Home Improvement Today?

The crimper?

 

Crimper works fine, the manifold spacing won’t work with it though. Not sure what tool they’re designed for. Thought I’d be fancy and use those and the nice copper stub outs. Both are in my return pile lol

 

Maybe these?
Disclaimer: I'm not a plumber, and have never used these. But I might be using them in a few weeks.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/1-in-Stainless-Steel-PEX-Barb-Pinch-Clamp-10-Pack-PXPC110PK/301541072

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Apollo-3-8-in-to-1-in-1-Hand-PEX-Pinch-Clamp-Tool-69PTBJ0010C/301921125

 

That would probably work, but I just made my own. It’s a decent drive to Home Depot and luckily I had enough fittings.

 

I have about the same size door. I can fit most things through.

The fridge was a tight fit but made it through.

 

Vinyl siding is not that hard. Watch all of the videos you can, gathering all of the good tips. Big mistake most make is putting your fasteners in tight and flush with the walls Unless something has changed drastically in the last several years, the vinyl has to sort of float on the fasteners to allow for expansion and contraction, and to allow far wall irregularities.
Here is a better idea, look into the concrete board siding, and into "LP Smart siding. A bit more expensive, but both are well worth the extra u pay. After using both alternatives I would never put up vinyl again on anything except a shed or utility bldg. I wanted james hardie concrete siding for our last redo, but no contractors wanted to put it up due to the increased labor time. and the fact we has some higher up areas with a steep pitch roof . we wound up with the "LP Smartsiding" and have been very happy.

 

Who knows what is considered the "correct" way to insulate a cold storage room?

In my basement, there is one with three "exterior" concrete walls (dirt on the outside of them). These all have insulation batting against the inside of the concrete then a vapor barrier over that. The fourth wall is between the storage room and the rest of the basement. It is also a concrete wall with an insulated door. It has batting then vapor barrier on both sides of it, basement and storage. Heated living space is above the storage room. There is spray foam insulation then batting covering the ceiling. There are no hvac ducts into the storage room.

I would definitely keep the ceiling insulation, but am debating whether I should remove the insulation from all four walls in the storage room. Haven't been able to find much guidance elsewhere on the internet. Any thoughts?

 

How many of y’all are blocking in where the seams of your backboard fall? I’ve typically framed/supported all edges but am starting to think it’s unnecessary on 16” or less centers and might do more harm than good (more chances to break edges with screws)

 

Fully perimeter blocked screwed at 8".

https://www.jameshardiepros.com/blog/how-to-install-hardiebacker-cement-board-on-walls

 

Read that website before, but I don’t see that part in there, just the 8”. I might not be reading it right.

 

You can't put screws every 8" unless there's backing.

 

Good point. Makes more sense to support it, just curious what others are doing.

 

Based on what you are describing, im guessing you are in a cold climate. If that was my room, I would pull the insulation and vapor barrier off the basement walls. You really are just creating a mold factory, unless you have zero moisture issues and live in a dry climate, generally vapor barrier over insulation up against concrete or block is a bad idea. The "right" way to do it is to dig out against the exterior and put form board on the outside of the wall, that way any condensation happens on the exterior of the wall, but that is generally not feasible or practical for a remodel type situation. Air sealing and insulating your rim joists will go a lot further than trying to get fancy insulating the block wall from the interior of the house. If you are deadset on insulating that wall, use rockwool, no vapor barrier, and dont put any finishing on it so it can dry out when it eventually does get moisture in it.

 

Tomorrow will be fun. Two bathrooms at once is intense on the wallet and the ass.

 

Looking for any advice or professionals who have dealt with this shit before. Every single bathroom wall has this metal mesh backing behind the tiles and it’s damn hard to get pulled out. Any tips or tricks?

 

I’m no pro but I’ve demo’d 2 bathrooms now with the same stuff. Definitely the old fashioned way of tile installation. If you can’t get behind it to smash it out, I’d say use a crowbar and small sledge and “chisel” it out. The metal mesh breaks pretty easy under some pointed force. I think pros always use hammer drills to tear it out.

 

Yeah, it’s brute force, long crow bars, and leverage. That stuff SUCKS. Vice grips can sometimes get you enough hold to tear the smaller leftover chunks out, but it’s mostly swearing and banging.

 

Thanks fellas. Figured that’s the way and I’ve been doing that mostly. Walls weren’t awful but the small edges at the bottom and the floors is brutal

 

Brings back some nightmares. Ripped out three bathrooms in the last house with that stuff. It’s awful. Everyone pretty much covered what I was thinking. Good luck to you and i know your pain haha


Almost forgot sledging the old cast iron tubs to be able to move them. That shit was heavy! I don’t miss plaster and lathe.

 

Still taking a break from starting my stair case, so I started the massive overhaul of my home office. This is essentially going to be a glorified fly tying room with a couple of monitors for… “work”

Here’s the starting point. T&G pine boards that need to be yanked. Carpet from the 80’s. A questionable mountain mural… yeah basically everything needs to go.


The idea is to have nice built-in base cabinets on both ends of the back wall and build a wall desk that spans the whole 11 ft over them. Custom flooring, modern trim, new lighting, relocate just about every outlet, new paint, etc. The works.

Step 1 was to build my base cabinet carcasses. Since this isn’t a woodworking thread, here’s a brief gallery of how I like to construct my cabinets (everything below x 2)




Separate toe kicks (install is way easier)




Nailer strips, stretchers, and face frame construction:






undermount drawer slides (side mounts suck)


That’s as far as I got for now on the cabinets — just need to build drawers and paint them up! It’s been pounding rain in Oregon and there’s no way I could go get materials to make my drawers. In the meantime I started demo:




Yeet the carpet and prep the subfloor:


So for the flooring I wanted somewhat of a challenge. I’ve done a lot of flooring for my family over the years. Since this is MY office, I figured I’d kind of geek out and do a custom herringbone pattern. I bought some “utility” white oak boards that were unfinished and full of defects. So I cut the defects out and milled grooves where necessary. Boards were 4” wide, and the length for a herringbone needs to be a multiple of the width. 5x is standard, so I cut defects out to 20”. Made a big ass stack of boards.

Then I started figuring out my pattern. I wanted the majority of the floor to be a herringbone rectangle, and the edges of the rectangle to point to the corners of the room / corners where the edges of my base cabinets will be (that’ll make sense at a later date). After about 70 chalk lines and math I’m not very good at later, I made my blank board and started laying them down.




Since I have a Festool tramp stamp, I made it easy on myself. Basically I laid floor until my pattern was slightly larger than it needed to be. Like this:


And then I used the track saw on some “final” chalk lines to get a perfect rectangle exactly where I wanted it on the floor. The edge patterns are identical meaning I centered my blank board starter correctly. Also the rectangle is very symmetrical (within 1/32” of an inch). Now to route the entire thing with a groove and build my border!


That’s as far as I got. Still to finish:

• Finish 8x drawers and shaker door faces
• Paint cabinets
• Finish parquet border
• Epoxy knots in floor
• Sand 40
• Trowel wood fill entire floor
• Sand 60, 80, 100
• Rubio cotton white
• Install cabinets
• Build and install 11 ft desk