Home Improvement: Am I screwed? I learned that I live on a Superfund site |
- Am I screwed? I learned that I live on a Superfund site
- What should I do during a home inspection? I'm the buyer
- Get on your roofs!
- How do you properly delete stairs?
- Neighbor is having some serious foundation work done. Should I be worried about mine too?
- Old deck gets some love (NJ)
- My dryer vent just caught fire...do I re-connect the dyer?
- Bathroom vent -- does it have to go out the roof?
- Need advise on replacing all the door knob locks and dead locks in a new house.
- Is it worth insulating only part of a suspended floor?
- Have to hold toilet handle for 5-6 seconds
- Best fake grass?
- Looking at all Grohe faucets for our remodel. Any issues with this brand?
- Running Cat5e from Basement to Attic in Two Story Home
- Floodlight Install - no more invisible dogs at night!
- Can you jury-rig a sander cushion for a hand held sander?
- Overlooked bathroom upgrades?
- Want in ceiling speakers installed. Who should I hire?
- I want install new cabinets in my basement and paint to match a bookcase and wall, should I get unfinished cabinets or finished white ones then re-paint?
- All my electrical plugs and outlets are cracked and falling apart. 24 yr old home.
- Hanging a hose reel on vinyl siding...
- Tips for making stairs safer?
- How to remove or cover glue from peel and stick tile?
- HELP! The plumber screwed up. What can we do?
- Am I crazy to DIY this lead abatement? (Canada)
| Am I screwed? I learned that I live on a Superfund site Posted: 05 Oct 2020 12:33 PM PDT Hey all - not too long ago, I closed on my first house I ever owned. It's a three-level townhouse built right before the Great Recession hit. There were no disclosures, likely because the seller never actually lived in the house. Long story short, about a month after I moved in, I started noticing the classic signs of foundation problems. Large cracks in the first level (stained concrete floor) and in the garage, which I had originally thought were expansion cracks when I first saw the townhouse. The second and third floors are slightly crooked, at a ~1.5 degree and ~2 degree angle, respectively. Cracks starting to form in drywall. Doors not being square in their frames. Windows not closing all the way. That kind of stuff. Then I learned the lore of the subdivision:
To be clear, none of this is impacting my ability to live in my house (yet). I'm also having a foundation engineer come out later this week to assess the situation. Basically: has anyone lived in a structure with any of those issues before? Wondering what I'm in for, especially with the foundation settling issues. EDIT: removed potentially personally identifying information not relevant to the problem at hand. [link] [comments] |
| What should I do during a home inspection? I'm the buyer Posted: 05 Oct 2020 06:15 AM PDT I have a home inspection coming up in two days on a home I'm currently under contract on. It's a large house and the inspection will probably take a few hours - what do I do during this time? Will the inspector be annoyed if I follow them around and ask questions? I want to be there obviously, but the last home I bought was really small and I was only present for the last hour on that one. How do I learn as much as I can without being annoying? I imagine all home inspectors deal with this, but just looking for common curtoursey stuff. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 05 Oct 2020 08:38 AM PDT Wanted to remind people to not forget about their roofs and associated systems! We purchased our house back in December 2019 and one of the few items noted on the inspection report was minor cracking in the chimney crown. Asked some masons and the fix is to fill the cracks with MasterSeal and ultimately install a chimney cap to improve flue longevity. While up on the roof doing that yesterday, I inspected the 2 turbine fans near the roof ridge and noticed that one of them was almost completely separated from the base with a direct hole into the attic! Luckily, no damage to the ceiling below (probably helped by having several inches of insulation), but could have been much worse with winter coming. I was able to get a replacement fan purchased for less than $50 and the install was a breeze (heh). Anyway, just a reminder to get up there every so often to make sure things are as they should be! [link] [comments] |
| How do you properly delete stairs? Posted: 05 Oct 2020 07:50 PM PDT My house has a doorway that was covered and instead of covering the stairs level to the floor they put 1/2 inch plywood over it and it's not even level with the floor. Wuts the right way to cover this up? [link] [comments] |
