I accidentally flooded my kitchen with soap suds today.

10/24/2010 10:13:28 PM

AHA, classic.

10/24/2010 11:51:01 PM

^^ Regular dish soap in the dishwasher? If so, I've been there.

10/25/2010 9:39:08 AM

I killed 3 black widow spiders under my house last night. I'll return soon... with lots of poison.

10/25/2010 4:20:05 PM

Quote :

"^^ Regular dish soap in the dishwasher? If so, I've been there. "

Same here. Luckily it was in an apt.

10/25/2010 11:47:00 PM

Does any one have any recommendations for a guy who does replacement windows and/or gutter/rotting wood replacement

Quote :

"my question is: would just laying down plastic sheeting on the ground under the house be beneficial at all? i could get my unemployed construction management major brother to do that. maybe foam up the vents too (?). is there anything cheap i could do to the crawlspace to help?"

Just buy a $200ish dehumidifier with a hose fitting and pipe the water outside

Definitely seal up the vents. thats probably a large part of your problem there...when the AC is running at least. From everything I've read theres no reason to keep your vents open at any point throughout the year

10/26/2010 8:33:23 AM

well, just know that a ventilation/dehumidification system for the crawl space is not a substitute for a vapor barrier. It is the solution for the fact that crawl space vents don't really help half as much as they are intended to as far a ventilating the crawl space. Putting a vapor barrier down on the dirt in a crawl space is still highly recommended to help control crawl space and house humidity levels.

In an ideal situation, you'd have a vapor barrier down, NO vents to the outside, insulated sidewalls of the crawl space like the inside of your house, and your first floor AC unit would actually dump a little air into the crawl space (or maybe a vapor pressure controlled ventilator fan or just dehumidifier). But yes I agree that the standard little vents do basically nothing.


[Edited on October 26, 2010 at 9:11 AM. Reason : .]

10/26/2010 8:56:00 AM

the vents are going to be removed from the building code as a requirement in the next few years

10/27/2010 3:05:49 PM

good to hear

I assume they are going to force you to put some rate of conditioned air or dehumidify the space around the time that happens?

[Edited on October 27, 2010 at 3:08 PM. Reason : .]

10/27/2010 3:07:49 PM

okay my brother is freaking out about putting down plastic sheeting. is laying it out & putting pins in place to hold it down really that hard of a job? the crawlspace is about 3' tall, house is 1609 sf.

10/27/2010 3:08:28 PM

I've never done it so I can't really say :/

10/27/2010 3:15:03 PM

its not that hard but it is a huge pain in the ass because its in a dirty, cramped, bug infested place.

10/27/2010 9:29:10 PM

All of the grass I planted has come up great but I have nothing to cut it with. I am looking for a zero turn mower with a 60" deck and around 29hp engine. I have narrowed it down between a toro, hustler, and scag. Leaning toward the hustler based on demoing them last weekend.

Anyone have any experience with these?

10/27/2010 10:32:47 PM

^ this thread in the garage will probably help you more:

message_topic.aspx?topic=544164

10/28/2010 6:53:53 AM

The grass I put down a couple weeks ago is starting to come up.

I have one area in my back yard that is hard dirt on an incline. In the past I have tried mixing in better soil and seeding, but the soil and seed just washes away during the first heavy rain. This year I used this green matting stuff that you put over the seed/fertilizer as you would hay. I put down a couple bags of starting soil, dropped my fertilizer/seed, and laid this stuff on top. The grass in that area is at least 1"-2" tall and coming in very thick while the rest of the yard is just barely starting to sprout. If this stuff gets grass to take in that area it will be well worth the $15 or whatever I spent on it. They had it at Lowes by the grass seed.

10/28/2010 11:59:16 AM

So I installed a new dishwasher and a new garbage disposal. I installed the disposal first, then when I was installing the dishwasher I went back to fix the hack job the previous owner did on the wiring for the garbage disposal (used the correct conduit, but tried to tape the damn thing to a threaded connection instead of using something purpose built for a watertight connection) and ended up creating a nice environment for some arc flash (whoops). At least the dishwasher works well and doesn't leak.

The previous dishwasher was... Nasty behind...



Edit: Oh yeah, the wall got soaked with clorox bleach (spray cleaner), wiped down (mold probably still got airborne, but I had to do SOMETHING and wetting it was the best option I had for reducing how much got airborne), dried off, coated with primer (coated the sides of the cabinets, floor, and rear wall with a single coat), and I sealed off that little hole you can see in the back which leads to the crawlspace (builder did a hack job with some plumbing and that spot was partially exposed to the musty crawlspace). Now there's a $20 air filter protecting me (I hope) from the mold spores by pulling them out of the air. New dishwasher is nice and doesn't leak (tested and checked). <3

[Edited on October 28, 2010 at 9:16 PM. Reason : aids]

10/28/2010 8:49:51 PM

anybody know about painters? i got a quote to have the trim (boxed, incl windows & doors) my 1609sf rectangular brick ranch house painted, $1340. includes powerwashing. i'm waiting to hear if this does include scraping & the cost of the paint.

is this a good #? i'm looking for a couple of other companies to give me quotes too.

