Also, I mean... you don't really want to drink distilled water.
I'm not a plant! It's for the plants, and potentially flushing toilets if we have another freak winter storm here in Texas, having a few jugs around was a bit of a life saver...
Thanks for all the advice. I reached out to some folks for local recommendations!
AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
If you get an under-the-sink RO filter try to hook it up with 2 tanks if you can (and if you have the space). Doing so has been revelatory for me. It's great being able to get a gallon+ of RO water on demand before losing any pressure at the faucet.
I am just amazed that Matt keeps seeing this through instead of breaking the curse and noping out of this structure.
Like I've dealt with a lot of janky construction, but a lot is just straight up sentimental 150 year old family farmhouse jank.
This is just nuts. Do you wish you had just bulldozed and built fresh?
I think if I got to the point where there was something wrong with it that I couldn't fix myself, I'd probably start looking at ways to get out of it. But that hasn't happened yet, and I've now gotten to where there really aren't any places in the house that I haven't been into yet to examine, so aside from the possibility of a body buried under it there won't be any more surprises.
Having said that, I do still need to take the dirt down about 12 inches in the basement...
+7
That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
IMO getting a whole house filter in the 0.5 micron range is going to give you better water than anything that comes out of a water softener kit.
I am just amazed that Matt keeps seeing this through instead of breaking the curse and noping out of this structure.
Like I've dealt with a lot of janky construction, but a lot is just straight up sentimental 150 year old family farmhouse jank.
This is just nuts. Do you wish you had just bulldozed and built fresh?
I think if I got to the point where there was something wrong with it that I couldn't fix myself, I'd probably start looking at ways to get out of it. But that hasn't happened yet, and I've now gotten to where there really aren't any places in the house that I haven't been into yet to examine, so aside from the possibility of a body buried under it there won't be any more surprises.
Having said that, I do still need to take the dirt down about 12 inches in the basement...
How do you take out 12" without undermining the foundation? I'd always wondered about the practical difficulties of taking a crawlspace into a basement and assuming the footers and so on would be the biggest hurdle.
I’ve started getting into woodworking over the past month or so. The previous owners left a bunch of scrap lumber around, so I’ve been using that to experiment with my first tools (table saw, circular saw, router, random orbital sander). Mostly been tests so far, making sure I can cut evenly and cleanly without killing myself or losing any important fingers, but I did make a basic box frame to stop a chair from sliding in the basement (it sits behind the chair and presses against the wall, so it’s ok that it’s ugly) and a test for making a nice looking chessboard (looked good, but I had insufficient wood, so it’s more of a tic tac toe board).
First real project is just wrapping up now - I bought a couple sheets of birch plywood and cut out pieces to make a box that I’m going to put over about half of a double vanity as a kind of shelf (my wife and I don’t share bathrooms, so one sink is going unused - this will make it more of a high counter). The straight edge I built out of old warped plywood has some predictable issues, but worked well enough for cutting rabbets into the plywood, so now I’ve got my box pieces ready for taping, painting, gluing, and sealing. I messed up a bit with the planning, so some plywood edges are showing through the top (originally I planned to rabbet all four edges of the top piece, but forgot and rabbeted all the board tops instead), but I’m hoping that a little sanding and a lot of priming will conceal the imperfections.
Didn’t realize when I started that, as a hobby, this is like 75% planning and using geometry (and watching youtube tutorials) vs 25% working with wood, but it’s stretching my brain and requiring me to pick up a whole new vocabulary. This is an expensive and deep hole, but I’m really enjoying it so far.
I’ve started getting into woodworking over the past month or so. The previous owners left a bunch of scrap lumber around, so I’ve been using that to experiment with my first tools (table saw, circular saw, router, random orbital sander). Mostly been tests so far, making sure I can cut evenly and cleanly without killing myself or losing any important fingers, but I did make a basic box frame to stop a chair from sliding in the basement (it sits behind the chair and presses against the wall, so it’s ok that it’s ugly) and a test for making a nice looking chessboard (looked good, but I had insufficient wood, so it’s more of a tic tac toe board).
First real project is just wrapping up now - I bought a couple sheets of birch plywood and cut out pieces to make a box that I’m going to put over about half of a double vanity as a kind of shelf (my wife and I don’t share bathrooms, so one sink is going unused - this will make it more of a high counter). The straight edge I built out of old warped plywood has some predictable issues, but worked well enough for cutting rabbets into the plywood, so now I’ve got my box pieces ready for taping, painting, gluing, and sealing. I messed up a bit with the planning, so some plywood edges are showing through the top (originally I planned to rabbet all four edges of the top piece, but forgot and rabbeted all the board tops instead), but I’m hoping that a little sanding and a lot of priming will conceal the imperfections.
Didn’t realize when I started that, as a hobby, this is like 75% planning and using geometry (and watching youtube tutorials) vs 25% working with wood, but it’s stretching my brain and requiring me to pick up a whole new vocabulary. This is an expensive and deep hole, but I’m really enjoying it so far.
Woodworking is tons of fun, I'll make stuff out of plywood with power tools when need be but I enjoy working with solid wood and hand tools more. You definitely end up scratching your head sometimes... "uh... soh-cah-toa, so where's the damn calculator". For plywood stuff I recommend getting a Kreg jig if you don't have one already. For solid work a block plane and nice set of chisels will take you pretty far until you end up on Lee Valley drooling at joinery planes.
