The best thing about Jimmy DiResta videos on YouTube is that you ALWAYS know whose video it is you're watching - he puts his name on everything in sight, often multiple times. I swear I saw a stencil he uses to spray paint his name on stuff that had his name stencilled on it once...
I actually have that in the con side of my list.
PSN: jfrofl
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minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
i don't DIRESTA know DIRESTA what DIRESTA you DIRESTA mean DIRESTA DIRESTA DIRESTA
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
On the subject of being sick of the loft is this manky bit of old wood that since we moved in I've assumed was doing something structural in holding up the purlin that it's wedged underneath.
Whoever put it in did such a shit job of it that it's literally at a 30 degree angle to the vertical. You can see how bad it is compared to my nice and straight 5x2 joist that I put in to brace it. It was so bad that it went from one side of the joist to the other - sticking out behind the joist at the top, and in front of it at the bottom, so it covered over 5 inches in diagonal travel:
So today I decided to tackle it and it turned out that it was a waste of about 40 minutes of my life. On the other side of the manky bit I very carefully measured out the size of the door frame for the hatch, measured out the framing necessary to continue the stud on the other side of it and built the basic support structure making sure everything was tight and secure. What I was left with was a nice structure on either side ready to take the weight of the purlin/ roof if in fact this thing was doing anything.
Then, very gingerly, I started unscrewing the top of the two screws that were holding this thing up. There was no resistance. Just popped straight out. Then the whole thing fell over sideways because the screw in the bottom had snapped during installation so that wasn't doing anything useful.
So not only was it not holding anything up, it was actually being held up by the purlin. I've wasted hours building around it and making sure everything was properly braced, and hours just worrying about it in general. I was on the verge of just leaving it and having it as a feature of the wall. A little slide for ants, maybe.
Oh well. Work continues and I'm one tiny step closer.
The one about the fucking space hairdresser and the cowboy. He's got a tinfoil pal and a pedal bin
ugh my brand new house has a horrific leak in the roof. it's raining and there is just a torrent of water coming in, entire top floor hallway is filled with water.
this is fun fun fun fun. i pointed out that there was some water damage during the walkthrough and they said they fixed it and they came and redid the paint before we sold but lol they apparently didn't do shit.
this is the worst weekend.
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minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
This is why you should always make it a point to break into any house you're interested in during a thunderstorm so you can check for issues like this.
The current owners will understand.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
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MichaelLCIn what furnace was thy brain?ChicagoRegistered Userregular
ugh my brand new house has a horrific leak in the roof. it's raining and there is just a torrent of water coming in, entire top floor hallway is filled with water.
this is fun fun fun fun. i pointed out that there was some water damage during the walkthrough and they said they fixed it and they came and redid the paint before we sold but lol they apparently didn't do shit.
Reach out to your attorney to see what your options are. There are sometimes things that can be done to get money back from the sellers if they didn't fix contingent repair items like that.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
The list of ‘wants’ for this house grows ever longer.
We’re fortunate though that, apart from the siding project (which will be big and expensive enough in itself!), nothing is tooooo urgent.
So far:
- back door still needs to be replaced, but a stick works well as a lock for now
- curtains would serve us so much better than blinds
- remove/replace broken dishwasher
- replace non-LED lightbulbs/broken lightbulbs
- replace dining area chandelier, which I have cracked my head on at least ten times now
- replace stairwell chandelier, which just looks dirty and crappy and is peeling
- have a key hook for the mail/spare keys (this’ll be cheap, anyway!)
- caulk bathrooms
We can do half the above ourselves, just need the money...
Further down the line:
- replace carpet in downstairs areas with anything but carpet (we’re doing our best to restrict food/drink in the living area, but it’s all connected to the kitchen and some spills HAVE happened; it’s a nice carpet but won’t last long with two young kids)
- replace toilets
- texturize/paint garage walls, add better lighting, and a rug or foam panel floor to keep feet a little warmer!
If it’s eventually in our budget, looking into a yard service... I just said this out loud and Anya yelled ‘NO I LIKE THE WEEDS, THEY’RE FLOWERS’
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minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
It's always a good sign when most of the stuff on your want list for your new place is relatively easily doable on your own without hiring pros. Means you chose your house well!
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
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LuvTheMonkeyHigh Sierra SerenadeRegistered Userregular
The most important component of my house was installed this past week
Regarding sticks in sliding doors:
Even when Janson and Moriveth replace the lock, it's still a good idea as a back up.
Also important is the kind of stick. An old broom handle is usually good, just make sure it is longer than the door sliding area. It is act as a visual indicator so that would-be thieves know it is there and hopefully move on, and they will not try to flood the door slide to float the stick out and be able to open the door.
We invest in large dogs to dissuade would be burglars.
The critical part is to also ensure the large dogs are too stupid to let the burglars in, because they totally would if they could. Fuzzy anticapitalist traitors.
Yeah, I’m not convinced people would be persuaded to skip our house if they saw our dog.
I know it doesn't seem like he'd do much, but just by being there it's more likely that yon burgs would go somewhere else with no dog, unless they've cased your joint specifically for some reason.
Even with an obviously friendly doof there's a percentage chance that theyll get pissy if you step in their space, so random burglars are less likely to persist.
Or in our case, a very real chance of injury by tripping on a 50kg moron, which has much the same effect.
We invest in large dogs to dissuade would be burglars.
The critical part is to also ensure the large dogs are too stupid to let the burglars in, because they totally would if they could. Fuzzy anticapitalist traitors.
When I had my coyote she was very protective of her house from everyone
She would watch the mailman place the mail in the box and roll onto the next house but there was a time we had package thieves in the area and she told them their services were not needed or asked for with a simple growl
There used to be a home security TV show, and every time, the guy breaking in would take the dog with him.
Fun facts about It takes a thief
The "host" was fired and pretty much blacklisted from his teaching job and from employment because of that show. He is best friends and helped build the Ring device
The guy who would break in and then fence the goods went into detail once how he sold the dogs {really scary and kind of alarming}
Shit. Was just feeding the dog her Friday dinner when I felt a drop hit the back of my hand, which is odd because I feed the dog in the laundry. Look up and check the top of the cupboard I keep the dog food in and discover a puddle on top. It's been raining pretty heavily today. Fuck. There's a fucking leak, and I've found out about it on a Friday night.
Further investigation has revealed the back wall behind the cupboard is very damp, the gib has started warping, and there's a slight bow in the ceiling. It doesn't look like it has been there too long - there's not enough water damage for it to have been unnoticed for months over the winter, but I suspect it might have started at least as back as the last heavy rain we had on Saturday.
I've poked a hole in the ceiling where it seemed dampest and put a bucket on top of the cupboard, but given we're supposed to be out of this house by this time next year I wasn't really wanting a couple thousand dollars to hunt down and repair a leak in a room we've already renovated this decade, thanks.
Fortunately we've just engaged the same builder who did that work for the significantly larger and more expensive renovation at the new house, so he's got a bit of motivation to come over and poke around a bit. It's in such an out of the way place, to an extent we're lucky we caught it when we did; hopefully we've still found it while it's merely expensively bad as opposed to seriously depleting. It's not like we're not already trying to scrounge around to cover the cost of renovating and moving to a new place.
Builder came over to check the leak - found some roofing screws where the seal had perished. He's replaced them and hopefully that will do it.
We've got about a week of fine weather forecast and Summer is coming up, so I'm trying to decide if I want to let it dry out as much as possible and check it the next big rain (which might not be for months) or whether I should say fuck it and test it by dousing it with a hose so we know whether it's fixed or not. Much easier to replace a bit of roof when you're heading into dry sunny weather rather than trying to rush it before winter.
After several hours of steady rain most of yesterday/last night, there's no sign of any water and the former leak is bone dry, so I'll say that our leak has been successfully fixed, which I find a reassuring relief.
I always got the feeling the people who signed up to get their houses robbed weren't fully aware of what they were getting into.
I remember one of the episodes where Rainey or whatever the burgler's name was let the family's golden retriever out by accident because he wasn't paying attention and the dog actually ran away. It ended not too long after that I think. Maybe I'm misremembering the dog running away.
I know he loved stealing remotes for TVs to annoy the families.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Good news: I fixed the draft from the garage by pulling on the weather stripped a little bit so that it actually meets the door. Efficiency!
Bad news: While doing the same to the back door, I tried to discover why that door sticks at the top. Turns out the screws for the top hinge are stripped out, so the door is only supported by two hinges.
What's the play here? Put wood filler in the screw holes and reuse them? Relocate the hinge entirely?
Last night my wife woke me up frantically "THERES SOMETHING IN THE ATTIC! LISTEN!"
Me, half awake 'No dear, listen, it only happens when the winds whips up and it happens at different locations, an animal we would hear skittering along, not just like hooves at different points.'
