Anybody I used to know still post around here??????
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Thursday, May 23, 2024 14:59
VIEWED: 53454
PAGE 12 of 32
Saw pics...Did ya get yer shelf put back up? You'll have to post some "done" pics, eventually...I never did take any pics of our basement "before", but I recently took the woman I bought our place from on a tour and when I took her downstairs, she gasped and said "It look soo different, I can't even picture what it was like in here before!" That was satisfying.
I'm of the opinion that any kind of insulation other than foamboard in a basement is a disaster in waiting. Too many things can go wrong...
Oh, I saw an article today about a man who goes to the Ukraine looking for bride and gets scammed into homelessness. So yeah, don't go there... 
If I had an extra $2000 bucks, I'd take a vacay, not get a high-fallutin' tee-vay 
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Shelf... what shelf????
I'm guessing probably not. If it was anywhere in that mold infested basement I haven't done any actual rehab yet. I've just gotten all of the bad stuff out and I'm working on making it water tight. I want to live through a spring flood season or two and have a new sump pump and (hopefully) one of those Natural Gas backup generators installed before I work on re-finishing it. They cost about 3000 bucks installed for the smallest (8000 Watt) units. Some could argue it's a luxury, but then again "some" haven't ever had to spend a month in a basement removing mold that had crawled up to 6 feet high behind-the-scenes either. 
Not much is actually "done" yet, but just greatly improved. I just realized after I saw your post that I have a lot of updated pics that I haven't uploaded there yet. Even though the basement isn't "done" yet, I think you'll find it really cool what I'm doing to mold-proof it as much as possible. I've got a few inventive ideas going on here that I think will also add a lot of value to the house because I'm taking pics of everything as proof of work done before I wrap everything up.
Speaking of pics......
YOU DIDN'T TAKE BEFORE PICS!!!!!!!?????????
Awwwwww.... bummer. 
It's such a satisfying thing for me to look at the before pics and what everything looks like now. It especially helps in the morale department when I'm feeling like something is just taking way too long and huge strides aren't being made in a short time. When I was pulling out 5 to 8 huge trash bags of moldy crap a day it was easy to see how much work was getting done and give myself a big pat on the back at the end of the day, but when it came to scrubbing studs with bleach/vinegar/peroxide, removing screws and staples from the studs, bleaching the removed trim that I'm going to try to re-use, and just general cleaning up of the aftermath, it could feel like I was working forever and nothing was getting done.
Pics are great, but I only wish somebody had invented a smell-o-camera so I could actually relive the smell of the house when I first moved in. I'll just have to be happy that I'm not the only one who was here before the work was done and that others remember how it smelled of a thousand kitty cats crapping and now the basement has a pleasant, faint, primer/bleach odor to it and there is absolutely no smell on the upper floors at all.
Hehe.... Still on that Russian Bride thing, huh?
I was JOKING!!!!!! 
Seriously, what does a guy expect when he marries a foreign woman he doesn't even know, no pre-nup, and she just happens to look like a 5k/hr hooker our good Senators spend our tax dollars on?
There can sometimes be a fine line between fantasy and reality, but if some poor fool breaches that barrier and invites a woman who's upkeep costs just to look as hot as those photos he saw of her online cost 500 bucks a day, he better have a huge bankroll and an outstanding job. Not to mention a near inhuman will to not be suckered into homelessness in that one weak moment when the temptation gets greater everyday as he really starts falling in love with her.
Caveat Emptor.....
Oh yeah, and if I had the extra 2k at the moment, it's a split decision between gutters or a large down payment on that natural gas fail-safe backup system.
All of this work is a vacation to folk like me. Like the seven dwarves, I just whistle while I work and listen to my mp3s. Sometimes some jobs grind on me, but for the most part I love this stuff. It's the idea that the party is nearly over and that I'm going to have to start looking for a job working for somebody else that bothers me.
Keep shinin'!
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." ~Shepherd Book
BTW... I love my General Discussion Peeps. If you feel a strong need to judge me on RWED discussions I've had in the General Discussion, I welcome it, but I also say that they are two different worlds......
And while my core never wavers and tho
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Hey Wishimay!
I added the pics to the Porch Project to the photostream. There are three new sets to check out.
1. Post scrub, pre-fix/primer
2. Primered and fixed
3. Finished - caulked and painted
It looks great!
Don't mind the leaves everywhere in the pics. I've since gotten to them...... a huge pain in the ass itself, with four large maples and the fact that my lawn seems to be a magnet for all of the neighbors leaves too.