| Neighbor is having some serious foundation work done. Should I be worried about mine too? Posted: 05 Oct 2020 06:34 AM PDT The neighbor is having some major work done on her house at the moment. The trucks that are there are from a foundation repair company and they're out there with a backhoe and the whole 9 yards digging around and tearing up stuff. Her house is about 10-15 ft from mine and was built around the same time as mine. Should I be worried that if her house has foundation issues mine might too? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 05 Oct 2020 02:23 PM PDT My fiancé and I bought our house in August 2018 and one of the worst parts about it was the rotting deck in the back yard. In the first week of "lockdown" we were sitting out on the deck talking about how nice it would be to fix it up. About 5 minutes later, I'm tearing apart the railings and beginning a ~2.5 month project. As we got further into the demo, I realized it was a bigger job than I originally thought it would be but, there was no turning back. It was definitely a learning process and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We are loving the final product. I originally didn't order enough lights for the steps which is why the bottom riser is missing in the photos. They were back ordered until late august and I just haven't gotten around to installing them yet. Some background info: I'm a 25 year old landscaper and have no real carpentry experience other than this. I am pretty good at working with my hands and have some great people around me to help me when I need it. [link] [comments] |
| My dryer vent just caught fire...do I re-connect the dyer? Posted: 05 Oct 2020 09:43 PM PDT Okay, this is a very strange situation...what I know so far: Yesterday
5.5 m/s felt a bit low, but I decided I'd go with it and figure it out later. Today Today I hear a scream inside the house and I run over - dryer vent flex metal accordion tubing is on fire. I was able to put it out - but I don't see any lint buildup anywhere. I'm confident it's not a lint issue as I just cleaned the whole exhaust system. What did I do wrong??! What do I do next? I'm lucky the fire caught in the flex tubing outside before the vent entered the wall. If the fire had started farther down in the exhaust system (inside the wall) it could've caused a serious house fire. Now I'm worried about reconnecting the dryler without identifying the cause of the fire. What should I do? [link] [comments] |
| Bathroom vent -- does it have to go out the roof? Posted: 05 Oct 2020 06:41 PM PDT How important is it that the bathroom vent goes out the roof. Currently ours just vents into the attic but we're going to finish the attic and want to know whether or not it's essential that we vent it out the roof or not? [link] [comments] |
| Need advise on replacing all the door knob locks and dead locks in a new house. Posted: 05 Oct 2020 04:42 PM PDT I just bought a new house. There are 6 doors with locks, 4 of them have a deadlock. I don't want to rekey, I want to replace them all. I want them all to use the same key. What's my best course of action? Should I buy 6 door knobs and 4 deadlocks, and then go to a locksmith and have them all rekeyed? Can anyone suggest good hardware to choose for this? I'd like some color options, if possible. [link] [comments] |
| Is it worth insulating only part of a suspended floor? Posted: 05 Oct 2020 03:57 AM PDT My house is built on a fairly steep plot. Downstairs has suspended timber floors, and at the front of the house there is a large void underneath. By the rear wall of the house there is only about a 20cm void. I've got some floorboards up in a WC at the front of the house at the moment to do a plumbing project, and am wondering if while I'm down there I should stick some rockwool insulation between the joists that I can access. The problem is, I can only crawl about 2/3s of the way to the back of the house - there's no room to access the last third of the floor from underneath, and I don't want to lift the nice floor in our kitchen for this project. Question is, is there value in insulating what I can, or is that likely to cause problems if there is an obvious cold, uninsulated area remaining? [link] [comments] |
