That's a great job you've done there! Looks really, really good! Sorry to hear about the water leak... have you thought about calling in a pro? The biggest problem I'd see is that you have next to none of that water exposed to the fan, etc... it's all trapped under the wood. I wonder if the pros have some sort of method or tool or dessicant or something that they use in these kinds of cases that you wouldn't know about or think of... might be a small fraction of the cost of replacement.
The floor (from the above posts) dried out enough that if you didn't know about it, you'd never be able to tell. I have a pretty sharp eye and it's hard for me to see any warped edges. On to the next project. The wife picked out this light for over the dining room table but since it's supposed to be a ceiling mount and not a chain mount, the bastard swings all over the place. Even when you do eventually get it perfectly lined up over the table, as soon as the heat/AC turns on, it spins lol. It's on a vaulted ceiling without topside access so moving the base and getting a kimball mount(?) isn't a preferred option as we'd have to patch, paint and have someone come out as my ladder isn't that tall. We're going to use one of those cloth covers to hide the chain and any support device which is where I need your guys help. Anyone know of a non jury rigged device to help stop it from spinning? It has a threaded nipple on top that I could screw an extension shaft onto and then somehow attach that to the ceiling. Thoughts?
Stripper pole beneath it to support it. It's already got the threaded nipple, so you're part way there.
Or... replace the chain with a "real" chain, and weld the links together so that they don't twist (as easily). You could also weld the chain to the ceiling mount. Failing that, some careful work with glue/epoxy on the existing chain might help.
I ended up jury rigging some shit but hey, the bastard doesn't spin or move anymore. I bought some threaded brass lamp extenders that screwed onto the threaded nipple on the top of the light, found a matching thread bolt & welded the bolt to carriage bolt (that gets screwed into the stud). So now I could mount the lamp but the wires are supposed to run through the hollow brass extensions so I had to cut a little hole and feed the wires out. Fun times.
Well today was fun. What should have been a 30 minute plumbing job turned into a 5 hour journey. TL;DR; Needed a specialty tool (wrench tube thingy) to remove the faucet, didn't have it, so welded up my own tool with my new welder. Took a fuck of a long time in uncomfortable positions under the sink, but it works and I drank Victory beer. Long version: Last week the nylon braided hose on the retractable sink faucet had a crimped connection loosen up and started to spray water everywhere. A quick heat shrink hack stopped it from flooding stuff and left it somewhat usable until it got fixed, and the replacement hose was ordered and curbside picked up, and has been sitting on the kitchen counter mocking me for the past few days. Well, today was the day... that the hose kicked my ass, at least in the beginning. To start with, the kitchen sink is in a corner, and the mass of pipes and connectors below the sink are something from Escher's worst nightmares. I had to un-mount the faucet from the counter top, which means disconnecting a series of hoses and other mounting hardware. Looking up under the sink at the underside of the faucet, it's a long, thin, tightly packed collection of pipes and fittings and retaining rings and retaining nuts, all totally inaccessible to anyone without 14" fingers and 3 elbows. In theory, there is supposed to be a specialized tool to help with all of this, as most of the retaining nuts have to be loosened/tightened about 6" down a length of hollow threaded pipe. (this threaded rod was hollow as the water flows down the inside of it, they just used threaded rod in order to let the same pipe be used as a mechanical fastener for the faucet). Normally you'd use a basin wrench to help with this, but I didn't have one. Well, yeah, I didn't have one, but my neighbour did, so I borrowed it. Within moments of trying to use it I realized it's a lost cause, as there was just no room for it to get any purchase or access to anything it needed to grab. Normally you'd have things nicely spaced out for the different faucets, but with this single-riser faucet, all 3 water hoses (including the extendable line) were all jammed in there together. A quick Google showed the special tool that comes with the faucet to get around this, but alas, it was nowhere to be found. And with the COVID going on, it wasn't a matter of wandering over to Home Despot and finding a replacement. So... time to fabricobble something together. What I needed to do was take an 11/16" socket and weld it to the end of a piece of thin-walled pipe. This would allow me to loosen/tighten the nuts over the really long threaded hollow rod. Now, about a week ago I upgraded my welding gear, as the welder I have been using for the past few years is a big steaming pile of shit. As soon as the new skid of gear showed up it was packed into the