It's a giant pain in the ass. Doing my parents for them is like a 9am to 6pm type of job with my gf and mom helping.
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Homeowner Thread |OT| A Thread for Homeowners
- Thread starter vacantseas
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It's a giant pain in the ass. Doing my parents for them is like a 9am to 6pm type of job with my gf and mom helping.
I don't have a full before and after, but here's a corner where the railing is done and the floor isn't yet.
Not for old decking. As above ours was built during the reno of the property last year so it was in pretty good shape other than some graying from sun. Pressure washing is probably the best thing to get the old paint off. Sanding if that doesn't work. Replacing of any boards that are rotting are too warped etc. as well.
In terms of applying the stain, that's pretty easy, just time consuming with stain brushes and rollers, getting between the railings etc. You can do it with a sprayer, but we're not skilled at that kind of thing and would have way more runs etc.
Looks great. I'd need to power wash it all first and it's be so much work because it's a picket fence.
They replaced all the city water pipes on our street. My husband told me that apparently we were the only house on the street that still had a lead pipe. Yikes. We knew we had one (it's a small connecting section), but I'm kind of surprised we were the only house that had it.
We use filtered water for cooking and drinking so it's no biggie, but it's nice that they replaced it finally.
We use filtered water for cooking and drinking so it's no biggie, but it's nice that they replaced it finally.
I have the dryer, wish I would have went with the washer as well. However went with the LG front loader instead (recommended by wirecutter), but too many unnecessary bells and whistles in my opinion. It also has a few design flaws in my opinion, compared with a comparable speedqueen model. There are some recent problematic reports though:
https://thewirecutter.com/blog/speed-queen-washer/
I still place them ahead of LG because they often will sell through a dealer that does a better install, and because LG's issue tie to basic functions along with all those bells and whistles.
We finally finished staining the deck (other than maybe a few minor touch ups) last night. Worked on it 6+ hours Sunday, Monday and yesterday. Here's some pics (will spoiler to not spam the page) with a couple in progress ones and then some finished ones). Looks much better!
Nice job, looks great! I like that style of railing that you haveWe finally finished staining the deck (other than maybe a few minor touch ups) last night. Worked on it 6+ hours Sunday, Monday and yesterday. Here's some pics (will spoiler to not spam the page) with a couple in progress ones and then some finished ones). Looks much better!
We now officially have central air. Won't help in our bedroom upstairs but that's why we have a portable.
Our fuse box was updated to a 20 slot earlier in the week and the other crew just left.
Our fuse box was updated to a 20 slot earlier in the week and the other crew just left.
Ugh, someone's dumping stuff into my bins when I leave them out the night before trash day. Incompetent fuckers too. Trash in the recycle bin and cardboard boxes in my compost bin.
Someone was putting dogshit in mine (after trash pick up) , I caught the guy, and it hasn't happened since. Not sure what is wrong with people.Ugh, someone's dumping stuff into my bins when I leave them out the night before trash day. Incompetent fuckers too. Trash in the recycle bin and cardboard boxes in my compost bin.
I'm glad my trash goes out on a back alley as opposed to the from street with the sidewalk.
Ugh, yeah. That's happened a couple of times too. Thankfully it was bagged but I had to leave the bin outside that week.
wife just did a number on the garage door. She backed out too early and hit it. I managed to get the wheel back in the track, and I respooled the cable, but now I'm waiting for her to bring home some wood nails so I can try to fix the top edge of the frame.
Whew
Whew
So I got my plan from the architect. As expected, they removed one of the three "bedrooms" to make a living room in an open floor plan connecting it to the dining room and kitchen. Dumb. I have by default three bedrooms, and I intend to keep them, and use one as a desk/reading-space/living room type of place: a desk, some comfortable couch and/or chair(s), a console for a TV, some speakers, some book shelf. Also, by making everything so open, it creates a LOT of useless navigation space, such as from the kitchen to the entry hall (why??). This is a symptom of house-flipping where people buy apartments without much space and take down every wall they can so everything can be shown in listing photos, with more light. It looks "nice", but it's killing the usefulness of the space and the next thing you know you need three bathrooms and a walk-in closet and a powder room and mess kitchen and what not because no room is functional on its own anymore.
Formal vs. functional: Formal living rooms fall from favor, but get creative replacements
Open floor plans often cause living rooms to be missing a wall; either you have no proper wall for the TV, or the couches are misaligned to the TV because they can't stand against a missing wall. It makes the living rooms useless, a room people essentially never really use properly or at all. Plus, because the kitchen is being used and loud you raise the volume of the TV and now everyone speaks loudly to each other and the neighbors have to raise the volume of their TV or music to stop hearing you.
I have seen how my landlords with their two kids used their home for the past decade, as the kids grew up from toddlers to teenagers, I learned so much about how to use space from that. When they have guests, they are in the kitchen/dining room or on the patio, NEVER in the living room. The kids go outside to play in the backyard or the backstreet or just leave the house, otherwise they go in their own bedrooms. The living room is only used to watch TV, only by the parents, only at night, when one has down time while the other is doing something like the laundry or preping meals for the week or whatever, barely ever. The kids use their mobiles. And if both parents are using the living room, which essentially never happens, chances are one of them is looking at their tablet.
So my plan is to make the dining room and kitchen open to each other, with the dining room close to the exterior to get a lot of light, and make it an almost living-room-like space. There's a table, so you can sit at it comfortably even if it's not to eat, there's a couch-like seat with a big drawer underneath to put the vacuum cleaner and mop in. More often than not the table is unused so kids can use it to do whatever, be it play games, draw, whatever, and be sent to their room or out if needed. You can easily add a TV on a wall if really needed, and it can be used like a radio to play some music in this room where people spend more time than the usual living room. The space being open to the kitchen makes both more social, and whoever is in the kitchen is not excluded from the people in the dining room. I can imagine the kids doing homeworks or playing in the dining room or at the kitchen counter while a parent is preparing meals and talking to them or whatever. At the same time, both rooms, considering how they are used (to cook, eat, and spend an evening with guests), can be loud, so it's another good reason to put them together but separate from the other rooms.
Also, the architect put the toilet in the bathroom, and I'm trying to convince them to separate it. I don't want a prison bathroom. Instead of having two vanities in the bathroom, I want a single one, a shower, a bath tub, some storage. Another small room with the toilet has its own smaller vanity and a bit of storage. That way, I still have two vanities, and both can be used at the same time but each in their respective space (I really think that two persons using two vanities next to each other is conflict-inducing, even if just in our heads). And this way, if anyone needs to use the toilet, the bathroom with its tub, shower and its vanity is still accessible, and the likelihood that someone needs to use the toilet while both vanities are being used is very low, and if they had all been in the same bathroom the mere use of the toilet or shower or bath would have caused the room to be hijacked. Imagine your teenage daughter hijacking the bathroom for 30min+ and having no alternative but to kick her out or wait for her. Next thing you know you are removing space from other rooms to make a whole second bathroom anyway.
If a mezzanine is ever built, I would move the toilet room upstairs and expand it just to add a second shower. We would only have one toilet in the house, which is I think fine; it's usually not the toilet that needs to be used at the same time, it's the vanity or the showers.
Formal vs. functional: Formal living rooms fall from favor, but get creative replacements
Open floor plans often cause living rooms to be missing a wall; either you have no proper wall for the TV, or the couches are misaligned to the TV because they can't stand against a missing wall. It makes the living rooms useless, a room people essentially never really use properly or at all. Plus, because the kitchen is being used and loud you raise the volume of the TV and now everyone speaks loudly to each other and the neighbors have to raise the volume of their TV or music to stop hearing you.
I have seen how my landlords with their two kids used their home for the past decade, as the kids grew up from toddlers to teenagers, I learned so much about how to use space from that. When they have guests, they are in the kitchen/dining room or on the patio, NEVER in the living room. The kids go outside to play in the backyard or the backstreet or just leave the house, otherwise they go in their own bedrooms. The living room is only used to watch TV, only by the parents, only at night, when one has down time while the other is doing something like the laundry or preping meals for the week or whatever, barely ever. The kids use their mobiles. And if both parents are using the living room, which essentially never happens, chances are one of them is looking at their tablet.
So my plan is to make the dining room and kitchen open to each other, with the dining room close to the exterior to get a lot of light, and make it an almost living-room-like space. There's a table, so you can sit at it comfortably even if it's not to eat, there's a couch-like seat with a big drawer underneath to put the vacuum cleaner and mop in. More often than not the table is unused so kids can use it to do whatever, be it play games, draw, whatever, and be sent to their room or out if needed. You can easily add a TV on a wall if really needed, and it can be used like a radio to play some music in this room where people spend more time than the usual living room. The space being open to the kitchen makes both more social, and whoever is in the kitchen is not excluded from the people in the dining room. I can imagine the kids doing homeworks or playing in the dining room or at the kitchen counter while a parent is preparing meals and talking to them or whatever. At the same time, both rooms, considering how they are used (to cook, eat, and spend an evening with guests), can be loud, so it's another good reason to put them together but separate from the other rooms.
