What Did You Do To Your House Recently?

[unt0uchable]

Oh holy hell. I'm going to have to start posting my home projects. This is all I needed around here, lol!

[Mike W.]

Those are sweet.

I bought one of those Costco lights last night. It's pretty friggin' bright. I'd actually say it's brighter than the two fluorescent lights I've got hanging in the garage right now.

Unfortunately, for me, the big drawback on this is that there is no switch on it. My other lights have a pull chain. This one has to be hooked up to a switched outlet or something and there's no way to hard wire it in from what I can tell. I was thinking a few of these on the ceiling could give me all the light I'd ever need, but I'm on the fence.

A little late on the draw, but I've got several wireless switches of a different brand and they work great. You just plug the receiver in, then plug the lamp or whatever into it and mount the light switch where ever you want it. I ordered some replacement batteries last year but the oldest are now 6 and I haven't had to change one yet, there obviously being a battery in the remote wireless switch.

http://www.amazon.com/Heath-Zenith-BL-6 ... RRY2F3C3G2

[ElGuappo]

On the cabinet above my workbench that has a 2.5" fascia at the bottom, I removed the hateful dual T12 48" fluorescent fixture that hung below the fascia, and installed 2, 24" T5 lights I had purchased for our closet a while ago, before we found better LED fixtures at Ikea.
They were individually switched, so I spliced in a toggle I had, and ran it thru the fascia with some galvanized steel to make it look cool.
I never thought it could be so satisfying to turn lights on and off, but you feel like Igor firing up the machinery for the good Doctor.

[MicahO]

I installed a bunch of those Heath Zenith switches around the detached garage and downstairs in the house, and configured them to be controlled by the very old-school looking Master Command Lighting Control Panel. This is so that at night when I realize I left some lights on I don't have to go all the way outside to turn them off Works great!

Other ongoing house tricks.... My plumbing list suddenly got long, so I've got a plumber in today getting a bunch of work done. The house has a pair of 40-gallon NatGas hot water heaters, in-line to each other. They've been there since the house was built ('96), and I've been on the watch for breakage. In addition, the house was not built with hot recirculating loops, so it takes a few gallons and a few minutes to get hot water 45 or so feet across the basement and two stories up to the master bathroom. That's not ecologically sound! Some minor drippage finally started at both of the HWHs, so it was time to get them done.

First, we're putting in a recirculating loop for the section of the master-bath run that goes across the basement. This takes up more than half of the run, and will be a great improvement in hot water access. Second, both of the 40's are coming out and a Navien NPE240 tankless heater is going in for the whole house. This should be a much more efficient hot water set up for both water and gas usage.

Third, the house humidifier that I've been nursing along with crazy glue and duct tape for the last 5 years is getting replaced. I was going to do that myself, but since Lloyd's coming to the house anyhow.... He's also going to move the feed for the humidifier to an internal, softened water line. The original installer (before I owned the house) tapped the main feed before the water softener, so the humidifier panel gets crusted solid after about 8 weeks. That will be a nice improvement.

Finally, inspired by demetk's discussion of the mini-split for his garage, I'm having them size up a dual-head mini-split for the 'other' garage. There's 1200 feet downstairs and 800 feet upstairs that I've kept somewhat warm with ceramic resistance heaters and cool (upstairs) with a window unit over the years. It's time to graduate to something more efficient. Again, I will not be installing that myself....

Yay house! Yay planet!

[Karl Grau]

I put checkered tile in the workshop. I figure projects should go 25%-30% faster now.



Early reviews have been positive.

[bbaxter]

Those are sweet.

I bought one of those Costco lights last night. It's pretty friggin' bright. I'd actually say it's brighter than the two fluorescent lights I've got hanging in the garage right now.

Unfortunately, for me, the big drawback on this is that there is no switch on it. My other lights have a pull chain. This one has to be hooked up to a switched outlet or something and there's no way to hard wire it in from what I can tell. I was thinking a few of these on the ceiling could give me all the light I'd ever need, but I'm on the fence.

