Home Improvement

  • 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!
P

Picasso3

Silver Baronet of the Realm
11,333
5,322
I have the ryobi one+ kit and am pleased. The 4AH extended life battery is pretty solid. The regular ones are worthless on circ saw. I think i got impact, drill, sawzall, circ, 2 reg bats, extended bat, and charger for 300.

Great value kit which has served me well for extensive DIY. I have no doubt milwaukee, dewalt etc are superior.
 
Palum

Palum

what Suineg set it to
26,556
41,373
Kind of tangentially related depending on the suggested remedy.

Woke up today, went outside to check chlorine tabs on pool. Saw 3 cats (with collars) in the back yard. Any suggestions? Since I haven't seen them regularly I'm guessing they kind of wandered a few houses/streets. They definitely aren't the neighbors animals.
 
opiate82

opiate82

Bronze Squire
3,078
5
Palum_sl said:
Kind of tangentially related depending on the suggested remedy.

Woke up today, went outside to check chlorine tabs on pool. Saw 3 cats (with collars) in the back yard. Any suggestions? Since I haven't seen them regularly I'm guessing they kind of wandered a few houses/streets. They definitely aren't the neighbors animals.
Click to expand...
Most local animal laws require that you keep your pets (even your own outdoor cats) contained on your own property. If it is a major issue you can always give animal control a call, but I always think a friendly conversation with your neighbors is a good first step. Even if you don't know the cats owners your neighbors might.

There are 3 or 4 outdoor cats in my neighborhood that frequently cross my yard. I don't really care that they are there other than the fact my mini Aussie goes into full meltdown mode when she sees them (which is funny because we have two cats ourselves that she lives with). I've warned my neighbors that my mini Aussie has caught and slaughtered several adult rabbits now and I make no promises that she won't do the same to their cats should they cross paths in my backyard.

Yup, 25lbs of pure terror, this dog is:
rrr_img_98113.jpg
 
iannis

iannis

Musty Nester
31,351
17,656
Housecats have a fairly large territory. They might be coming from half a mile away.

Around here county animal control will come and drop trap cages if you call them and ask them to and impound anything they catch. Unless it's a fox or an opossum or so, they'll kill those. No idea how it is in AZ.
 
Borzak

Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
25,464
33,220
Water gun and ammonia. Will never see them again. Can pick up the good stuff at engineering, office supply places.
 
C

Corndog

Lord Nagafen Raider
520
130
So got my new house. Ripped up the carpets. Hardwood underneath needs work. Theres some water damage in a few places, the boards are cupped slighly in and some gaps between boards that are say 1/8 of an inch to 1/4 of an inch in a couple spots.

I've had one company quote the works so far. Came back at 12.5k for a refinnish or 12.5k for new hardwood. This seems crazy to me as the quote is only on 1000 sqft of hardwood. We are taking a wall down, so it'll require some feathering in if we use old hardwood.

I feel my options are refinish the floor myself and figure out something so where the wall was doesn't look horrid and spend roughly 1k renting the sander, paper, buying good finish etc. Or just spend like 3k to lay new engineered hardwood flooring. From videos it looks super simple to use the snap together engineered flooring. I believe the goal would be to put this over top of the hardwood with a decent underlayment mat. That way my Fiancee can still have the dream of refinishing it at some point. Shes one of those people that doesn't want to see anything be wasted. So if I was to remove the old floor she would want to remove it without destroying it so it could be used later for a project which would never happen. So I'd end up storing 1000 sq ft of used hardwood for 50 years until I die or snuck it away to the dump.

Does this seem reasonable, and for people have have laid their own engineered no glue/staple floating floor, how long did it take ya? I'm thinking I can do it room by room and take a couple weekends at most to get it done. As we don't live in the house currently, theres really no obstacles in our way.
 
P

Picasso3

Silver Baronet of the Realm
11,333
5,322
I would get another quote on refinishing.

if it's oak i would think you can blend it in reasoably well. Putting down hardwood is moves along at a decent pace but it's still a lot of pieces of wood and fairly time consuming to tear up and there's always the greater risk of the unknown with replacement. May mess up trim, cabinets, or be glued are a few things that come to mind.
 
