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Post by Sir Trevor on Jul 9, 2018 15:27:13 GMT -5
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Post by Sir Trevor on Jul 13, 2018 8:23:11 GMT -5
IT's been a pretty good week. With luck, I will finish up the laundry room today. Hope to have some pictures up tonight.
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Post by Sir Trevor on Jul 14, 2018 19:27:34 GMT -5
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Post by bunbun / Hank on Jul 18, 2018 16:45:36 GMT -5
Hey Trev, got a question for ya since you just performed this task: What is this obsession with replacing kitchen cabinets that everyone seems to have? Bunnie watches all these remodeling shows on HGTV and people buy these half million dollars homes and the first thing they do is tear out the kitchen, and the builder tells em "well that's gonna add 29,000 dollars to the rebuild." First off what the hell are you installing, military grade titaneum? And WHY are you doing it? In my opinion if the old cuboards open and close and have shelves you can put dishes on then they're good enough, leave em the hell alone and save a ton of money. We have the same cabinets that were in the house when we moved in 15 years ago. If it ain't broke don't fix it!
HANK.
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Post by Sir Trevor on Jul 19, 2018 6:52:05 GMT -5
I really don't know why so many people have to 'update' their kitchen. Or their bathrooms for that matter. Why does everyone want tile everywhere in the bathroom? And separate tub and shower? I mean sometimes it makes sense. Like with us. After we took the electric stove top out of the counter, and had to knock out that fake stone oven to make room for the gas oven, it didn't make sense to try and save the remainder of the ugly cabinets. Especially since there were no drawers in them. If someone has old crappy cabinets that are falling apart. Or if you are taking out walls and redoing the layout it makes sense. But why does everyone have to buy expensive custom cabinets with granite counter tops? And I do not understand why they always get white shaker style cabinets. They look boring to me. And they will be hell to keep clean. Only reason we went white in the laundry room is because it is small and dark in there. White brightened it up. And it won't get used a ton, so not a lot of cleaning to worry about. These people spend more redoing a kitchen than I spent buying a whole house. Right now, we are just short of $9000 for all the repairs and upgrades on the house. That's everything for the kitchen, including new appliances. All the paint, putty, rollers, brushes, floor tiles, light fixtures, ceiling fans, mew tools I needed, and the $1500 I spent on plumbing and gas lines. Which is what I have been working on this week. More plumbing I finally took out the sink in the kitchen, and figured out why the water pressure sucked so bad. They had 1/4" water lines going to it. So, I had to cut those out and replace them with 1/2" lines. I had to get that done, so I can drill the holes in the new sink base and drop that into place. (have to wait for Dale to do that job). So, while I was down there doing plumbing crap, I also ran the gas line for the new stove as well. Keeping my fingers crossed that all my joins are good and I don't have any leaks to fix. Won't know until I get the sink base in place, and can put the shut-offs on the stub-outs. I can say that trying to uncoil and maneuver copper tubing over my head was not a pleasant experience right now. I was a bit sore after doing that yesterday.
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Post by bunbun / Hank on Jul 19, 2018 13:32:22 GMT -5
I hear ya about the WHITE cabinets. My knucklehead buddy Mark has em in his garage and he keeps his oil, filters, paint and other supplies in em. Problem is he DID NOT put pull knobs on em and the hinges are hidden also, so you never know which side to grab to open the damn things and since this is in a garage where you're working on cars they are now a greasy mess. The ones in MY garage are gray steel with knobs and exposed hinges so I know where to open the damn thing. And being steel a little brake cleaner on a rag and PRESTO, no more greasy mess.
HANK.
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Post by Sir Trevor on Jul 25, 2018 14:49:13 GMT -5
Well. The walls in the kitchen are done now. Tomorrow I can finish making all the electrical connections in there. Sunday I hope to get Dale over to hook everything up in the panel. Then I just need to get the countertops done.
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Post by Sir Trevor on Jul 31, 2018 7:19:53 GMT -5
Getting closer. Cabinets are all in. Walls are done. Electric is hooked up (though most of it is temporary until Dale and I can put the new panel in). This week is working on the counter tops. I got the one cut yesterday. So I have the 2 pieces I need for the single cabinets in the corners. The long one is just sitting there for now. Still need to add the spacers, corner brackets to the cabinets to screw it down, and sand the back to match the dips in the wall.
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Post by Sir Trevor on Aug 23, 2018 18:19:33 GMT -5
Wow! Been 3 weeks since I updated this.
I got the counters in, and we moved into the house that weekend. Got the sink hole cut, and the sink mounted and plumbed the following Friday. Been settling in, unpacking, and still moving crap from the old house. So, not much work on the new place other than little things. I discovered I need a new cartridge for the shower valve upstairs. You can turn it on, but there is no hot water.