I’ve started getting into woodworking over the past month or so. The previous owners left a bunch of scrap lumber around, so I’ve been using that to experiment with my first tools (table saw, circular saw, router, random orbital sander). Mostly been tests so far, making sure I can cut evenly and cleanly without killing myself or losing any important fingers, but I did make a basic box frame to stop a chair from sliding in the basement (it sits behind the chair and presses against the wall, so it’s ok that it’s ugly) and a test for making a nice looking chessboard (looked good, but I had insufficient wood, so it’s more of a tic tac toe board).
First real project is just wrapping up now - I bought a couple sheets of birch plywood and cut out pieces to make a box that I’m going to put over about half of a double vanity as a kind of shelf (my wife and I don’t share bathrooms, so one sink is going unused - this will make it more of a high counter). The straight edge I built out of old warped plywood has some predictable issues, but worked well enough for cutting rabbets into the plywood, so now I’ve got my box pieces ready for taping, painting, gluing, and sealing. I messed up a bit with the planning, so some plywood edges are showing through the top (originally I planned to rabbet all four edges of the top piece, but forgot and rabbeted all the board tops instead), but I’m hoping that a little sanding and a lot of priming will conceal the imperfections.
Didn’t realize when I started that, as a hobby, this is like 75% planning and using geometry (and watching youtube tutorials) vs 25% working with wood, but it’s stretching my brain and requiring me to pick up a whole new vocabulary. This is an expensive and deep hole, but I’m really enjoying it so far.
Woodworking is tons of fun, I'll make stuff out of plywood with power tools when need be but I enjoy working with solid wood and hand tools more. You definitely end up scratching your head sometimes... "uh... soh-cah-toa, so where's the damn calculator". For plywood stuff I recommend getting a Kreg jig if you don't have one already. For solid work a block plane and nice set of chisels will take you pretty far until you end up on Lee Valley drooling at joinery planes.
I've been wood working for like three years and I've true thing I've learned is everything is doable by hand, but a hundred times faster by spending money on a specialty tool.
Also for anyone using a table saw, please buy one of those modular push handles so you don't find to my ED with missing digits
I’ve started getting into woodworking over the past month or so. The previous owners left a bunch of scrap lumber around, so I’ve been using that to experiment with my first tools (table saw, circular saw, router, random orbital sander). Mostly been tests so far, making sure I can cut evenly and cleanly without killing myself or losing any important fingers, but I did make a basic box frame to stop a chair from sliding in the basement (it sits behind the chair and presses against the wall, so it’s ok that it’s ugly) and a test for making a nice looking chessboard (looked good, but I had insufficient wood, so it’s more of a tic tac toe board).
First real project is just wrapping up now - I bought a couple sheets of birch plywood and cut out pieces to make a box that I’m going to put over about half of a double vanity as a kind of shelf (my wife and I don’t share bathrooms, so one sink is going unused - this will make it more of a high counter). The straight edge I built out of old warped plywood has some predictable issues, but worked well enough for cutting rabbets into the plywood, so now I’ve got my box pieces ready for taping, painting, gluing, and sealing. I messed up a bit with the planning, so some plywood edges are showing through the top (originally I planned to rabbet all four edges of the top piece, but forgot and rabbeted all the board tops instead), but I’m hoping that a little sanding and a lot of priming will conceal the imperfections.
Didn’t realize when I started that, as a hobby, this is like 75% planning and using geometry (and watching youtube tutorials) vs 25% working with wood, but it’s stretching my brain and requiring me to pick up a whole new vocabulary. This is an expensive and deep hole, but I’m really enjoying it so far.
Woodworking is tons of fun, I'll make stuff out of plywood with power tools when need be but I enjoy working with solid wood and hand tools more. You definitely end up scratching your head sometimes... "uh... soh-cah-toa, so where's the damn calculator". For plywood stuff I recommend getting a Kreg jig if you don't have one already. For solid work a block plane and nice set of chisels will take you pretty far until you end up on Lee Valley drooling at joinery planes.
I've been wood working for like three years and I've true thing I've learned is everything is doable by hand, but a hundred times faster by spending money on a specialty tool.
Also for anyone using a table saw, please buy one of those modular push handles so you don't find to my ED with missing digits
Yeah dont fuck around with a table saw. I fucked up a few years ago and only lost a gob of skin and half a nail. So lucky that was it.
If you plan on doing woodworking for real, one of the safe stop table saws is probably worth paying the 2x up front. It is literally the most dangerous single thing people regularly own and use.
+2
zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Even a table saw with a guard. I see way too many table saws and bandsaw with no guard and the owner or contractor says the guard doesn’t work, or the saw doesn’t work with the guard on, and it’s a grumpy dickhead with 8 and 3/4 fingers.
+9
That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
IMO getting a whole house filter in the 0.5 micron range is going to give you better water than anything that comes out of a water softener kit.
Other than drinking, are there any other benefit's for a whole home filter? Our fridge will have a filter for drinking.
Less sediment in the pipes, less sediment in your hot water heater if you have one.
