My Most Expensive Mistake, to date; the Smithton house

Some pictures of the half the basement I'm thinking of drywalling. This is where the couch and tv are. No idea what the stains are from, but they're what started the repartee the tile program. 

 do you know what's great about the oscillating tools? They can cut romex so gently it won't even trip the breaker. Happened today when I was cutting through a peg boards to make room.

Cause this happened today. Meet the fabrication shop. 17.5x16.5, lined with shelves.

Annoyingly, the incandescent in the top right broke it's pull string when I shut it off.

There's still a butt load of wiring to be done, but the wall is up and the Fab shop lives. Unto I bring the other truck full of crap I have over next week.

So summer is coming to a close. The apple tree has tent worms and never so much as blossomed, same with the pear tree. 

I'll be cutting them down in the spring, and replacing them with 2 paw paws on one side, and a different apple tree and possibly a pomegranate on the other. Maybe a peach tree too somewhere.

After way too much deliberation, I've also figured out where the garden is going to go. I'm going to have a very busy fall and spring this year turning over the sod, tilling in compost, and getting things ready. I decided I'm going to go full idiot, 20x50 or so. Should provide plenty of room for fruits and veggies.

I still haven't gotten the last of my stuff/bulk of my tools moved over. I can't seem to line up money for a Uhaul, help, and sunny days all at the same time. 

Added a chalk board in Thing Ones room, she is happy, I'm surprised how well chalkboard paint works.

Still haven't figured out what to do about the crappy wall paper. 

In reply to RevRico :

My homeowners advice after 20-years 4 different properties: unless you're prepping it to sell, ignore as much of the cosmetic stuff as possible. 

Finally fixed a big glare problem in the downstairs living room.

 This thing that I hate, not just this one but this whole style I find obnoxious, was causing horrid glare on the tv.

 not anymore is not.

And of course, thanks Andy, flat head screws holding the old supports up, except for one.

Like damn man. Course thread 1 5/8" drywall screws, aka my default screw for just about everything, are cheap and easy. Why is everything in this house flat head or a nail?

Because it is an old house and was owned by an old man. My father in law kept every nail he ever pulled. He had buckets of them, and would just reuse as needed. I'm not condoning the behavior, but I have certainly seen it before. 

^You buy a place and the inevitable set of screw/bolt/nut drawers full of completely outdated hardware where everything extra coarse-threaded, in a numbered rather than measured size ("Hand me a No. 5"), mega rusted though never used, fuses that fit nothing made after 1960, cracked Bakelite, ungrounded electrical, certainly not a single thing metric etc. is sitting there on the wall acting like it's helpful when it's really just full of trash.

Well my winter project has been secured. My mom got into senior living apartments, so she's going to be selling the house. That meant o had to get the rest of my E36 M3 out of there.

If you saw the carport thread, you know that's a ton of E36 M3. 

20 for Uhaul was picked up this morning. Loaded almost everything up, including the trailer I've been neglecting for a couple years now, and finally got it all unloaded. Still another pickup load of hand tools, hardware, work table and welding carts to bring over.

But both garages are now FULL. Like packed to the brim full. So for the winter, I get to organize and sort everything out. Yay. But, maybe, hopefully, since I'll be starting with a blank canvas, I can actually stay relatively clean and organized in the future.

I'll post pictures of the clusterDuck that is my Fab shop tomorrow, for now, a hot shower and some cold pizza are calling my name.

Running a cat 6 cable to the bedroom today because a cable is cheaper than doing the whole house right now.

Floor joists are in the right orientation so I can run right along them. Get to the water access for the upstairs bathroom, where I want to run my cable through, and it's nailed up and taped in place with white masking tape.

Thanks again Andy.

Using plywood or drywall to fix this later

We got new curtains last week. I don't have a picture handy, sorry.

We got cheap insulated blackout curtains from Amazon for the dining room, upstairs living room and our bedroom to replace the thin white lacy ones that came with the house. 

Holy crap the difference. Yes, it's darker, so we're using more light, but they really do feel like they're helping the temperature by actually covering the windows and being a barrier instead of just a pass through. 

The 12ft length in the living room needs some reinforcement on the rod, but we're very happy overall for a $300 upgrade. 

We sat down and made a list the other day of things we want to do or change around the house and rough prices for materials to do it. We're going to attack one or two things a year to keep costs down. First up is the basement living room. Something down there stinks like hell, the wiring is horrible, the drop ceiling sucks, the lighting is bad. 

Plan is strip it entirely, rewire it new everything from the breaker out, and new light fixtures, possibly remote operated, then call my contractor up and have him do the drywall for the walls and ceiling. We'll also be replacing the sliding door that doesn't at the same time, as well as building the networking cabinet and hard-wiring the house.

My contractor will also be replacing the cooktop that I despise with the stove from my old house. The cabinet hole is 28 inches, the stove is 29.75. I'm paying someone to make it prettier than I could. But while he's here I'm going to have him mark the ceiling joists. With the height we have I've decided to make a ceiling mounted rack to hold all the pots and pans from. That frees up cabinet space and would make things easier to find. 

Ran a new circuit into the downstairs garage Sunday so I could get my veggie garden started indoors soon and made some discoveries.