Have you tried the new LED lights. Those things are really bright. You can use a much smaller fixture because they are so bright.

[bbaxter]

I started building my new shop in the back yard. The foundation is in and the slab is poured. Lumber and trusses are on the site. Have a few walls layed out but none standing yet. 36 x 40 with a 12' ceiling.

[ElGuappo]

Dude those are crooked and I'm not even leaning. I'll repeat this while leaning in March. :-)

[grahamular]

Replaced the inducer fan motor and start capacitor on my furnace. I've had the part for a few weeks but had put off digging into the repair since the furnace had started working normally just after I bought the parts. But...a few hours after arriving at our cabin Friday night for a long ski weekend, I got an email from the thermostat that the house temp was down to 45F and dropping So had to cut the weekend trip short and drive 4 hours back home to do the repair in order to avoid the risk of pipes freezing. Good news is it seems to be working fine after the repair, and I used the "free" time at home to finally build my iRacing PC

Graham

[davintosh]

Having reached the boiling point more than a few times on home remodeling projects, I can relate to the frustration that led this guy to bulldoze his house. I think he went just a tad too far though.

http://launch.newsinc.com/share.html?tr ... d=28403485

[MicahO]

That's only about 25 minutes from me. I have to say it's sort of unsurprising for Middletown...

[demetk]

Having reached the boiling point more than a few times on home remodeling projects, I can relate to the frustration that led this guy to bulldoze his house. I think he went just a tad too far though.

I can relate to that. I got just a little carried away with was to be a little roof job.



Oh oh.



Now what?

[vinceg101]

^^^
Awesome new Master Suite?
Add some nice large dormers and windows for lots of light. Bedroom, bath, and study.
Lot's of potential.

[demetk]

^^^
Awesome new Master Suite?
Add some nice large dormers and windows for lots of light. Bedroom, bath, and study.
Lot's of potential.

When you have an 80's house "potential" is a word you use a lot. Eventually a full dormer was born.





And you're right on the mark Vince, it will be a new master suite. I didn't realize it was going to be that much work though. I'm just finishing off the sheetrock work.

[davintosh]

I think that's known as "project creep".

[davintosh]

This weekend I finished up re-grouting the tile surround above the tub in the main floor bathroom. Ugh. Now I know why my tile guy quoted me $800 to do the job. The tile was put in three years ago, but there were several places where the grout had popped out leaving a nasty gap, so we decided to bite the bullet and just do the whole works. Actually I only did it up to about eye-level because the upper ~2 feet doesn't see much water and was 99% intact.

I'd post a pic but it's really nothing to see, plus there's still plastic stretched over it so it can be used for showers again while we wait for the sealer to dry; the directions say to keep it dry for 72 hrs. I'm not sure how critical that is, but the plastic isn't much of a bother.

I also made a little more progress on clearing out some of the excess stuff clogging up my workroom; four old Macs that I picked up who knows how long ago for nothing, sold to a guy who went away smiling like he got the bargain of the century. Win-Win.

[Coldswede]

I did the Heat loss calc to see how much Ptex I have to run under the floors.

Seems like it will be a lot of work... maybe I'll just have a beer instead.

I am kidding, except about the work.

[davintosh]

I replaced a couple of light fixtures in the basement bathroom. I started out intending to replace the fixture over the vanity; the old one was a track light that didn't do a very good job of providing light for that spot, plus it used some halogen bulbs that were about $7 each. Replaced it with a regular 3-bulb vanity light that does the job much better.

But while I was shopping for that fixture I stumbled across an LED fixture that matched the style of the vanity light; for $20 I couldn't pass it up.


Instead of light bulb sockets, it's got this inside:


And when it's connected & turned on it does this:
[

The color is a bit harsher than I'd like, but it just provides light over the stool and for the shower, so NBD. No bulbs to replace, and it does its job without generating a lot of heat; I had it on for the ~2 hours it took to install the vanity light, and when I put a hand on the glass dome it was no warmer than the ceiling around it. And no bulbs to change, ever.

Pretty cool that LED has reached the point where fixtures are being designed around them and work this well.

