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Official Pit Home Improvement/DIY thread

So just learned that I was accomplishing nothing for years by plugging a surge protector into an ungrounded outlet with a 2 prong to 3 prong adaptor. Whoops.
 
DeaconCav06 said:
Apparently our shower pan is leaking because water came through the ceiling in the garage last night. According to the plumber we can fix it but the whole shower was installed incorrectly so we probably need to redo the whole thing.

I’m pretty sure this was a DIY job.
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So, the toilet flooded (dumb dumb fiance flushed paper towels after cleaning up dog vomit) in one of the upstairs bathrooms, and we had a decent amount of water leak through the ceiling, particularly a light fixture. This was a while ago. Very similar thing also happened when using the garden tub in the other bathroom, but it didn't even overflow.

I'm assuming the original contractors skimped out on waterproofing obviously, but anyone have any better ideas as to the problems/how to best address?
 
DeaconCav06 said:
Apparently our shower pan is leaking because water came through the ceiling in the garage last night. According to the plumber we can fix it but the whole shower was installed incorrectly so we probably need to redo the whole thing.

I’m pretty sure this was a DIY job.
Click to expand...

Yeah, shower pan issues make sense - if you don't waterproof (like, really waterproof) a horizontal surface you're just asking for trouble. I feel confident in what we have going on at this point. We did 4mil plastic behind the CBU, both of which overlap with the tub lip, so it's technically waterproofed and would have to go through the CBU first.
In some various searching on the internet I did see a few blogs of folks showing their DIY shower installation where they were doing a shower stall and didn't waterproof anything or do a proper shower pan (here's an example: http://www.prairiesmokepress.com/diy-bathroom-shower-stall-tile-installation-tips/).
 
So it appears very difficult to find a carpenter/contractor to do "small" jobs around here. I have a balcony that needs a railing rebuilt that's a unique design; and either it's too small a job for the big guys, or too complicated for the little guys. This is why I end up doing everything myself, I was hoping to sit this one out because it's a bazillion degrees outside.
 
A contractor friend tells me this will be more and more so.

Apparently the NC Pubs in charge, while reportedly doing a lot of good things for “business” have done at least one thing that’s “bad”. Something about contractors having to collect taxes for the state on subcontractor services. But if it’s a big capital improvement project (permit requiring) you are exempt from this tax collecting burden.

Now there’s lots of audits and contractors are fleeing the smaller jobs. My friend said he only does jobs that are capital improvement (permit requiring) and no longer any repair/maintenance type work.

I probably got something wrong in this recounting, but the gist is I am advised it will be increasingly difficult to find people to do smaller jobs.


Edited slightly and to add this link that explains something about this: https://gontramarchitecture.com/new-sales-tax-rules-construction-projects-nc/
 
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tiltdeac said:
So just learned that I was accomplishing nothing for years by plugging a surge protector into an ungrounded outlet with a 2 prong to 3 prong adaptor. Whoops.
Click to expand...

To follow up on this, is there a good way to protect electronics that need to be plugged in to an ungrounded outlet, since the above doesn't work?
 
tiltdeac said:
So just learned that I was accomplishing nothing for years by plugging a surge protector into an ungrounded outlet with a 2 prong to 3 prong adaptor. Whoops.
Click to expand...

You may have been using the adapter wrong. The wire or tab on it is supposed to connect under the screw holding the cover plate.

In some cases the box holding the outlet, if metal, may be grounded. This is common in older homes. Get an outlet checker to find out.

Sometimes you can add ground wire and change the receptacle but that requires access to something that is grounded. Copper cold water pipe can be used if accessible and continuous to house exit.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
Speaking of refrigerators, my inlaws got a new "smart fridge" a few weeks ago from Lowes, it basically has an ipad on it. Lowes delivers it and plugs it in, the freezer is set to 0 and fridge is set to 34. They load it up with the food from the old fridge and go about their day. Two days later they go to get something from the freezer and it isn't frozen. Had to dump the whole freezer's worth of food. Apparently, even though the freezer temp read 0 on the display screen, nobody ran the fridge through "activation mode" to actually fully turn it on, so it was in some middle ground cooling mode for 2 days and not really doing anything. Lowes of course denies any liability for not setting it up right. Some basic things really have no need for significant computer integration. Like the stupid autostop things in cars now. Why the hell do I need to turn my car off for 20 seconds at a stoplight before it coming back on? So I can save an aggregate of $6 a year on gas for the pleasure of dropping $800 on a new starter after 5 years because it wears out exponentially faster than it normally would?
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while I express no opinion on the car, i wholeheartedly agree that there is zero reason for a refrigerator to be computerized or connected to the internet. It cost me about $250 to get a guy to fix a widget running the icemaker in my 12 year old dumb fridge, I don't want to know what it would cost to get the brains of a smart fridge fixed. And I don't in any way understand the value added to my fridge experience by the computer.
 