Exactly. A .5 micron 4.5in whole house filter in a suitable housing will actually remove the majority of dissolved biologicals, chemicals and minerals including chlorine, most bacteria, heavy metals, and scale. Instead of just exchanging scale ions for salt ions you're removing them altogether. Depending on exactly how hard your water is, you might need to change the filter as often as every month. For most people it's every 6 months or so. You'll notice a slow drop in water pressure when it's time.
One of the .5 micron carbon block whole house filters costs about half what one of the fridge filters cost and will benefit the whole house. The install is usually pretty simple. You can hire a plumber to do it or install it in-line just after your inside cutoff valve.
The whole system is far cheaper than a water softener and no more difficult to install. The filters can add up over time but you can bargain hunt on amazon and find good deals on quality filters.
Even a table saw with a guard. I see way too many table saws and bandsaw with no guard and the owner or contractor says the guard doesn’t work, or the saw doesn’t work with the guard on, and it’s a grumpy dickhead with 8 and 3/4 fingers.
Though for woodworking I can see the point of removing the guard, mostly because half the cuts you're making don't actually work with the guard on (dado cuts, miters, etc). But in a controlled shop environment it's also a lot easier to use other tools to increase safety like cross cut sleds, the Grr-ripper and other types of of jigs, and push sticks at least.
I’ve started getting into woodworking over the past month or so. The previous owners left a bunch of scrap lumber around, so I’ve been using that to experiment with my first tools (table saw, circular saw, router, random orbital sander). Mostly been tests so far, making sure I can cut evenly and cleanly without killing myself or losing any important fingers, but I did make a basic box frame to stop a chair from sliding in the basement (it sits behind the chair and presses against the wall, so it’s ok that it’s ugly) and a test for making a nice looking chessboard (looked good, but I had insufficient wood, so it’s more of a tic tac toe board).
First real project is just wrapping up now - I bought a couple sheets of birch plywood and cut out pieces to make a box that I’m going to put over about half of a double vanity as a kind of shelf (my wife and I don’t share bathrooms, so one sink is going unused - this will make it more of a high counter). The straight edge I built out of old warped plywood has some predictable issues, but worked well enough for cutting rabbets into the plywood, so now I’ve got my box pieces ready for taping, painting, gluing, and sealing. I messed up a bit with the planning, so some plywood edges are showing through the top (originally I planned to rabbet all four edges of the top piece, but forgot and rabbeted all the board tops instead), but I’m hoping that a little sanding and a lot of priming will conceal the imperfections.
Didn’t realize when I started that, as a hobby, this is like 75% planning and using geometry (and watching youtube tutorials) vs 25% working with wood, but it’s stretching my brain and requiring me to pick up a whole new vocabulary. This is an expensive and deep hole, but I’m really enjoying it so far.
Woodworking is tons of fun, I'll make stuff out of plywood with power tools when need be but I enjoy working with solid wood and hand tools more. You definitely end up scratching your head sometimes... "uh... soh-cah-toa, so where's the damn calculator". For plywood stuff I recommend getting a Kreg jig if you don't have one already. For solid work a block plane and nice set of chisels will take you pretty far until you end up on Lee Valley drooling at joinery planes.
I've been wood working for like three years and I've true thing I've learned is everything is doable by hand, but a hundred times faster by spending money on a specialty tool.
Also for anyone using a table saw, please buy one of those modular push handles so you don't find to my ED with missing digits
Depends what you're doing, I can make a taper with a broad hatchet and jack plane faster than setting a taper jig on a table saw but I only rip cut by hand if I want the exercise. Clamping boards in my leg vise and tongue and grooving them with a Stanley 48 is faster than my router table but the router is going to win at making ogees. When its all for fun and hobby money it is nice to just pick whatever way I feel like doing. Certainly I like having my daughters around the Stanley 78 cutting rabbets better than if we were doing it on the table saw.
Edit to add: reflecting again on your statement, yes... I guess those planes count as specialty tools vs if you were chiseling out that stuff. Still, if you ever build a big workbench you should chisel out its mortise and tenons for fun, you really wail on those mortise chisels, it is relaxing when you're not doing it to put food on your plate.
Does anyone have specific suggestions for grease clog drain cleaner? I've tried the standard black bottle at home depot but it doesn't seem to be doing the trick.
Does anyone have specific suggestions for grease clog drain cleaner? I've tried the standard black bottle at home depot but it doesn't seem to be doing the trick.
Was it Zep? I usually have good luck with their stuff.
In the oldest house I've lived in with the worst drains I'd go to Walmart and buy some drain cleaner that was really just lye... it has extra warnings on the bottle and is probably not great on certain kinds of pipes but it'll clear a drain like nothing else.
+2
That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
In the oldest house I've lived in with the worst drains I'd go to Walmart and buy some drain cleaner that was really just lye... it has extra warnings on the bottle and is probably not great on certain kinds of pipes but it'll clear a drain like nothing else.
Pure lye crystals are really the way to go. They're safe enough on all your pipes as long as you don't let it get too hot. I bought a 1lb bottle on Amazon years ago and still have most of it. You just need a wee little sprinkle to do the deed.
Does anyone have specific suggestions for grease clog drain cleaner? I've tried the standard black bottle at home depot but it doesn't seem to be doing the trick.
