have recommendations for a decent cheap lawn mower? Our lawn is super tiny but the reel mower that came with the house isn't cutting it, no pun intended.
It isn't cheap, but when my gas mower dies I'm either getting a robot or an Ego Power+ mower. Not having to worry about fuel going bad, maintenance, or cleaning has been great for the snowblower I have from them and I've slowly whittled down to just the mower and a power washer as far as gas powered tools go.
Posts
If you're insulating your rafters, rather than your ceiling joists, you're bringing the whole attic into your thermal envelope. Does your attic not have any vents (box, ridge, gable, soffit, etc.), or are you going to block them off? If you aren't it's going to create issues in that attic with both heat and moisture.
grill gazebos with a little built in chimney in the middle are rad
Update: after getting home and jury rigging some flat screwdriver bits with wire wrapped around them, I was able to jump/charge the drained battery enough for the wall charger to work again.
More later, but I think I solved the problem
Why wouldn't you remove the food from the heat when it's done in that setup?
That's why I was confused, the grill is literally surrounded by countertop space
To answer the original question: I had a pergola thing that covered my grill at my old house. It worked pretty well for rain so I have to assume it would also work for rodent poop. You'd then have a gradually-accumulating layer of poop over your grill, though, so maybe do something about the rodents instead?
Looking forward to when we get that side finished and then I'll show some before/after pics.
My BiL's are trying to convince my wife and I to not let my brother move in and rent the place out for $1400/month but we're not having it. We've been helped out by family all our lives and now we're finally in a position to turn around and do the same. Sometimes they brag about this dog eat dog mentality so much I could slug them.
To give you a ballpark, average rent in the area is $550, and is going up 29% year-over-year lately. This would be a 2-bedroom apartment that would give the renters full access to our side of the house, a prospect I'm not wild about when it comes to strangers. If we did more renovations down the road we could close off their side of the house and give them access to their utility stuff simultaneously, but right now you can't have one without the other. I also want the place properly coded for rent which apparently makes me a big dumb dumb in everyone else's eyes.
What do you have for existing flooring?
We just (like, this past weekend) finished refinishing our kitchen floor. It was pretty nice hardwood but had a thick gloss urethane coating that had yellowed a bit. My wife sanded it and applied a different grain enhancer plus satin sealant that lets you feel just a bit of texture and gives it a really nice clean look.
If the current floors are no good and you don't have anything salvageable under it (you would be surprised in older houses just how many linoleum floors cover up nice hardwood) probably the easiest solution is to go with a laminate flooring, or if you have the budget get a good hardwood installed.
I greatly dislike carpet in kitchens, and I'm not a huge fan of most tiled kitchen floors, but I'd start by figuring your budget and square footage as that'll give you a pretty good idea what your options are, then go to a flooring store or the flooring section at Lowes / Home Depot and get an idea what you might like.
We currently have some kind of garbage "looks like wood" linolium shit. The house is from '54 so it's possible that there is hardwood under it but I'm not expecting that.
You'd be surprised. So many homes with hardwood buried under linoleum, carpet, sometimes multiples of both.
Now if you want to deal with wood is another thing. Resistance to water is not over of its selling points.
(Almost) any kind of planks will be better than linoleum, with cost matching quality.
A good install over a solid subfloor and underlayment will go a long way too. Get floor heating installed and cook your eggs right on the floor.
We have two layers of linoleum and underlayment that I plan to tear up when we redo our kitchen.
Our designer recommends waterproof LVP, so that even if moisture gets past the lamination, it's still just hitting vinyl. I have some reservations about properly closing things up at cabinet faces and walls so that you don't get water infiltrating the subfloor but I think I'm going a bit too far. I also want to figure out some sort of clever solution to protect the subfloor under our dishwasher, once we start outfitting the kitchen proper (I'd prefer we extend the flooring under the fridge and dishwasher areas but I don't know how feasible either of those are; depends on timing of flooring install).
I'm thinking of adding some soundproofing foam panels to my office, both so that I don't disturb my household when I'm making phone calls, and also to insulate myself from distractions outside my office.