Also, the architect put the toilet in the bathroom, and I'm trying to convince them to separate it. I don't want a prison bathroom. Instead of having two vanities in the bathroom, I want a single one, a shower, a bath tub, some storage. Another small room with the toilet has its own smaller vanity and a bit of storage. That way, I still have two vanities, and both can be used at the same time but each in their respective space (I really think that two persons using two vanities next to each other is conflict-inducing, even if just in our heads). And this way, if anyone needs to use the toilet, the bathroom with its tub, shower and its vanity is still accessible, and the likelihood that someone needs to use the toilet while both vanities are being used is very low, and if they had all been in the same bathroom the mere use of the toilet or shower or bath would have caused the room to be hijacked. Imagine your teenage daughter hijacking the bathroom for 30min+ and having no alternative but to kick her out or wait for her. Next thing you know you are removing space from other rooms to make a whole second bathroom anyway.
If a mezzanine is ever built, I would move the toilet room upstairs and expand it just to add a second shower. We would only have one toilet in the house, which is I think fine; it's usually not the toilet that needs to be used at the same time, it's the vanity or the showers.
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Question for you all:
My wife and I are looking at our first home purchase. The one we found today, we liked particularly, but the house is on a hill. It is ok for a walkway because there are steps. However, the driveway is steep and I would want it leveled out as much as possible so we don't scrape the shit out of our cars on the underneath.
I know pricing varies by state but does anyone have a general idea as to how much it would cost to re-do a driveway with leveling.
My wife and I are looking at our first home purchase. The one we found today, we liked particularly, but the house is on a hill. It is ok for a walkway because there are steps. However, the driveway is steep and I would want it leveled out as much as possible so we don't scrape the shit out of our cars on the underneath.
I know pricing varies by state but does anyone have a general idea as to how much it would cost to re-do a driveway with leveling.
So I called before I dug, had all the cables and utilities marked. Start digging and find a cable where there isn't supposed to be one. Shit.
It'll start at a couple of grand I'd think, not less than that, very likely more
Anyone got any tips on killing weeds and fixing bare spots in your lawn? I really don't want to hire lawn care people unless I have to.
Curious to see my architect's reaction to the new plan I made. I closed the damn kitchen. Bye open floor plan.
Sleek and straight: Galley kitchens make a comeback
The whole open floor idea only works when you have massively excessive space. It's been mainly a flipper's trick to sell small apartments at a higher price at the cost of functionality, and a marketing trick to showcase and sell stuff. Also makes it much easier for architects or interior designers to showcase their work on picture, which is why I bet mine will fight me about this.
Sleek and straight: Galley kitchens make a comeback
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/interiors/home/open-plan-living-is-over---bring-back-the-closed-kitchen/
The whole open floor idea only works when you have massively excessive space. It's been mainly a flipper's trick to sell small apartments at a higher price at the cost of functionality, and a marketing trick to showcase and sell stuff. Also makes it much easier for architects or interior designers to showcase their work on picture, which is why I bet mine will fight me about this.
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Yeah. I grow more in love with the city everyday. Summers are unbeatable here 😎. Cloudy as fuck so far today though.
Which burbs would you suggest looking at for someone in the $300kish range? Been to a few and they all seem quite nice.
I am not a huge fan of open floor plans either. Have a standard door size opening between my kitchen and dining room and a large sized opening between dining and sitting areas.
No island in the kitchen either. Was considering on but I realize I just like having some space to walk around.
today it was supposed to rain. now it's just going to be cloudy.
We live in Des Plaines now in a decent sized house near a good school. We paid $327K.
Maybe this isn't the right thread for it, but I want to put a TV in my "living" room, but my PC will be in another one. Can I broadcast music to my TV over wifi?
As long as there's something like Chromecast on/attached to it.
You can use Chromecast or Steam link.. Or if your TV is Android just cast from your phone
What do you guys recommend, a single sink in the kitchen, or double? I have a double at home, sure washing big stuff is less easy, but I kind of like being able to dump stuff in one side and use the other. What do you think?
Large for me. I hated the double at my old place. Such a pain for large pots, pans, baking sheets, etc.
Ok, single it is. I'll just have to stop being lazy dumping stuff in the whatever-later sink.
What about toilets? I have no room for a bidet in my current plan. Anyone has a toilet with an integrated bidet? What do you think?
I'm going to airbnb for an unknown number of months because I don't know yet when renos will start and end. The renos themselves will likely take 3 months easily!
Worst is I'm storing my stuff but will likely get rid of most of it. I'll try to move them in the room where the least amount of work will take place to stop paying for the storage, give stuff away too, no time to waste trying to sell stuff.
What a pain the next few months will be. Hopefully it will have been worth it once everything is over. 😖
I liked the double, or so I thought. But at my new house there is a single and I'd never go back.
I've always had a double before but am really liking my large single with the drain on one side.
Did it cost a lot to set-up a power outlet? Or was the socket already conveniently located?
We were building our house, so we knew to plan ahead. The cord is really long though, so that helps in retrofit situations.
Or you could just be like one Japanese person I know and break all code by cutting a hole in the wall.