I've got a lot more pics of the basement now that all the studs/tracks are primered and I've begun some really cool work to really make the skeleton water tight. I'll have to get those organized so I can upload them soon.
I got, like, the ultimate compliment today! A couple of teen girls were walking down the street and said hi to me while I was doing some yard work. They said that they loved my house.
I haven't felt that "cool" since I was riding around in my old man's brand new Dodge Daytona as a kid and some kid yelled out "cool car!!!!" as we passed.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." ~Shepherd Book
BTW... I love my General Discussion Peeps. If you feel a strong need to judge me on RWED discussions I've had in the General Discussion, I welcome it, but I also say that they are two different worlds......
And while my core never wavers and though I may say things you don't like in the RWED, I'd never say them in General Discussions and I hope you would do the same.
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They're right, it looks pretty cool...Amazing how much a coat of paint and changing out some boards can do for a place.
Yes, I know you were kiddin' about the russian bride thing, was just on the subject...
Do you have any other projects in the house you are going to do eventually, changing out fixtures and such?(In the first set of pics there was a wire shelving in several) I know you said you were having problems with a shower leaking? Did you say that got fixed?
We finally moved in the cast iron tub I refinished($45 at a flea market, $40 for 2 refinishing kits which work great , 'cause I left it in the rain for a week and it was perfectly fine ) , and put it next to the pedistal sink I bought($20 unused ata yard sale,fixture $15 at same flea market, also unused) and introduced them to each other. They are such a pretty couple Now...just need some plumbing......and some walls. There is already lines run to the area, so it's not as complicated as it sounds, hopefully. Don't hold yer breath for updates, it'll be A WHILE, heh...
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Thanks Wishimay! :)
I have a billion projects I'll eventually be getting to. I'm just taking care of the preventative stuff mostly right now before the winter kicks in. I do believe that, minus the gutters, I have the entire outside of the house and garage sealed tight now. My main focus now is making the basement watertight even though I don't plan on actual basement rehab until at least the end of next summer, if not a year from then.
Once I get all that done, I can focus on one project at a time and take a little more time to show pics and explain exactly what I'm doing. The entire 2nd floor (2 bedrooms, a bathroom and a hallway) are my next main focus.
The secondary bedroom is a HUGE eyesore. Every wall is a different primary color.... even in the closet. If life were simple, I'd have already at least primered the walls and gotten them prepped for painting. Unfortunately, the electric in that room is all out of wack. One of the outlets will actually fry anything you put into it. It is an outlet that was extended from an existing outlet on the adjacent wall on the outside of the drywall (hard to explain without showing pics).... Plus, the light switch for the overhead fixture in the room is across the hall from the room. That crap ain't going to fly with me. I very well may have to rip out a wall and some of the ceiling to fix the problems before I start remodeling the room. Even worse, I may very well have to rip out some of the walls in the hallway to fix the electricity since this ain't Cook County and Romax wasn't a code problem back in the late 50's here when the house was built. Fingers crossed they actually used conduit and bent the corners instead of using elbows or junction boxes.
Bah... if I have to take out the walls, no big deal really. It's pretty cheap to fix them and repaint them. I kill two birds doing it, since I'll make sure the electric is kosher, and I'll alleviate any subconscious worries I have that mold got upstairs. It doesn't smell at all in the house anymore..... but I'm such a mold-a-phobe now that tearing down those walls would probably be good therapy for me.
I didn't fix the leaky shower yet. I'll probably have to rehab the upstairs bathroom to do it. I think the leak is coming from one of the 2 elbows from the top of the shower head, but the creators were silicone crazy and the shower is lined with those fiberglass wall boards all the way up to the ceiling. I'd have to rip out a lot just to fix that. I'd like to replace that cheap fiberglass wallboard with some real kick-ass ceramic tiles someday, but the funds and time just won't allow for that now. So... in the meantime it's just going to be a 5 gallon bucket catching the overflow in my 2nd bathroom in the basement.
I've finished laying concrete between the tile edges and the tracks for all the walls in 2/3rds of the basement today. I wanted to do this to make sure that if there was even a flood of 1" in the basement that it would have nowhere to pool. When it's dry I just need to sand it and then caulk it to the primered tracks. It will be great when it's all done, but it seriously takes forever to do. Between mixing concrete, laying it down, smoothing it out and then cleaning up the excess from the ceramic tiles, I'm making about 7 to 8 linear feet of progress every 45 minutes.
