Home Improvement
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Denamian
Night Janitor
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McCheese
SW: Sean, CW: Crone, GW: Wizardhawk
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Our AC partially flooded the basement last summer, causing us to pull up all the shitty laminate tile the previous owners had down there. I only just got around to installing new flooring over the basement concrete slab. I used that click-lock luxury vinyl plank flooring. Holy shit it's amazing. So easy to install, looks and feels great. Easiest DIY job ever. A++ do recommend. Whoever invented these deserves a god damned Nobel prize.
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Daidraco
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My handyman charges 3 bucks a sq/ft to put that shit down. It blows my mind that people pay him to do that shit all the time. At times, Im halfway tempted to do some of the jobs I get for him just because it is just that easy. I did the whole main levels floor of one of my rentals in Home Depot's Lifeproof Engineered Bamboo and it looks freaking gorgeous. I think the higher price in rent I got is specifically because of that flooring and the new baseboards.
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Home improvement is a technique that has been used to improve the look of the home.
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Gutterflesh
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Dandai
<WoW Guild Officer>
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Daidraco
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This just a pic you found, or did it actually happen to you or a unit you own?
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Picture I found, but something that happened in one of my rentals years ago. Some dumb fuck turned the furnace off when they left for holiday over Christmas. So many burst pipes. The tenants were totally apologetic. Never owned a home, about 20 years old, didn't have a clue about maintaining a house. They volunteered to pay an additional $1500 over the next four months to compensate. I decided that was okay. All the leaks were in the basement (which had a floor drain), so nothing was damaged in the house except the toilet. I redid all the plumbing in pex in about 2 days. They were really good folks who were learning and willing to pay for their mistake.
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Daidraco
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We had a cold snap here in Virginia last month where it got down to single digits. The two full time plumbers I know made enough off of those jobs to sit on their ass for the next 6 months. Its crazy how little people know about how to deal with shit like that.. yet they live here. Tf.
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Lanx
<Prior Amod>
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i mean it's virginia, i remember walking my dog in flip flops in the winter
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Lanx
<Prior Amod>
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so last year i put up insulation on my garage doors and it has been a night and day difference in how much heat it retains and blocks (in the summer)
i decided to go further and get these spring hinges
i did notice a gap i felt the air rush in and i saw the sunlight, now it's gone, how much has it helped? who knows, it just "feels" like it did something worthwhile.
i decided to go further and get these spring hinges
i did notice a gap i felt the air rush in and i saw the sunlight, now it's gone, how much has it helped? who knows, it just "feels" like it did something worthwhile.
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Intrinsic
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Spent the morning pulling up carpet and trying to get the guest room ready for turning it in in to a nursery. Room is 12x12 with a 3.5 x 3.5 closet. Going to go back down with some to be determined LVT/LVP product. Need to get the wife started on picking a paint color and doing that. I'll repaint the trim. I'd like to redo the stool of the window where the dog chewed the corner as a puppy, but that may be outside my scope here.
The subfloor seems like it is in good condition to lay the LVT over. I never noticed anything with the carpet, no creaks, or dips. There are a couple of splintered spots that maybe I can knock down with an 80 grit block, and a few seams on the ply are slightly not level. Just having a grand total of 0 experience with this not sure what my return on trying to get everything perfect is.
I want to replace the carpet on most of our 2nd floor so this was a place to start.
Hands and knees and a pair of vice grips. This was about 1/3 - 1/2 of them. Back is killing me lol
The subfloor seems like it is in good condition to lay the LVT over. I never noticed anything with the carpet, no creaks, or dips. There are a couple of splintered spots that maybe I can knock down with an 80 grit block, and a few seams on the ply are slightly not level. Just having a grand total of 0 experience with this not sure what my return on trying to get everything perfect is.
I want to replace the carpet on most of our 2nd floor so this was a place to start.
Hands and knees and a pair of vice grips. This was about 1/3 - 1/2 of them. Back is killing me lol
Daidraco
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You can just get a pair of End Cutting Pliers, sit on your ass and pull (cut and hammer down stubborn) each staple. Time intensive, but getting it perfect will give you the best results for the flooring.
Do the wall paint before you do any work with the trim.
The trim work around the window is easy if you have the correct tools. But if not, Box Store/Lowes will have something similar to replace it with and will cut it to the desired size. Dont patch, just replace trim work. Use "trim nails" to put the piece down, use caulk to fill the holes from the nails and paint over top of it and the rest of the molding. Make sure you have a really, really thin paint to use on the trim work. Paint once, use fine sandpaper over it lightly, then paint it a second time to get it looking great. Match the brush to the type of paint for the best results.
