Home Improvement: Best $60 I’ve spent in a while |
- Best $60 I’ve spent in a while
- Are these horizontal cracks in this foundation something to be worried about?
- Help! Want to buy a house but the driveway and deck are located on the neighbors/future developers property... Need advice please!
- Bought a new house, builder didn't leave remote for ceiling fan.
- Anyone get stuck with perma cat pee smell thanks to Valspar paint?
- Pros/Cons of placing backyard fence on property line vs putting it in a couple feet?
- Got new quartz countertops, the hole for the sink is a tiny bit crooked and off center. Company agreed to either redo that section, or give a $400 discount. Which should I choose?
- Is this my doorbell transformer?
- Cut down on the road noise
- Comparison between Phillips, Cree, and Ecosmart LED bulbs flickering at 240fps
- Whole house lights flickering
- Eggshell paint for bathroom?
- Storm window help
- Garage remodel
- No power to new thermostat
- What sheen to use on wainscoting
- A bit overwhelmed looking at paint sprayers. Use case and details in post.
- Would I need a permit to remove wall/doorway in my bathroom? -Fairfield County, Connecticut
- Shower pan only drains after a few minutes
- Finishing my garage
- Self-Leveling floor Questions
- Box Elder Bugs Swarming
- Painting trim Question
- Preparing to paint walls on limited time with the possibility of a Skim Coat
| Best $60 I’ve spent in a while Posted: 02 Mar 2020 06:26 AM PST Bought 2 4ft lights from Harbor Freight this weekend, replaces the light fixtures so they have a plug in. Now my garage is totally different. Getting a 3rd light for over my workbench area itself. [link] [comments] |
| Are these horizontal cracks in this foundation something to be worried about? Posted: 02 Mar 2020 08:07 PM PST There are these horizontal cracks that showed up in a previous inspection of a home I may purchase. I have been reading that horizontal cracks in a foundation are the worst kind, and most are caused by water pressure from the exterior. Although from the photos it seems as if the crack is caused by some type of object set into the foundation, for it runs along these objects and not anywhere else. They look like mounting nails of some type. Have you guys ever seen something like this? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2020 04:41 PM PST So, I've been looking to purchase my first home. I'm a single first-time home buyer that works in social services. Needless to say, my budget is a bit tight. I'm looking at a max of 150K. I live back with my parents in the suburbs right now and looking to purchase a home in Detroit. Ideally, I'd like something historic or with character (cookie cutter is not at all my style). I've found a property that I like - it's a "mild" flip (i.e., they've updated plumbing, electrical, roof), and retained some of the historic charm. The location is stellar - 10 minutes out of downtown, on a small street with no other homes. Essentially a meadowy area/oasis nearby all the attractions of downtown. It was listed at $155K on 1/15/20 and they've reduced the price a couple times, now it's $125K and I feel this is my moment. As I was getting ready to put an offer down, the seller's agent discloses that the deck and driveway of the property fall onto the neighbors property. Uhh.. what! So apparently, the lot to the left of the home is "unbuildable" - which is fine. And the 2 lots to the right of the home are owned by an investment company. This is part of the email from my agent in regards to her conversation with the seller's agent: "The agent said there has not been, nor will be an issue with using the deck/driveway parking, however they could potentially build down the road. If a developer decided to buy out all of the lots on the street, they would essentially come to you and offer to purchase your property for development. They would offer fair market value in that case. The agent said this is the 5-7 year plan for this street. " For those who are not familiar, property values in Detroit have been dramatically increasing, especially surrounding downtown. I plan to stay at my job for another 4.5 years to be vested into the great retirement plan. So, I plan to stay in this home for the same amount of time and am treating whatever home I buy a bit as an investment. It seems like these investors are waiting for the opportune moment to sell/develop the property. My question is: Is the property line/potential development a big deal? If I was offered market value for the home in 2-3 years, I'd probably have little issue taking that and moving on. However, working at various government levels, I also realize that ideas are very slow moving and this issue may never come up? In other words, should I be concerned that someone will come knocking on my door and force me into an offer? Will the developers use some type of big bad lawyer to potentially scam me out of the home (nit-picking to drive down the value)? Do I *HAVE* to sell the home? Or, given the market in Detroit and my income, does this investment seems like a no brainer? Does anyone think I'm missing something? I don't have any experience in investments, developing or that whole mindset. I'd appreciate perspectives. Thank you & sorry if I left any critical information out. [link] [comments] |
