Summer Remodeling!

[schild]

Is Killjoy going to get off the couch to help?

[Sky]

If it lasts, you'll make your money back

This is not the way I approach home remodeling. I want stuff I like.

Although I am also concerned about the weather endurance of the door, since it's going to be southerly exposed in an upstate ny climate (meaning ranging from humid high 90s to subzero blizzards). Most metal or vinyl doors I've seen look like shit, though. I'm open to suggestions.

Signe, that's a nice door, too. You can come rework the masonry into an arch.  I like the stain on the door I linked better.

[Signe]

It's not so much the colour or the style of the door, I just like rustic beat up looking wood doors with knotholes and imperfections.  My sister beat the hell out of her door and stained it and it looks awesome.  I like the stain on your door, too. 

[Nebu]

My advice: Don't spend the money on a solid wood door.  You can get engineered wood veneer doors that cost less, have the same styling, and will weather better. 

[Yegolev]

Is Killjoy going to get off the couch to help?

He's actually more excited about it than I am.  He has already gutted and rebuilt his own house, so his expertise will be invaluable.  Seriously.  The current holdup is just me getting some trusses (I'm not dumb enough to think we can build those ourselves) and after that it's up to my wife to draw the plans using whatever the standard size is for those.  I already have the scotch, so we will just need lumber, roofing and windows to get it dried-in.

As for doors, I'll agree with Nebu.  Solid wood doors are a vanity item, and these days I'm rather partial to metal doors if you want something solid.  But hey, your house.  That's what's so awesome about having a house: you can tell everyone else to go fuck themselves.

[Sky]

It's not so much the colour or the style of the door, I just like rustic beat up looking wood doors with knotholes and imperfections.  My sister beat the hell out of her door and stained it and it looks awesome.  I like the stain on your door, too. 

I grew up in a "rustic" house. We called it old and beat to shit. I don't understand why people would intentionally fuck up their house or furniture like that. I hear rustic or distressed and vomit. So there's that. Like Yeg said :)

Anyways, the only door treatment I'll be worrying about for a few years is a can of spray paint on the crappy metal doors I already have.

[Merusk]

My advice: Don't spend the money on a solid wood door.  You can get engineered wood veneer doors that cost less, have the same styling, and will weather better. 

This.

Check out Anderson & Milliken to start with.  Don't go to Home Depot or Lowe's, check out with local builders who they use as their supplier and go to the showroom. You'll find more doors than you'll know what to do about.

[bhodi]

That's what's so awesome about having a house: you can tell everyone else to go fuck themselves.

Unless you've got a gestapo HOA like I do.

[Signe]

I like old worldy looking stuff when it comes to wood.  Maybe it's the Euro influence.  I like solid wood doors, too.  Nothing wrong with vanity.

[Yegolev]

What does Righ think about solid wood doors?

[Signe]

I don't know.  I'll ask him when he's not so busy.  Actually, he probably won't care much about doors.  I have only a very mild interest.  My main concern about doors is that they keep bad things out and good things in.  I'm not overly fussed about stuff.  When we look for a place to live, we look for space, a view and all mod cons.  Mostly all mod cons.  I prefer living near water, too.  If I have that stuff I don't bother with style.  I also prefer disinterested or mostly absent neighbours, for the most part, although when we lived in Portsmouth I loved my neighbours.  We had a very cool older couple on one side (weekly bbqs, fast RIBs for frequent wine trips to France and only there half the year) and an ex Red Arrow wing commander on the other side (amazing looking, interesting stories, only there on some weekdays).  I don't think our preferences are the norm. 

PS  Was that a trick question?  I'm not always sure if something is innuendo. 

[Furiously]

Couple more before and afters, living room edition. Not done yet, but move-innable.

Do you have gas? I'd look at a gas insert instead of the fireplace. Give you back some room.
Also look on Craigslist religiously for doors. I got a sweet deal on two sets of fiberglass french doors to replace my old sliders.

[NiX]

This is not the way I approach home remodeling. I want stuff I like.

I meant you'll get your money back in that it'll maintain its appearance. There's nothing worse than buying something you really like only to see it become something you don't like in a year or two.

[Yegolev]

The current technological level of gas fireplaces is good.  I have a ventless LP fireplace that does a great job of heating up the joint.  Far preferable to the wood-burning sort.