| Have to hold toilet handle for 5-6 seconds Posted: 05 Oct 2020 06:49 AM PDT For some reason one toilet in our house (in the Pacific Northwest) is different from the rest and you have to hold the handle down for 5-6 for it to flush fully. Even for a low-flow flush you have to hold it down a few seconds. If you just press down the handle like a "normal" toilet, the flapper immediately closes. I have adjusted the chain length to be taught, I have replaced the flapper with a Corky ultra that has multiple airflow options, and then with the Corky that has a floater on the chain, and nothing has made a difference. Here is a pic of the inside of the tank and a video of the flushing: https://imgur.com/gallery/aJqo2iY The handle in its natural state kind of points upward, and I am not sure if that is part of the problem. The toilet is a Koehler K4620 1.6 gallons per a flush, and was most likely installed around 1998. Any advice would be most welcome. I have searched here and so many other sites and cannot figure out what the issue is. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 05 Oct 2020 04:48 PM PDT I am looking to fit my balcony with some fake turf but I am stuck on the research part. I want it to be as comfortable and realistic as possible. I live on the second story of an apartment building with no cover over my balcony. The turf will be exposed and I don't want anything getting ruined by the sun or rain. Does anyone have any recommendations of great products or advice on the products to avoid? [link] [comments] |
| Looking at all Grohe faucets for our remodel. Any issues with this brand? Posted: 05 Oct 2020 05:44 PM PDT |
| Running Cat5e from Basement to Attic in Two Story Home Posted: 05 Oct 2020 01:41 PM PDT I moved into this house just shy of 2 months ago and have recently decided to run ethernet to every room in the house. I have figured out how to do the first story rooms with relative ease, but can't seem to figure out a good way do the upstairs bedrooms without cutting a bunch of holes in the wall. My plan was to have all the cables go from the basement to the attic and then have each cable go above its respective room and go down the wall. Is there anyway I can do this without cutting a million holes in the walls ? Thanks! [link] [comments] |
| Floodlight Install - no more invisible dogs at night! Posted: 05 Oct 2020 07:38 PM PDT The light by our back door is just bright enough to light up our walkway but didn't shine into the yard enough for when we let the dogs out. Little one would disappear almost instantly. Corner of the garage is a perfect spot for full yard coverage and even better because the power enters right at that corner. Made running the new conduit super easy. Took it slow and still was just a 2 hour job. Biggest cost was the light itself at $70 and then $20 for the rest of the supplies (conduit, switch, boxes, caulk). I dialed in the sensor so opening the back door triggers the light but walking on the public sidewalk keeps it dark. [link] [comments] |
| Can you jury-rig a sander cushion for a hand held sander? Posted: 05 Oct 2020 04:39 PM PDT I have a small 1/4 sheet sander and last night I was sanding something and I noticed the cushion is worn down enough that the screws are occasionally gouging the wood. I don't care about the dust collection holes. Is there a way of jury-rigging a new cushion from old towels or something? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 05 Oct 2020 07:50 AM PDT So I'm doing a complete bathroom remodel myself. Going from fiberglass shower to tile. Every thing else is pretty cosmetic. My question is kind of open ended. Are there things, small (or big but mostly want to know about small overlooked things) that you upgraded and really thought it was worth it or not worth it. For example, looking at shower drains, is kohler really better or waste of money here? Should I replace the toilet with a one piece, since cleaning is a pain with a two piece or is it a waste since I don't really need to replace the toilet? Shower head, have you found one that just changed the way you think about showers? Soft close cabinets, dimmer lights, adding or removing a medicine cabinet. Things that you changed and realized it made no difference or is it something you swear by. I'm NOT looking for things like, I expanded the bathroom to add a tub. Thanks for your input [link] [comments] |
| Want in ceiling speakers installed. Who should I hire? Posted: 05 Oct 2020 09:18 PM PDT I want to install speakers in the ceiling for my rear surround sound. Wires need to be run to the ground. I know access knotches will need to be cut to run the wires. Who should I hire? Electrician, drywall repair and painter or handyman? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 05 Oct 2020 05:20 PM PDT I am building out a home office and looking for some cabinets to just store some papers and what not, so I am not looking too high end, and there is no sink or anything. I was thinking the unfinished cabinets from home depot would be fine since I am painting over them anyway, why pay for nice paint job that I will cover. But then I read comments like this and it makes me wonder if I should buy painted ones and just sand them before painting. I will be priming all the other wood work at the same time, so if its just priming that needs to be done I am not worried about it. My end goal is something like this [link] [comments] |