Hope to finish moving all the crap from the old house by the end of next week. Ripping out the carpets over there this weekend, and getting a realtor in next week to list it.
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Post by Sir Trevor on Aug 27, 2018 18:54:50 GMT -5
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Post by Sir Trevor on Aug 31, 2018 18:41:51 GMT -5
Well, tomorrow's schedule is full of things at the old house. Listed it with an agent last night. While taking pics, he pointed out a few things that could be addressed to help with the sale. It's all little crap, that I'd basically become blind to. Paint cracking and peeling on some of the exterior window sills. A water spot in the one bedroom from 20+ years ago. A few other things. Plus I need to mow the grass, and clean up some more branches in the yard. I want to finish emptying the basement, and hopefully get it all swept out and cleaned up.
The rest of the weekend will be spent tackling the long list of things here at the new place. Trim work, start skim coating walls in the dining room, cutting more branches down in the back yard, hanging some shelves for the wife. Etcetera and so on.
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Post by Sir Trevor on Sept 9, 2018 11:10:15 GMT -5
Started working on the dining room. Need to get at least the one corner done so we can move the hutch into place. That way we can put away the 8 boxes of stuff on the porch that goes into the hutch. It's been on the back burner because there is so much work to do. The walls were not in the greatest of shape. You could see the outline of the framing for the archways on the 2 walls. On the big arch, there was tape on the joint, under the plaster that had come loose and caused the plaster to crack and peal. Since the plaster is textured, I was thinking I was going to need to completely skim coat both walls to make them smooth. Major undertaking with lots and lots of sanding, and dust. But, after fixing the popcorn ceiling at the old house, I though, "why not try and match the texture? What's the worst that can happen? I screw it up, and have to skim coat the whole wall, I was going to do that anyway." It helped that the wife decided she wanted wainscoting on the lower half of the walls. So that was less are to fix. But I don't have the cash to do the whole room yet. So, yesterday I went and got 2 4' sections to do the one corner, as well as the chair rail and corner trim. Last weekend I patched the really big area on the left side of the big arch. Yesterday morning I cleaned and patched the other side of the arch, the corner, and the smaller archway. Last night around 9, 9:30 I got motivated to get all the rest of the prep work done. I knew if I didn't get it completed, we wouldn't get everything else done today. I moved a bunch of stuff out of the room to make it easier to work. Including all the trim that is waiting to be put up around the house. About half of it, I measured and marked so I can cut and put it up today. If I'm going to fire up the compressor and get the nail gun out, I might as well put some up. Then I sanded my patches. Watered down the rest of the drywall mud I had, and used a small roller to cover my patches. The texture looks close, but I won't know for sure until I get some paint on it to see how well it really matches. Then I started masking. Which lead me to notice I still had some scraping to do. Between the left of the big arch, and the wall shelf, there is wooden chase that runs up the wall. They had plastered it. Well, plaster doesn't hold well to wood apparently, as it was all cracked and peeling. When I started scraping, the plaster was coming off in big sections. Ended up scraping the whole thing clean. Which then lead to me getting out the primer. So there I am, brushing on primer at 2 AM this morning. Because otherwise, it wouldn't be dry enough to paint if I waited and did it today.
Hope to have before and after pics up tonight, if all goes well.
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Post by Sir Trevor on Sept 9, 2018 19:28:21 GMT -5
As promised, here are the before and after pics of the dining room. As you can see, the walls were in pretty bad shape. Some of those spots I had to sand down with my belt sander to get them flush with the rest of the wall. Just about done. Still have to spackle, caulk, and paint. My texturing was close, but not quite the same. If I need to do it again, I should be able to do an even better job on it. Though I will probably use plaster instead. The drywall mud is so soft, you really can't do anything with it after the fact. Now I just need to get some extra cash to get more wainscoting for the other walls.
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Post by bunbun / Hank on Sept 10, 2018 7:28:01 GMT -5
The texturing doesn't really show up in the photos so I'll take your word about it. The wainscoting looks good, nice touch. Considering your illness you've accomplished a lot on the house especially since it seemed to be a total disaster when you started. (remember those basement photos, YIKES!) Doing the work yourself saved you a lot of money but material costs are outrageous. So I guess ya just work from pay check to pay check and do shit as you can afford it, or hit the powerball and hire Mike Holmes, quicker that way.
HANK.
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Post by Sir Trevor on Sept 10, 2018 17:20:24 GMT -5
Yeah. That's the plan right now. A little bit at a time as money becomes available. At least until the old house sells. Once that is gone, I will have money again. Not counting any profit from the sale, without that house, I free up $600-700 a month. Between the house payment, gas, electric, and water. That would give me the cash for the kitchen floor, lumber for the shelves I want to build in my display room, lumber for storage shelves and my workbench area in the basement.
So, until then, I will just limp along and do what I can, while trying to build up a little in savings again to cover emergency repairs for the house or vehicles.
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