"Please go look"
we have no way into the attic, the landlord has the key, so I went outside and looked for a hole in the roof.
Turns out all it was was ice/snow falling from the neighbor's trees onto our roof.
Good news: I fixed the draft from the garage by pulling on the weather stripped a little bit so that it actually meets the door. Efficiency!
Bad news: While doing the same to the back door, I tried to discover why that door sticks at the top. Turns out the screws for the top hinge are stripped out, so the door is only supported by two hinges.
What's the play here? Put wood filler in the screw holes and reuse them? Relocate the hinge entirely?
Depending on the structure of the door frame maybe just using longer screws would work
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
Good news: I fixed the draft from the garage by pulling on the weather stripped a little bit so that it actually meets the door. Efficiency!
Bad news: While doing the same to the back door, I tried to discover why that door sticks at the top. Turns out the screws for the top hinge are stripped out, so the door is only supported by two hinges.
What's the play here? Put wood filler in the screw holes and reuse them? Relocate the hinge entirely?
Most wood filler isn't hoss enough to hang a door from. An old trick is to fill the screw holes with tightly-packed toothpicks and wood glue. Once it dries and you cut away the excess, you end up with a plug that's probably stronger than the surrounding wood in most older doorjambs.
Here's an article with photos that explains the technique pretty well.
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minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
There's a pound bakery just around the corner from me so I can drown him in pastry
That's a nice, neat tiling job. Are you going to have a light grey grout to make it pop?
I hate those little plastic tile separators. I once tidied up after a tiler that used an entire box of them on a 3m x 3m bathroom and didn't pull them out and re-use them as the bonding set, so I had well over a thousand of the little bastards to pull out with no gloves. I ended up without much skin left on my index finger's first knuckle
This was the same guy that used far too much bonding so it had risen up between the tiles. I had to take a small screwdriver and chip away at every single line before I could grout them. I literally wore that screwdriver down a good few inches to a nub
The one about the fucking space hairdresser and the cowboy. He's got a tinfoil pal and a pedal bin
Posts
I actually have that in the con side of my list.
might have to jump on those now.
Today he installed new lights on the master bedroom and ensuite which makes everything much neater.
He'll be starting tiling in the downstairs bathroom at the weekend.
Next spring he's going to dig up our driveway and put a new drive/path in. He's also going to lay a new path around the edge/sides of the property.
We're very fortunate to have him. Once everything is done we'll have saved several thousand in labour and parts.
Can you send him North? I'm sick to death of doing my loft
Whoever put it in did such a shit job of it that it's literally at a 30 degree angle to the vertical. You can see how bad it is compared to my nice and straight 5x2 joist that I put in to brace it. It was so bad that it went from one side of the joist to the other - sticking out behind the joist at the top, and in front of it at the bottom, so it covered over 5 inches in diagonal travel:
So today I decided to tackle it and it turned out that it was a waste of about 40 minutes of my life. On the other side of the manky bit I very carefully measured out the size of the door frame for the hatch, measured out the framing necessary to continue the stud on the other side of it and built the basic support structure making sure everything was tight and secure. What I was left with was a nice structure on either side ready to take the weight of the purlin/ roof if in fact this thing was doing anything.
Then, very gingerly, I started unscrewing the top of the two screws that were holding this thing up. There was no resistance. Just popped straight out. Then the whole thing fell over sideways because the screw in the bottom had snapped during installation so that wasn't doing anything useful.
So not only was it not holding anything up, it was actually being held up by the purlin. I've wasted hours building around it and making sure everything was properly braced, and hours just worrying about it in general. I was on the verge of just leaving it and having it as a feature of the wall. A little slide for ants, maybe.
Oh well. Work continues and I'm one tiny step closer.
If you get divorced lemme know. I need a useful father in law.
this is fun fun fun fun. i pointed out that there was some water damage during the walkthrough and they said they fixed it and they came and redid the paint before we sold but lol they apparently didn't do shit.
this is the worst weekend.
The current owners will understand.
🤜
When I sold my house my realtor had me write down repairs that had been made recently.
We’re fortunate though that, apart from the siding project (which will be big and expensive enough in itself!), nothing is tooooo urgent.
So far:
- back door still needs to be replaced, but a stick works well as a lock for now
- curtains would serve us so much better than blinds
- remove/replace broken dishwasher
- replace non-LED lightbulbs/broken lightbulbs
- replace dining area chandelier, which I have cracked my head on at least ten times now
- replace stairwell chandelier, which just looks dirty and crappy and is peeling
- have a key hook for the mail/spare keys (this’ll be cheap, anyway!)