[Sky]

I do have a gas line running close to that location, and we've discussed a gas fireplace. But on one hand, a new fireplace would cost money I don't have. On the other, gas is going to get real expensive soon, which kinda kills the whole money-saving aspect of a wood stove ($$ vs free). I don't mind the room it takes up, I love woodstoves. Plus, it has a dragon on it.

Craigslist in my area is for gay hookups. I was going to sell GH3 on there, and I've looked for musicians and musical gear. And by my area I mean the city a half hour away. Goddamned city folk.

[Signe]

The current technological level of gas fireplaces is good.  I have a ventless LP fireplace that does a great job of heating up the joint.  Far preferable to the wood-burning sort.

This is what we have.  In fact, it works so well that I can only use it if it's very cold because even at the lowest setting, it makes the whole house very warm, very quickly. 

[Jayce]

That's what's so awesome about having a house: you can tell everyone else to go fuck themselves.

Unless you've got a gestapo HOA like I do.

I moved out of a Gestapo HOA into a no-HOA area.  Now we're considering moving back.  God help us.

HOAs sound like a good idea until you actually live in one.

[Yegolev]

I also have a real fireplace and it is not only cheap (to operate, not install!) but you can dispose of many things in it.  Worst case, put on another sweater.

[Signe]

I also have a real fireplace and it is not only cheap (to operate, not install!) but you can dispose of many things in it.  Worst case, put on another sweater.

Or nosy neighbour.

[Righ]

What does Righ think about solid wood doors?

Doors are for pussies. Seriously. If you don't have any, your cats will go exploring and get lost and other peoples' cats will come exploring and piss on your carpets.

[lamaros]

I also have a real fireplace and it is not only cheap (to operate, not install!) but you can dispose of many things in it.  Worst case, put on another sweater.

Or nosy neighbour.

So are we putting a sweater on the fire, or wearing a neighbour? You've got me all confused.

[Lantyssa]

If your neighbor is a sweater, putting them on would be kind of icky.  You don't want your fire to get cold, so a sweater is okay for it, though it prefers natural fibers.  Synthetics will cause it to give off all kinds of horrible smells after a bit.

[Broughden]

Sky,

What was that big black box hanging from your ceiling originally for???

[NiX]

YAR! WRONG THREAD!

[Sky]

What was that big black box hanging from your ceiling originally for???

It had a hinged bottom panel that would swing down. When you were using the stove, you could open it up, turn on a fan in the attic and run hot air through a duct that spanned the attic crawlspace out to the kitchen, where it would come out over the sink.

Since the kitchen is the NEXT ROOM, I tore the entire thing out, though I still have to pull the ducting out of the crawlspace. If I need more heat in the kitchen, I'll install a fan in the "hallway" (which is about 5x5).

The kid I bought the house from lived there for three years with that thing in his living room and never bothered to find out what it was. Then again, he didn't ever look for the screens, either. Possibly the most clueless person I've ever met, and I've met some real doozies.

[Broughden]

If anyone is thinking about going tankless, it is soooo worth it.  I'd recommend it to anyone, regardless if your hot water heater is going out or not.  Dropped our power bill by 25 percent, and the instant heat is awesome.

My in-laws are remodelling an old house to hopefully turn it into a B&B. What can you tell me about these tankless systems? One per bathroom? One for the whole house? How does it work?

[Viin]

One for the whole house unless it's huge and you need one for each floor.

Upside is that you get hot water for hours at a time. Downside is that it takes longer to get hot (30 seconds or more depending on the temp of the water coming in).


Edit:

I believe there are two verisons: 1) where you heat the hot water at/near the exit (ie: in the bathroom), in which case you'd need one for every room that has hot water and won't usually work in older houses. 2) the one I'm referring to above, where you replace your existing heater with the on-the-wall unit and provide hot water to the whole house.

Most folks only do one, but if you have kids or a big enough house then two might be worth while.. but requires lots more plumbing changes. And they aren't cheap.

Prolly wouldn't work for a BB because they really are only good for one major item using hot water at a time - so two guests showering may be too much for it and cause lots of temperature changes/pressure changes.

[Merusk]

There's only the one type.  The # of flames required to create the BTUs needed to heat the water take up a decent bit of space.  Installing them AT the fixture is prohibitive.  There are instant-hots which are mini-water heaters for taps and similar things for showers if you want immediate at-the-fixture hot water.

