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Official Pit Home Improvement/DIY thread

Easy enough. Take out the 30 amp 2 pole breaker for the dryer. Cap the red wire with a wire nut and shove it out of the way. Put in a single pole 20 amp breaker. Hook up the black. On the other end cap the red again and use the black, white and ground like you would a normal outlet (hot, neutral, ground).

Definitely don't use the original 30 amp dryer breaker, easy way to burn up extension cords / your house. You will have a gap in your panel (taking out 2 pole for single), just put in an extra single pole 20 amp breaker, don't hook up anything to it and mark as spare.
 
ImTheCaptain said:
anyone with some electrical skills?

I'm trying to finally get my garage set up with a workbench. Currently, there are very few outlets in the garage, period. The previous owners ran a 220v line into the basement to install a dryer. That line is still in place but not used for anything but runs right above the spot where I'd like to put my bench and some other outlets/lights, etc. Can I just pigtail in a 12 gauge wire into the Black hot and neutral lines and leave the red hot line intact?
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I realize this is a little late, but you might want to consider having the 220 line in your workshop if you plan to have a heavy duty table saw or band saw as part of your equipment. Any electric motor bigger than 3 hp requires 220 V electricity. If you don't plan on doing that, then go ahead and convert the 220 to 110. Just be very careful working inside the breaker box. Assume everything is hot and you won't get burned.
 
Replaced four old 300 watt outdoor security lights with some new LED ones. About half the lumens in the new lights, but they seem almost as bright as the old ones. I got ones with split LED heads, so the light can be aimed better. The most difficult part was getting the screws holding the old lights out of the junction boxes. That is an interesting project when the screw heads turn into nothing but rust with the first attempt at removing them.
 
What's your best strategy for getting those screws out of the old junction boxes Deaconblue? I've had to try several different methods myself when replacing lights/ceiling fans where the old screws were mostly/nothing but rust and nothing seems to work that well. Guessing I may be going about it inefficiently.
 
RedHatDeac said:
What's your best strategy for getting those screws out of the old junction boxes Deaconblue? I've had to try several different methods myself when replacing lights/ceiling fans where the old screws were mostly/nothing but rust and nothing seems to work that well. Guessing I may be going about it inefficiently.
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I found that liquid wrench then a little waiting made it possible to very carefully ease them out with a screw driver (mostly( but a few I pulled with pliers like they were nails. It also helped to cut the paint just at the bottom of the screw head to eliminate that from holding the screw.
 
Well, another "minor fixit" project got out of hand. Had a few loose tiles where the wall and floor come together in the powder room. So need to reinstall said tiles. Remove tiles, clean up wall behind, suck up debris with shop vac...and proceed to such up a few floor tiles. Because of where this was, had to take out the toilet to get to the area without having to add extra joints to my arms. Then find that the wall paper behind the toilet is pulling loose at the seam between two pieces of paper. So its reinstall floor tile, reinstall wall tile, get seam sealer and restick wallpaper, then reinstall toilet and change the flapper because it started leaking after being dry for a few days.

The one good thing is I used a product that was advertised as both tile adhesive and grout product. It worked as advertised. Was able to install the tiles and grout them in one pass. Used my finger to force the compound into the grout spaces and smoothed it and cleaned up the surfaces with a wet rag. Finished job looks pretty good.
 
Cabinet door question for anyone: we currently have Kraftmaid shaker style glass panel doors in our kitchen with 8 panel mullions (single pane glass, just a mullion overlay). We have a contractor who put in new cabinets in a new space in the kitchen, got the wrong cabinets (just glass panel, no mullions), and we want them to replace them with the mullion doors. We've pushed very hard since the original contract says they should match the old doors, but they say it would've been an upcharge even from the beginning. Regardless, they claim that the upcharge will be $1500 (and they'd eat the cost of the original doors). So basically, the original 6 doors cost ~$1700, and their price says the same doors with mullions would cost $3200. Does that sound right to anyone? Seems way too high to me.

I'm very close to just telling them to finish everything else and go away, we've had all kinds of problems with this company (one of the highest rated in NoVA on Angie's List).
 
Anybody ever seriously consider putting down field turf as their lawn? I've got a friend who did it at some rental properties and he said it works and looks great, but I question his judgment as he is primarily interested in not mowing or watering it. Supposedly it is pretty cheap now, he claims I can get enough to cover my front and back yard for like $2,000 plus labor. Between watering and mowing and aerating and other shit I probably spend at least $2500 per year on the lawn, and this would be a one-time fix. Plus, if Trump deports my lawn crew then I'm screwed.
 
spiffylubes said:
Cabinet door question for anyone: we currently have Kraftmaid shaker style glass panel doors in our kitchen with 8 panel mullions (single pane glass, just a mullion overlay). We have a contractor who put in new cabinets in a new space in the kitchen, got the wrong cabinets (just glass panel, no mullions), and we want them to replace them with the mullion doors. We've pushed very hard since the original contract says they should match the old doors, but they say it would've been an upcharge even from the beginning. Regardless, they claim that the upcharge will be $1500 (and they'd eat the cost of the original doors). So basically, the original 6 doors cost ~$1700, and their price says the same doors with mullions would cost $3200. Does that sound right to anyone? Seems way too high to me.

