Home Improvement Today?

was actually thinking about that this morning...any suggestions how to do it without paying someone? If I have to buy a brush or anything along those lines that isn't a problem.

 

I have one of the screw together brushes from Lowes hardware. It works great. Just don't run it in reverse. It comes with a shop vac attachment for inside the house, but I don't usually use it. I just put the dryer on in a cool mode, and snake it from the outside. It blows in your face a bit, but if you've ever seen a dryer fire, you won't worry about a little bit of lint on you.

 

...the "lint eater"... i have one, and i love it! be sure to get the extension shafts as well, ...an extra 12'

 

Install an inline lint trap

 

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Just cleaned the lint filter piping (15' with 3 bends) with the shop vac on "blow" ... lots of stuff came out ...

Good idea on the "lint trap" ... need to install one.
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Adds to list of things to do....

 

... ^^^ ... I bought 3 (of what I think you are talking about) of those kits at Lowes to TRY to clean my main HVAC ducts later ...

It looks like it might work from the info on the box. Clean main HVAC hard pipe lines and then replace the soft flex duct lines.
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Good thing to do though.
Wife lost her best friend at 18 due to a dryer fire and several non-working smoke alarms. Could have been avoided so easily.

 

sorry.

I've cleaned the outside vent out several times, but haven't moved the dryer to clean from the inside (too much of a pain due to the space, or lack there of)

 

Here is the countertop de-molded. I still need to apply a slurry on the edges to fill in the holes. Then I'll take a wet sander to the surface to smooth it out and apply a sealer. It's hard to tell from this photo but the edge is a half bullnose.

 

Looks good. I'm on my phone,what type of counter is that?

 

If you mean the countertop, it's a concrete countertop that we made with Quikrete Countertop mix. The color is Buddy Rhodes ultra fine pigment "Coal". We also added some AR Glass Fiber to the bottom layer for strength.

If you mean the counter itself, it's our laundry room counter. We did this counter as a trial run before we attempt the kitchen.

 

We decided to dry sand it with 400 grit sand paper instead of wet sanding based on Buddy Rhode's "Cast in Place Countertop video" (see below). I used a 300 grit diamond pad to smooth out the major rough spots.

It came out pretty smooth without exposing too much of the aggregate. We applied a thin coat of Behr Wet Look Concrete Sealer to the top and we sealed the backsplash pieces as well.

I'm waiting on a delivery of some slurry material and more color from the Buddy Rhodes site. It should be here in a couple of days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNmJr7cQlkQ

 

Looks cool

I do a lot of cast in place decorative concrete sills and caps for stonework and ended up getting a 4' wand , 18V Makita cordless vibrator to deal with the air pockets on the edges similar to what you got on the edge of your form , a palm sander without a pad works pretty good too or the old school tap with a hammer routine

 

I love concrete counters,especially with integral bowls. I've installed plumbing on these,but haven't tried it. Again,nice work.

 

Thanks. I did use the palm sander but I focused more on the top edge rather than the side of the form. I'll be sure to hit it a little more on the side when we do the kitchen. After looking at his video, he had similar holes though not as many. We were able to sand a lot of it down with the diamond pad so it was a little more even.

 

Yeah , depending on how stiff the concrete is , it can be difficult to remove all the voids

 

My wife and I took a 3 day class at Buddy Rhode's San Francisco location. It was pretty good with a lot of hands on. It cost about $2300 for my wife and I to attend not including hotel, car and flights. At our condo we spend about $3500 for a Silestone countertop. I told my wife we'd probably save money over what a new countertop would cost despite the cost of the training plus we'd have the skills to do other stuff (fortunately she likes doing that kind of stuff with me). One person is about $1250.

In the class we did cast in place, a press fit countertop and a press fit with an integrated sink. We also did a GFRC spray sink. The biggest advantage for me is the ability to feel what the concrete felt like when putting it in plus all the tips they gave.

Our total cost for this countertop so far is about $180 (15 sq feet, 1.5" thick). I asked them how much they would normally charge to do countertops and they said they charge about $80-$100 sq ft. If that's correct, this would have cost me about $1200-$1500 to have a contractor do it. So we've already recouped about half of our class investment. The kitchen is going to be about 55 sq feet of countertop space so that would cost around $4400-$5500.

 

The countertop mix is pretty stiff. It clumps in your hands. We can probably be a little more aggressive when packing it in as well.

 

Is that a wall mount faucet to the right of w/d?