[vinceg101]

We recently started on a Kitchen & Laundry Room remodel; we had been procrastinating too long and had to get over some work hurdles at the end of last year.
The Kitchen was one room that we didn't touch when we bought the house 16 years ago mostly because it was functioning and there were other spaces and items in the house that needed attention first. Well, time marched on and the economy took a dump and we procrastinated some more and blah blah blah...you know the drill. You've all been there at one point.

There are actually three rooms/spaces in all but are all connected along this side of the house: Laundry Room, Kitchen, and Breakfast Room. The house is a mostly original 1927 Transitional single story house pretty typical for the housing stock in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles. The house and garage were moved to its' current location (West Los Angeles) in 1950/51 when the Hollywood Freeway was built through the middle of the city; not knowing exactly where it came from, that move was approximately about 15 miles. (We recently did a major foundation & Living Room repair discussed here:http://www.mye28.com/viewtopic.php?f=2& ... n#p1226645 and here earlier in this thread.)

Anyway, the spaces were in desperate need of a remodel since the last time it was done back in the '70's. We really wanted to get our Breakfast Room back (the small room has been home to the refrigerator, toaster oven, and microwave). The cabinets and sink were original from 1927 and were rather crude field built units, but made out of the clearest, cleanest Vertical Grain Douglas Fir you have ever seen. Pretty typical for this era house. All the tile work on the counters and backsplash were original as was the sink; all pretty beat up after 86 years.

A few right before photos just after/while we were emptying the spaces; it's amazing how long it took to pack these rooms:
Shot looking down with the Laundry Room in the background:


Shot looking up into the Breakfast Room at the top of the photo:


Demo: Boom

Bam:

Crash:


Here it was cleaned up:



The things you find hidden: The instructions written by the foreman 86 years ago:


Roughs are done: Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC.




Framing for the new arches into the Dining Room:



Drywall and Plaster are underway and the finish coat is being put on as I write this:





One to the big hidden infrastructure costs was re-wiring this side of the house. We had a new 200A Service Panel installed last year but never parsed out the circuits and wire runs; with the new Kitchen needing a pile of dedicated circuits, we had to have this done now. It was an expensive, major PITA as they had to work in the attic and under the house running new conduit, isolating neighboring rooms, bypassing old ones and running new wire. A necessary upgrade.

Next up is cabinet assembly and base installation. We decided to go with Ikea cabinets with a custom wood fronts (doors, drawers, and panels). It's a good compromise and economical to boot; Ikea makes a pretty good cabinet for the money and all the hardware is Blum (one of the best German hardware companies). For the money, you can't beat Ikea; they are a fraction of the cost of any custom cabinets or even what you get at Home Depot. We were going to do Ikea anyway but we had a client who wanted to replace her Ikea kitchen last November and we were very impressed by how they turned out as was the high end custom General Contractor who assembled & installed them (the only reason for the replacement was a water leak took out pretty much everything in the house).
After that: flooring

Our Dining Room is serving as our temporary Kitchen for the next few months. This room has gotten the short end of the stick lately: last year at this time it was our Living Room while the real one was being remodeled.


Anyone want a nice used original 40" Wedgewood double oven? It's too big to go where the range needs to go in the new design. I hate to give it up, but we have no choice .

[Karl Grau]

Yikes! The guy that added the pass through at some point, really knew what he was doing.

[vinceg101]

^^^
Tell me about it; turns out the crappy upper cabinet they installed was actually holding the cove ceiling in the Dining Room up after they hacked the wall studs out.
We found that out the hard way: the cove ceiling cracked like mad once the cabinet was dropped. Nothing like "structural casework" .
Thank god this isn't a load bearing wall.

[Karl Grau]

I'm digging the 2x4s that are actually 2 inches by 4 inches. Did the house originally have knob and tube electrical?

[geordi]

I passed on this thread for awhile and missed out on some cool stuff. Nice work there Vince and Jim! Re-models, major or minor are the best. I've done several and five with Ramona. One was a scrape and rebuild in Old Town Alexandria on a lot platted by G.W. himself.

