Home Improvement Today?

I always tell the homeowners they can help but I charge an additional suppervision fee on top of my hourly rate . That usually kills that plan .

 

Friend of the family....
And I keep the gfs dad busy with material runs.

 

Perpkerns

 

Didn't get as far as I had hoped today , got side tracked with some yard work this morning and then decided a dry fit of all of them was probably prudent which turned out to be a good idea as I had to sand a few tenons that were just too snug

The rails and stiles will get a surface sand and then I'll glue them up tomorrow

 

Finishing up the shed. 2 1/2 days for 1 person. Could have knocked it down to 2 if it wasn't so hot.

Review of the kit.
If all you own is a hammer and a tape measure and a drill you could build this. If you own a saw build your own. And the instructions keep using words that I'm pretty sure they don't know what they mean like "flush"... Its all 2x3s and the ones I didn't use on the first day twisted nicely... I also forgot how annoying 3tab singles are.

 

Starting a drainage project and need a question answered...

Short way about it is: Can you tie downspout drains into a french drain if it is below grade of the downspouts?

Long way: My neighbor and I dug out a temporary trench to help alleviate some of the water runoff he was getting in his garage from my downspouts and from the natural drainage of water downhill. It solved the problem, but now I want to add a french drain in the trench and cover it up for asthetic reasons. I was hoping to bury my downspout drains underground via 4" corrugated piping, and my sump pump discharge piping into the corrugated perforated piping and run it all out back where it will drain out and away like it has been. I will be lining the trench with a soil separator first, and will be using a catch basin at the beginning of it for a vent in the system. If I tie my downspout and sump pump discharge piping into the main drain, will I be defeating the purpose of the perf piping and just adding water back into the trench soil? I assume since most of the runoff is from the downspouts, it shouldn't hurt, but I don't want to do this and create a bigger problem. Please see my pics and if you need anymore info, let me know.

 

Depends on the volume of water , I would keep the downspouts in a seperate solid pipe myself , you could tie the perforated french drain into the solid line beyond your drain bed as long as the 4" pipe could handle the volume but I wouldn't dump the downspouts into your french drain perf

 

My wife and I have spent the last week doing nothing but home improvement stuff. We completely gutted all 4 bedrooms and stacked everything in the garage to have the carpets professionally cleaned and re-stretched, currently we are in the process of trying to put everything back together. We bought both kids new bunk bed sets, dressers, mattress's, ect. and have been going through all of their stuff to donate, throw away or re purpose. It's amazing how much clutter we have accumulated over the years. Boring work really, painting walls, moving furniture, putting stuff together but the house should be immaculately clean once we are done.

Having had enough of all that, last night I started a small project that I can actually take ownership of and enjoy doing. With the new furniture in my sons room we found ourselves with no place for his books. I think that I came up with a boarder line genius idea to fix it and started building this shelf out of 1 x 4 red oak. It might look a little odd right now and the idea behind it would be difficult for me to explain so I will let the finished pictures do the talking. Here is what I have so far, still have some more work to do tonight as it got late on me yesterday and I try not to run power tools after 10 pm for my neighbors sake but hopefully I will get it finished and stained tonight, hung on the wall tomorrow.

 

The majority of the volume of water is from the downspouts. I kinda figured the French drain would run off any excess water from the slope of the land. Would you suggest just running each line parallel to each other in the trench and having them drain off together? Or run another individual trench for the solid line?

Just in between my yard and the neighbors is a creek maybe 30 yards into the woods. It all slopes back towards it so most of the runoff is running right into a creek. The houses at the very top of the hill drain their downspouts straight back into the woods as well big it's pretty far back in there.

 

You can do a single trench , line with geo fabric bottom and sides , install perforated drain at bottom with drain holes down , lay in some clean drain rock to cover the pipe , put your downspout solid line on top , fill up the trench with more drain rock

 

Is that going to be mounted on the wall?

 

Yes sir. Still not completely finished but it's getting close.

 

So , best laid plans of men and mice and all that ..... I realized my original plan to glue the box newels into boxes and then install them would not allow me to slide the boxes down over my framing and also notch under the stair nosing , plus I realized I would need one of the panels on the tall landing newel removed in order to attach the handrails from within the boxes , so now I'm assembling them in place

Got this one all fitted , the tall , 2 panel side is attached and I will glue it up in the morning save the one panel I need for handrail access

 

crazy shit man.

 

Check out one of my roomates living in my attic:


I am currently building a batbox that I will attack the chimney near this opening. That being the case, i want to close off this opening around dusk when they should all be outside. What would be the best method of doing so? It is a little too big to use caulk, so I was thinking some of that "great stuff" expanding foam, shave it flush after it sets, then caulk over it to make sure it stays sealed.

 

Looks great OZ, as usual very nice work.

Here is the finished picture of the book shelf I built. I think it came out OK, the staining process was the worst part.

 

^^^ I like the bookcase/rack.

 

looks good

 

What's going on there ? Is there a space between your brick chimney and your wall sheathing ?