My wife has the filthiest sink drain pipes I’ve ever seen, which is inevitably clogged with hair and… some substance I choose to believe is make-up. The only thing that works for her is the Drano that comes in a split bottle, think it might be the Dual Force foaming stuff.
On the woodworking front, thanks to all for reminding me to get a decent pushblock - I’ve been careful, but with just the stick and block I have, too often that means “Find another tool to make this cut,” and I don’t doubt I’ll eventually get lazy and screw that up.
The counter project continues, but hit a snag when I realized that a single can of spray paint isn’t going as far as I’d hoped. That said, good practice with sanding in between coats today, and the difference in the end result is waaaay more significant than I expected. I’ve got the top piece just about done, and it feels like it’s made out of glass… except for a shitty corner that I oversprayed in an attempt to cover up some tear-out, then panicked and wiped up, revealing the wood again. Re-sanded and painted that section, feels good, but still looks gross compared to the rest, so I’ll probably stick it in the back. Also hoping that a final paint coat after assembly will help out (worst case I’ll sand the top edges and put on some edging tape, though I’d like to avoid that).
I don't recall what it was called, but the best drain cleaner I ever used came in a non descript bottle that was itself sealed inside a clear bag. Whatever it was would bubble acrylic tubs if you weren't careful. Ultimately if you have long haired people in your house, a drain snake is a worthwhile purchase as well.
:so_raven:
+2
thatassemblyguyJanitor of Technical Debt.Registered Userregular
Always lovely when your mortgage is sold, and the first thing that pops up when doing a search of them is a federal government (CFPB) complaint:
(1) failed to identify thousands of loans with existing
in-flight modifications and, as a result, failed to recognize some transferred loans with pending
loss mitigation applications or trial modification plans, or failed to identify and honor other
borrowers’ loan modification agreements; (2) foreclosed on borrowers to whom it had promised
foreclosure holds while they applied for loss mitigation relief; (3) improperly increased
borrowers’ permanent, modified monthly loan payments; (4) failed to timely disburse borrowers’
tax payments from their escrow accounts; (5) failed to properly conduct escrow analyses for
borrowers during their Chapter 13 bankruptcy proceedings; and (6) failed to timely remove
private mortgage insurance from borrowers’ accounts. Each of these acts or failures violated the
law.
Our original mortgage bounced between I think four lenders from December 2008 - mid-2009, one of them was so fast we never even made a payment to whoever owned it.
It settled at Bank of America and they have kept us for 12 years (w/ refinance in 2012 and 2021) and honestly BOA's reputation aside have been really good to us.
It does seem to be a crapshoot though if you are going with any big lender. Our other property is through a agricultural credit service / co-OP (Greenstone) who are absolutely awesome and don't sell loans, but are limited to agricultural and country living services. Maybe a credit union local to you keeps loans and is competitive with big banks?
FWIW, the mortgage department of WF were the only ones not under some sort of legal issue. I still refinanced out of them once I figured out a good target.
We are currently with Rocket, but were almost immediately "sold" to Fannie Mae. I have that in quotes because we still make payments to Rocket.
0
thatassemblyguyJanitor of Technical Debt.Registered Userregular
Your only option is to refi into a company that you hope won't sell it
There was a checkbox on the mortgage explainer sheet that I knew I should have pushed back on that basically was like, “this mortgage is being underwritten to be sold”.
Hopefully, I won’t end up a statistic. The point of this loan was to keep my cash in hand and get a dummy low interest rate.
Just really tragic when it’s not random internet reviews but the actual federal government that shows up.
I’ve started getting into woodworking over the past month or so. The previous owners left a bunch of scrap lumber around, so I’ve been using that to experiment with my first tools (table saw, circular saw, router, random orbital sander). Mostly been tests so far, making sure I can cut evenly and cleanly without killing myself or losing any important fingers, but I did make a basic box frame to stop a chair from sliding in the basement (it sits behind the chair and presses against the wall, so it’s ok that it’s ugly) and a test for making a nice looking chessboard (looked good, but I had insufficient wood, so it’s more of a tic tac toe board).
First real project is just wrapping up now - I bought a couple sheets of birch plywood and cut out pieces to make a box that I’m going to put over about half of a double vanity as a kind of shelf (my wife and I don’t share bathrooms, so one sink is going unused - this will make it more of a high counter). The straight edge I built out of old warped plywood has some predictable issues, but worked well enough for cutting rabbets into the plywood, so now I’ve got my box pieces ready for taping, painting, gluing, and sealing. I messed up a bit with the planning, so some plywood edges are showing through the top (originally I planned to rabbet all four edges of the top piece, but forgot and rabbeted all the board tops instead), but I’m hoping that a little sanding and a lot of priming will conceal the imperfections.
Didn’t realize when I started that, as a hobby, this is like 75% planning and using geometry (and watching youtube tutorials) vs 25% working with wood, but it’s stretching my brain and requiring me to pick up a whole new vocabulary. This is an expensive and deep hole, but I’m really enjoying it so far.
Woodworking is tons of fun, I'll make stuff out of plywood with power tools when need be but I enjoy working with solid wood and hand tools more. You definitely end up scratching your head sometimes... "uh... soh-cah-toa, so where's the damn calculator". For plywood stuff I recommend getting a Kreg jig if you don't have one already. For solid work a block plane and nice set of chisels will take you pretty far until you end up on Lee Valley drooling at joinery planes.
