What home improvement work did you do today?

why go through all the trouble for laminate flooring? If I'm re-doing my whole house, I'll make sure it is a solid hardwood floor.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IcFNiNDb8E

 

Good luck!

 

Next step of replumbing...cold line into PEX manifold and ran two foundation spigots off that (one replacement spigot and line, one new). The 3/4" tee to the left and the line coming down are temporary, to tie into existing CPVC line and water heater in. I'll be cleaning that up...

 

Additional deconstruction today

and of course found another fire hazard

but followed it up with a little reward

 

nearly 3x the cost, and with pets and our lifestyle, the trouble-free aspect is going to win out.
the "trouble" for laminate isn't much really, compared to doing a full gut and rework for hardwoods. I don't have to pull trim, rework underlayment, or anything like that since everything we're replacing is laminate currently. 3/4 of it is 18 years old, and it's been great except for the fact that the stuff we originally installed was no longer made when we decided to start tearing out carpet and replacing it with hard flooring.

 

I love our LVP flooring, waterproof and awesome for dogs/kids

 

Im something of a laminate floor enjoyer myself. Having three kids the only thing so far that can withstand continuous years of a little tikes car doing donuts with another kid riding on the roof is laminate. Just installed 2500sqft and did about 3k in prior houses, even in bathrooms and held up well.

 

This weekends task was converting a coat closet into a kitchen pantry (remove door, build shelves, paint, add hanging door) and installing these pretty sweet kids cloud lights x 4.

 

+1 for LVP here. I originally wanted hardwood in our first house, but the price tag made me vomit. Then you add dogs running and kids spilling drinks into the mix, and LVP becomes a no brainer. The back end of my kitchen remodel will include the addition of LVP as well. Laying it down isn't all that bad once you get a good flow and a solid set of knee pads

 

Was hoping you would chime in.

We bought quality LVP, zero issues 8 years later with kids trying to destroy it! Gotta clean up those spills against the baseboard quick too!

 

I am in process of thinking about moving out of state from NH to Ohio... Here now visiting my brother and SIL and looking at real estate. Looked at a very overpriced house yesterday at an open house, noticed they had large bricks piled outside next to an area of the foundation, was like hmmm, wonder what they are hiding there. Went down to basement and sure enough stair step crack down the basement wall. Have to be so careful when you buy and look for things that are being covered up, forget the cosmetic stuff and pay attention to the more expensive stuff!! Good luck with your selling and buying!

 

I can't remember if I mentioned this or not.

I've been going a little nuts because I haven't had a deep freezer for way too long, and our new fridge has more room than the old one, but still not enough room for me to keep larger slabs of meat, which means I haven't been able to buy meat in bulk for a while, and any time I land some venison or catch a deal on a partial cow or hog, I'm having to clear out the fridge, or process it immediately to package and save for later.

When I remodeled/finished out the basement, I intentionally built out the shelving to accomodate a 7-9cu.ft chest freezer, but hadn't found quite the right one. Lowe's had a deal on this 8.8cu.ft Hotpoint (so GE, basically) unit for $300. And I had a discount I needed to burn which kept it right around $300. Needless to say, pickup was a shitshow, as usual for big-blue, same as big-orange these days. I walk in, there's no longer a human working the pickup counter. After a couple minutes of standing there, I realize you're supposed to scan in at a kiosk, not wait at the counter. So I scan in, and sit on a bench 4ft away.

And wait.
And wait.
And wait... and finally after multiple employees pass by, one asks, "Did anyone from the counter help you yet?" It took about 7mins. I told them no, and they spent several minutes trying to get anyone to come by. At about the 15 minute mark, the Lowe's employee assigned to pickups showed up, touched a few buttons, and tells me, "We'll have it out in 15-20 minutes sir".

Just shy of 15 minutes later, she shows up with a box that's absolutely fecked on a lower corner and upper corner and expects me to take it. She walks off to find someone to help me load up, and I inspected the top corner where the box is open, looks OK, then I check the lower corner, and there's a golfball-sized dent in the lower corner. Raise the point with her. She gets a manager. I tell the manager, "look, you've got a scratch and dent store south of town, this is just gonna go down there and sell for 30% off - let me save you the effort, take 20% off and I'll walk out right now". Dude tells me the best he can do is 15% off. I hem and haw, and he tells me there may be another in the back, they pulled the wrong one.