I have had many head scratching sessions when I opened up a wall and see someone else's work. Our house in OKC was a good case in example. When we got to remodeling the loft, the pressboard flooring was cupped along the edges. The PO's contractor used nails instead of screws. In the process of screwing the edges back down, there was an arc and the floor ignited. After putting the fire out, I found not only the that the subfloor was laid incorrectly… but the romex was run through the gaps in the bottom layer. Ripped up all the subfloor and found more horrors. The PO added another electrical box in the attic for his new AC condenser. He must have run short on the 8 gauge wire so he joined it with some left over 12 gauge romex. Just wire nutted it together and wrapped in a wad of electrical tap as big as softball. Why folks do stuff like this and take shortcuts, I'll never know.

Last year, we put a new roof on one of our rental houses in Ponca City. Day 1 & 2 hovered in the high 50s. Day 3 the high was 14 F. Not fun on the roof in that temp, but thankfully no ice or snow.



Ramona was handy with the roofing shovel.





Yuri and David suffered the most on day 3. I had loading and unloading duties with the front loader.

I think the powers to be don't think I have enough to do. The furnace suffered a voltage surge during one of the ongoing midnight hail & thunderstorms a couple days ago. Possibly fried the board but definitely toasted the blower on the 11 year old Bryant furnace. Parts are half the cost of a new furnace ($1200). Going try to replace ECM module on the blower motor and hope that was the only casualty.

More pics Jim & Vince!

[vinceg101]

I'm digging the 2x4s that are actually 2 inches by 4 inches. Did the house originally have knob and tube electrical?

Actually the lumber is true 2" thick but is 3 1/2" in the other dimension (a pretty fat 3 1/2", but clearly not 4"). The wall between the Laundry and the Closet behind it was framed with 2x3's which are almost square: 2"x2.5". Those studs dense, heavy Douglas Fir which have been baked and dried in the walls over the last 86 years. They are hard as rock.

The wiring is/was all in 1/2" black iron conduit; this house was obviously a higher quality build for the day. There were many things in this house that point to it being slightly more custom and having had a bigger budget behind it:
-Black Iron conduit & boxes (including in the detached Garage)
-Lighting: there were wall sconces everywhere in this house, the Living Room alone had 6 and even had a special project lamp which lit up the wall above the fireplace. When we bought the house and had it re-wired, the electricians found the projector still up there in the housing built into the vaulted ceiling (the house was remodeled in 1942 where a lot of sconces and this projector where covered over; date was confirmed when we pulled the newspaper out of one of the wall sconce boxes)
-High, coved plaster ceilings in all rooms (except the Kitchen)
-High vaulted ceiling in the large Living Room (13.5x22)
-Large Kitchen with attached Breakfast Nook with casement windows all around
-The Kitchen had some interesting features: namely a built-in trash chute with an opening in the tile countertop next to the sink. It emptied into a galvanized box under the counter with an access door to the outside. The hole in the counter had been covered over decades before we got this house, but they left the box there; when we installed a dishwasher, I removed it and the cabinet framing around it. The box still had the original sticker on it (what was left of it at least): it was made by the Acme Sanitary Company (or something like that) here in Los Angeles.
-Size: it's a 1,400 s.f. with only 2 Bedrooms; the Bedrooms are large (11x13 and 11.5x17) both with French Doors and Windows onto the rear yard. It has a large separate Dining Room with 8'-0" of French Doors onto the front porch
-True walk-in Closets for each Bedroom, each with small casement windows
-Hardwood flooring throughout except the Kitchen/Breakfast/Laundry which had Linoleum (always designed and built this way since they changed the sub-floor to 1 3/4" T&G planks). This alone is not uncommon for any house of this era, but is a high quality feature nonetheless (at least compared to track housing today). Some goes for the Bath with the 1" hex tiles on the floor.
-The Garage is an oversized one car (14x28) and had some kind of early version of drywall on the walls. It was thin and very brittle and had some kind of factory finish on it; I'm sure it was loaded with Asbestos and likely shortened my life when I took it down. I think I saw a tag on the back of a panel that marked it as being made here in Los Angeles; this house seems to have been a testbed for a lot of local specialty fittings.