Vinyl Plank Flooring is extremely easy to install. Unfortunately, if you think your back hurts now - you'll really feel it after laying the planks. Get yourself a pair of cushioned knee pads and an orthopedic back brace to help. The picture gives the idea that the planks can slide up under the moulding. But if not, leave a small gap so they can float and put shoe molding down to hide the gaps (treat the shoe molding with the same directions as the window trim work above.) The LVT "Install Kits" are fucking worthless. Buy a rubber mallet and that should be all you need. The puller and spacers are unnecessary in the grand scheme. The LVT Cutter is good, but some are expensive. If you have a portable table saw and a jig saw, then you're good to go regardless.
Depending on the distance to lowes (or w/e) - probably a couple days with most of it spent on waiting on paint to dry.
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Dandai
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Hate to tell you this now that you’re almost done, but when I did this several years ago I had a lot of luck using a long handled floor scraper to get the vast majority of staples out. I still had to get the pliers out for the really stubborn ones but the scraper saved me a lot of bending over.
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Today's quickie project... A new front patio on the house.
Leveraging these drop and click tiles I picked up on Amazon :
Amazon product ASIN B07KLVQQTP
Front patio on our house is concrete. We're gearing up for painting the whole house so I've been sanding/stripping/prepping some and got fed up with the concrete patio. It was just level/not level enough to have water pool on it some when we got lots of rain or when the sprinklers were running, and then it would get slick, and I have in fact busted my ass on it once or twice.. so screw that. These are wood tiles on a plastic underframe, which lifts above the concrete surface and provides for water run off below the wood.
This project took 14 cases of the tiles above, total cost around $800.
First lay down the tiles which didn't require cutting :
Each box was 11 tiles (weird number..) and took one and a half boxes back to the table saw to cut some fitment pieces.... added those :
All this so far consumed a grand total of around 3 hours. Although it's shown me how out of shape I've gotten as being up and down laying down these tiles has me far more sore than I want to admit to.
Next will be to refurbish/repair those columns, then probably stain concrete as needed (which I realized in hindsight I should have done first, but I can just do around the edges as needed for cosmetics as they aren't attached to the concrete yet). Maybe add an edge board around the bottom of the concrete pad to fully conceal the concrete. Then the last step will be some selectively place concrete anchor bolts to attach these to the concrete under. Whole project will easily be under $1,000 for the wood and the columns.
Next step, prep the house for painting, and make that final call on if I'm going to paint the brick which seems to be all the fashion these days.
Leveraging these drop and click tiles I picked up on Amazon :
Amazon product ASIN B07KLVQQTP
Front patio on our house is concrete. We're gearing up for painting the whole house so I've been sanding/stripping/prepping some and got fed up with the concrete patio. It was just level/not level enough to have water pool on it some when we got lots of rain or when the sprinklers were running, and then it would get slick, and I have in fact busted my ass on it once or twice.. so screw that. These are wood tiles on a plastic underframe, which lifts above the concrete surface and provides for water run off below the wood.
This project took 14 cases of the tiles above, total cost around $800.
First lay down the tiles which didn't require cutting :
Each box was 11 tiles (weird number..) and took one and a half boxes back to the table saw to cut some fitment pieces.... added those :
All this so far consumed a grand total of around 3 hours. Although it's shown me how out of shape I've gotten as being up and down laying down these tiles has me far more sore than I want to admit to.
Next will be to refurbish/repair those columns, then probably stain concrete as needed (which I realized in hindsight I should have done first, but I can just do around the edges as needed for cosmetics as they aren't attached to the concrete yet). Maybe add an edge board around the bottom of the concrete pad to fully conceal the concrete. Then the last step will be some selectively place concrete anchor bolts to attach these to the concrete under. Whole project will easily be under $1,000 for the wood and the columns.
Next step, prep the house for painting, and make that final call on if I'm going to paint the brick which seems to be all the fashion these days.
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Intrinsic
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Hah, I knew there was a better way but was on a roll ripping stuff up and had the vice grips already. It wasn’t really that bad and was a lot less staples than I expected.
Daidraco
thanks for the tips. My dad just recently laid some LVP at a neighbor’s house and he is going to send me a link to some underpayment they used to help smooth out the small inconsistencies in the subfloor. He said it was easy and didn’t add any difficulty to the process but helped them in the long run. We’ll see. When installers put down a new subfloor + LVP at my old house I just remember being able to feel every single small dink in the ply. I’ll rip down anything on my table saw once I get to that point.Baby is 6 months away so I figure my wife will have it painted sometime in the next 5 months. J/k. Or not.
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