This is probably one of many OVERKILL things I will be doing to the basement in the future, but nobody could really understand my mindset unless they've seen what I've seen. I really think that when it comes time to sell the house down the road that all of the pics I have of these little extras will really be selling points too.
Cast iron tubs are The SHIT! I envy you so much right now! I didn't even know you could refinish them on the fly by yourself. What a bargain at that price. I will definatiley be looking to do that in my upstairs bathroom when the time comes.
Good luck getting it all hooked up right. I know about time though.... I'm probably looking at get
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Post got eaten, dammit.
Any way I was thinking today about how far I'll go to make sure things don't come back to haunt me, heh. Primary colors EVERYWHERE?? Yeah that would come back to haunt me...
Tips for re-finishing a cast iron tub...(you could call re-bath but I never could get someone to give me a ballpark, they say they have to come to your house first...and I'm sure a high pressure sale is involved somewhere)$$$!
First of all, selection is key. If you live near a building salvage there may be a few to choose from. They also make resin ones now, but $$$!
Find one that has as few chips as possible(I just had one). They do sell chip kits. Mix and Apply VERY quickly, it dries like lightning!!(then sand it smooth) Make sure the drain and faucet holes are sound and round, there may be SOME rust, but not all the way through. Buy a couple tub refinish kits and a couple SMALL cheap rollers and trays, as the paint dries hard, and you will probably want to layer. Hand sand all the surface to be painted, and clean thoroughly with baking soda and vinegar, then bleach. Believe it or not, sliced onion will take off most rust staining... PAINT OUTSIDE, the kit contains xylitol. Also, if you have an old truck with rust spots you don't want getting worse, you can use tub paint-it won't come off in the rain or when you wash it, like those touch ups from the auto store...I'd like to try painting words or a design on one with it, I think it would work...
Also, if you get one that has feet, they are not usually used for support, so get a couple smooth faced concrete blocks and paint them the same color.
I know it sounds like a lot of work, but the reward of restoring one of these things is worth it...
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Heh... yup. I call it "The Clown Room". I have some beautiful Civil War prints hung up in there that my uncle gave me when he moved into a condo Downtown and no longer had room for them. It's kind of my office/workout room right now until I rehab the basement completely and move stuff down there. The prints are framed and huge so they cover a lot and make the room at least bearable to sit in, but I wonder if Grant and Lee are turning in their graves now.
Speaking of making sure things don't come back to haunt me, that's 100% of my work in the basement right now. So completely overkill I'm sure, especially if I do right and never have a flood again, but man..... it's depressing work. Everything I'm doing now will end up being covered and nobody will ever see it. It takes ages to do, and at the end of the day the visual impact is so lacking that it all just seems to drag on forever.
Thankfully, I finally finished laying the concrete today! Tomorrow I'm going to sand it all down with a grade and vaccum it all up and begin caulking the rooms that I started first. Then I have about 6 more cans of Great Stuff at least to spray all over like silly string and then I can finally put the final coat of mold/mildew proof paint on the studs and tracks.
Will I be able to wash and dry my clothes at my own house next week????????? Here's hoping!
Great tips on the tub. I'm sure that every single step of installing a cast-iron tub will be a huge pain in the ass, but well worth it in my book. Here's hoping I can find a decent one. I'd LOVE one with feet. They really don't support the weight though?
My biggest regret that I didn't get into one of the houses that I was looking at before this one was the beautiful tub in the upstairs bathroom that had feet with dragon-like paws/claws at the bottom. Seemed so retro-goth. It would be cool to find something like that in the future and restore it.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." ~Shepherd Book
BTW... I love my General Discussion Peeps. If you feel a strong need to judge me on RWED discussions I've had in the General Discussion, I welcome it, but I also say that they are two different worlds......
And while my core never wavers and though I may say things you don't like in the RWED, I'd never say them in General Discussions and I hope you would do the same.
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Boy, sanding concrete is impossible when you only have fine grain sandpaper (probably would be with the most coarse stuff too). The heavy duty steel wool brush I tried using was basically torn to shreds after about 8 feet of sanding. Whoops!!!!!
Screwdrivers, however, have multiple uses :)
I would have used a chisel, but I didn't want to gouge the ceramic tiles, so I had to be pretty careful. I graded the concrete so water would stay away from the tracks/studs and then I sanded the corners and tracks down so they are smooth, concrete free, and ready for caulk. Yay!
