Sucky Homeowner Maintenance / Repair Jobs

Did that two years ago and will not do it again.   It has since been repainted as part of a remodel.   

Ours has a pitched roof and a skylight and my back was killing afterward.     

Bummer dude. I never liked working over my head when I was younger, and can't imagine tackling a project like that now.

This happened this morning at a duplex I own. Ice storm dragged power power line to house, and box truck plowed through it this morning ripping the power meters off the house. This repair gonna suck. 
 

Dog Karma from this.

Maybe Gum Off or even wd40 is worth a try on the glaze. 

Although my shack has many projects to be accomplished,  one of the dirty and time-consuming jobs was changing elements on the old electric water heater.

Bradford-White from early 80's,  and those elements are obsolete.  However I located "NOS" elements at the old-school plumber supply house in Trenton NJ, our state capitol.  Good price too!  Long drive though.

So you have to cut electricity to the appliance and then drain the water before removing old / installing new elements.  Problem is, it's in the cellar and there is no drain in the dirt floor.  The solution  ;; connect a couple hundred feet of Hose to the outlet spigot and run down the hill, creating a Siphon.

Other problem - the drain spigot is facing the brick wall and not much clearance to connect a hose.  But it's a dirt floor, so you can dig a clearance hole and attach the garden hose. HUGE FUN !!  Of course, there's no running water, so you wash your hands in a Bucket prepared earlier (maybe).

After two element replacements,  I got a new Electric Water Heater and installed it off the ground with draincock facing forward.  When that one dies,  it will be easy to replace.

> How do you get frosted glass spray off windows?

Acetone?

Looking at ARSS job description,  I would measure the ceiling and buy some thin Sheet-rock or similar sheet goods,  paint it and screw it to old stuff with drywall screws.

Anything to avoid all that ceiling work. You could even glue colorful Mosaic tiles to the sheet,  or have the kids paint it like the Sistine Chapel.

I never used the 'Frosted GLass' spray but people put that stuff up for Xmas or Halloween. I think the razor is best way,  maybe some basic Windex would work ?  Goo-Gone brand works on all sorts of stuff and smells like Pine-Sol.  It's cheap enough to try first on stuff like that.

Putting the house up for sale in two weeks, and now it the process of fixing stuff. I had a leek in the kitchen ceiling about a year ago and touched it up with Kilz Paint and the gloss does not match the flat paint of the rest of the ceiling. I bought two gallons of ceiling paint and have my fingers crossed that I can just touch up the paint there and also where I change my kitchen light out from a track fixture to one the is centered about two feet away, my drywall and texture patch looks good but again I need to match the color of the ceiling. If that does not work then I will need to paint the ceiling in the kitchen and connected Family Room.

I also cut in a wood stereo cabinet into the side of a closet that is in my Family Room, and now I have to figure out how to picture frame it with some trim to cover up some open spaces around the cabinet, should of done this years ago, but it was pretty well hidden.

I have to replace about 40' of wooden fence this spring. The chipmunks in our yard have burrowed around 2 of the posts and they are leaning pretty good now between critters and the amount of rain we get. (I have been watching this happen over the last 2 years). Whoever built the fence did it 8' on center, I am going to reduce that to 6' on center to make it a little stronger, and so I can avoid the chipmunk holes. Hoping they just do not repeat the behavior on the new posts. I could just replace the 2 leaning posts, but then I would have to look at new and old fencing in the same section. 

I have seen a couple Laundry Chutes in new homes but only a couple

i want a door from the master closet to the Laundry Room in the new home. 

Alan, you reminded me of a bathroom shower that I have that doesn't have anything on the greenboard on the ceiling, so need to go through ALL the steps ... luckily not rehabing mold and what not.   Drywall and finish work in general is very tedius and looking up all the time can make it more so.

Skitime, that sucks!  As much as it might be tempting to trying and fix it while the power supply to the duplex is on, I'd be careful with that .... better safe than sorry.

I had a massive ice dam removed today. No way in hell I was getting up on a 30' ladder and hacking away at a 25' long dam that was 10" high and went back about 3'. Fuck that shit!

^^^^^ thanks. In this case, I am hiring a professional. The Power company won't hook up the power until we have our own electrician come in and re-do the box that houses the power meter and the conduit into the units. This ice storm in Portland reeked havoc, my power was out for 5 days and tons of down power lines and trees everywhere. Electricians are hard to come by so I feel bad for the renters without power right now,  might be a few days til it can all get fixed. 

Alan, good luck. 
I just talked to the landlord about the same problem, but worse.

Thankfully he's hiring a drywall guy that I've known for years and won't fuck the job up or take forever doing it.

Nice to have a guy with 30-plus years of experience on the job.

this works on most sticky stuff around the house  mixture of xylene and acetone. mike and jaz were pretty close. 

I worked at a solvent lab that had all of the toxic stuff that works. Methylene chloride, trichlor, perchlor, isobutanol, mibk, mtbe, toluene, xylene, acetone,. We formulated a paint stripper that would immediately bubble the paint on the outside of the 5 gal metal bucket if it ran down the side. It removed everything but debt. Most likely banned from existence now, but that shit worked.