The 10/3 going from the breaker panel to the upstairs dryer had 6 inches of stripped insulation in the middle of the black wire from when they cut the jacket to attach it. Next to looped together grounds because buying a $10 ground strip when they installed the panel must have been way too expensive.

There's a row of outlets on the back of the attached garage. 3 different kinds of outlets. No idea where they feed from but there's 12/2 coming out of the end and going up towards the laundry room. 

None of the 3 hole outlets in the basement are actually grounded.

The water main is not grounded.

I may actually rewire this whole house in conduit because I can't afford/don't have space/don't have time to strip the whole thing down to studs and rewire it properly. Especially with the lackadaisical arrangement of the panels that seem to share some circuits.

I'm just glad there hasn't been a fire yet, and very surprised at that.

We got a flipped house last time. You wanna find out the fastest, cheapest way to do remodeling? Buy a flipped house and then go to replace something. 

Oh, you grounded the bathroom light fixture to what, exactly? Drywall? Good idea. 

We had three electricians decline to touch the kitchen, saying pretty much what you said: “I’m not sure how it’s working and why it hasn’t started a fire yet”

I feel for you, man. 

 from the wall behind the oil tank

From the outside right wall, when facing from the street.

So good news is I found the leaks in the garage. Bad news, is physically impossible to solve this correctly from the outside. Especially the back wall behind the oil tank. Looks like a few gallons of drylok extreme are in my future, as long as that's not oil or latex paint. I sure hope it isn't, because drylok specifically says it won't work with oil or latex paint. And I really, really, really don't want to have to try to strip all the paint

Today was a $100,000 mistake. 
 

Concrete guy has been working on a 120' long retaining wall 9' high for about 3 weeks. Just finished. 

I was double checking something and noticed a discrepancy on they drawing. I called the civil engineer and he said the structural design of the wall was done by the structural engineer- I should call him. 
 

Called the structural engineer to ask my question, and it wasn't long before we realized I didn't even have his design. The civil engineer had pasted a typical detail into his drawings, and FORGOT to include the structural engineer's design for the wall. We built off the drawing supplied. 
 

Entire wall built not to spec. $70,000 wall needs to be torn down, hauled off, re-graded, and built again from scratch. 
 

I need another beer. 

Civil engineer says, "Gee, I'm sorry"

 that looks much better. In addition to getting rid of that ugly wall, I've trimmed the hell out of the Apple and pear tree, despite the fact they're coming down all together this year. Also cleaned up a lot of the ornamental overcrowding crap all around the property.

Also a call into my carpenter to finally get rid of that stupid berkeleying coil cooktop and replace the sliding door in the basement.

I like these fake spring days.

SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:

Civil engineer says, "Gee, I'm sorry"

Now that's what E&O insurance is for.

SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:

Civil engineer says, "Gee, I'm sorry"

Damn that sounds awful. Assuming this is a concrete wall.. Were there shop drawings submitted for the rebar and formwork?

In reply to RevRico :

My wife calls these days" The Spring of Deception"lol

SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:

Today was a $100,000 mistake. 
 

Concrete guy has been working on a 120' long retaining wall 9' high for about 3 weeks. Just finished. 

I was double checking something and noticed a discrepancy on they drawing. I called the civil engineer and he said the structural design of the wall was done by the structural engineer- I should call him. 
 

Called the structural engineer to ask my question, and it wasn't long before we realized I didn't even have his design. The civil engineer had pasted a typical detail into his drawings, and FORGOT to include the structural engineer's design for the wall. We built off the drawing supplied. 
 

Entire wall built not to spec. $70,000 wall needs to be torn down, hauled off, re-graded, and built again from scratch. 
 

I need another beer. 

Jesus, that's not good. Since it was 9 foot I'm betting it was built very strongly and will be a bitch to take it down too

we have chickens again!!

8, 6 are supposed to be pullets, 2 bigger were just bonuses. I'm cinnamon queen, possibly the green eggers again, and... I'm drawing a blank

Sapphire gems - black

Cinnamon queen - brown and tan

Possibly green eggers have the lighter wings.

Not sure on the big ones, wyandotts maybe, or possible green eggers.

An odd possible development in my ongoing water pressure problem.

I see in the downstairs thinking room last night while the demon was in the bath upstairs. I heard the bathtub drain open, and then saw my shower start dripping. I hit the toilet sprayer and water pressure was through the roof.

Could there be something, bad drop angle on the main drain, air leak somewhere, letting air into the system when there's a large amount of water rushing through the drain?

All the big stuff is piled up for NissanTechs smoker, all the little shot is making its way towards the burn barrel. I've got way too much scrap wood and brush to burn in this dinky barrel, I might have to put it in the dumpster when we get one.

and in its final form. That pile by the wheelbarrow, that is much smaller than I'd anticipated, is the smoker sized wood. All the other little shot is piled up along the driveway. Maybe I need to borrow the wood chipper again. 

If I could have walked into lowes or harbor freight and bought one, I'd have an electric right now. The majority of what I need to do would fit in the 1.5" throat. But I wanted this done TODAY.

 so there's 2 coops. The big one for the 4 that are the same, and the little one for the others.

Well today was moving day

One just didn't want to let go of Dana. Totally scared of the grass. They're getting better now about it though.