I've been wood working for like three years and I've true thing I've learned is everything is doable by hand, but a hundred times faster by spending money on a specialty tool.
Also for anyone using a table saw, please buy one of those modular push handles so you don't find to my ED with missing digits
Depends what you're doing, I can make a taper with a broad hatchet and jack plane faster than setting a taper jig on a table saw but I only rip cut by hand if I want the exercise. Clamping boards in my leg vise and tongue and grooving them with a Stanley 48 is faster than my router table but the router is going to win at making ogees. When its all for fun and hobby money it is nice to just pick whatever way I feel like doing. Certainly I like having my daughters around the Stanley 78 cutting rabbets better than if we were doing it on the table saw.
Edit to add: reflecting again on your statement, yes... I guess those planes count as specialty tools vs if you were chiseling out that stuff. Still, if you ever build a big workbench you should chisel out its mortise and tenons for fun, you really wail on those mortise chisels, it is relaxing when you're not doing it to put food on your plate.
For me it depends how big the project is and how many repetitive cuts I have to make. If it's a lot then I just set up the router table or whatever
Also all those cool hand planes are more expensive than I think they should be
Your only option is to refi into a company that you hope won't sell it
There was a checkbox on the mortgage explainer sheet that I knew I should have pushed back on that basically was like, “this mortgage is being underwritten to be sold”.
Hopefully, I won’t end up a statistic. The point of this loan was to keep my cash in hand and get a dummy low interest rate.
Just really tragic when it’s not random internet reviews but the actual federal government that shows up.
I refinanced at the end of last year. Didn't see the little "we intend to sell this mortgage" until the end but oh well. It was immediately sold to Nationstar, which for some reason now is called "Mr Cooper". They f'ed up on my escrow stuff and didn't pay my homeowner's insurance, so that almost got cancelled. Then after being a customer with them for about 6 months, they started sending me refinance offers, so I get one of those about every 2 weeks now.
I’ve started getting into woodworking over the past month or so. The previous owners left a bunch of scrap lumber around, so I’ve been using that to experiment with my first tools (table saw, circular saw, router, random orbital sander). Mostly been tests so far, making sure I can cut evenly and cleanly without killing myself or losing any important fingers, but I did make a basic box frame to stop a chair from sliding in the basement (it sits behind the chair and presses against the wall, so it’s ok that it’s ugly) and a test for making a nice looking chessboard (looked good, but I had insufficient wood, so it’s more of a tic tac toe board).
First real project is just wrapping up now - I bought a couple sheets of birch plywood and cut out pieces to make a box that I’m going to put over about half of a double vanity as a kind of shelf (my wife and I don’t share bathrooms, so one sink is going unused - this will make it more of a high counter). The straight edge I built out of old warped plywood has some predictable issues, but worked well enough for cutting rabbets into the plywood, so now I’ve got my box pieces ready for taping, painting, gluing, and sealing. I messed up a bit with the planning, so some plywood edges are showing through the top (originally I planned to rabbet all four edges of the top piece, but forgot and rabbeted all the board tops instead), but I’m hoping that a little sanding and a lot of priming will conceal the imperfections.
Didn’t realize when I started that, as a hobby, this is like 75% planning and using geometry (and watching youtube tutorials) vs 25% working with wood, but it’s stretching my brain and requiring me to pick up a whole new vocabulary. This is an expensive and deep hole, but I’m really enjoying it so far.
Woodworking is tons of fun, I'll make stuff out of plywood with power tools when need be but I enjoy working with solid wood and hand tools more. You definitely end up scratching your head sometimes... "uh... soh-cah-toa, so where's the damn calculator". For plywood stuff I recommend getting a Kreg jig if you don't have one already. For solid work a block plane and nice set of chisels will take you pretty far until you end up on Lee Valley drooling at joinery planes.
I've been wood working for like three years and I've true thing I've learned is everything is doable by hand, but a hundred times faster by spending money on a specialty tool.
Also for anyone using a table saw, please buy one of those modular push handles so you don't find to my ED with missing digits
Depends what you're doing, I can make a taper with a broad hatchet and jack plane faster than setting a taper jig on a table saw but I only rip cut by hand if I want the exercise. Clamping boards in my leg vise and tongue and grooving them with a Stanley 48 is faster than my router table but the router is going to win at making ogees. When its all for fun and hobby money it is nice to just pick whatever way I feel like doing. Certainly I like having my daughters around the Stanley 78 cutting rabbets better than if we were doing it on the table saw.
Edit to add: reflecting again on your statement, yes... I guess those planes count as specialty tools vs if you were chiseling out that stuff. Still, if you ever build a big workbench you should chisel out its mortise and tenons for fun, you really wail on those mortise chisels, it is relaxing when you're not doing it to put food on your plate.
For me it depends how big the project is and how many repetitive cuts I have to make. If it's a lot then I just set up the router table or whatever
Also all those cool hand planes are more expensive than I think they should be
For sure, if you need 16 pieces the same width and own a table saw it'd be silly not to use it. You can save money on planes if you tune up antiques, I have all of my grandfathers' planes and drawknives and so on. The new ones are more for spoiling yourself if you enjoy them.