I believe that one of the main avenues to success in life is to know well what one's strengths & weaknesses are, and personally I know well that I'm completely, absolutely useless with anything technical or tool-oriented (I made my living working with people, young and old; you're all much easier for me to manipulate than a hammer, etc).

This makes it easy for me to hire people to deal with home issues. That way it gets done correctly and it's just my arm that hurts writing the checks.

At the moment there are a number of situations with my home that need to be dealt with, but it was recently discovered that there was some serious dry-rot along the edge of my roof/under the gutters, and it was then made clear to me that the roof itself was in serious need of replacement (1976 was the last time the roof had been replaced) so just last week I had the dry-rot repaired and had the roof & gutters replaced.

I just got the invoice today. My arm is really going to hurt when I write THAT check, so some of the other issues will have to wait.

I cut that into my closet in 04 and never finished the trim, closet framing fucked me in trying to center it, let's see how I can fuck it up now

The shelf the turntable sits on pulls out and I know my trim is going to prevent that from operating but wtf I'm selling the house anyway. Maybe I will remove that turntable shelf and put it in the new place.

Patch and paint that mess. Regardless of its utility (to you), a prospective buyer will only view this modification as a "hole in the wall with a picture frame around it", and will (correctly) utilize it as a point of negotiation. Also just as simple and straightforward to repair than further modify. Just looking at this from both angles here.
 

Few things more satisfying than investing sweat equity into owned property. I'm logging trees and conducting some general fuels reduction this week.

happy Saturday zone.

Yes.  Close that up before selling house.  New home owners don't even listen to music or are aware of its existence ...

Cleaning the BBQ. Especially when we discovered that some critter moved in and was snacking on snails - leaving  behind dozens of snail shells and turds. In general, not a fan of rodent proofing and disposing of their messes. Our cat brought in a dead mouse yesterday, so he's helping..

Ok what about the ceiling speakers thoughout the house? I have speakers everywhere including the garage, Patching a wall is easy, patching a ceiling is whole other animal. Plus I can play music though the house while showing it. I'm taking my Tannoy Towers, and Klipsch Center channel and sub, that are part of my 5.1 but the cabinet and ceiling speakers are staying. They can pull it out if they want. 

Split the difference. Leave the speakers or replace them with dummy grills and fix the wall is my recommendation.

The custom stereo holes are a benefit to you

They are merely features to anyone else

But half installed, and the other half torn out is already another expense and flat out hassle for a serious buyer. 

The housing market is so hot down where I live it will not be an issue. The small down town area I live by is on the Water and being built up with restaurants, breweries,etc. twenty miles from over priced Orlando Market.  I am a mile from all of that. People from New York are leaving in droves and buying homes left and right from pictures on the internet. I' m looking in Ft,. Myers area and every home I like is pending in days. My biggest worry is finding a place once I sell this and having pockets large enough to stuff the cash in that I am going to make on this home. 

round of golf at 7am, planted a bush, zoned, then I took down air vents, light fixtures and did the trim work in the kitchen, around the upper cabinets was a bitch. Tomorrow round of golf at 7 am, and start the trim work in the family room, cannot wait to get the roller out with the long handle and get off the fucking ladder

I skipped golf yesterday and slept in, going up and down the ladder all afternoon Saturday kicked my ass. I finished the painting of the ceiling in the kitchen and Family Room yesterday, and I am now doing touch up on spots I hit too lightly with the roller. 
 

when will they make bath fans, smoke detectors, and light trim that do not yellow with time? My. Halogen light trims are ok butt starting to yellow. Next house I will retro in all LED fixtures if they are not there already. 

Alan, are you absolutely sure that is not replaceable?

>>>>The chipmunks in our yard have burrowed around 2 of the posts...

Yep, this week a chipmunk got in between our house and an outdoor heating/cooling unit we installed for our newly finished porch.   Chewed a hole right through it and then was nibbling on the intake vent filter.   My dog was going nuts.   One more thing to take care of.   

Fabes....I think these are signs it's time to move out of Florida.    Ft. Meyers sounds nice but I know plenty of people trying to move down there.   Atlanta is the same.  My real estate friends had their best years ever last year.     The south is booming.    They were saying my house may be double what we paid for after only five years.   I hope not, those aren't taxes I'd like to pay.  

Our 4-pin fan bulb - Edison #2? - just pulled right out. However, it took days to clean the grease off of it.

Zang, come on down. Ft. Myers  may be wrinkle city but I just intend to smoke and fish a lot in the coming years, it appears I can get more house in Cape Coral, but it is a terrible planned city. Tampa is only 2 hours and Miami is less, so I can still get to some sports events. 

Alan,  that's the trick, once you clean up one thing, everything else starts sticking out.   I've replaced five fans this past year.   

I usually like to do house work high, but I have not been smoking the past 2-3 weeks to get my tolerance back down, and to clean out the stuff in my lungs. It has actually improved my fuck ups. Usually when smoking I do not read directions or get sloppy on some of the work, and have to go back a redo shit. Outside of a few touch up spots I did a decent job on a lot of ceiling and did not fuck up the edges by the walls. 

Alan does this look familiar? Mine has and incandescent bulb