10-12 minutes later, they show up with another box, looking in better shape, but the bottom corner is ripped again. She walks over to call for help loading while I look at that corner, and this one is MORE DAMAGED THAN THE OTHER. Like wtf?! So I raise the point to her, she calls the same manager over and I reiterate: It's more damaged, but I will still take it if you knock 20% off. That manager calls over another manager, who says he'll give it to me for 10% off, I say, "hell no, it's more damaged than the last!", which is when he learns this is freezer #2 for me, and I've been there for almost 45 minutes now, gets another manager, and that manager says "OK" to 20%, so I load the chest freezer and leave.

What a f'n debacle. But I only paid $230 after all was said and done so I'm pretty happy.

​

 

PS - retail/services industries are absolutely fucked these days, and I don't use that term lightly. It's been nothing but a nightmare ordering anything for pickup that's in the vein of appliances/electronics/construction at any of the big-box stores.

I've been defaulting to buying @ www.build.com (Fergusson) lately because their customer support is top-notch, they almost always get it to you on-time, and typically have everything I need in stock, cheaper than scAmazon.

 

Good to know, they sell to Joe Homeowner no problem?

 

I didn't have any issues buying from them, and after getting burned by Lowes and Home Depot both on our basement remodel, with Home Depot trying to give me half a $400 toilet, and Lowe's trying to sell me two cracked shower pans back-to-back, I gave up.

 

Yeah, it's painful.

My hero
https://youtu.be/IEhHEOIYgMY?si=XDEjUPXrFpAhBQYp

 

…. almost forgot. Added more solar lights. Night mode

 

House / Ferguson will take anyone’s money. Depending on the product, contractors MIGHT get a deeper discount, but not always (depends on the margins and the specific item).

our company does ~$80-100mm worth of purchases through Ferguson a year, but we typically get volume rebates on the back end over much deeper discounts on the front end. It’s how a lot of bigger split houses are operating any more - another way for them to make a little more interest on your money before they give you some back.

 

Valid question. I wasn’t happy about buying new mdf vs plywood but the size difference causes uneven floor and I didn’t want to dump that much more $$. Long term probably a better idea but I have a bone dry crawl space and above the flood plain along w quality plumbing skills .
I will be installing some drip pans for additional damage prevention as well.
All the damage was over 4 decades worth if that gives some perspective.

 

I’d consider using a product like Redgard (sp?) over the MDF, just to seal it. As you’d do with other stuff in a bathroom environment. Just sayin’. Insurance.

My MIL is a designer and has a rep w/Ferg, and if I build a cart; I can give her the cart ID, she’ll knock off 10% or sometimes 15% under MIL’s account. But then I gotta go thru the hassle of calling her up and working thru everything for a small discount. I’ve found a lot of times I can go to RetailMeNot and other places and find at least 5% off coupons and sometimes 10%, which may work for others reading it. The only way Home Depot and Lowe’s are ever going to fix the problem is if we all take our money elsewhere, so I’ve been doing what I can to avoid them these days. I buy everything I can at Ace or Ferguson.

 

Yup, autocorrect strikes again ... fixed!

 

Anyone use a hot water recirculating pump? Hassle, awesome, or both? And details on dedicated return or reteofit crossover? This would be a retrofit, but the pipes are being replaced anyway, so, not a huge extra to plumb a dedicated return loop.

TIA!

 

Pinging @daveeasa on this one, since he recently mentioned recirc on tankless WH recently.

 

I had a return line ran with the circ pump when we built the house, love it.
I need to replace the Grundfos pump though, it shit the bed.
I've heard Taco makes a good pump

 

The maintenance around the house continues. Had to replace the bushings on the golfcart. Was a pretty straight forward job.

 

Recirc makes sense for long runs where accessible. Definitely worth thinking about and plumbing for even if not used if walls are open or at time of build. In my setup I don't get a lot of benefit from it as it's a recirc to the kitchen sink which is a 10-12' run in the crawlspace which has since been insulated (stem walls) plus I insulated all hot and cold pipes with pipe insulation.

I kind of have mixed feelings about it, to me the whole point of a tankless heater is to not spend money and fuel heating water when not needed, and I hate "smart" thermostats and such, I prefer manual controls. But at the same time I'm not blind to the benefits when something is heavily used to just keep "hot" as "hot" rather than wasting cold water. Then again, here in the PNW, water is abundant, it may be more scarce elsewhere.

The internal 1 gal buffer tank is really the biggie to me, that's something the Navian "A" series have but I don't think others do, makes for a pretty seamless delivery. That and minimizing hot runs is my ideal.

I'm not a plumber nor really qualified to opine on this stuff though.

 

Color change from blue to gray