The Super Official Homeowners Thread

[NTIman]

Maybe Scotty can install some vacuum transport tubes to complete the look

Bonus points if he slips a dye pack into his wife's purse before she leaves one morning

[ScottyB]

The river stone looks great! I generally don't like stone because it reminds me of the banks from the 80s in my area. You're is done really well and it fits the yard/house well.

I just moved a bunch of stone out of my flower beds and replaced it with mulch, so I definitely don't envy the work you put into that, but I do envy the time you've been able to put into it.

Keep it up, everything looks great!

thanks, honestly i would have preferred mulch but it just wasn't gonna happen with our no gutter thing, so we had no choice.

that's a hilarious reference and 100% correct from my 80's childhood memories.

vacuum tubes from my mailbox to my front door would really tie the landscaping together.

[NTIman]

Ah, forgot about the no gutter thing. Makes sense for sure. Looks good though!

Unfortunately this reminds me that I put down my mulch *before* I washed my siding, which is probably a horrible order of operations.

[JPolen01]

Dropped by the new house today for the walk through. Boy is the grass in bad shape. Got random patches of dark green, super long grass, dead grass, and just scraggly shit everywhere. We move Saturday so I've got a ton of shit to do. Am I out of luck this year to get this grass in shape? Wait until fall to aerate and seed?

[Sully]

Yes. You'll be in an uphill battle all summer. It can be done but you'll spend a fortune keeping it watered. Aerate and seed in the the fall

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[Apoc]

Dropped by the new house today for the walk through. Boy is the grass in bad shape. Got random patches of dark green, super long grass, dead grass, and just scraggly shit everywhere. We move Saturday so I've got a ton of shit to do. Am I out of luck this year to get this grass in shape? Wait until fall to aerate and seed?

Seed, with compost on top, around when football starts. Aerate at the same time. 

Anything that germinates now is probably getting scorched in summer until you $$$$water the shit out of it.

[Senor_Taylor]

Quarantine does funny things to the mind.
 


Our deck was ugly, and downright dangerous for your feet.
(Picture from 2018)


[imghttps://imgur.com/ZPn5UmJ][/img]

We decided to redo the deck for the landlord if he paid for supplies. Took about a week on and off, we flip, recut, and sanded every board that we could. Then replaced the rest (6x2x16 pressure treated lumber is HEAVY).











We did some sanding and staining after it all dried



Along the way I decided to start making stuff. Made saw horses that are ugly, made a work bench and some shelves.





Landlord ended up giving us some extra money and bought me a sander. The scrap wood was useful for learning building things and I even used some of it to fix the top of the fence in the backyard.

[ScottyB]

nice work! deck looks awesome now, honestly if i was your landlord i'd be pretty dang pleased.

[Deceus]

Working through some deck work of my own. It all started with a single board ...

Some of my front steps were starting to crack pretty bad. Two of them were outright split down the middle for most of the length. Was waiting for it warm up and stop raining before really diving in. The whole deck really needed a bit of attention. One day I noticed a chunk missing from one of the boards near the bottom of the staircase. Didn't think much of it at the time but this deck is barely 8 years old, how did anything rot all the way through? Plucked a few more chunks off and I found my answer.





Someone either used interior screws or the world's shittiest exterior screws while building this deck. Looks like they rusted out real good and started letting water in. Out it all came after some serious effort. The few screws that didn't immediately strip, simply snapped off. I could've gone to town with the sawzall but didn't feel like redoing everything, so I pryed it all off. Screw by screw, board by board. Was a LONG weekend, definitely should've just hacked it up.



Figured it was a good plan as any to start tackling everything at once. Replaced the steps and started sanding everything down. (You can see how bad I let it get)

Had some solid help from a pro




After nearly cutting off a couple fingers trying to take a little off the top of some 8ft boards, I figured it was finally time to build the woodshop a bench. Found some inspiration on a pintrest post and just kinda started winging it. Pretty happy how it turned out even though I need to fix a few things.





Added the table saw because ripping 4x8 boards solo without an outfeed table also gets kinda dicey.

BONUS: Threw some pegboard up on one of the unfinished sections. It was entirely too fulfilling putting all this stuff up.



Got to thinking and realized I needed to tackle the siding first or risk ruining the deck. Just had someone come and give it a "soft wash" in May. It was ready for a fresh coat of whatever I wanted as nothing really remained from whenever it was stained last. Settled on PPG/Sikkens Pro Luxe and picked up their solid stain for the deck. Found nothing but good reviews on it but I guess we'll see.

The siding was definitely a lot of trial and error. The stain was too runny for a roller and definitely wasn't going to be able to reach much of it with a brush. Settled on using a Shurline deck pad I bought for the deck stain but ended up rolling that as it was super thick. Almost done now, have to go back and touch up some spots and order more. Apparently 5 gallons was only enough to do 2 sides of the house.

About the time I regretted taking this on:


One side down:


Upstairs mostly done:


Needed a break from the madness but couldn't say no to a 70 degree weekend in the middle of June. Finishing up the bottom deck now. Have to wait 2 weeks to finish the back of the house and the other side. Won't be as hard to reach those as it's level ground and I won't be 8 feet under the first floor.

Before/after: (no idea how I'm hitting those shingles up top)



Hopefully finishing the bottom deck this week while it's still 70s and not 90s.

One coat of one third is all I had the energy for, the railings took forever to both prep and paint.

[Kaan]

need more tips on doing the siding... we are due next year for a reseal of our cedar siding... two sides of the house are SUPER easy and two sides need scaffolding. we do have a couple of boards that finally split (house is 20 years old) and some of the trim work needs to be redone thanks to some carpenter bees

[Deceus]

need more tips on doing the siding... we are due next year for a reseal of our cedar siding... two sides of the house are SUPER easy and two sides need scaffolding. we do have a couple of boards that finally split (house is 20 years old) and some of the trim work needs to be redone thanks to some carpenter bees

Shurline makes some good stuff. This is their applicator I used: 



Eventually settled into a groove of running it horizontally across the top of each board and then quickly backbrushing the bottom half once the pad starts running of juice. Getting it to not run didn't seem feasible/possible so I just learned to control it. Works real well when I don't have the pad on a 16ft pole and got some real good results when I could do it properly. I love the shorter Shurline pole too, makes refilling the pad pretty easy on a ladder. So far I've gotten away with just a 23ft multi position ladder, a 5-8ft pole and 8-16ft pole. 

The girlfriend picked one of these up "because it said stain on it" (lol) and it's actually been a lifesaver for blending and getting the underside of the overlap.

[Senor_Taylor]

Dang Chris, I didn't realize you were restaining the whole house...

[HAULN-SS]

looks good but what a pain in the ass

[Deceus]

Dang Chris, I didn't realize you were restaining the whole house...

Yeah this project really kinda grew. I was honestly just intending to replace a few boards on the staircase lol. Apparently the siding needs a maintenance coat every 2-3 years with a semi-transparent stain to maintain UV protection and keep the wood from turning grey. That gave me the motivation to figure out how to do it myself as I'm sure it wasn't going to be cheap to have someone else do it.

Next place is DEFINITELY going to have composite decking and vinyl siding.

[JPolen01]

I spent about 5 hours yesterday installing lattice (chicken wire on the backside) around the bottom of my new shed. Saw a ground hog lurking around so decided I might as well use the nice weather to get this project done. Pretty easy, just time consuming to unroll and staple the chicken wire.


The backyard has been quite the project. Had a concrete company pour a stamped patio which turned out much better than I expected. A friend and I built the sitting wall around it and my mother in law helped me with the landscaping. I I needed to backfill a lot around the backside of the wall. Ordered 5 yards of topsoil and spent 2 solid days moving it around the yard. Thank god for a dump trailer and mower.

I cut in the walking path and spent wayyyy too much money on decorative river rock. The wall isn't perfect but any means but it costs me 1/3rd of what the concrete company wanted to build it so I'm very happy with it.

[Senor_Taylor]

Shit dude. You have a YARD now?!?! Living large.

[.RJ]

Nice work, y'all. I need to replace the deck boards and railings on my house, i'm debating just fixing the ones that are really bad vs replacing the whole mess.

[Senor_Taylor]

Nice work, y'all.  I need to replace the deck boards and railings on my house, i'm debating just fixing the ones that are really bad vs replacing the whole mess.

Flipping and sanding may be a good option.

[HAULN-SS]

I had wood railings on my WV deck. Lasted about 7-8 years I guess. I replaced them with vinyl..can do it yourself if you have a chop saw. Even doing it yourself, it was expensive as shit. I think 24' of railing was like $1200 with all the brackets and extra shit needed

[Deceus]

I had wood railings on my WV deck. Lasted about 7-8 years I guess. I replaced them with vinyl..can do it yourself if you have a chop saw. Even doing it yourself, it was expensive as shit. I think 24' of railing was like $1200 with all the brackets and extra shit needed

Yeah throwing down some trex boards wasn't too bad when I priced it out. But the cost to get matching railings was indeed outrageous and was the dealbreaker for me. I'd need almost 50' of it but man there are some good looking options out there.