My question is, is it necessary to completely cover the wall in foam panels, or can I place them at semi-regular intervals to get an efficient enough result? I don't really want 4 walls full of foam if I can help it, but slightly spaced panels placed around the room don't bother me too much.
It will have some effect though.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
1. House is pretty old but has a lot of redone stuff. New wiring everywhere but attic, newer plumbing, etc. Finding an electrician to come out and fix the attic wiring is proving to be a huge hassle.
2. Bedrooms are all upstairs and our master bedroom is hoooot. Any suggestions on ways to improve the airflow up here? Vents are in the floor and keep the ground floor a great temp but a lot of it doesn't get up to the second floor I guess.
3. Once I get the radon test back and it's okay, I'm going to turn the basement room into my office/workout room. It's unfinished but does have some drywall up. I've got a dehumidifier running down there but I'm not sure what to do about flooring. Just get a big rug and some horse stall mats for the exercise area? Start saving to put in some kind of flooring?
I'm very excited but also nervous to be finally owning a home. It is both awesome and terrifying.
We're getting this in our townhome. I liked that it's 100% waterproof and it has nice texture to it for LVP.
https://www.armstrongflooring.com/residential/en-us/rigid-core/vantage/item/A6920.html
EDIT: I've also had ceramic tile in my old kitchen. It was ok, but we needed a foam mat as it was hard has hell and cold in the winter. It was tough as hell, nothing chipped it but that also meant things broken when dropped.
Can you do tests with music playing and then moving to other parts of the house to see where the noise is leaking? A lot of the time it's the door that leaks the most and upgrading to a solid core with a stopper under it and foam seal in the frame can help a lot. If it's coming through the walls or ceiling that can get trickier. If your ceiling is really high, you could install acoustical paneling, though that tends to look ugly ha. For walls, not sure what you can do other than maybe getting someone to spray insulation foam in there. I've seen where they only have to drill a small hole in each section to do it.
Once this whole covid mess is over I'll get a lowes card and finally get some nice stainmaster carpet upstairs and see about unfucking the mess downstairs.
2. Ceiling fans. What I also did was close half the vents on the ground floor, close all of them in the basement, and open all of them on the top floor. I reversed that for the winter when I switch to heat.
Remember at the end of the day that you're fighting physics. I also have floor vents, and the cool air upstairs stays on the floor and generally flows down the stairs. You can close doors to try to contain the cool air but it doesn't gain you a whole lot
+1 for ceiling fans
The ceiling is standard (slightly over 7'). Good advice regarding testing. I'll get on that later, thanks.
Recently the plastic panel on my oven control board started cracking from age. So after researching online and carefully measuring and confirming against the model number, I ordered a new one and switched it out with the old one this morning.
It was only after I shoved the oven back in place and restored power I discovered there was one more thing I forgot to confirm before i installed it.
Can you guess what it is?
Old panel below for comparison purposes.
I am very smart.
This is why you check if your stove is big endian or little endian.
HEDGIE
I finished all the tile for the backsplash over the weekend and got the last coat of sealer on it yesterday. I also replaced the crappy old outlets with nice clean new ones and screwless plate covers. My wife got all the sealant down on the floor, and we got all of the cabinets back up and some of the doors on.
We need to finish putting doors on stuff, do a shitload of caulking, reinstall the over-the-range microwave, reinstall window coverings, I need to replace a few of the main lights on the ceiling, then its time to haul all the shit back into the kitchen and put it away.
It's nice getting to the end of a big project like this and seeing everything coming together the way we hoped. We're at $6000 on the project but $1000 of that was new tools - miter and table saw, nailgun, etc.
Here's a before:
And where we're at now:
Well at least you're ready to enter the next season of The Great Clock Off.
"Why are you setting the clock to 350 degrees?"
Try flipping the wiring harness upside down.
Define "cheap" and "super tiny". I would recommend looking at electric mowers - they're a lot less messy and noxious than the traditional 2 stroke engine models.
It isn't cheap, but when my gas mower dies I'm either getting a robot or an Ego Power+ mower. Not having to worry about fuel going bad, maintenance, or cleaning has been great for the snowblower I have from them and I've slowly whittled down to just the mower and a power washer as far as gas powered tools go.