It was built well and has stood the test of time including being moved across town, they even moved the garage with it.

Here is the complete photo folder of both the Living Room and ongoing Kitchen remodels:http://s499.photobucket.com/user/vinceg ... %20Remodel

[demetk]

I think the powers to be don't think I have enough to do.

LOL. Story of my life too.

Cool pics guys. It's comforting to see the DIY spirit in other aspects besides our bimmers.

Anyway, if you're interested to see more of my crap renovations, here are a couple of snapshots of some of the renovation work I did on POS this house. As I write this I'm wondering what possessed me to buy this money pit in the first place.
Oh well. It's only money and you can't take it with you.

I rebuilt my shed.
Nice thing about it is it doesn't leak anymore like the old POS.





Installed a couple of heat pump systems, one for the new addition and the other for the garage.
Got keep comfy working on my bimmers.



I installed the air handler horizontally in the closet of the addition.
It will be enclosed with sliding doors for easy access.



I rebuilt my stairs because when we pulled the burgundy (yuk) carpet up we found a million staples in the shity pine treads.
So I ripped this sucker out,



The loft was covered in the same burgundy carpet so that got ripped out at the same time.

The house was a construction zone for a couple of months as the stairs were being built and the bamboo flooring went in on the second floor.



But the end result was satisfying,




I'm still unsure what I will do about that crap beam though.

The addition is progressing somewhat at a leisurely pace because life got in the way.
But it has gone from this,



to this,



Comments on my tape and mud job are welcome.
I'm now working on the bathroom installing cement board and drywall.

cheers.

[geordi]

Awesome job! So its a two story addition? If thats a master suite in the making on the second level, you may find staying there all morning Drywall work looks well done. Last home re-no, we used venetian plaster in the rooms. I'm an ok drywaller, but the venetian plaster is more forgiving, though time consuming.

I'm still unsure what I will do about that crap beam though.

Is it you don't like that the beam white and it stands out? Can you strip and return it to its wood grain for staining? Or maybe paint it a darker color then sand it down to soften the white. If you want it white, you could paint your handrails, spindles and stair risers white and it would blend in better.

We had some very dark beams on our light colored ceiling that Ramona wanted to soften up. She painted them with a milky, white based paint (I'm trying to remember the brand). Then hand sanded them to the desired color. You can see them in the photo below. In the second pic, the wall surfaces are venetian plaster with yellow pigment added to the plaster. Yeah, that's a veneer stone. Ramona likes to take new and make old. The wet bar became my IT closet.

[vinceg101]

I think he's referring to the older one running parallel under the loft. It looks pretty checked with a bunch of crap on it.There's pretty much no way to clean it up
I would consider cladding it and painting it out like the other new beam it all you want to do is make it disappear. That way you make the staircase the centerpiece, which is where you put all you effort.

[demetk]

I think he's referring to the older one running parallel under the loft. It looks pretty checked with a bunch of crap on it.There's pretty much no way to clean it up
I would consider cladding it and painting it out like the other new beam it all you want to do is make it disappear. That way you make the staircase the centerpiece, which is where you put all you effort.

Exactly right. At the moment it's the focal point. I wish I could just replace it with some inset laminated beams and have a flat ceiling, but that white fake beam is actually 2 2x10's tying the front wall into the second floor. If the house had a actual ridge beam then it would be easy to cut everything out. So it just sits there until I decide what to do with it. My wife says the same thing, just cover it with drywall and that would make it disappear. But that would be the easy way out.

[ahab]

Rebuilt this thing after 25 or 30 years of neglect. Got a little frustrated at the corner there and need to rework it a bit.

[demetk]

Rebuilt this thing after 25 or 30 years of neglect. Got a little frustrated at the corner there and need to rework it a bit.

Quite nice. Next time, instead of a wrenching party at my place, I think I'll do a rock laying party.