0
zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Does anyone have specific suggestions for grease clog drain cleaner? I've tried the standard black bottle at home depot but it doesn't seem to be doing the trick.
Does anyone have specific suggestions for grease clog drain cleaner? I've tried the standard black bottle at home depot but it doesn't seem to be doing the trick.
Is it totally clogged or slow draining?
cleared it out to somewhere unreachable under the house with the small snake. Drains very slowly now. Tried some acids, probably going to call the plumber tomorrow.
Does anyone have specific suggestions for grease clog drain cleaner? I've tried the standard black bottle at home depot but it doesn't seem to be doing the trick.
Is it totally clogged or slow draining?
cleared it out to somewhere unreachable under the house with the small snake. Drains very slowly now. Tried some acids, probably going to call the plumber tomorrow.
Make sure to tell the plumber about any acid you used. They will not appreciate that kind of surprise.
Your only option is to refi into a company that you hope won't sell it
There was a checkbox on the mortgage explainer sheet that I knew I should have pushed back on that basically was like, “this mortgage is being underwritten to be sold”.
Hopefully, I won’t end up a statistic. The point of this loan was to keep my cash in hand and get a dummy low interest rate.
Just really tragic when it’s not random internet reviews but the actual federal government that shows up.
I refinanced at the end of last year. Didn't see the little "we intend to sell this mortgage" until the end but oh well. It was immediately sold to Nationstar, which for some reason now is called "Mr Cooper". They f'ed up on my escrow stuff and didn't pay my homeowner's insurance, so that almost got cancelled. Then after being a customer with them for about 6 months, they started sending me refinance offers, so I get one of those about every 2 weeks now.
We refinanced with rocket, who like another poster said immediately sold it to fannie mae but continues to be the collector. We immediately started getting letters every week about "mortgage insurance". Not the insurance that mortgage companies make you buy to ensure they will get paid if you default, but basically life insurance that covers just your mortgage (or something like that). They look like straight up scam letters, but they all reference rocket mortgage some how.
Jebus314 on
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
Anyone here have experience with buried downspout drain lines?
When I got this place in Jan all the downspouts just dumped right at the foundations causing water to pool up. I got some flexi hose stretched across the yard as a bandaid but I'm finally able to properly bury the lines now.
It's all in the back yard with fucked up slopes so I can't just run the drainage to the curb. Trying to figure out my options.
Run everything to a single dry well. Pro: most robust solution. Con: more digging, more expensive.
Run individual lines away from the house, then into a soaker section, then cap. Pro: keeps everything underground, simple layout. Con: could overflow if things get really bad.
Same as above, but with pop-up overflow instead of capping. Pro: still mostly underground, simple layout. Con: need to balance heights so overflow actually works, now I have these drains hanging out in my yard.
Just run straight solid lines with a popup outlet or other kind of drain to surface. Pro: cheapest and simplest, yard can already handle that amount of surface runoff (it had it all winter with the flex hose). Con: possibly problems with standing water in the pipes, will always have surface water.
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
0
zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Anyone here have experience with buried downspout drain lines?
When I got this place in Jan all the downspouts just dumped right at the foundations causing water to pool up. I got some flexi hose stretched across the yard as a bandaid but I'm finally able to properly bury the lines now.
It's all in the back yard with fucked up slopes so I can't just run the drainage to the curb. Trying to figure out my options.
Run everything to a single dry well. Pro: most robust solution. Con: more digging, more expensive.
Run individual lines away from the house, then into a soaker section, then cap. Pro: keeps everything underground, simple layout. Con: could overflow if things get really bad.
Same as above, but with pop-up overflow instead of capping. Pro: still mostly underground, simple layout. Con: need to balance heights so overflow actually works, now I have these drains hanging out in my yard.
Just run straight solid lines with a popup outlet or other kind of drain to surface. Pro: cheapest and simplest, yard can already handle that amount of surface runoff (it had it all winter with the flex hose). Con: possibly problems with standing water in the pipes, will always have surface water.
I would personally do the second option but arrange them as a French Drain that way it leaches the water into the soil. I wouldn’t bother with a pop up emitter.
Your only option is to refi into a company that you hope won't sell it
There was a checkbox on the mortgage explainer sheet that I knew I should have pushed back on that basically was like, “this mortgage is being underwritten to be sold”.
Hopefully, I won’t end up a statistic. The point of this loan was to keep my cash in hand and get a dummy low interest rate.
Just really tragic when it’s not random internet reviews but the actual federal government that shows up.
I refinanced at the end of last year. Didn't see the little "we intend to sell this mortgage" until the end but oh well. It was immediately sold to Nationstar, which for some reason now is called "Mr Cooper". They f'ed up on my escrow stuff and didn't pay my homeowner's insurance, so that almost got cancelled. Then after being a customer with them for about 6 months, they started sending me refinance offers, so I get one of those about every 2 weeks now.
We refinanced with rocket, who like another poster said immediately sold it to fannie mae but continues to be the collector. We immediately started getting letters every week about "mortgage insurance". Not the insurance that mortgage companies make you buy to ensure they will get paid if you default, but basically life insurance that covers just your mortgage (or something like that). They look like straight up scam letters, but they all reference rocket mortgage some how.
I get a lot of scammy looking random mail referencing things like "your mortgage with such and such" that are clearly not from the actual mortgage company. The other companies can just look up property records and get that info.