You can set-up a recirculation pump at the tankless heater as well.  It cycles the water through your hot water pipes back to the tankless so there's always hot water at the fixture,  but that's always seemed stupid to me. You're essentially turning your hot water pipes into a hot water tank but with none of the insulation. If anything I'd think that sort of a setup would RAISE your bill, not lower it.

One should suffice for any home (note I'm not a plumber.) since it attaches into the plumbing like your hot water tank.  All the other hot water pipes branch off from it, so as long as the unit is rated to heat water at the max flow you'd have hot water everywhere. 

Pressure isn't a problem these days.  Modern plumbing systems and fixtures have pressure and temperature regulators to avoid the old "flush the toilet and water goes away/ gets scalding" problem.  If your parents are rehabbing, I'd hope they're replacing the plumbing as well.  Lots of folks want to in order to have more cash for finishes.  However, plumbing and framing is the infrastructure of your building.  Cheap out on those and it doesn't matter what the finish is like, because you'll be ripping it up/ replacing it soon enough when that infrastructure fails.

[Yegolev]

I agree that the circulating-water-with-a-tankless defeats the purpose, which is to avoid heating water 24x7.  The other side of that is if your heater is like mine and faaaaar away from your shower then you will wait a long damn time for hot water.  Our solution at the time was to have a convection loop so that I get warm water pretty quickly, but it's both wasteful and inconsistent.  I really want one so that I can stay in the shower for two hours without a temperature drop.  I'm going to put in a tankless once my wife stops spending all of my money, but I will put it under my bathroom.  Everyone else will have to deal with the other 40-gallon tank unit until I put in another for the rest of the house.

The important metric for looking at a tankless heater is the degree rise at a specific GPM.  I figure that the most GPM I have going at once in my bathroom would be from the tub faucet and that's probably 2.5GPM per the Delta catalog.  From there I can figure out how hot I can get the water from a particular heater and size it appropriately.

[Sky]

I thought I was going to have recovered the budget to the point where I could start on the winterizing stuff (lots of work involved there!). Then the fiancee gives me an ad with the bedroom set we had just looked at (to buy in a year or two) that is marked down from $1800 to $1000 (and the $1800 was an amazing deal). Fizuck. Looks like I'll be broke again.

At least I'll have a decent bed.

[Yegolev]

Replace the nouns in that anecdote and you'll be set for wife-stories until you die.

[K9]

Arise!

I am just wondering if anyone has any experience or expertise with garage flooring. We are fitting out a four car garage at home, complete with a maintenance pit, and I am wondering what is the best material to lay down over a concrete base?

Google seems to suggest rubber mats as the popular solution, but I have also seen many garages with some sort of durable paint-esque floor material that is smoother and harder than rubber. If anyone has any advise regarding what is better/cheaper/easier/more durable, that would be welcome. Cheers!

[Nebu]

Epoxy garage floor coating

That's what I did to the garage at my last house and it worked out pretty well.  I wouldn't recommend it for high traffic and industrial use though.  It provides a nice clean look to the garage floor that's easy to maintain.  That's why I did it. 

[Sand]

Rubber mats are nice because the installation is so easy, you can make the kids/wife do it. Simply snap them to each other, trim around support posts or walls, and you're done.
However the draw back is if you have a fluid leak from an automobile or weather incident flooding the garage, the stuff will get under the mats and they will need to be removed in order to clean and dry underneath.

Self leveling epoxy floor covering is nearly as simple in installation. Really all you need are a bunch of five gallon buckets, a drill and mixer attachment, and a couple of large squeeges.
About the only other thing I would recommend is a laser level, to check the slope of the garage floor. Because this stuff is self leveling, if your garage is sloped forward so water and such will run out, so will the epoxy when you put it down.
Bonus is nothing can get underneath it, makes an old concrete floor look shiny and new (we use it in some of our businesses), and stands up to LOTS of abuse. Draw backs can be the stuff can be extremely slick when wet, if you dont add chips or sand or some other traction additive.

[K9]

Fucking A! Thanks chaps.

That epoxy stuff was what I was trying to remember. As it stands the garage will not be getting much traffic, and flooding is pretty unlikely, the epoxy seems like a less fancy but better option to the rubber mats.