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Official Pit Home Improvement/DIY thread

Anyone have any input on drilling screws into a concrete basement wall? They will be for 2-4 large support masonry screws. The Dewalt 18v doesn't even come close to even drilling holes for hanging pictures. Additional information, it is concrete that is covered in a thick semi textured paint that makes the room look like it's not concrete..
 
rent a hammer drill w/ a masonry bit, use tapcons?
 
paint the trim paint the trim paint the trim.



otherwise it ends up looking like you live in a coloring book (white/pale walls, dark outlines)

aw I think wood trim can look nice. but mostly painting the trim will be a ton more work and I'll have to buy white paint in addition to the primer and wall paint. wish I could just magically win the lottery without playing it so I could hire someone else to do this.

0417_gq01a.jpg
 
i really love wood trim with super light walls. but wood trim or white trim are the only acceptable options, IMO. never, ever any other color (i.e. nothing like the awful blue trim in the yhl house)
 
Anyone have any input on drilling screws into a concrete basement wall? They will be for 2-4 large support masonry screws. The Dewalt 18v doesn't even come close to even drilling holes for hanging pictures. Additional information, it is concrete that is covered in a thick semi textured paint that makes the room look like it's not concrete..

Sounds like you just need to get a legit corded drill. Absent that, you could try first drilling a smaller pilot hole and gradually build up to the necessary size.
 
i really love wood trim with super light walls. but wood trim or white trim are the only acceptable options, IMO. never, ever any other color (i.e. nothing like the awful blue trim in the yhl house)

yeahh definitely not other-color trim. their blue was rough.

this is the paint color I am leaning toward right now. a little sagey, a little minty. Bonsai Tint
 
yeahh definitely not other-color trim. their blue was rough.

this is the paint color I am leaning toward right now. a little sagey, a little minty. Bonsai Tint

did you get a sample size of it first? i was always instructed to go with the lightest color on the paint swatch. i ignored that once, and was pretty disappointed with how it turned out. i definitely think that lighter = better for the vast majority of indoor colors.

eta: i think the color itself is gorgeous. i would just go a shade or two lighter.
 
did you get a sample size of it first? i was always instructed to go with the lightest color on the paint swatch. i ignored that once, and was pretty disappointed with how it turned out. i definitely think that lighter = better for the vast majority of indoor colors.

eta: i think the color itself is gorgeous. i would just go a shade or two lighter.

I haven't yet. I'll probably do the primer first and then get the paint once I have the walls primed. The lightest color on the swatch barely looks different from white (when I was walking around the room with the paint swatch), and I definitely want there to be noticeable color in the room. Thanks for the tip though, I should (reluctantly) spend the extra money and time to get a sample.

I painted my apartment a bright green color and loved it. I don't want it this bright again but I do like some color.

2yyo0le.jpg
 
yeah, i know what you mean about it looking white. when i started painting my living room when i bought my house, i painted a super light grey. and when i started actually putting it on the wall, i was so upset because it looked white, not grey. by the time it dried though, it looked awesome.

if bold colors are your thing though, have at it. but regardless, i would suggest the paint samples :). those itty bitty swatches really can't give you a good idea of what it will actually look like.
 
Washed two of the walls in my wood panel room last night with TSP substitute stuff. They were absolutely filthy, mostly the top ~18 inches which were just coated in grime. Makes me wonder if a smoker lived there in the past or something to cause that upper part to be dirtier than the rest. I'm told the oil furnace can produce some soot if not well maintained, but there was no particular relationship between the filth and the air vents in the room. Was pretty neat to watch the wood grain reappear from under the layer of black.

Now I am also considering replacing the large sliding doors on the closet, which are made of the wood paneling, with something else. The back one on the track currently catches on the other somehow and there is a long gouge in the wood. It would probably look better to have something new, and I think they would be a challenge to paint. However I don't know if I replace them myself. Plus I'm not sure if I want a bifold or what. Maybe I could even use a curtain, though I'm not sure if I could find a tension rod long enough.

I guess the nature of homeownership is that every project creates at least one other project.
 
Now I am also considering replacing the large sliding doors on the closet, which are made of the wood paneling, with something else. The back one on the track currently catches on the other somehow and there is a long gouge in the wood. It would probably look better to have something new, and I think they would be a challenge to paint. However I don't know if I replace them myself. Plus I'm not sure if I want a bifold or what. Maybe I could even use a curtain, though I'm not sure if I could find a tension rod long enough.