| Bought a new house, builder didn't leave remote for ceiling fan. Posted: 02 Mar 2020 07:11 PM PST My wife and I recently bought a house for the first time and in our naivety we didn't check the living room ceiling fan to make sure it worked. It is a Harbor Breeze Hydra Ceiling Fan. I bought a remote on Amazon the Harbor Breeze CHQ7030T Ceiling Fan & Light Wireless Remote Control. I don't think this remote will work but does anyone have any advice to make this work? Also, I hope this is the right sub for this sort of thing. Thanks in advance. [link] [comments] |
| Anyone get stuck with perma cat pee smell thanks to Valspar paint? Posted: 02 Mar 2020 06:42 PM PST It's coming up on 1 year since we painted a loft using Valspar 2000. We hired professional painters who warned us against the crap quality (and we ended up having to pay for about 2x the paint to do the coverage that only 4 cans of Sherwin Williams should have completed, accorded to them), but they agreed to do it so we could stick to a tight budget. Coverage was shit but we didn't mind that since we went with a white color and it was hard to tell. Long story short, the fresh paint smell quickly turned into a strong ammonia stench. We assumed we had to wait a little longer for the paint to finish drying but 1-2 months later, it was still eye burning. I emailed Valspar and they told us to wait longer and make sure the windows were open in the rooms. I said this was bullshit because the two well-lit and well-ventilated rooms have 7 large windows that were kept open for an entire month...the smell hadn't dissipated whatsoever. It actually gets much worse when the windows are open. I looked up a bunch of posts online of people experiencing the same issue and Valspar had to compensate buyers in the UK. I mention this in my emails to customer service and since I had the receipts for the paint, the guy eventually agreed to refunding for the cost of the paint. He said a check would be sent out in a month...except he never took my address info and ghosted. So that was a complete lie. The only other solution they offered was us paying another $3k to basically have the paint covered in primer and re-painted with a different brand. Of course they didn't offer to compensate any of that. We can't open the windows in the rooms at all unless no one is going to hang out in them or you start feeling sick pretty quickly. Has anyone here been through the issue and had luck with customer service at least refunding the cost of the paint? It's fucked up that they're still selling defective paint without pulling any of it. The most recent complaints I could find date to August 2019, not including the ones on Lowes' reviews. Some have contacted Valspar and they're saying it's not the paint and there's nothing wrong. There are people who painted their entire homes with this shit and had to pay to have it all covered up, I assume because Valspar hasn't gotten sued in the US yet. TL;DR Stay the hell away from Valspar 2000, or any of their other paint if you don't want to support a company that does not give a flying fuck about their product making rooms uninhabitable. [link] [comments] |
| Pros/Cons of placing backyard fence on property line vs putting it in a couple feet? Posted: 02 Mar 2020 12:58 PM PST We are getting a new fence for our backyard and need to decide whether we want it on our property line, or want to set it back a few feet. What would be your preference. Our township allows fences to be directly on the line FWIW. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2020 05:52 PM PST It's not way bad, but the sink is just a bit skewed and off center. Here's a photo that shows what I mean: https://imgur.com/a/SKL7G4V Referencing the photo, L1 and L2 are off by about 0.3cm and L3 and L4 are off by about 0.7cm. The entire sink is off centered by about half an inch. Is it better to just get it replaced and done right? Or should I take advantage of the opportunity to get a discount and just live with it being a bit off? Does $400 seem like a reasonable discount for an issue like this? [link] [comments] |
| Is this my doorbell transformer? Posted: 02 Mar 2020 05:41 PM PST I bought a Nest Hello and can't seem to find the transformer. Is it maybe this? If not, where do you think it'd be? I've looked in the basement and attic. No luck. https://m.imgur.com/a/yUprxU0 [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2020 04:36 PM PST I have one bedroom that road noise is a bit much. Not sure if new windows will help, or big thick curtains? [link] [comments] |
| Comparison between Phillips, Cree, and Ecosmart LED bulbs flickering at 240fps Posted: 02 Mar 2020 12:28 PM PST I bought 3 75 watt replacement bulbs to compare. these lights to use at my desk, as the LED I was using before was hurting or fatiguing my eyes after an hour or so. They will be in a non-dimming lamp, pointed directly at my desk. This subreddit, and others have helped me out, so I thought I would pay it forward a little bit. I noticed that LEDs that don't flicker tend to be less likely to cause less fatigue for me. So I set out to buy some Phillips LED bulbs due to the branding of "eye comfort". At the store however I saw these other brands and the numbers are all pretty similar: claimed 1100 lumens @ 12, 12.2 and 13 watts for the Cree, Phillips and Ecostart. I decided to buy all 3 and compare myself when I could not find any other actual comparison. PHOTOS of the boxes. I made a video with my iPhone 11pro at 240fps to see how badly each bulb flickered as you can see here: VIDEO. This flickering does not seem to be visible, and it will not be perceptible or make much difference to some people, but the effect is definitely there for me. Surprisingly the Ecosmart did the best, was the cheapest and will be the one I am keeping. The Ecosmart had very little perceptable flickering, the Cree was horrible and the Philips was in between. They all seem to be around the same brightness. Strangely the cree turns on and off the fastest, the Ecosmart has a slight delay in turning on, and the Phillips has a slight delay turning off. I imagine the Ecosmart has an array of LEDs that are canceling each other out to seem like there is no flickering, that might explain the slight delay in powering on. There are obviously other factors to consider when buying lightbulbs, like price, warranty, longevity and reliability, etc. But for my one desk lamp, I am not concerned with price, or how long the bulb lasts, so I decided to focus on just the flickering, but turns out the best bulb is the cheapest. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2020 05:03 AM PST Hoping someone here can help out with this situation. Our house is from the 40s, but had a new panel and wiring installed about 7 years ago. Over the past couple of weeks we noticed our lights in the entire house would occasionally flicker. Over the past couple of days it has gotten much much worse. After speaking with the power company they advised i get an electrician to come out ASAP. Had an electrician come out on Saturday and he found nothing wrong. He was there for about 2 hours and of course the issue never happened while he was there. He checked everything in the panel including taking out the individual breakers to see if there was anything shorting at the bus bar. He gave me some crazy expensive options that he could do like completely switching out the panel and breakers for something like $7k. Told me to call the power company and have them send someone out to check the line and transformer. Power company came back out and check the line and voltage coming in was correct and everything looked fine. He looked down the line toward the transformer and saw a couple of small branches against the lines and suggested that was the problem and he would get an engineer to come out and look at cutting the branches. My thought is that that would affect everyone around us and not just us. Hoping when they come out again it gets fixed, but has anyone had an issue like this? It's starting to get expensive going back and forth like this. This morning the issue was really bad and the lights flickered for about 3 minutes straight. I was able to capture a video of it. https://imgur.com/a/SEK49cX UPDATE: Thanks everyone for the responses! I called the power company again and told them the situation and asked if they could send someone out to check the neutral on the pole and transformer by me. I was put on hold for a couple of minutes while they looked at my smart meter from their computer. They said it all looked fine on their end, but they were going to send a tech out anyways. I have a feeling the tech will show up while I am at work so I won't know what he checks out. UPDATE 2: Power company is back out and they are hooking up a beast to our meter to see if they can figure out the issue. Hopefully this helps! UPDATE 3: Tech just called and said the power is back on and it looked like we had a bad neutral. Said he fixed it and we should be all good. I am at work for a few more hours, but I will check this evening and update. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2020 03:40 PM PST Accidentally bought eggshell instead of satin for the bathroom paint. Take it back or go for it? Note, this is a guest bath so the shower in there gets used rarely, so there's not a ton a moisture in there. Thanks! [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2020 07:13 PM PST I rent and need a storm window due to a double panned window missing a pane of glass. I also want to cut down on the outside noise. I'm wanting an indoor storm window but i'm having trouble finding one to buy. Are these just not very popular? Or should I just go with a regular outside storm window? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2020 09:00 AM PST My wife is a lularoe consultant and I got tired of having clothes all over the house so I decided to finish half the garage and give her a dedicated space for her shit. This also gave us a temperature controlled laundry room as an added bonus. The gist of the remodel was:
Everything is done except for some cabinets above the washer/dryer and the laundry sink and some door trim. Start to finish was just under a month working on the weekends only. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2020 03:19 PM PST Follow up to this post. I bought a Honeywell RTH6580WF and tried installing it (I have a partially disabled left hand, but I screwed the wires in). I flipped my breaker back on, but the display is blank. I have tried this for the past 3 days, rechecking if the wires are snug because they have come loose after I placed the front plates on. I don't know if the thermostat is just dead or if I have a faulty wire somewhere, but the other two thermostats in the house work just fine. I read in manual that the C wire is the one that would turn the display on, but the other thermostats also have a C wire and work just fine. Any steps or suggestions to try before I call an HVAC or electrician? [link] [comments] |
| What sheen to use on wainscoting Posted: 02 Mar 2020 01:57 PM PST Hello, I will be having wainscoting installed in my dining room next week and am wondering if it is more common to have it painted with a semi-gloss or satin paint. I'm leaning towards satin as I don't want it to be too shiny, but would love any input (or pictures of your own wainscoting and what type of sheen it is!) The trim around the doors and windows in this room are painted with a semi-gloss paint. Thanks! [link] [comments] |
