Home Improvement

Great idea on the tired planter, from what the concrete company said, it can be done by adding a small top layer or treating the current layer than adding and stamping. This part of Texas has just caught on to stamped concrete, few companies do it so they charge an arm and a leg. Lots of oil money so they can keep their prices extremely high.

Yeah, and then that thin, stamped layer will spend the next 20 years breaking up. The way to do it is when you pour it. Something that might look nice is some outdoor tile. You could do the stairs, to, and one course around the outside so the dirt comes up to it. Look at some of these:

Cabot Porcelain Tile - Redwood Series Natural / 6

Good for outdoor use.

Also, the tiered garden around is a great idea. You get some grasses that grow about 2-3 feet higher than the deck itself and you get a nice, isolated feeling while you're on the deck. Code probably calls for a railing, but I wouldn't.

On the crown molding, I don't think it would be that difficult to pull it down, paint it and throw it back up. Even if you don't have the tools currently the investment could be minimal. At most like $1k in tools (if you don't have anything you would need and buy quality, even cheaper if you go the "disposal Harbor Freight"route) and $500 in materials would be a quick ballpark. That and your time, which will be a lot. Not too terrible if you tackle it one room at a time though. Not a hard project skill-wise, just tedious.

I would make sure you can find the exact style of molding that is up there currently though because inevitably you are going to fuck up a piece of two that need replacing.

Yea if it's that bad then sure. Here you could do it every 10 yrs for $250 so who cares about durability.

lurkingdirk_sl said:

Yeah, and then that thin, stamped layer will spend the next 20 years breaking up. The way to do it is when you pour it. Something that might look nice is some outdoor tile. You could do the stairs, to, and one course around the outside so the dirt comes up to it. Look at some of these:

Cabot Porcelain Tile - Redwood Series Natural / 6

Good for outdoor use.

Also, the tiered garden around is a great idea. You get some grasses that grow about 2-3 feet higher than the deck itself and you get a nice, isolated feeling while you're on the deck. Code probably calls for a railing, but I wouldn't.

Click to expand...

So maybe 1 tier? due to the slope. I have brick, so hopefully all works well. Need to liquid nails the brick or just stack? For the molding I'll check YouTube to see if it's doable for me. That tile for the porch looks legit....I'll upload images of the slop and brick in a few

I'd probably go one tier. Make it fairly deep so you can put annual flowering things in on either side of the taller grass. Or, do a tier for the taller stuff, second, lower tier for flowery stuff. The options are limitless.

You're going to close in the railing of the stairs? May be the look you're going for, but I'd try to find a way to leave it at least a bit open. It's all a preference thing, though.

And you're doing good work, man.

Makes sense. Also makes the basement a distinct area.

Has anyone put in fake grass or have any? TL: DR; prev owners put in two types of gravel, I want to remove one type but instead of ordering another ton of 3/4", I want to rake a bunch over and add some color by adding a grass medallion. Seems easy enough, my only worry is that the area is underneath a Mesquite tree that poops everywhere. Everyone I've talked to said it's fine, just use the leaf blower but... somehow all that fill seems like it'd come right out too.

Uber Uberest_sl said:

Use CPVC faggot.

Click to expand...

We used to use a shit ton of CPVC (Flowguard Gold) on thousands of condo/apartment units for domestic water distribution, and more rarely in low temperature heating systems. Then we started getting a lot of reports of pipe/fittings sheering/cracking when any force was put on the pipe. For example, every condo or apartment unit would have it's own shut off valve on the hot and cold water to their suite, and when an owner would go to shut it off cause they were going out of town, if they didn't put one hand on the valve to support/back it and cranked on the handle, the pipe just shattered and caused a massive flood.

Needless to say, we're no longer using that product (we are using a different CPVC product now, called Aquarise, which has thicker pipe walls so should be more durable. The new stuff is sch80, while Flowguard was copper tube size and therefore had pretty thin pipe walls), and basically waiting for the phone call that a developer or condo association is suing us for using a substandard product. The biggest problem was on domestic hot water recirculation lines. Prolonged exposure to high temperatures (120-130F) seems to cause the pipe to get extremely brittle. As far as I know the vast majority of the breaks have been on hot or recirc lines, and just about never on cold.

I'm not an old school kind of guy who thinks that copper is the only way to go. But there's some serious concerns about the longevity of some of the newer materials, whether that be CPVC, PEX (Uponor has been having a shitload of lawsuits from pipe delaminating or seems breaking, as well), the various fusion welded PE ones, etc. Copper's not perfect either, of course. It's terrible on recirc lines as it wears out unless the installer and maintenance contractor have ensured that the velocity/flow in the line isn't too high.

Uber Uberest_sl said:

Pex blows, but CPVC is where it's at. Eomer talking Canada and probably a decade ago, shit's money now.

Click to expand...

It was installed over the past 10 years yes, but up until a year or two ago, when the phone calls started. It's a widespread issue, trust me. Just do some googling around, you'll find a shitload of web pages and forum posts about it. The other issue with CPVC in large systems, anyways, is you have to be extremely careful what pipe dopes, disinfectants, and degreasers you use as some of them can destroy the entire piping system. When we first started using Flowguard, we had to special order in a specific pipe dope because no one stocked it and throw out a shitload of the stuff we used to use to ensure that it wasn't used accidentally.

I'm not saying that CPVC is a bad material. But it's not perfect either, and not suitable for every application. In a single family residence for domestic water it's suitable, and if I were building a house today it would probably have a combination of CPVC and PEX in it. I'd probably stay away from CPVC on the hot water and recirculation mains, if you have recirculation, though. Like I said, it seems that long term exposure to those temps really doesn't do the material any favors for durability.

Here's one link of many:Plumbers warn of CPVC piping problems

Picasso_sl said:

Man, can you go back and put in clamps? That would be the most helpless, infuriating thing flooding your place while trying to prevent flooding your place.

Click to expand...

Again, we do large apartments, so generally the flood takes out at least a few suites, depending on what floor it is and how long it took to get the water shut off. Thankfully we haven't heard of one happening in a high rise yet, but it's probably a matter of time. As far as going back and retrofitting stuff, at this point it hasn't become enough of an epidemic for that. That's a bridge that we don't particularly want to cross, because at that point we've admitted that we know there's a problem and it could really expose us to huge liability or remediation costs, even though our installation was to code, the materials were approved by the mechanical consultant, etc etc. The manufacturer (Bow Plastics in Canada) is taking the same tact when we've called to ask them if they're aware of a problem.

I like PEX a lot. Never had any problem with it.