Home Improvement

chaos_sl said:

Is there anything you can do to counteract the humidity and protect the equipment? Does the rice thing really work?

Humidity here ranges between 40 and 80% with the highest in the summer months, which doesn't seem extreme to me. But I'd rather not ruin them, even if I did get them cheap as fuck off craigslist.

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Lowes/Home Depot sells something called Damprid (or something close) is assorted sizes. Its a bucket of stuff that soaks up moisture in the air. Left 2 in the basement of the restaurant last winter and they worked great.

Thanks, that might be a good solution.

My shed has a wood floor, I think the best thing might be to do what mkopec said and grease/oil it well and use the damprid stuff as well.

That Damprid stuff looks like a good idea. You might consider caulking your shed like crazy, and putting a good thick coat of a sealing paint on everything. Obviously your shed won't be air tight, but do as much as you can, and I bet you'll be able to reduce humidity in there by a good percentage. The grease/oil idea is also brilliant. Wish I could rep the bastard that suggested it...

chaos_sl said:

A stupid question: would it ruin my shit to store my table saw and miter saw outside in the shed? The shed doesn't leak or anything, but I was going to cover them with a tarp when not in use anyway for extra protection. I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be fine, the most extreme temps we get here are high 90s and low 0s so it shouldn't be the end of the world. I have them in the basement taking up a very large amount of space.

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Wax the table top, especially if it's a cast iron top. Even aluminum will benefit from waxing and make sliding stuff on the saw much easier and will protect it at the same time.

We had some siding damage from Hurricane Sandy and *FINALLY* got new siding put on. Here's a before and after:

So here's what our house looked like when we first moved in, 5 years ago. Real piece of shit.



Here's what it looks like as of a week days ago. It looks a little different now. They finally added navy blue shutters to all of the "single" windows. 4 sets in all.



Total changes to the exterior: New roof, new siding, all new windows, replaced the old sliding glass door, replaced the deck with a larger cedar one w/ black aluminum balusters, designed and built a shed onto the deck, and had a stone path installed that the deck steps descend to. I also closed up the old attic venting and added a gable mounted thermal fan that kicks on at 105 degrees (there was a ridge vent at the roof peak that would allow hot air to exit as heat rose). And finally, added a fence.

My neighbor's house is still blue (faded), but the gray of our new siding really makes his house appear gray as well. It could also be the lighting the day I took that picture.

It's fun owning a house. We've done a ton to the inside as well, but this was the latest project.

Well, it was a toss up. Insurance covered 1 side due to it being a claim from Hurricane Sandy. So I just had to do 2 sides & the shed. I've lived in a tanish colored house my entire life. People always go with tan or beige, or other weak ass neutral colors. I was just tired of it and wanted something new. My wife and I had bitched about the siding pretty much the entire time we lived there with the eventual goal of replacing it just to make the house look nicer.

So we settled on a color and absorbed the rest of the price to get the entire place sided. We also hated our old windows... 26 years old, and they were wooden. One of the previous owners (or hell, maybe all of them) painted over them, so they were completely sealed shut. So we just bit the bullet and got the entire thing done. The windows took 1 very long day to complete. They got to my house around 11am, and didn't leave until 10:30pm. I was amazed that the crew stayed that long, but we're happy with the results.

So... yeah, it was visually important for us to change, plus the storm blew off a large section in the rear of the house, so we only had to cover about 2/3rds of it out of pocket. It became worth it from that point alone to do the entire thing and not just cheap it out and get the same color that we already resented.

Bought our first house two years ago, finally this spring saved enough money for a remodel. We did all the work ourselves, took a few months after the initial demo but really like how it turned out.

I don't think I've ever seen a backsplash done with vertical stripes like that. It's jarring when you first look at it, but I like it.

Here is our garden re-construction progress to current day. The most current photos are horrible night shots I just took but I'll try and get some better shots uploaded tomorrow. you can see the area before I put the fence up to adding 3.5 cubic yards of dirt all the way to plants growing. Unfortunately I don't have any shots of the french drain I also put in under the pea gravel but that was quite a bit of work by itself.

I'm using a drip watering system with an in-line fertilizer which I don't know yet if its working or causing issues. You can see the basil plant in one of the images with brown spots and a green pepper plant seems to be dying a very slow death. All other plants have been healthy though including the other herb and pepper plants of different types so I don't know what to think. I just changed the fertilizer on the off chance that was causing problems.

I love the drop watering system though. I was able to run tubing all over and under the place with an extra connection to our grape vine. Could have accomplished the same with soaker hose I think but drip has been pretty awesome. Watering about 3 hours every 7 days right now.

It's all on dropbox.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w7u3r44615n5lmw/pMX8ddjEK1

Edit: Now there is a total of 66 photo's. 6/11/13 photos are the clearest pictures of the current garden.

Any fixes for squeaky wood floors? Our upstairs hallway is terrible.

Was going to try something like this:http://www.squeakyfloor.com/counter-snap.htmlsince the guy at Lowe's said he's heard of people having success with it.

Those are what I saw Mike Holmes use on an episode of Holmes on Homes, and they seemed to work great. I've been thinking about getting some for our house, the floor outside of our babies room squeaks horribly, and I'm always afraid it's going to wake him up. The only semi-difficult part is finding the beams under the floor to screw into. Once you successfully locate one though, you should just be able to measure off the rest.

What kind of wood floor do you have? Do you know if it had a sub-floor or not? If they are right on the joists and you have access to them from the underside, like a unfinished basement, you have more and better options but in a upstairs hallway I doubt that's a possibility. Something like the product you linked is the only option I can think of.

Counter-snaps screws seem like good product that will leave only a really small area to putty and really quick to install. Before you put a lot of them in make sure you have no plans to replace the wood floor anytime down the road cause that floor will be an absolute bitch to tear out after they are in.