What's under your lip/in your nose right now? - Part 2

[rothenbj]

View attachment 863617 View attachment 863619 A little DIY homeowner's advice. Pick up a Little Giant ladder with a work platform if you have any high areas you have to reach. I bought their 17' from an ad on FB for $125 and I wish I had it years ago. I think new it was about $250. I was going to head up to HF and pick up one of theirs on sale for $99 but they don't have the platform that you can stand on while on the ladder.

I have an old Werner quad fold that I needed 12' of it's 16' total length. It fit fine to get me up to the 16 or so foot peak I have in my sunroom but I had to work on the top area and down the angled walls of the room. I guess when they put the room on and painted it, they hadn't used primar on the bare sheetrock and I ended up having scally, loose areas from the top down the walls a few feet.

The little Giant can easily be changed from 4' to full extension, one foot at a time and it's a lot lighter than the Werner. I spent a lot of time up there scrapping and sanding, then putting Pro999/Rx35 a problem solver something or other they recommended at HD after I showed them some pictures of my mess. After that dried I put a skim coat over the bad areas and then sanded it relatively smooth.

I fell in love with that ladder real quick.View attachment 863617

 

[hittman]

I have a werner ladder that is similar. I hadn't seen one with a platform on it. I got mine several years ago for xmas from my inlaws. It's great for what I need to do. It was nice being able to have each side different lengths for working on stairs.

 

[rothenbj]

Yeah my Werner has 4-4' sections so you only have a choice of 4',8',12' or 16' and it is heavy. These new guys make life so, so much easier.

 

[hittman]

I don’t remember how many holes are in the sides to lock in the pins but there are several.

 

[Waho]

My wife talked to the project manager today, his estimate is 6-7 weeks, probably less. Depends on the drywallers and how quickly they can do their thing. But after they finish up it'll go very fast. I'm really hoping we don't end up being a horror story because being without a kitchen for an extended period is gonna suck.

I'll be sure to take pictures of the process as it's going to be a heck of a transformation when complete.

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[hittman]

Our stairs going up and stairs going down to the basement are between our kitchen and living room so we could never have the open concept in our house. I’m ok with that but would love to have our kitchen remodeled some day. It’ll for sure have to wait until our youngest finishes college.

 

[The Rebel]

Waho, drywallers are different breed. My father in law, who is a builder, has went through several in his career and he said the best ones are usually the hard partying types that play as hard as they work. When I was finishing our basement I hired some cats off Craigslist, not even sure if they were insured. But man those guys busted ...., screwed and mudded 800 square feet in a day. Came back the next day sanded the seams and stamped the ceiling. Two days, done and gone. Excellent work and very affordable. My next project is cement. I have a son who'll be driving this summer and I need a place for him to park. So I'm gonna have an side extension added to my existing driveway along with a pad poured for my camper. I'll be back to Craigslist looking to get it done. Always guys on there looking for side jobs.

 

[Waho]

Here's the current view from the cooking side of the kitchen. I hear the staircase woes, the main reason we're moving the kitchen across the house is that staircase to the basement being located right in the kitchen. It's finished and makes a great den, and the stairs being there makes it easy to communicate between floors but really kills the available size of the kitchen. Being a ranch style house, that wall on the left runs half the length of the house to the bedroom side and is getting removed to really open the place up.

Drywallers are something else. The remodel company has a couple crews they work with. The crew that did our bathroom did a good job, the extra time came from them having other work while our smaller project was going on. The job they were doing previous to ours ran a day long, and they let the mud dry an additional day before sanding due to issues at another job.

On your partyer's note, my friends Dad (Rick) does drywall and another of our friends (Derick) hired him to do some drywall at a place he was working on. Derick came home from work at 7am, left the door unlocked with a note he was napping and would head down to lend a hand when they got there and woke him up. Rick and one of his friends showed up massively hungover at 9am and managed to do the entire job before Derick woke up for work, ceilings and all.

 

[hittman]

That sounds like it's going to be a really nice set up when it's finished. Our house is a two story and the basement is unfinished and full of stuff. I claimed one side for my guitar stuff and exercise equipment but the wife keeps dragging stuff downstairs and it's starting to crowd my side. I don't know if I'll ever finish the basement. We've talked about doing an industrial type thing down there where you stain the ceiling and studs. It's actually nice not having it finished for when I need to run wires or make repairs.