10/29/2010 3:50:54 PM

^^ you act like a few mold spores are fucking anthrax or something....

you'll be alright, dude.

[Edited on October 29, 2010 at 10:41 PM. Reason : ^]

10/29/2010 10:41:35 PM

They can spread throughout the house wherever there's moisture and make the problem worse? There's a reason nobody takes mold lightly in an older house. If it spreads around all over the damn place the house can become pretty shitty to live in and fuck with your health, and if you've never experienced those side effects then you're a very lucky person.

10/30/2010 1:05:56 PM

There is already mold everywhere in your house. Almost all lumber naturally has mold, it is just a matter of it being dormant or actively growing. As long as you don't have moisture problems anywhere else, there shouldn't be much issue of it spreading.

Also, most mold in the house is not of the toxic black mold variety.

10/31/2010 11:35:27 AM

Are creaky floors on hardwood anything to worry about? My house was made in the 1960s but I don't know when the hardwood was put in. It is only really creaky in one part of one room so I'm worried moisture or something got in there.

11/1/2010 12:25:38 PM

nope, probably just the nails in your sublflooring that have loosened up. with a house that old, it's pretty much inevitable. But it's not really indicative of a problem.

If you can pinpoint it, you could sink a new nail (or better yet, a screw) in the floor to tighten the area where the subflooring fastens to the joists. Use a nailset to get the nail below the surface of the hardwood plank, and then put some wood filler over it(and you'll have to match the color of the filler, or stain the filler to match it to the wood... this can be hard). However, unless the creaking is really bugging you out, it's probably not worth the effort.

11/1/2010 1:48:52 PM

creaking is just part of life with hardwood floors, given the aging process they undergo and seasonal variations in humidity, temperature, etc.

I wouldn't worry about it unless your floors are super out of whack. We installed hardwoods in Oct and Nov. of last year and they were creaking in places by July.

11/1/2010 2:46:09 PM

anyone ever bought/installed LM brand hardwood flooring? It is all engineered hardwoods but I have read some good reviews on a few different sites. We've been wanting hardwoods put in the first floor for awhile but keep pushing it out just to see how jobs and stuff go. It would be nail or staple down to a wood subfloor over a crawl space. Originally we wanted pre-finished solid hardwood planks for sure but have been more open to pre-finished engineered planks due to a little lower prices in some of the stuff we have looked at. (Not interested in laminate though).

11/1/2010 4:17:47 PM

we're having some pre-finished engineered wood installed next week. not the same brand, but that brand seems pretty good.

we're using this brand Premiere Flooring Solutions... their Doussie wood
http://www.pfsfloors.com/products/natures-beauty

11/1/2010 5:13:38 PM

what kind of $/ft² are you looking at? For the wood and the installation separate assuming you have that. Feel free to PM if you don't want to post that here .

Appreciate it!

PS, I'm planning to move all the furniture out and rip out the carpet and vinyl out myself before we get anything installed.

[Edited on November 1, 2010 at 5:51 PM. Reason : ]

11/1/2010 5:47:41 PM

I'm not the best with budgeting money, i have a pretty social lifestyle that i enjoy but i'm also not wasteful. maybe i'm being conservative or over estimating but trying to put together some monthly payment figures for owning a home I keep going in the red on everything. I don't see how people can afford a home on a single income. Even if the damn payment is less than an apartment. Maybe i'm not making enough

11/2/2010 4:00:21 PM

It's definitely not easy, but good on you for trying to actually figure it out beforehand. Lots of people dont do that.

It's doable. We have a single income (mine), and I have a wife and 2 kids. One of my kids is also disabled, which puts a lot of extra financial burden on us. I don't make what I would consider to be a ton of money either (<$100,000).

We somehow make it by. My wife views shopping intelligently with coupons, etc.. as part of her "job" as a stay at home mom, and we have very strict budgets for things like groceries, etc...

We even manage to fit in android phones, two nice cars, a nice house (~2400 sq ft., pool, etc..) on the budget.

We havent been on an extravagant vacation in 5 years, and some months are harder than others financially, but we seem to make it.

