Home Improvement Today?

That’s a real nice oasis u got there

 

My wife has learned if she wants me to prioritize a job around the house all she has to do is threaten to call a “professional” in to do the work.
All DIY all the time but I got a decent skill and tool set and am unafraid to fuck things up in the name of learning how to fix them lol.

 

Exterior side after sanding from wire brush up to 220 grit. I talked to a refinishing guy who suggested to first do stain and 1st layer of clear, then put Minwax color putty stained to final color on top of the first coat of clear after it cures. He said he thinks the color can be better matched this way vs. applying putty to bare wood, then staining it all
at once as I had planned. He also said the putty sticks better long term when it is sandwiched between 2 coats of clear. I am planning to follow his suggested method, will post some pics of how it works out with the larger cracks.




Interior side after sanding. Ended up leaving the diy metal brackets and will make 1/4" thick wood covers to hide them better.

 

I just bought this one at the end of the hurricane season last year. I have not and will never put gasoline in it. I have 12 propane tanks for the grill and two 80lb tanks. Thats enough to run this thing for 2 weeks hooked up to my house.
It will run the well pump, my 2 refers and the meat freezer, the water heater, a couple lights and a portable AC unit. I will have to adjust of course, turning something off while the other thing runs, but that is all I need in the aftermath of a hurricane.

 

Back at the same place I did the kitchen remodel. Now replacing the deck railing components (excluding the stairs). Just doing a basic system. All the current stuff is interior grade and whoever installed it used Drywall screws. WTF. I'm using cedar and adding intermediate posts as there were none along the outer 8' sides. Again..WTF. Of course the spacing between the posts is all different. Didn't feel like removing all the blocking under the deck so I placed them as even as possible between the end posts. I just spaced the balusters by starting in center and using a 2X4 to space them from the center out. I like to end with one along the post just for extra support. Sometimes you end up with a small space on the end, but nobody picks up on it. I do know how to properly space them and would have done so if all the distances were similar. Still way better than it was. Couldn't find cedar 2×4's longer than 8', so I ripped 5/4 deck boards for the top board/cap. Wrapped up the lower section today (started yesterday). Figured it would be good to work out a good system/process down low before tackling the upper section. Wish I had a helper on the ground. It's coming out nice. I'm betting the stair railings will be next.

 

I have 37 solar panels and a 40.5 kWh battery storage system. Just the batteries are enough to run my house for about 3 days if I turn the thermostat up a little bit. I can go off grid for longer if the panels are producing.

 

Ok, going on a bit of a fucking rant right now. Drawings, any profesional builder uses them. The problem is the arch and engineers coming up now days, every fucking one of them is a lazy mother fucker, doesn't check their or their associates work, and are just plane fucked up. These fucking things are supposed to be correct by the time they EVER get to me. Here I am still building the shell, one of my engineers writes an RFI, I look at the RFI and she asked one question. Apparently she is to stupid or incompetent to see all the fucked up shit wrong and ask all the questions at once in the same RFI.
And fuck the arch and designer for putting out such a piece of shit drawing.




Here is some help.



Every fucking drawing in my set, 16 floors worth, all look like this.

 

yeah. stoned or on purpose????

 

Ill preface that I'm not a builder by any means so I don't intend to insult your intelligence. With that said, could the door to the 8 story drop be the emergency fire escape rescue chute? And two, the square door-less room, could that be a utility corridor that runs the height of the building? About the bedroom door, well you got me on that one. Perhaps all tenants are given training by David Blane and shown the trick of walking through walls.

-J

 

I'm one of the owner's representatives on commercial projects. My main focus is on IT and its infrastructure, but I've been doing it awhile so I know what to look for. I always take the mostly complete drawing set and whoever is representing the folks that will be using the building and go through every single, office, closet, conference room, hallway, restroom, data center, you name it. We check door swings, plug locations, data ports, potential furniture arrangements, etc. Depending on the size of the building it can take several hours, and we usually find a few things to fix. But yours takes the cake! You win the idiot architect award. Hopefully construction hasn't started yet.

 

We do the same thing for our buildings - have the trades guys look them over for their respective disciplines before final drawingsare completed. I worked for an electrical engineer for 8 years so I usually skew that direction.

 

Wrapped up some of the upper sections today. The remaining sections need a post added and one replaced. Can use a full piece of decking for the cap/top up on top as there are no posts in the way. Temporarily tacked one in place on that front section to protect the end grain of the balusters (we're expecting rain Sun-Mon). My little jig works great for spacing & aligning the balusters to the top rail.

 

I guess you could call me a trade guy too. The other trades do look at the drawings, but they tend to be narrowly focused. I started bringing the building occupants into the process after a couple of ah-shits. They're typically business people and building a building is something they've never done before. But since they're going to be spending 40 hours a week in the place they have a lot of incentive to make sure its's right.

 

Yeah, I dont have that luxury, I get them when I show up to the site and break ground. By the time I get to the foundation I have barely glanced at the interior drawings because I am focused on infrastructure then comeing out of the ground and at that point I am focused on the structural. By the time I start framing is the time I start looking at the interior drawings.
The rest of the team is responsible for reviewing the drawings, but the engineers are so young, and they are coming out of school with no practical building knowledge, the same as the architects. Everyone is a fucking moron these days. No offense meant to you, but owner reps top that list as well, at least the ones I get to usually deal with. Luckily, I am the super and owner rep on this one, the owner is building it so I get to make changes as needed and tell the arch to go fuck himself.

 

No they are closets, and there is no fire escape on the building, the doors going outside are true fuck ups by the arch. That interior room, is a walk in closet. There would be an x in there if it was a penetration through the deck.

 

Ha, I am here in construction. I have 3 bldgs going like this at different levels of course.

 

Yeah that one counts as an ah-shit!

One of the things I like about working with commercial construction general contractors is how things that would cause the average muggles head to explode are no big deal. I've lost track of the times when this IT guy is thinking how the hell are they going to fix that problem? And, the next thing you know trackhoes, cranes, boom lifts or what ever is needed are there to make it go away.

 

No offense taken. Some of our reps don't have the first clue. As for the shit you've got I call them architect specials. Our architects like to make grand 2+ story open entry ways. More than once I've had to ask "and how are you getting data to the offices on the other side?" I mean computers are not a new thing anymore, or in your case doors. lol

 

at least your plans have dimensions