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Like I've dealt with a lot of janky construction, but a lot is just straight up sentimental 150 year old family farmhouse jank.
This is just nuts. Do you wish you had just bulldozed and built fresh?
I'm not a plant! It's for the plants, and potentially flushing toilets if we have another freak winter storm here in Texas, having a few jugs around was a bit of a life saver...
Thanks for all the advice. I reached out to some folks for local recommendations!
I think if I got to the point where there was something wrong with it that I couldn't fix myself, I'd probably start looking at ways to get out of it. But that hasn't happened yet, and I've now gotten to where there really aren't any places in the house that I haven't been into yet to examine, so aside from the possibility of a body buried under it there won't be any more surprises.
Having said that, I do still need to take the dirt down about 12 inches in the basement...
How do you take out 12" without undermining the foundation? I'd always wondered about the practical difficulties of taking a crawlspace into a basement and assuming the footers and so on would be the biggest hurdle.
The whole job took about 2 hours, would have been quicker if I was more confident in my abilities.
I purchased a Fleck water softener off of Amazon and it was delivered directly to our house. Made a big difference as the city water is pretty hard.
I just watched a youtube and confirmed what I was cutting with my dad.
First real project is just wrapping up now - I bought a couple sheets of birch plywood and cut out pieces to make a box that I’m going to put over about half of a double vanity as a kind of shelf (my wife and I don’t share bathrooms, so one sink is going unused - this will make it more of a high counter). The straight edge I built out of old warped plywood has some predictable issues, but worked well enough for cutting rabbets into the plywood, so now I’ve got my box pieces ready for taping, painting, gluing, and sealing. I messed up a bit with the planning, so some plywood edges are showing through the top (originally I planned to rabbet all four edges of the top piece, but forgot and rabbeted all the board tops instead), but I’m hoping that a little sanding and a lot of priming will conceal the imperfections.
Didn’t realize when I started that, as a hobby, this is like 75% planning and using geometry (and watching youtube tutorials) vs 25% working with wood, but it’s stretching my brain and requiring me to pick up a whole new vocabulary. This is an expensive and deep hole, but I’m really enjoying it so far.
Woodworking is tons of fun, I'll make stuff out of plywood with power tools when need be but I enjoy working with solid wood and hand tools more. You definitely end up scratching your head sometimes... "uh... soh-cah-toa, so where's the damn calculator". For plywood stuff I recommend getting a Kreg jig if you don't have one already. For solid work a block plane and nice set of chisels will take you pretty far until you end up on Lee Valley drooling at joinery planes.
Other than drinking, are there any other benefit's for a whole home filter? Our fridge will have a filter for drinking.
Less sediment in the pipes, less sediment in your hot water heater if you have one.
I've been wood working for like three years and I've true thing I've learned is everything is doable by hand, but a hundred times faster by spending money on a specialty tool.
Also for anyone using a table saw, please buy one of those modular push handles so you don't find to my ED with missing digits
Yeah dont fuck around with a table saw. I fucked up a few years ago and only lost a gob of skin and half a nail. So lucky that was it.
If you plan on doing woodworking for real, one of the safe stop table saws is probably worth paying the 2x up front. It is literally the most dangerous single thing people regularly own and use.
Exactly. A .5 micron 4.5in whole house filter in a suitable housing will actually remove the majority of dissolved biologicals, chemicals and minerals including chlorine, most bacteria, heavy metals, and scale. Instead of just exchanging scale ions for salt ions you're removing them altogether. Depending on exactly how hard your water is, you might need to change the filter as often as every month. For most people it's every 6 months or so. You'll notice a slow drop in water pressure when it's time.
One of the .5 micron carbon block whole house filters costs about half what one of the fridge filters cost and will benefit the whole house. The install is usually pretty simple. You can hire a plumber to do it or install it in-line just after your inside cutoff valve.
The 10 x 4.5 model should be suitable for small houses. Say 1-3 bedroom. A .5 micron filter may drop your pressure more than you want. Going to a 1 micron filter should provide acceptable flow rates.
https://www.amazon.com/SimPure-Upgrade-Universal-Capacity-Mounting/dp/B086WRLZPY
If you want THE BEST and don't want to sacrifice flow rate, you can get one of the 20 x 4.5 bodies and a high flow rate .5 micron filter like this.
https://www.amazon.com/Pentek-FloPlus-20-Carbon-Filter-Cartridge/dp/B003ZWK528
The whole system is far cheaper than a water softener and no more difficult to install. The filters can add up over time but you can bargain hunt on amazon and find good deals on quality filters.
Though for woodworking I can see the point of removing the guard, mostly because half the cuts you're making don't actually work with the guard on (dado cuts, miters, etc). But in a controlled shop environment it's also a lot easier to use other tools to increase safety like cross cut sleds, the Grr-ripper and other types of of jigs, and push sticks at least.
Depends what you're doing, I can make a taper with a broad hatchet and jack plane faster than setting a taper jig on a table saw but I only rip cut by hand if I want the exercise. Clamping boards in my leg vise and tongue and grooving them with a Stanley 48 is faster than my router table but the router is going to win at making ogees. When its all for fun and hobby money it is nice to just pick whatever way I feel like doing. Certainly I like having my daughters around the Stanley 78 cutting rabbets better than if we were doing it on the table saw.