 

[Waho]

Of the entire house I have a corner of the basement I framed out and finished as a mancave/gun room. It catches overflow from the utility side of the basement on occasion, stuff my wife would rather just shut behind a door rather than deal with when we have company over. Not to mention it's the location for our cats litter box since she can squeeze in and the dog can't get in there and sample the "treats" left behind.

When I finished out that corner I naively thought the two outlets and one ceiling light fixture would suffice. I added another outlet and light fixture by using outlet box extension brackets and running conduit. Gives it a cool industrial look if you don't mind seeing the conduit.

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[hittman]

I kind of like seeing the conduit. Tell me this, when your wife dumps stuff down there, does she ever come back and take care of it? Mine seldom does. She'll do a sweep of the house cleaning up for visitors and conveniently dump boxes of stuff in the basement and forget about it. We used to have our cat's litter box in the basement before he died. We've still got the dog but she almost never makes her way to the basement and we keep the door closed most of the time.

 

[Waho]

My wife does the exact same. There's a wide variety of things she's "getting to" at any point in time. If I take it upon myself to take care of it she insists she was working on it and gets half angry at me.

Typed as I look out my window at the rocks she put in the lawn as Halloween graveyard decorations that she's "working on" picking up that I'll have to pick up in the spring while she gets mad at me. Note that I offered to take care of it when we took Halloween stuff down, but she said don't worry about it...

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[hittman]

That’s too funny waho. I thought my wife was the only one. This past summer my wife and oldest daughter went through a bunch of clothes and stuff in the attic and were going to have a yard sale. Everything was piled in boxes and bags on the couch and love seat in the basement. They ended up not having the yard sale which was partly blamed on me for no apparent reason and to this day that stuff sits there. It’s on the opposite side of the basement where my stuff is so I’m not too concerned about it.

 

[Waho]

which was partly blamed on me for no apparent reason

This made me laugh to the point of tears, my exact life in 10 words.

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[The Rebel]

Gentlemen I feel your pain. We have a separate storage room in our basement that I built wooden shelves in with the left over framing studs when we finished the basement. For the first five years my wife was really good at putting stuff away like decorations, summer/winter clothes etc. She would box them and stack them on the shelves. Then it started where she would at least keep the boxes in the storage area, I usually had to put them away as some where too heavy for her to get on the shelves. Now most of the time she just open the door to the basement and sets the box by the stairs so one of the men in the house notices it and takes it down for her. And don't get me started on her and the garage cause that's just a whole other can of worms...

 

[hittman]

Talk about bad luck. My wife called me yesterday after lunch that the power went off and came back on at home but the furnace wasn't working. I left work early to work on it. I keep a few parts on hand for it since I know how old it is. Luckily it was just the over temperature limit switch and I had one. I got the fixed fairly quickly. Then this morning I came downstairs to leave and heard the sump pump running but it didn't stop. I didn't realize it was supposed to get so cold overnight and had gotten down to 14 and the sump drain line outside had frozen. It has been so warm that I forgot to unhook the long drain line and hook up the short 4" drain hose. Our yard sits lower by quite a bit than my neighbor on that side so drainage is always an issue. I know better but just forgot so had to work outside in 14 degree temperature and get the line unhooked and flowing with the bigger pipe. I had jiggled the pipe enough that when I came downstairs, the backflow coupler had come loose a litte and sprayed water on the wall. One more reason to not finish the basement.

 

[rothenbj]

This thread is nearly, a bit over 2,000 posts, from where the original got cut off way back when.

The original ran from 2009 to 2012, this one will be over eight years.

 

[Waho]

You really got me thinking Roth.

I think is reading/posting in this thread is one of the longest term things I've participated in.

I've been with my wife a little over 10 years, worked for GM a little under 10 years, this thread roughly 8 years, owned my home almost 6 years.

Crazy to think about how time just flies.

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[rothenbj]

Yeah Waho, you've become one of the longest posters here. When you posted that you've been in your house for six, I thought it was only two or three. time passages.

time passages al stewart - Bing

 

[hittman]

I don’t remember, we’re you here before me Roth?