I'm very close to just telling them to finish everything else and go away, we've had all kinds of problems with this company (one of the highest rated in NoVA on Angie's List).
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That sounds way too high. How much were you paying for the cabinets originally? Fancy doors can be about half the cost of a cabinet. Take a look at the Kraftmaid web site. Looks like cabinets are in the range of $300 - $500 at a big box store.
Eight panel mullions don't look like Kraftmaid standard, that looks like 6, so that may be an issue. I would make sure Angie's list knows about the issue. Also, if you have the match iwording in writing I would think it would be in the contractor's best interest to make you happy. Their price sounds almost like complete new cabinets plus special order doors plus installation labor xx
 
Deaconblue said:
That sounds way too high. How much were you paying for the cabinets originally? Fancy doors can be about half the cost of a cabinet. Take a look at the Kraftmaid web site. Looks like cabinets are in the range of $300 - $500 at a big box store.
Eight panel mullions don't look like Kraftmaid standard, that looks like 6, so that may be an issue. I would make sure Angie's list knows about the issue. Also, if you have the match iwording in writing I would think it would be in the contractor's best interest to make you happy. Their price sounds almost like complete new cabinets plus special order doors plus installation labor xx
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My buddy who was looking at new cabinet doors recently said multi-lite doors are typically double the cost of single pane doors, and the superficial mullions just add about $50/door, not $250. That being said, my wife and I decided to just give up and not bother arguing anymore (she's also pregnant and it's been stressing her out a lot, so that's no good). The project is already many many thousands of dollars over the original budget (due to other screw ups by the contractor) and finishing about 3 months later than we were led to believe it would when we signed the contract. We'll definitely be writing bad reviews everywhere we can.

On a good note though, the site project manager (construction manager) has always been on our side and thinks his company is wrong about the cabinets. He gave us the name of the place where they source their cabinets and told us we should just go directly to them. He also showed my wife how to replace the glass (which I already knew isn't very hard), so we could potentially just order the wood doors with mullions and no glass, then use the existing glass to save some money. We'll get around to it sometime. At least we have doors for the time being, even if they don't match 100%.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
Anybody ever seriously consider putting down field turf as their lawn? I've got a friend who did it at some rental properties and he said it works and looks great, but I question his judgment as he is primarily interested in not mowing or watering it. Supposedly it is pretty cheap now, he claims I can get enough to cover my front and back yard for like $2,000 plus labor. Between watering and mowing and aerating and other shit I probably spend at least $2500 per year on the lawn, and this would be a one-time fix. Plus, if Trump deports my lawn crew then I'm screwed.
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You ever get any feedback on this? Had never seriously considered it or even thought of it. But it's intriguing. Do you have animals? Does it matter if my dog pees and/or poops on it? Or does it just wash away without damaging the turf?
 
I don't have dogs, but I assume the piss would just filter through it like rainwater. I assume dog poop could be scooped like on grass, or hosed off. I imagine birds and other animals shit on football fields all the time. Whether the dog would go on it is another story, and would probably track the black pellets back into the house.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
Anybody ever seriously consider putting down field turf as their lawn? I've got a friend who did it at some rental properties and he said it works and looks great, but I question his judgment as he is primarily interested in not mowing or watering it. Supposedly it is pretty cheap now, he claims I can get enough to cover my front and back yard for like $2,000 plus labor. Between watering and mowing and aerating and other shit I probably spend at least $2500 per year on the lawn, and this would be a one-time fix. Plus, if Trump deports my lawn crew then I'm screwed.
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Yes, but I haven't had anyone quote the job yet. I gave up on my backyard - dog destroyed the grass so I mulched the entire back yard. Most of the front yard is natural area, as well so I only have abound 500 sf of grass. Tired of messing with it even though my wife does almost all the work. Let us know if you get a quote on the job.
 
The heat exchanger in my furnace has cracks. Big downer, I've known this is coming for a couple years but still sucks to have to replace the furnace. Even worse is that I'm in the process of moving out now so I'll basically be buying this for the new owner solely to sell the house quicker.
 
I don't know how to do shit, but it seems like a lot of you do. I would like to re-fill the spaces that have formed in a number of spots between the different pieces of wood molding in my basement. The molding is all white, so can I just buy white caulk and fill the spaces and leave it at that, or will it look shitty if I don't repaint as well?
 
Yeah they make white wood filler that might work, but it is also tough to tell if it will be an exact match as your molding may have faded or be dirty. Try it to see if it works, and if it looks like shit then paint it.
 
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