| A bit overwhelmed looking at paint sprayers. Use case and details in post. Posted: 02 Mar 2020 05:23 PM PST Never used a paint sprayer and there are a lot of options out there. Primary use case: I'm putting up a 4' picket fence with 4x4 posts. I want to paint-as-I-go with an eye towards weather proofing. For context, I'm in NW Florida so it's not cold, rarely freezing, plenty hot in the summer. The fence is primarily to contain my mini pig. He doesn't mess with the fence but he will get it dirty. Light power washing will be in order. Will certainly want it for future projects but the fence is the main thing. Call it 400' of fence by the time I'm done. It's probably not going to see much use after this. I have a 2-gallon air compressor. Would that small tank be frustrating? Be willing to buy a bigger one if air is the way to go. Should I go electric? Pros and cons over an air compressor? Oil or latex paint? Maybe even Kilz? Since I plan to paint in spurts, ease of cleanup would be nice. Haven't got the time or money to do this all in one shot. [link] [comments] |
| Would I need a permit to remove wall/doorway in my bathroom? -Fairfield County, Connecticut Posted: 02 Mar 2020 04:08 PM PST My bathroom has an odd set up where the bath and toilet are separated from the vanity by a door. Would I need a permit to remove this wall/doorway assuming there is no plumbing or electrical in this wall? The wall is small and is only about twice the size of the door, and is definitely not load bearing. I am located in Fairfield County, Connecticut. [link] [comments] |
| Shower pan only drains after a few minutes Posted: 02 Mar 2020 09:47 PM PST I have a small shower pan in a guest bathroom. The depth is about 3.5". The water drains very slowly until the pan is almost to the rim and then it will drain very quickly. Any ideas what might be happening? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2020 05:59 PM PST Hey everyone, I am finally finishing my garage and am looking for cool finishing ideas for trim around the bottom of the wall to cover the cement and for trim around window and garage doors. See link for pictures. Any other ideas to complete this garage would be awesome! https://imgur.com/a/8L3wmEL [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2020 09:38 PM PST Laying down a section of laminate floor I noticed a trampoline effect. Pulled it and noticed a five foot wide stretch going across the room that is only 1/4" deep at most. Didn't check because the two rooms I've already done were flawless and was being optimistic. It's drywalled underneath but I also know that the subfloor was glued and nailed anyway. Learned about SLC, saw good reviews about Mapei's product but for plywood they recommend "lath"(whatever that is) or "diamond mesh. I also saw on a contractor forum people saying that wherever you poor must be a minimum of 1/4". So I worry about the thin edges where I pour crumbling over time Then you go on YouTube and nobody gives a damn, just primes and pours. I'm trying to research but everything I see/read is inconsistent. Thanks to anyone that chimes in. Side thought: Is there not a resin/plastic based product for this sort of thing? It just seems like if you're covering 3/4" plywood you want something that'll flex, not crumble. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2020 06:30 AM PST The south side of my house gets a lot of full sun (no trees). Every spring/summer I have hundreds of box elder bugs that will sit on the south side of the house and sun bathe. I don't want to plant trees in the front of the yard because the kids use that area. What can I do to stop them from swarming the house? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2020 09:30 PM PST My current situation is the follow: We have carpet upstairs and we plan on ripping it and replacing it with hardwood. Should we bother painting the trim or will we have to remove the trim in order to do the hardwood flooring? We will have to paint the walls as well. [link] [comments] |
| Preparing to paint walls on limited time with the possibility of a Skim Coat Posted: 02 Mar 2020 09:27 PM PST So after a couple of years of having poor looking white walls that haven't been touched in over 30 years, I'm wanting to repaint my bedroom, especially before doing the flooring. Right now the room has a popcorn texture on the walls and ceiling that I was originally going to just ignore (I've tried scraping the stuff, not worth the effort). I did pick up some spackle at the suggestion of a worker at the paint counter to fill in some holes, then when I got home I saw something about not using it for skim coating. After researching it, I'm thinking a skim coat would be a good idea to remove the popcorn texture. The issue is that I'm only going to have 4 days to move the furniture, clean the walls, prime, then paint and my help will be limited to just the moving of furniture. Based on that limited time frame to work, should I stick to my original idea of spackle the holes and paint, or would it be possible to do a skim coat as well in that time frame? Here is a photo of one of the nail holes with what my wall looks like, as well as the ceiling holes Thanks in advance for any advice. [link] [comments] |
| You are subscribed to email updates from The Hivemind Improving Homes. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment