The Super Official Homeowners Thread

[Apoc]

I don't actually have anything to talk about right now, but it seems like there's good reason for us to have this.

GO!

[Senor_Taylor]

So, I got approved for a 30 year note at 40% non-fixed. This place is in a good neighborhood and I think it'll clean up nicely. The only problem is the realtor won't let me do a walk through because of something about vagrant meth dealers, or vacationing math teachers, or something. He assures me the backyard pool is nice though. Thoughts?

[*insertusernamehere*]

So, I got approved for a 30 year note at 40% non-fixed. This place is in a good neighborhood and I think it'll clean up nicely. The only problem is the realtor won't let me do a walk through because of something about vagrant meth dealers, or vacationing math teachers, or something. He assures me the backyard pool is nice though. Thoughts?

I'll sell you this for the same price. Well insulated, they say. No pool. Drive throughs welcome.

[RawrImAMonster]

I just bought a house in downtown Harrisonburg and I'm currently in the process of adding a half bathroom in the semi finished basement. This spring I'm planning on refinishing this entire room (34x11.5 feet roughly).

[davej]

Fun. If you need any tools, feel free to raid my garage.

[RawrImAMonster]

I worked with my grandad building houses throughout all of my teenage years so he has most things I'll end up needing I think. Neither of us has a hammer drill though. Happen to have one of those for when I do the rest of the framing in that room?

[davej]

shoot, it's in NY at my father in laws. Sounds like a good excuse to get another though. 'Steven needed to borrow it"

[D_Eclipse9916]

Going to be watching this thread. Finishing up our basement right now and will be attacking our master bath and bedroom (last rooms to not have been renovated by us in the past year).

A lesson I have learned the wrong way is listen to your instincts and not going "we can add it later". Our basement on the right side was an exercise room but we couldnt decide on what the left side would be. We had a pool table to go there, but weren't sure if we would use it. Well of course we finished the room without adding provision for anything. Never put up the pool table, had it as a basic "living room for the guest bedroom" since our guest bedroom is downstairs. Now that Jess is pregnant we wanted a wide open space. Well movie room it is since the only thing that takes floor spaces are the chairs at the back of the room, leaving tons of play room on the floor.

Spent the last couple weeks running power/HDMI/speakers through walls and ceilings, fixing drywall, and deciding on lay out. Cutting up walls that we JUST had painted a year ago. Whoops.

[Ryan T]

Along the same lines as DJ, if there is one thing I can add as someone who remodeled my entire home myself; think ahead, like 3 or 4 steps ahead. We went all gung-ho into putting up the drywall in our basement back in the spring without thinking about changing outlets, figured I'd do it later. Come to find out that adding the thickness of drywall to the paneling already there didn't leave me enough slack in the old outlets to pull them out and replace them. So our nice blue walls and white trim were left with black outlets. Only option left besides butchering the drywall is to change the covers and paint the outlets themselves.

There's a thread covering most of my remodel and work in the projects thread, but this will be a great thread for people to ask homeowner related maintenance/service questions!

[D_Eclipse9916]

Isn't paint on the outlets against code? Bah that sounds miserable!


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[Apoc]

This is why I pay people to do shit... I know I'd screw it up and it would piss me off to no end. I figure I'm saving money because DIY would lead to an argument that ended in divorce, costing me half my stuff.

[WRXtranceformed]

I'm all for doing stuff myself around the house (ie we hung a bunch of blinds, etc) but also firmly in the "pay for it if the job is long/hard/sucks" camp with Chris for stuff like hanging drywall or ripping out flooring that's not carpet. My time off is too valuable to stress myself out. I can definitely appreciate the DIY feeling of accomplishment and money savings though, I just think those savings have diminishing returns when you think about your sanity.

So we've been dealing with some plumbing and leaking porch issues due to a poor gable design. I'll post up some pics of the sludge that has been exploding out of our downstairs tub later...fun

[D_Eclipse9916]

I think a lot of DIY stuff is mainly for my own sanity. I actually can tolerate imperfection when I do it myself. If I pay someone I expect it perfect and it always disappoints. A majority of the house renovation was done by someone else for time and sanity of my wife. That said the things that don't affect us everyday I prefer to do.


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[WRXtranceformed]

I think a lot of DIY stuff is mainly for my own sanity. I actually can tolerate imperfection when I do it myself. If I pay someone I expect it perfect and it always disappoints. A majority of the house renovation was done by someone else for time and sanity of my wife. That said the things that don't affect us everyday I prefer to do.
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Yes I definitely hear you on that, being a perfectionist I'm pretty much never happy with work that contractors do. A big exception to that was our last flooring company who did a ridiculously good job on the hardwoods in our townhouse.

So overall our new place has been fantastic, we love it and our builder is one of the better ones in the area. Unfortunately, our cul de sac got a new construction manager mid-build and even more unfortunately the new construction manager is probably the laziest most incompetent and uncaring professional I've ever met. In fact, our neighbors haven't signed off on their 30 day walkthrough with him over a year later...I saw one of them screaming at him in her driveway yesterday about something :lol:

I could write a fun laundry list of stuff we had to have fixed before our 30-day (I made them run a completely new, external lineset for our heat pump due to an in wall leak) but what has been ungoing is our plumbing issues. We have had 3 separate instances where so much backpressure has built up in the sewer pipes that waste has actually backed up into our downstairs tub. The toilet in the same room would also bubble like crazy and this time the pressure actually blew the wax ring. Here's the latest blowout:




We do not flush feminine products, use a ton of TP at a time or flush things down the drain that we shouldn't, so I knew it wasn't us. The first and second time were construction debris related and a break in the line under the soil in the front yard that had to get fixed. This time they couldn't find anything with a few camera sweeps so I had them literally crawl up in the attic, cut all three sewer stacks, run cameras down each and reconnect them. There are still chunks of drywall and stuff coming up from the tub so I have a feeling that there's still some debris in that part of the line that's causing some kind of backpressure. Hence my question about a beastmode shpp vac, I removed some marble sized chunks of drywall during the last blowout but i'm going to try to suck out the rest this weekend.

Oh, and they are tearing off a bunch of the fiberboard in our front porch roof to check the electricals for damage / insulation for mold after the gable there has been leaking during really hard rain storms (the Hardiplank will be fine so doesn't need to come off and the house wrap did its job of keeping the water from coming inside the house it looks like):



On a "brighter" note (you'll see what I did there), I replaced all of our recessed lighting and some of the other lamps we use the most with LEDs from Amazon. The good ones are SO much cheaper on Amazon, even vs. Walmart. I replaced 20 cans for like $112 (with two extras for spares). Here's what I bought (2-6 packs and one 10 pack): <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DE23PUW/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DE ... UTF8&psc=1</a><!-- m -->

Our lighting was already the CFL stuff which is pretty energy efficient but it is super annoying how they have a "warm up" period when you hit the light switch...these were especially bad. They also have kind of a pinkish hue which is really noticeable on warm up and gradually fades to a more normal yellow light. The old bulbs were 750 lumens, the new ones are 850. Noticeably brighter (I probably wouldn't go brighter than 850) and much better, more natural light at 2700k with the benefit of "instant on" and even better energy efficiency. We will also probably sell the house before we need to change any of these bulbs :thumbup: Some pics:

The only before and after I could find (CFL on left, LED on right) from our porch lights:

All LED:




Definitely a great upgrade imo!

[JPolen01]

Got our 1098 form for the mortgage. We are paying $213 a month in PMI...

[Apoc]

2700K LED is definitely the way to go - I replaced pretty much everything in our house over the last year.

If you ever need dimmable, don't just buy any ole LED. Not only are not all LED dimmable, but even some of the dimmable ones don't work that well because some dimmers still send low voltage to the bulb when off (they flicker). I've tried a bunch and finally settled on TCP and Philips. The Philips actually seems warmer than 2700K at low power; we have them in wall scones and they are hallway lights.

TCP 60W equivalent: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://amzn.to/2jKopYC">http://amzn.to/2jKopYC</a><!-- m -->
Philips 40W equivalent: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://amzn.to/2jKtS1z">http://amzn.to/2jKtS1z</a><!-- m -->

[.RJ]

This is why I pay people to do shit... I know I'd screw it up and it would piss me off to no end. I figure I'm saving money because DIY would lead to an argument that ended in divorce, costing me half my stuff.

I hate paying people for things that I'm capable of either doing, or learning to do myself, like wasting 4 hours fixing a fuckin' coolant leak on the Audi. I have a compulsion about being self sufficient. That said, most of the shit in the house I've figured out how to fix, same/next day for way less than paying a guy... in the past year, the washing machine, stove, garbage disposal, removing a built-in bookshelf, and I forget what else. Finished out the other half of my basement a while back, except for drywall, always outsource drywall. I feel like I learn a little each time. Although, I did pay someone to put my deck up, and that was a huge fuckin' bill but money well spent. Dudes had my shit up in 4 days, it looks absolutely fantastic. I remember thinking I could have probably done that but I would have been working on the thing all damn summer and it wouldnt have turned out nearly as nice. Those guys were A+ would recommend.

[Ryan T]

Isn't paint on the outlets against code? Bah that sounds miserable!

:dunno: Probably, but it's done all the time. When I was helping do maintenance at Pheasant Run when painted over them all the time doing turns between student move-out and move-in. Grab a roller and paint the entire wall, outlets and all. We're going to be a little more careful with these though. Obviously turn the power off and paint by hand with a detail brush.

Also, this won't be the first code questionable thing I've done haha

[WRXtranceformed]

2700K LED is definitely the way to go - I replaced pretty much everything in our house over the last year.

If you ever need dimmable, don't just buy any ole LED. Not only are not all LED dimmable, but even some of the dimmable ones don't work that well because some dimmers still send low voltage to the bulb when off (they flicker). I've tried a bunch and finally settled on TCP and Philips. The Philips actually seems warmer than 2700K at low power; we have them in wall scones and they are hallway lights.

TCP 60W equivalent: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://amzn.to/2jKopYC">http://amzn.to/2jKopYC</a><!-- m -->
Philips 40W equivalent: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://amzn.to/2jKtS1z">http://amzn.to/2jKtS1z</a><!-- m -->

Yes +1 for getting the dimmable LEDs. All of mine are indoor outdoor too.

Jon that sucks @ $213

[Apoc]

The way RJ feels about paying someone to do his deck is the same way I feel about most things. I mean, I'll replace outlets/faucets and fix small things that break, but that's it. I just save things up and then our handyman come and do a six hour day. It's also slightly different for us because our house is 80 years old, so it's nice to have someone that understands all the nuances of things like lathe and plaster walls.