Got heated floors in the master bathroom of our new house, but we're finding huge temperature differences on them. When the thermostat is set to 82, most of the main part of the bathroom floor measures around 82, with some hot spots around 86/87 in front of the tub. There's apparently an unheated strip across the doorway into the toilet room, and the floor of the toilet room measures at 100 (!!!). Anyone have any thoughts at all? The builder says they use the mats that can be adapted to fit the shape of the room, not manually placed wiring, so I'm kind of at a lose to explain the disparity.

We're going to look into the location of the actual thermometer for the thermostat, but I'm not sure how that would explain anything since the way I understand it is the entire system should just be one circuit of wiring that heats up, so individual areas shouldn't be getting so much hotter than others.
 
spiffylubes said:
Got heated floors in the master bathroom of our new house, but we're finding huge temperature differences on them. When the thermostat is set to 82, most of the main part of the bathroom floor measures around 82, with some hot spots around 86/87 in front of the tub. There's apparently an unheated strip across the doorway into the toilet room, and the floor of the toilet room measures at 100 (!!!). Anyone have any thoughts at all? The builder says they use the mats that can be adapted to fit the shape of the room, not manually placed wiring, so I'm kind of at a lose to explain the disparity.

We're going to look into the location of the actual thermometer for the thermostat, but I'm not sure how that would explain anything since the way I understand it is the entire system should just be one circuit of wiring that heats up, so individual areas shouldn't be getting so much hotter than others.
Click to expand...

There is some possibility that the mats ended up overlapping in the hot areas. Or if the mats were flexed to fit around the installed items, hot spots could result from wire spacing tightening up and creating hot spots.

Mats for floor heating come with specific spacing of the wires to achieve even heating. If the standard sizes don't fit you should either get custom mats or have the floor hand wired.
 
spiffylubes said:
Got heated floors in the master bathroom of our new house, but we're finding huge temperature differences on them. When the thermostat is set to 82, most of the main part of the bathroom floor measures around 82, with some hot spots around 86/87 in front of the tub. There's apparently an unheated strip across the doorway into the toilet room, and the floor of the toilet room measures at 100 (!!!). Anyone have any thoughts at all? The builder says they use the mats that can be adapted to fit the shape of the room, not manually placed wiring, so I'm kind of at a lose to explain the disparity.

We're going to look into the location of the actual thermometer for the thermostat, but I'm not sure how that would explain anything since the way I understand it is the entire system should just be one circuit of wiring that heats up, so individual areas shouldn't be getting so much hotter than others.
Click to expand...

We have heated floors and at first I thought the thermostat controlled the heat of the floor so I set it high, then, fortunately, the installer came by again for some minor issue and saw the thermostat really high and explained that the thermostat didn't control the heat of the floor, but the heat of the room. The floor heated and was supposed to raise the heat in the bathroom by a few degrees (while having a warm to the touch floor), so we went from having the thermostat in the 80s to the mid 70s.
He said having too hot will eventually discolor the tile.
 
Baconwfu said:
We have heated floors and at first I thought the thermostat controlled the heat of the floor so I set it high, then, fortunately, the installer came by again for some minor issue and saw the thermostat really high and explained that the thermostat didn't control the heat of the floor, but the heat of the room. The floor heated and was supposed to raise the heat in the bathroom by a few degrees (while having a warm to the touch floor), so we went from having the thermostat in the 80s to the mid 70s.
He said having too hot will eventually discolor the tile.
Click to expand...

I'm almost positive ours is meant to set the floor temperature, not the ambient (my old house floor thermostat could be set to do either, that was nice). But I'll look into, thanks for the tip.