11/2/2010 4:57:01 PM

I came home early today to find Sweetwater Landscapes digging up my yard on the side and planting 3 rather large trees. When I talked to the supervisor they informed me the builder forgot to put the trees in (24 in total around the neighborhood) and it was required by Wendell city codes or something (the development has been finished over a year with the first houses going in over 3 years ago).

I contacted the HOA and they had no clue what I was talking about, and I received no letter from the builders that they would be coming onto my property and vandalizing my yard. Is there any recourse to take or did I somehow sign something when I purchased the house that was an agreement that the builder could come do whatever they wanted whenever?

The last tree they started to plant is in between my fence and my neighbors leaving no access to the rest of my backyard. I told them if they planted it I would cut it down as soon as they left so they didnt back fill it with dirt but just left it till tomorrow when the HOA gets up with the builder.

11/2/2010 11:01:44 PM

^^man that's great for you. it sounds like you have a great system for knowing where every dollar goes. I definitely want to own, but the last thing I want to get into is becoming house poor where I barely have enough left over to enjoy my life let alone put anything into savings.

11/3/2010 8:11:05 AM

^^^

It's tough. I was paying rent for the past 3 years and putting aside $1,000 to $1,500 every month (after bills, law school loans, everything). So I went house searching and got a great house where my mortgage would only be about $500 more than what my rent was.

I've been in the red for the first three months. That being said, the majority of it has been initial house stuff ($1,000 shed, $2,300 plantation shutters, patio furniture, tons of miscellaneous stuff). I am soooo close to being completely done with everything I can conceivably think of that I wanted to do to my house (I just need some furniture for my upstairs porch and I want to put ceiling fans on my porches). But I will have done a little too much dipping into savings than I originally thought. Hopefully I settle this big case soon and I can pay it all back and take a little vacay...but we'll see.

Even if you can figure it out to where you're in the black...you're still going to have to set aside an additional $4 to $5K for miscellaneous stuff...AND still have a rainy day fund for when shit just fucks up, like AC or plumbing (I'm crossing my fingers because everything in my house is brand new). I haven't yet got to the point where I'm worried enough about my finances to really start cutting back (I love to eat out at nice restaurants...Charleston makes that way too easy), but I'm prepared if it gets to that point.

11/3/2010 8:13:19 AM

^^ I wouldn't say that im good at it, more forced to do it than anything.

Budgeting and working with money is painful, and I have to force myself to sit down and do it. I had to really learn how to use Quicken, the right way, and find a system that worked best for us.

Some examples of things we do:

- We have a certain budget for gas a month. We budgeted by the average cost of fill-ups ($45 for my wife, $35 for me). I get 1 fill up per week, she gets 1 fill up per 2 weeks. We have laminated cards that say "1 Fill Up" on them, and a set of envelopes in our safe. Every pay day, i put more cards in each of our envelopes, and write the equivalent money out of our bank account as a future purchase. That way, we can plan ahead and save fill-up cards for big trips, etc... if need be. Seems like overkill, but it really works for us, instead of just tracking a dollar amount.

- We pay cash for groceries and other things with a budget, and roll over the cash that we dont spend. When I refill the weekly grocery envelope, I add $160 to it weekly. If my wife spends less, good on her, and she can either keep the money and add it to her spending money, or she can roll it over to save for a big party we have coming up, etc.... Again, seems strict or wierd, but it really works for us.


For a while when my kids were first born, we had to kill the fun, not-necessary things like cable, going out to eat, etc... I drove a 1992 dodge pickup, that cost me $500, for almost a decade to help us save money and get by until i got enough of a raise to justify buying myself a decent car.

TL;DR: Different things work for different people, and even after years of doing it, its something I have to still force myself to do, and is still painful/frustrating to do.

11/3/2010 9:29:47 AM

Quote :

"I'm not the best with budgeting money, i have a pretty social lifestyle that i enjoy but i'm also not wasteful. maybe i'm being conservative or over estimating but trying to put together some monthly payment figures for owning a home I keep going in the red on everything. I don't see how people can afford a home on a single income. Even if the damn payment is less than an apartment. Maybe i'm not making enough"

I know most people don't want housemates after college, but that's a big part of how I afford my home without having to stress over money. I have two paying rent each month + 2/3 of the utilities. I still get hit with all the big bills, but it's not so bad with the additional income from rent. If I were to get married I would expect my wife's income to more than make up for the lost rental income, so it should get easier.

I can afford the house on my own, but having housemates allows me to take buy the things I want, take vacations, and still save money too. I really do miss the old days of $400/month rent and no responsibility when things break though.

[Edited on November 3, 2010 at 1:26 PM. Reason : l]

11/3/2010 1:21:26 PM

I posted a picture of my fireplace a while back to get some ideas and I have finally decided I want to get a solid piece of wood to span the length of the brick for a mantel. Do any of you have any recommendations on where to look for a slab? I was thinking I wanted it at least 4-5" thick and 8-10" deep.