- caulk bathrooms
We can do half the above ourselves, just need the money...
Further down the line:
- replace carpet in downstairs areas with anything but carpet (we’re doing our best to restrict food/drink in the living area, but it’s all connected to the kitchen and some spills HAVE happened; it’s a nice carpet but won’t last long with two young kids)
- replace toilets
- texturize/paint garage walls, add better lighting, and a rug or foam panel floor to keep feet a little warmer!
If it’s eventually in our budget, looking into a yard service... I just said this out loud and Anya yelled ‘NO I LIKE THE WEEDS, THEY’RE FLOWERS’
Even when Janson and Moriveth replace the lock, it's still a good idea as a back up.
Also important is the kind of stick. An old broom handle is usually good, just make sure it is longer than the door sliding area. It is act as a visual indicator so that would-be thieves know it is there and hopefully move on, and they will not try to flood the door slide to float the stick out and be able to open the door.
The critical part is to also ensure the large dogs are too stupid to let the burglars in, because they totally would if they could. Fuzzy anticapitalist traitors.
Satans..... hints.....
Satans..... hints.....
I know it doesn't seem like he'd do much, but just by being there it's more likely that yon burgs would go somewhere else with no dog, unless they've cased your joint specifically for some reason.
Or in our case, a very real chance of injury by tripping on a 50kg moron, which has much the same effect.
When I had my coyote she was very protective of her house from everyone
She would watch the mailman place the mail in the box and roll onto the next house but there was a time we had package thieves in the area and she told them their services were not needed or asked for with a simple growl
Fun facts about It takes a thief
The "host" was fired and pretty much blacklisted from his teaching job and from employment because of that show. He is best friends and helped build the Ring device
The guy who would break in and then fence the goods went into detail once how he sold the dogs {really scary and kind of alarming}
I always got the feeling the people who signed up to get their houses robbed weren't fully aware of what they were getting into.
After several hours of steady rain most of yesterday/last night, there's no sign of any water and the former leak is bone dry, so I'll say that our leak has been successfully fixed, which I find a reassuring relief.
I remember one of the episodes where Rainey or whatever the burgler's name was let the family's golden retriever out by accident because he wasn't paying attention and the dog actually ran away. It ended not too long after that I think. Maybe I'm misremembering the dog running away.
I know he loved stealing remotes for TVs to annoy the families.
Bad news: While doing the same to the back door, I tried to discover why that door sticks at the top. Turns out the screws for the top hinge are stripped out, so the door is only supported by two hinges.
What's the play here? Put wood filler in the screw holes and reuse them? Relocate the hinge entirely?
Me, half awake 'No dear, listen, it only happens when the winds whips up and it happens at different locations, an animal we would hear skittering along, not just like hooves at different points.'
"Please go look"
we have no way into the attic, the landlord has the key, so I went outside and looked for a hole in the roof.
Turns out all it was was ice/snow falling from the neighbor's trees onto our roof.
Depending on the structure of the door frame maybe just using longer screws would work
I went to buy antlers today.
No photos until December though, cause that's just tacky to start early.
Satans..... hints.....
Most wood filler isn't hoss enough to hang a door from. An old trick is to fill the screw holes with tightly-packed toothpicks and wood glue. Once it dries and you cut away the excess, you end up with a plug that's probably stronger than the surrounding wood in most older doorjambs.
Here's an article with photos that explains the technique pretty well.
We just got our December Bark Box in the mail and it includes doggie antlers!!!!
What about photos from last December?
PSN / Xbox / NNID: Fodder185
That depends, how many biscuits, Greggs sausage rolls and chocolate eclairs will you give him?
He's been tiling the guest bathroom this weekend:
The floor tiles will be a darker grey.
That's a nice, neat tiling job. Are you going to have a light grey grout to make it pop?
I hate those little plastic tile separators. I once tidied up after a tiler that used an entire box of them on a 3m x 3m bathroom and didn't pull them out and re-use them as the bonding set, so I had well over a thousand of the little bastards to pull out with no gloves. I ended up without much skin left on my index finger's first knuckle
This was the same guy that used far too much bonding so it had risen up between the tiles. I had to take a small screwdriver and chip away at every single line before I could grout them. I literally wore that screwdriver down a good few inches to a nub