Palum

Palum

what Suineg set it to
26,556
41,373
Corndog_sl said:
So got my new house. Ripped up the carpets. Hardwood underneath needs work. Theres some water damage in a few places, the boards are cupped slighly in and some gaps between boards that are say 1/8 of an inch to 1/4 of an inch in a couple spots.

I've had one company quote the works so far. Came back at 12.5k for a refinnish or 12.5k for new hardwood. This seems crazy to me as the quote is only on 1000 sqft of hardwood. We are taking a wall down, so it'll require some feathering in if we use old hardwood.

I feel my options are refinish the floor myself and figure out something so where the wall was doesn't look horrid and spend roughly 1k renting the sander, paper, buying good finish etc. Or just spend like 3k to lay new engineered hardwood flooring. From videos it looks super simple to use the snap together engineered flooring. I believe the goal would be to put this over top of the hardwood with a decent underlayment mat. That way my Fiancee can still have the dream of refinishing it at some point. Shes one of those people that doesn't want to see anything be wasted. So if I was to remove the old floor she would want to remove it without destroying it so it could be used later for a project which would never happen. So I'd end up storing 1000 sq ft of used hardwood for 50 years until I die or snuck it away to the dump.

Does this seem reasonable, and for people have have laid their own engineered no glue/staple floating floor, how long did it take ya? I'm thinking I can do it room by room and take a couple weekends at most to get it done. As we don't live in the house currently, theres really no obstacles in our way.
Click to expand...
Engineered is fine, however you are going to add a lot of height to the floors. You'll want to redo the baseboards on top of it - if it's in the kitchen that's a whole other ball of wax. One thing to be wary of is that floating floors do 'feel' different. It's a combination of squishiness due to the underlayment, the different noises they make and the multiple woods (due to substrate boards). You can get floating hardwood instead and alleviate some of that oddity. It's not necessarily 'bad' but I've seen installations of it where it just feels fake simply by walking on it.

To some degree, it's almost better to get a straight up wild laminate floor (like very exotic wood, handscraped, huge ass planks) to go for a specific look. Engineered is like the uncanny valley for hardwood because it looks real until you live with it and then it just annoys you. Sweet looking laminate that is practically artwork just fits an aesthetic.
 
P

Picasso3

Silver Baronet of the Realm
11,333
5,322
Typically laminates are floating install whereas engineered can go down exactly like hardwoods except it's more moisture resistant right?
 
Palum

Palum

what Suineg set it to
26,556
41,373
Picasso_sl said:
Typically laminates are floating install whereas engineered can go down exactly like hardwoods except it's more moisture resistant right?
Click to expand...
Engineered can go both ways, most of the installs I've seen with it have been floating because they've been used for below grade applications or on a slab - OR of course because labor costs is like $2-2.50 sq foot more to nail than install floating. It is more stable so you can use it in bathrooms, etc. and directly on concrete. It's also a lot cheaper to get extremely expensive exotics as engineered than solid for obvious reasons.

However, it can last less overall. You can refinish 3/4" solid until you die. Engineered typically you only have 1-2 times to properly refinish it and then at that point, you have even higher propensity for any gouges to show substrate instead of 'real' wood.

I think engineered is fine for most applications, but I guess I'd probably hesitate before nailing it in.
 
iannis

iannis

Musty Nester
31,351
17,656
12.5 for 1000 hardwood floor really does seem insane. It's not that hard to do. It doesn't even take many tools.
 
iannis

iannis

Musty Nester
31,351
17,656
Maybe I'm just out of touch. That sounds like a "parting suckers from their 2nd renovation mortgage windfall" rate to me, though. Or maybe they just really don't wanna do it.
 
lurkingdirk

lurkingdirk

AssHat Taint
<Medals Crew>
46,690
214,874
It works if you have air conditioning, but that sucks because your house will reek for weeks and weeks.

Also, here is a fun fact that many do not know - once you have used polyurethane in your house, if you have a gas stove, for a couple months after the application of polyurethane, you will have a funny, gas-like smell. It's normal. It's the off-gassing of the continually drying polyurethane.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.