I stayed in a hotel/condo room a few weeks ago where the master bathroom door was a teak two-piece sliding door like a closet door, but with big vertical bar handles on each and each piece slid back into the wall so it could be fully open, fully closed, or somewhere in between. It looked really cool because the doors didn't overlap or stack on each other at all. I thought that would be interesting to make, but wasn't sure what they did with the studs in the wall that it was sliding back into. I imagine it wasn't load-bearing so may have just been a stud-less fake wall of some sort. Or I guess if it was load-bearing you could build a fake wall out from the real wall that the doors would pass through, though you would lose a few inches of the room that way. But it looked pretty impressive.
 
We have a couple of bathrooms that still have wallpaper and we want to get rid of it and paint the rooms. I have talked to a couple of people who just put primer and paint on top of wallpaper, instead of removing it. Does anyone have any experience with that? Is it advisable? I know removing wallpaper can be a pain but I was assuming that was what we would do.
 
I stayed in a hotel/condo room a few weeks ago where the master bathroom door was a teak two-piece sliding door like a closet door, but with big vertical bar handles on each and each piece slid back into the wall so it could be fully open, fully closed, or somewhere in between. It looked really cool because the doors didn't overlap or stack on each other at all. I thought that would be interesting to make, but wasn't sure what they did with the studs in the wall that it was sliding back into. I imagine it wasn't load-bearing so may have just been a stud-less fake wall of some sort. Or I guess if it was load-bearing you could build a fake wall out from the real wall that the doors would pass through, though you would lose a few inches of the room that way. But it looked pretty impressive.

I'm trying to picture this. So was it a pocket door? I do like those but don't think it would be a possible solution for this room. I don't think much in my house will ever look "impressive" either, it's just a little starter home that needs to look better.
 
We have a couple of bathrooms that still have wallpaper and we want to get rid of it and paint the rooms. I have talked to a couple of people who just put primer and paint on top of wallpaper, instead of removing it. Does anyone have any experience with that? Is it advisable? I know removing wallpaper can be a pain but I was assuming that was what we would do.

I did that in my kitchen. Just primer/paint over the wallpaper. If the wallpaper is in good condition (no tears, etc.) then I would recommend it. If you look closely, you can see the seams from the wallpaper, but they aren't noticable.
 
I'm trying to picture this. So was it a pocket door? I do like those but don't think it would be a possible solution for this room. I don't think much in my house will ever look "impressive" either, it's just a little starter home that needs to look better.

Yeah, I just Googled pocket door and that is apparently what it is called. I'd seen similar things where it was just one door, but never two coming together like that. Kind of like this, but in like an ancient Roman design:

eyebrow.jpg
 
We have a couple of bathrooms that still have wallpaper and we want to get rid of it and paint the rooms. I have talked to a couple of people who just put primer and paint on top of wallpaper, instead of removing it. Does anyone have any experience with that? Is it advisable? I know removing wallpaper can be a pain but I was assuming that was what we would do.

Depends on the condition of the glue behind the wallpaper. The act of painting it could soak it enough that the wallpaper just falls off. Wallpaper removal isn't that bad, it just requires patience. I use a cheapass steamer, scorer, and a scraper and have gotten it off flawlessly 95% off the time.
 
i've also had friends use just a regular steamer to take down the wallpaper, and with that they said it was no big deal.
 
so we have a dishwasher, but it isn't anchored into the cabinets or countertop and i don't see any brackets to do it. am i missing something or is this normal?
 
We have a couple of bathrooms that still have wallpaper and we want to get rid of it and paint the rooms. I have talked to a couple of people who just put primer and paint on top of wallpaper, instead of removing it. Does anyone have any experience with that? Is it advisable? I know removing wallpaper can be a pain but I was assuming that was what we would do.


knowing your neighborhood... and assuming it is probably similar in construction to my parent's house... i'd recommend taking the wallpaper down, especially because it's in a bathroom. if it hasnt started to peel at the corners yet, it probably will soon (from shower steam/moisture/etc). my parents have redone 3 bathrooms in the last 5 years, and in each the paper-removal process was pretty painless. score, steam, peel.
i know the ladies of the pit talk about this site often, but younghouselove.com has had a couple recent posts about wallpaper removal tactics (as the house they just moved into had a ton of paper).
 
The husband and I are looking to regrout the tiles in our master bathroom shower. How hard is this? Should I just pay someone to do it?
 
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