Even so, it just seems like it should be a simple system, power through wires creates heat. The only way I see there being such a huge disparity in the temperatures is that the wiring under the toilet room floor is somehow jacked up. Our builder gets to figure out how to find out! The fact that the tile guys installed it doesn't fill me with confidence, they had to replace all of the wall tile in all of our showers because they did a crap job. The floor in the master isn't great either, but it didn't warrant replacing (but maybe it will now if the wiring job is awful).
 
tigerswood said:
So, the toilet flooded (dumb dumb fiance flushed paper towels after cleaning up dog vomit) in one of the upstairs bathrooms, and we had a decent amount of water leak through the ceiling, particularly a light fixture. This was a while ago. Very similar thing also happened when using the garden tub in the other bathroom, but it didn't even overflow.

I'm assuming the original contractors skimped out on waterproofing obviously, but anyone have any better ideas as to the problems/how to best address?
Click to expand...

Bumping this.
 
We finally got people scheduled to come fix our shower pan. They’re having a plumber come to move the drain. They also let me know the glass currently installed isn’t the right size and so now we have to replace that which doubled the price of the job.

I believe these are known as the joys of home ownership.
 
DeaconCav06 said:
We finally got people scheduled to come fix our shower pan. They’re having a plumber come to move the drain. They also let me know the glass currently installed isn’t the right size and so now we have to replace that which doubled the price of the job.

I believe these are known as the joys of home ownership.
Click to expand...

yeah, all i do anymore is write checks
 
Current state of our house:
-15yd drop box in the driveway, full of construction debris and massive amounts of yard stuff (husband pruned the yard yesterday, which was a 15hr job - tons of holly, rhododendron, and ivy). It's supposed to be picked up today.

-One bedroom about ready to paint, but only on three walls; the fourth still has to be sanded/finished by the drywaller

-One bedroom with exposed framing, waiting on the arrival of a window which needs to be installed. Once installed, we can get the framing inspectors back out to green light covering things up with drywall and actually painted/finished.

-Once they're painted, it's just a matter of beds assembled and decoration stuff.

-The hallway and den area are ready for some Killz and paint.

-What will be the baby's room currently has the two kids whose rooms are under construction sleeping in it, so we can't make too much progress in there although we will be painting in there next week (my mom's coming out to help). Not a huge deal as baby will start in our room, but it would be nice to feel a little more settled/finished with anything.

-Our master bathroom needs to be finished with mud, then painted, then vanity installed. At least the toilet is functional.

Other than elbow grease, any tips for removing grout haze so I can caulk the corners and along the tub?


I'm 29 weeks pregnant. Send help. Or painters.
 
Kitchen reno finally done; not DIY, but let me know if need a good contractor rec in Winston.

Before:
db8278db9e2e352df11d11f76ae41d2d.jpg


After:
99585c80ebe5075773da07d2062ecd91.jpg


Before:
8d1872b6c395d54239c28c7d81236f29.jpg


After:
c31b75e146a362ceb6a816c0eaf49e7e.jpg
 
lbE08 said:
Current state of our house:
-15yd drop box in the driveway, full of construction debris and massive amounts of yard stuff (husband pruned the yard yesterday, which was a 15hr job - tons of holly, rhododendron, and ivy). It's supposed to be picked up today.

-One bedroom about ready to paint, but only on three walls; the fourth still has to be sanded/finished by the drywaller

-One bedroom with exposed framing, waiting on the arrival of a window which needs to be installed. Once installed, we can get the framing inspectors back out to green light covering things up with drywall and actually painted/finished.

-Once they're painted, it's just a matter of beds assembled and decoration stuff.

-The hallway and den area are ready for some Killz and paint.

-What will be the baby's room currently has the two kids whose rooms are under construction sleeping in it, so we can't make too much progress in there although we will be painting in there next week (my mom's coming out to help). Not a huge deal as baby will start in our room, but it would be nice to feel a little more settled/finished with anything.

-Our master bathroom needs to be finished with mud, then painted, then vanity installed. At least the toilet is functional.

Other than elbow grease, any tips for removing grout haze so I can caulk the corners and along the tub?


I'm 29 weeks pregnant. Send help. Or painters.
Click to expand...

Not the right thread but we started baby in the nursery from night one and it worked great.
 
DeaconCav06 said:
Not the right thread but we started baby in the nursery from night one and it worked great.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be totally opposed to that, but the baby room is also going to be guest room as people come visit, so for various reasons it makes sense to just have kiddo in a pack'n'play with us for a while.
 
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