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Official Pit Home Improvement/DIY thread

Looking good! Air powered brad gun for all that nailing?
 
LK, what do you do about warped wood? Do you just try to buy the straightest stuff you can to work with and go from there? I built some more shelves for my basement this weekend and had a hell of a time finding decently straight 2x2s and 4s
 
ImTheCaptain said:
LK, what do you do about warped wood? Do you just try to buy the straightest stuff you can to work with and go from there? I built some more shelves for my basement this weekend and had a hell of a time finding decently straight 2x2s and 4s
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For now, just work with the straightest stuff I can find. My next project I'm going to work with the local lumber yard on getting some better stock.

Beyond that, just knowing that load bearing boards need to have the bow facing upwards so that pressure will force it down over time, and you can hide any imperfection in the finished product with trim pieces, or by using a router with a flush trim bit.
 
Right now my house is all electric but with my water heater slowly going bad, I have decided to add a gas tankless water heater. The rep from Piedmont Natural Gas came out and said if I added a fireplace connection for gas logs as well as the water heater install, they would run the 160' line into the house for free.

I got the quote to purchase, install, and take away my old water heater and its $2950. I looked at the Rinnai RL94E online and it looks like its about $1100. $1850 to run lines around to water heater and fireplace as well as install water heater seems high to me, but since I don't have natural gas anyway is there any other recourse?
 
took advantage of some mild weather this weekend:

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Picking up one of these on the way home. I've been debating getting one for a while, and I used a friend's a week or so ago and was sold on it. Best part of the deal, I'm using rewards points for Lowe's gift cards so it's like I'm getting it for free. Plus, the 20v battery pack also fits my cordless drill I got a few months ago.
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Looking to get the carpet replaced in our family room, so the wife and I went to Home Depot this weekend. We looked around, found some we liked in the $4-6/sqft range, not including removal and pad. Sounded ok.

We went to a flooring store after to compare prices, and the cheapest they seemed to have was ON SALE for $6/sqft for crummy feeling carpet. The others they had were $10+/sqft.

Admittedly I haven't compared to brand/line/etc of the 2 carpet samples we got (1 from Home Depot, 1 from the carpet store), but am I missing something here? Why is Home Depot so much cheaper? Do they get lower quality levels of the same brands so that they can sell them in bigger quantities? Has anyone used HD for carpet/flooring installation before that can give me some input?
 
I'm thinking of ripping up the carpet in my finished basement this week/end in advance of bulky item pick-up in my neighborhood next week. I definitely want to replace the flooring eventually and figured this would be a good start. It would be nice to dispose of the carpet for free and without having to haul to the dump.

However, it might be a while before I am able to afford replacing the floor. I am currently just using the basement for storage, laundry, workshop and cat boxes. Any reason (besides comfort on my bare feet when I go downstairs) why I shouldn't just go down to bare concrete slab for what might be months? Frankly it might well be a year in which case maybe I should just wait until next year's pick-up.

I had a pipe break so the carpet did get wet. there is also a potential mold issue. I thought it might be good to let the concrete air out or something, before my plan of gluing vinyl to it.
 
RollTheQuad06 said:
I'm thinking of ripping up the carpet in my finished basement this week/end in advance of bulky item pick-up in my neighborhood next week. I definitely want to replace the flooring eventually and figured this would be a good start. It would be nice to dispose of the carpet for free and without having to haul to the dump.

However, it might be a while before I am able to afford replacing the floor. I am currently just using the basement for storage, laundry, workshop and cat boxes. Any reason (besides comfort on my bare feet when I go downstairs) why I shouldn't just go down to bare concrete slab for what might be months? Frankly it might well be a year in which case maybe I should just wait until next year's pick-up.

I had a pipe break so the carpet did get wet. there is also a potential mold issue. I thought it might be good to let the concrete air out or something, before my plan of gluing vinyl to it.
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No, you should be good with going down to the concrete (and possibly better, as compared to carpet, in terms of mold/moisture issues).
Before you do anything on top of the concrete you should test it for moisture, though - duct-tape some plastic sheeting on top of the floor all around the edges and look for condensation build-up. if you've got a lot of condensation building between the floor and plastic, you should address that before gluing/recarpeting/installing other flooring.
 
Strongly consider tile in the basement..carpet is asking for mold/moisture issues..throw down a rug here or there to cut down the noise..we had some moisture/water issues before our new sump pump was put in and were really grateful we had tile. Easy to clean up and dry out. The anger issue was much better than if we had carpet down there
 
Does anyone have any advice for DIY leather repair? I have a set of nice, leather bound dining room chairs that have collected some wear and tear (nicks and shallow scratches, no punctures). Enough to notice and thus motivate me to touch them up, but not serious enough to bring them to a professional (if such a profession even exists). Any products out there that would help?

Thanks in advance.
 
lbE08 said:
No, you should be good with going down to the concrete (and possibly better, as compared to carpet, in terms of mold/moisture issues).
Before you do anything on top of the concrete you should test it for moisture, though - duct-tape some plastic sheeting on top of the floor all around the edges and look for condensation build-up. if you've got a lot of condensation building between the floor and plastic, you should address that before gluing/recarpeting/installing other flooring.
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thanks, good idea.

BacktoBack said:
Strongly consider tile in the basement..carpet is asking for mold/moisture issues..throw down a rug here or there to cut down the noise..we had some moisture/water issues before our new sump pump was put in and were really grateful we had tile. Easy to clean up and dry out. The anger issue was much better than if we had carpet down there
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Definitely not replacing with more carpet. Got a quote from a handy friend for vinyl strips that look sort of like wood. He uses them a lot in basements. Might be worth pricing out tile too though, thanks! His other suggestion for cheapest would be etching/staining the concrete directly.
 
RollTheQuad06 said:
thanks, good idea.



Definitely not replacing with more carpet. Got a quote from a handy friend for vinyl strips that look sort of like wood. He uses them a lot in basements. Might be worth pricing out tile too though, thanks! His other suggestion for cheapest would be etching/staining the concrete directly.
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yeah, I was going to suggest staining the 'crete. you can always put a rug down if you just want something underfoot, but stained concrete keeps the ease of dealing with anything wet/messy down there and just looks nicer than essentially a garage floor.
 
Can't you polish up and seal a concrete floor so it looks pretty nice?
 
KickballDeac said:
Does anyone have any advice for DIY leather repair? I have a set of nice, leather bound dining room chairs that have collected some wear and tear (nicks and shallow scratches, no punctures). Enough to notice and thus motivate me to touch them up, but not serious enough to bring them to a professional (if such a profession even exists). Any products out there that would help?

Thanks in advance.
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Shoot dieharddeac a text. He's got more experience with leather than anyone I know.
 
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