| All my electrical plugs and outlets are cracked and falling apart. 24 yr old home. Posted: 05 Oct 2020 02:53 PM PDT 24 year old home. My concern is every switch and outlet is literally falling to pieces. I unscrew a plate and the plastic is crumbled into three or four sections. The wall plate is often what was holding the entire plug/switch together. Is this normal? How long do plastic based light switches hold together. Is it routine maintenance to replace all outlets and switches every 20 years? [link] [comments] |
| Hanging a hose reel on vinyl siding... Posted: 05 Oct 2020 01:16 PM PDT We have a hose spigot in our backyard that I would like to install a hose reel next to, currently, the hose just lays on the ground beneath it. We've never had a house with vinyl siding and I don't want to put unnecessary holes in it... what's the best way to mount a hose reel (with a 50' hose) or should it be avoided? I'd rather not have a reel that is freestanding because they always move around when pulling out/winding up the hose. On a secondary note, I'd like to put some sort of hook up for our pool skimmer-net. I've seen little clips that can hook underneath the siding to hang pictures and cameras... would one or two of those be capable of supporting a few pounds of net & pole? Thanks for any vinyl siding help! I did hang a swing on the front porch and had to buy a siding tool to get the siding back into place after popping a couple of pieces on the porch roof apart to hit the proper support with the swing hangers. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 05 Oct 2020 10:22 AM PDT I had a small patio made but did not take into account what the stairs would look like from above. The step blends in with the ground and we've almost fallen a few times by missing the step. Any ideas to make the top step stand out? I was thinking about paint... I live in Canada so the solution has to stand up to the elements. [Make steps safer?[(https://imgur.com/gallery/F6fcKDT) [link] [comments] |
| How to remove or cover glue from peel and stick tile? Posted: 05 Oct 2020 01:28 PM PDT We pulled up old 12x12 peel and stick tile and are going to install waterproof vinyl plank flooring. There's residue that will leave your flip flop behind as you walk across, and I have I feeling it will make installing the plank impossible. How do I remove it easily? Or could I like prime over it?? [link] [comments] |
| HELP! The plumber screwed up. What can we do? Posted: 05 Oct 2020 07:04 AM PDT My elderly mother lives in the middle of nowhere and has a special set up where she can draw water from her spring or from her well. Well, the well pump died and with the draught, we were afraid of the spring drying up. So, she called a plumber to replace the pump. He replaced a 110 amp pump with a 210 pump, changed the outlet(110) the pump ran off into a 230amp without running a 210 line to it. We also have no idea what he did to the fuse box. He was told beforehand to bring a 110amp pump and he didn't. He also charged her $2k. Now we have a fire hazard on our hands and a spring pump that cannot be run without risk of blowing up. Also, he told her to run extension cords across her basement to run the dehumidifier because he blew up the first one by changing the 110 outlet to 230. He is going to replace the dehumidifier. She canceled the check she gave him and told him to come out and fix what he did. Now we are going to go out and meet him to deal with this mess in a couple days. I'm just wondering what we can do to protect us and keep her house from burning down. In retrospect, we should have replaced the pump ourselves since it would only have cost us $200. [link] [comments] |
| Am I crazy to DIY this lead abatement? (Canada) Posted: 05 Oct 2020 07:46 PM PDT This crumbling paint on the exterior brick wall in our solarium tested positive for lead in a lab (13g/Kg). Got some pretty high quotes to have it be abated professionally and decided to give it a go myself. Was recommended Peel Away, and after doing a test patch for 48hrs it worked OK, but not 100%. Not sure if a second coat will get the stuff left over in the cracks. The abatement pros mentioned they might have to sand blast as a last step to get the stuff in the cracks... so maybe its worth paying someone to do it professionally? Any tips? Thanks! [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