Edit to add: reflecting again on your statement, yes... I guess those planes count as specialty tools vs if you were chiseling out that stuff. Still, if you ever build a big workbench you should chisel out its mortise and tenons for fun, you really wail on those mortise chisels, it is relaxing when you're not doing it to put food on your plate.
Was it Zep? I usually have good luck with their stuff.
Pure lye crystals are really the way to go. They're safe enough on all your pipes as long as you don't let it get too hot. I bought a 1lb bottle on Amazon years ago and still have most of it. You just need a wee little sprinkle to do the deed.
My wife has the filthiest sink drain pipes I’ve ever seen, which is inevitably clogged with hair and… some substance I choose to believe is make-up. The only thing that works for her is the Drano that comes in a split bottle, think it might be the Dual Force foaming stuff.
On the woodworking front, thanks to all for reminding me to get a decent pushblock - I’ve been careful, but with just the stick and block I have, too often that means “Find another tool to make this cut,” and I don’t doubt I’ll eventually get lazy and screw that up.
The counter project continues, but hit a snag when I realized that a single can of spray paint isn’t going as far as I’d hoped. That said, good practice with sanding in between coats today, and the difference in the end result is waaaay more significant than I expected. I’ve got the top piece just about done, and it feels like it’s made out of glass… except for a shitty corner that I oversprayed in an attempt to cover up some tear-out, then panicked and wiped up, revealing the wood again. Re-sanded and painted that section, feels good, but still looks gross compared to the rest, so I’ll probably stick it in the back. Also hoping that a final paint coat after assembly will help out (worst case I’ll sand the top edges and put on some edging tape, though I’d like to avoid that).
Cool.
Coolcoolcool.
Your only option is to refi into a company that you hope won't sell it
It settled at Bank of America and they have kept us for 12 years (w/ refinance in 2012 and 2021) and honestly BOA's reputation aside have been really good to us.
It does seem to be a crapshoot though if you are going with any big lender. Our other property is through a agricultural credit service / co-OP (Greenstone) who are absolutely awesome and don't sell loans, but are limited to agricultural and country living services. Maybe a credit union local to you keeps loans and is competitive with big banks?
We are currently with Rocket, but were almost immediately "sold" to Fannie Mae. I have that in quotes because we still make payments to Rocket.
There was a checkbox on the mortgage explainer sheet that I knew I should have pushed back on that basically was like, “this mortgage is being underwritten to be sold”.
Hopefully, I won’t end up a statistic. The point of this loan was to keep my cash in hand and get a dummy low interest rate.
Just really tragic when it’s not random internet reviews but the actual federal government that shows up.
For me it depends how big the project is and how many repetitive cuts I have to make. If it's a lot then I just set up the router table or whatever
Also all those cool hand planes are more expensive than I think they should be
I refinanced at the end of last year. Didn't see the little "we intend to sell this mortgage" until the end but oh well. It was immediately sold to Nationstar, which for some reason now is called "Mr Cooper". They f'ed up on my escrow stuff and didn't pay my homeowner's insurance, so that almost got cancelled. Then after being a customer with them for about 6 months, they started sending me refinance offers, so I get one of those about every 2 weeks now.
For sure, if you need 16 pieces the same width and own a table saw it'd be silly not to use it. You can save money on planes if you tune up antiques, I have all of my grandfathers' planes and drawknives and so on. The new ones are more for spoiling yourself if you enjoy them.
cleared it out to somewhere unreachable under the house with the small snake. Drains very slowly now. Tried some acids, probably going to call the plumber tomorrow.
Make sure to tell the plumber about any acid you used. They will not appreciate that kind of surprise.
We refinanced with rocket, who like another poster said immediately sold it to fannie mae but continues to be the collector. We immediately started getting letters every week about "mortgage insurance". Not the insurance that mortgage companies make you buy to ensure they will get paid if you default, but basically life insurance that covers just your mortgage (or something like that). They look like straight up scam letters, but they all reference rocket mortgage some how.
When I got this place in Jan all the downspouts just dumped right at the foundations causing water to pool up. I got some flexi hose stretched across the yard as a bandaid but I'm finally able to properly bury the lines now.
It's all in the back yard with fucked up slopes so I can't just run the drainage to the curb. Trying to figure out my options.
Run everything to a single dry well. Pro: most robust solution. Con: more digging, more expensive.
Run individual lines away from the house, then into a soaker section, then cap. Pro: keeps everything underground, simple layout. Con: could overflow if things get really bad.
Same as above, but with pop-up overflow instead of capping. Pro: still mostly underground, simple layout. Con: need to balance heights so overflow actually works, now I have these drains hanging out in my yard.
Just run straight solid lines with a popup outlet or other kind of drain to surface. Pro: cheapest and simplest, yard can already handle that amount of surface runoff (it had it all winter with the flex hose). Con: possibly problems with standing water in the pipes, will always have surface water.
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
I would personally do the second option but arrange them as a French Drain that way it leaches the water into the soil. I wouldn’t bother with a pop up emitter.
I get a lot of scammy looking random mail referencing things like "your mortgage with such and such" that are clearly not from the actual mortgage company. The other companies can just look up property records and get that info.