I also bit the bullet and primered all of the really hard to reach places all in one shot. There are only two trouble spots that I noticed I'll still have to bleach because I missed a little bit of mold. 
Did a second bleach treatment on the tiles and bare floor and was amazed at how dirty the water was still. I'm going to keep doing that every few days until the damn bucket has sparkly clear bleach/water when I'm done!
Other than that, just caulking, Great Stuff-ing, and painting all the tracks and studs with the mold/mildew proof paint and the basement is DONE!
Well... at least until I have the money for a generator, new sump pump and all the material I'll need to actually remodel down there.....
This is so cool! I'm finally going to be able to work a real job and just do remodeling work I enjoy on the upstairs on the side.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." ~Shepherd Book
BTW... I love my General Discussion Peeps. If you feel a strong need to judge me on RWED discussions I've had in the General Discussion, I welcome it, but I also say that they are two different worlds......
And while my core never wavers and though I may say things you don't like in the RWED, I'd never say them in General Discussions and I hope you would do the same.
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Hi 6string.
Reading your posts made me a little nostolgic for my remodeling dayz here.
Got this place in 93 and did alot uv work to increase the value to ride the refy wave.
The coolest thing I did wuz add a roof deck. also did alot uv electric upgradez, redid the bathroom, bilt a cement & cinderblock work shed that mainly servez az a house for the air compressor and generator.
Something simple to do that payz off big iz to insulate your bath tub. I put sum 2 inch foam panelz and hozed Great Stuff in the gaps. Works fantastic if you like to take long hot baths.
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MOR XeN 70 RxS SPINING UBoWT XU GaLIKSE & XU MEK HaV INHeRITID NoT U 1. - MaL
http://www.nooalf.com
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Hey JO753,
Ain't this work fun? Don'tcha miss it?
I don't know what I'll do with myself when I "finish" the work. I always somewhat enjoyed rehabbing work with my friend's dad, but it's nothing like the awesome feeling of working on your own place.
Heh... I think the refy wave days are long gone. I know the work I've done so far at the bargain basement price I got the place for has added a substantial amount compared to what I spent on it if I were to put it on the market now, but I fear it won't be too long before I hit the sweet spot and then suffer from the law of diminishing returns. This ain't 2002....
I think in the end I could only honestly sell this place for 220% of what I paid for it if it were completely updated and modernized, which doesn't sound too shabby.... but that would include some major things like completely ripping down the vinyl siding and putting up some more expensive material that isn't "garage-worthy" like, in my opinion, vinyl is.
A roof deck sounds awesome :) Do you mean you added some sliding patio doors to your bedroom and had a deck overlooking the backyard from it? I'd LOVE that!
Fortunately, I have a built in storage shed at the tail end of the enclosed porch. It's pretty cool to have your very own U-Haul storage locker attached to the house. The gumment must have thought it was cool too because they tax me about 80 bucks a year for it as a line item in my taxes.
I can't think of the last time I've ever even taken a bath. I'm pretty low maintenance that way. Gimmie' a hot shower and I'm all smiles. I can tell you that after I got the hot water installed after 3 weeks of doing mold remediation in 95 degree weather and taking ice cold showers afterwards that I think my first hot shower was about an hour long!
Good tip though for the future. I'm not looking to be a bachelor the rest of my life. I can't imagine a woman that doesn't enjoy a nice hot bath.
My biggest regret about this place I guess would be the layout when bathrooms are concerned. I'd love to have one of those huge walk in bathrooms with a jaccuzi in them and two sinks and a lot of room to move about, but that would entail a lot of construction work and sacraficing the sizes of the otherwise pretty large rooms surrounding them.
Decisions.... decisions....
BTW..... speaking of great stuff, it really is great stuff... but... if you're going to completely disregard the instructions like most men inherantly do and decide that wearing gloves while using it is a hassle you don't need to put up with, you better have a shut off switch for instinctual desires like diving in with your bare hand to re-fit stuff that fell over where you didn't want it to fall. I swear to god that it kills at least the first layer of skin on contact, and it also seals in any dirt you had on your hand before working with it. I had to ensure my parents that my hands were clean and washed about 8 times before I came over for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday even though it looked like I hadn't washed them in a year and necrosis had set in.
Nothing a little sandpaper the next day can't take care of, but I'd rather not have to buff my hands out with 200grit sandpaper in the future anytime soon.
Thanks for sharing 
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." ~Shepherd Book
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