11/3/2010 3:04:02 PM

could look here I guess:

http://www.redwoodburl.com/mantels/index.htm

might give you some ideas if nothing else. I can say it won't be cheap to get a solid piece of wood that size either way but I'm sure the end result will be nice. You might be able to find some salvage piece from something, I just don't really know where you could look for that :/

11/3/2010 4:03:58 PM

Capitol City Lumber or American Woodyards might have something.

Capitol City is on Beryl Rd and American Woodyards is on Hillsborough, across from the fairgrounds at Youth Center Dr.

11/3/2010 4:43:09 PM

Old Growth Riverwood is a pretty cool company.
http://www.oldgrowthriverwood.com/

tell them wake crossroads builders sent you

11/3/2010 10:02:40 PM

Skack, are your housemates friends or did you find them through third party means? I'm not opposed to housemates but most of my friends are in LTRs and live with their significant others already so I don't have many options on that end.

11/4/2010 8:20:01 AM

^ Not Skack, but I have one roommate who helps me out with the mortgage and he's a good friend. But I got lucky and he kind of fell into my lap. He's older (33), was a professional soccer player for the first few months he was living here (retired after this year), and travels with his other job. When he's not traveling with his job he sleeps A LOT. Perfect roommate.

However, before that I was taking out ads at the local law school and med school websites. I was looking for grad students. Responsible people who wouldn't be partying all the time (not that I didn't party hard in grad school, but I was definitely more responsible and respectful of my roommates).

I would try and go that route if you can't get friends to rent out. I would avoid college students at all costs.

11/4/2010 8:23:55 AM

My friend rented out his spare bedroom to a coop at his job.

11/4/2010 11:23:40 AM

Quote :

"Skack, are your housemates friends or did you find them through third party means? I'm not opposed to housemates but most of my friends are in LTRs and live with their significant others already so I don't have many options on that end."

All of my housemates have been friends except one of my current ones. I had met him a couple times and he was pretty good friends with another friend of mine, so I felt ok about him moving in. I don't think I'd let a true stranger move in at this point in my life.

This is one area where your Facebook network can come in handy. Just let your friends know that you'd rather not have any assholes/negligent fuckups in your house.

I know CarZin has had a lot of tenants in his pre-marriage life. He could advise you on finding good tenants outside of your social network.

[Edited on November 4, 2010 at 3:42 PM. Reason : l]

11/4/2010 3:41:24 PM

Finally turned on the heat this weekend and it's only coming on upstairs. So nice and toasty in the bedrooms, but freezing downstairs??

Any suggestions? I have a warranty on the heating and air system, but they said to ask the contractor before they could do anything and he hasn't returned my call yet. This is a brand new system (as of 4 months ago).

11/8/2010 6:28:47 PM

Gas? Elec? Both?

11/8/2010 10:25:21 PM

Both.

11/9/2010 7:01:27 AM

Alright, I have 2 open (no actual doors) doorways/entryways from my foyer into the dining room on one side and into our library/reading room on the other side. Neither of them have any kind of trim work at the moment.

If I am installing molding at this point, can I just:

1) make the painted molding assemblies for both sides of the doorway (the two vertical pieces and the horizontal piece)
2) install said pieces with a 1/4" reveal on each side (obv have to cut some of the existing baseboard away since it was installed without doorway trim).
3) paint the dry wall in between the two pieces of molding** with the same paint as we painted the molding (going to be a white semi-gloss)

?

**I guess if there was a door, this is basically the area that would be considered the door jamb or whatever.

11/9/2010 8:44:43 AM

You could do that OR clad the inside of the opening with 1x6 (or whatever you need to cover wall width) and then put the casing on with 1/4" reveal. That is typical of a cased opening and would just give you a little protection on the corners of the opening.

Either would work.

11/9/2010 9:17:40 AM

cool, appreciate the help.

11/9/2010 9:21:38 AM

Quote :

"Does any one have any recommendations for a guy who does replacement windows and/or gutter/rotting wood replacement"

11/9/2010 11:04:53 AM

Had the draft inducer assembly replaced in my gas pack Monday. Still waiting for the bill on that one.

11/9/2010 2:31:07 PM

So I am actually getting some heat downstairs, it's just not even close to the amount of heat I'm getting upstairs.

Details:

- Gas/electric AC/heating system
- Thermostat upstairs
- Not a big house (maybe 1,200 sq ft)
- Temperature upstairs is a good 10 degrees warmer than it is downstairs
- Usually set the thermostat between 68 and 70 degrees
- No problem with the AC during the hot Charleston summer

11/10/2010 11:49:50 AM