I was looking at the refrigerator size on my architect's plan and it's way too big. Canadians living like Americans again, and by default people don't take their location into account.
I live in a city, in a good neighborhood with bakeries and cheeseries and grocery stores you walk to, not in the suburb where I have to drive to the grocery for 15+ mins to and back from once a week to fill the fridge with too much stuff, a lot of crap, many of which don't even need to be refrigerated (or don't spoil because they are heavily processed).
It's the kind of thing that on one hand is obvious to me, but on the other could be "an issue" for resale. But if someone buys my place one day and they don't understand the above, they can buy some other place. Sad that we are killing the planet over such obvious stuff.
Even a wine fridge might be useful, but for what? How many are really worth keeping for a long time? Seven bottles or so? Yet people get these big things and fill them with cheap wines. I don't get it. And anyway, wine is full of lead and pesticides... I massively reduced my consumption of it.
I live in a city, in a good neighborhood with bakeries and cheeseries and grocery stores you walk to, not in the suburb where I have to drive to the grocery for 15+ mins to and back from once a week to fill the fridge with too much stuff, a lot of crap, many of which don't even need to be refrigerated (or don't spoil because they are heavily processed).
It's the kind of thing that on one hand is obvious to me, but on the other could be "an issue" for resale. But if someone buys my place one day and they don't understand the above, they can buy some other place. Sad that we are killing the planet over such obvious stuff.
Even a wine fridge might be useful, but for what? How many are really worth keeping for a long time? Seven bottles or so? Yet people get these big things and fill them with cheap wines. I don't get it. And anyway, wine is full of lead and pesticides... I massively reduced my consumption of it.
That makes sense. Just went with a mechanical bidet for now. (Though it is a little inconvenient during Michigan winters).
...
Then again, considering they tear down houses in Japan in every 30 years, maybe not such a huge risk.
Yeah, we have one of those in the second bathroom, but I never use it since I know there's a nice heated one just on the other side of the house...
Oh no, this is in the US, lol.
Re: about broadcasting over chromecast. Someone I know retrofitted his house to have usb and ethernet wiring throughout the walls (a LOT of wiring), even has a little server room, so HD content and all that jazz can be broadcast to any room.
Is it really worth it? I'm thinking everything can be broadcast through the walls anyway, assuming the signal isn't too hampered, the house isn't huge. I'm just thinking, over the following years it feels like all that wiring wouldn't be necessary.
Is it really worth it? I'm thinking everything can be broadcast through the walls anyway, assuming the signal isn't too hampered, the house isn't huge. I'm just thinking, over the following years it feels like all that wiring wouldn't be necessary.
Yes on the Ethernet, no on the USB. You won't know how well your wireless transmits until all of your walls are up, and by then it's too late.
Along those lines, we didn't feel it was necessary to put CAT6 everywhere (cause the price, if they had let us make our own drops, but we did put it in the study so that our outside line would be guaranteed to be CAT6.
I'm not even sure what the question was here. Seemed like a rant about.... refrigerating things?
It doesn't even make sense. A big fridge doesn't really affect your living space unless you're living in a shoe box. They wouldn't need to fill the fridge with "a lot of crap" either and having space in the fridge so you don't need to move a bunch of stuff to get to what you want is really nice. Also, being able to just throw a pizza box in the fridge without making room first is fucking great.
Edit: I'm trying to go for matte finishes as much as possible in the house, but for the kitchen counter I'm thinking I have to make an exception otherwise it will stain. Strangely I have seen concrete ones on Instagram. I don't get it, a little oil stain would be impossible to remove no?
Edit2: oh soapstone looks great, expensive though.
Ok I'll look into it. I don't have the URL but he showed me a site where you can make your virtual home plan, specify the materials and it will show you how well the reception is. He said it's accurate. I'll look it up tomorrow.
Yes, it was a rant that Canadians have big refrigerators because Americans do, by default, without taking context into account.
Edit2: oh soapstone looks great, expensive though.
Ok I'll look into it. I don't have the URL but he showed me a site where you can make your virtual home plan, specify the materials and it will show you how well the reception is. He said it's accurate. I'll look it up tomorrow.
Yes, it was a rant that Canadians have big refrigerators because Americans do, by default, without taking context into account.
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Finally got a quote on our proposed small addition (210 sq ft) and it was 80k.....some how the price keeps creeping up from when we first looked into this
If you can wire for Ethernet then do it but with modern AC WiFi mesh set ups it's not nearly as much of a requirement anymore
Wiriing for USB seems kind of dumb imo unless they just put in those USB outlets for charging.
If you can wire for Ethernet then do it but with modern AC WiFi mesh set ups it's not nearly as much of a requirement anymore
Wiriing for USB seems kind of dumb imo unless they just put in those USB outlets for charging.