garage and my old gear went into the garbage. This is all great, but now, in order to replace this $20 nylon braided hose, I had to spend a few hours unboxing and assembling my new welder and figuring out how it runs. (For anyone interested, it's a Fronius Transsteel 2200, and it's fucking amazing... stick, tig, mig, steel, mig aluminum without a spool gun, stainless... it does it all.) This was all made much more fun due to not having the correct shielding gas fittings, getting that all McGuyvered together, and then to find out that I'm out of shielding gas and nothing was open. Great! I can still weld shit, but it'll look like ass... more so than usual. I first welded a socket to the end of an old thin-walled spark plug wrench, which worked great until I went to use it... the square end of the socket wasn't quite big enough for the threaded rod to fit through... so then I had to cut the socket in half, then re-weld just the barrel(?) of the socket to the end of the tube. Holy fuck, it welded up great, and it worked! I was able to use it to loosen off the faucet retaining nut, remove the faucet, replace/re-fish the hose, and then tried to tighten it all back up... and couldn't get a grip on the new tube-socket to tighten things up enough to stop the faucet from twisting while it was being used. So back to the shop I went, took the back half of the socket I sacrificed, and welded it to the other end of the tube. So now I basically had a socket that I cut in half and elongated with a hollow tube. Holy fuck, it worked. A socket with a flex extendor connected into the other end of the tube and I could tighten the nut up more than what I needed, and could quickly thread on the second, retaining nut. It took a while to get shit threaded on initially, and some Zen like calming exercises to not rage quit every time something fiddly fell down or came loose... but eventually, it all worked. It took way, way longer than it should have, but yeah, it worked. Having the ability to make your own shitty tools to fix problems is pretty satisfying. Here's a pic before I welded the back half of the socket to the other end, but you get the idea: (again, shitty mig welding with no shielding gas, so don't judge)
My house has U shaped steps that are drywalled in from all sides. I'd like to use this dead space under the landing going to/from the basement and main floor to store items that are rarely used, but need to kept in a more temperature stable environment than the garage. I know I'll need to remove a stud to make a wide enough opening. What I can't figure out is if the opening is then framed like a standard foor frame, or do I need to do anything additional since its a part of the stairwell, or if there's any sort of building code I need to check for in my state? The door will be from the unfinished side of the basement, so it wouldn't need to be anything more than functional and meet any applicable codes.
For almost a year, I've had a leaking hot-water pipe under my house; I didn't find out about it until I got hit with an electric bill for almost $600 one month. I quickly found out where the problem was, but it wasn't an easy fix; the pipe was set in concrete. In the meantime, Jungle Julia and I have been having to shut off the water heater when we weren't using it. I got an estimate from a plumber (a GOOD plumber, not some guy doing side-work), and he wanted almost $1,000 to route all of the affected pipes above ground. In the immortal words of my dad: "Shit, I can do that." So here we are, about $750 under budget. Spoiler Spoiler
The Canadian part of me that has to drain and winterize outside water faucets and irrigation lines every fall so they don't freeze and burst says "go fuck yourself". The DIY part of me says, "Nice job!"
In other news, I just pulled apart my downstairs (full sized, stainless) beer fridge. Why? Well, water was leaking everywhere inside the main compartment, and ice was forming on the floor of the freezer compartment. Needless to say, unplugged it, moved all the spoil-able shit to the other fridge/freezer, and then took everything apart inside and out... and then cleaned the fuck out of it with a portable steamer I have. Found a couple of fittings that had come loose, and a bad bearing in the fan that I was lucky enough to have a spare of (all my neighbours knows to bring me their old carcasses of dishwashers, fridges, etc, and I rip all the interesting bits out of them). In this case, it was a drop-in replacement fan from something being thrown away a few years ago. The biggest issue seemed to be a plugged drain line, so I got that all cleaned out, steamed it clean, and it now drains like a motherfucker, albeit where it's supposed to drain now.
I also spoiled myself this Xmas by picking up a Dewalt 20v battery operated caulking gun that was on sale on Amazon. Re-did some shelves in the linen closet and got to use it for the first time with some adhesive silicone, and holy shit, what a game changer. I never knew I hated using a manual caulking gun as much as I did before today.
That was my first thought, must be fucking nice to live in an area that you can run you water pipes outside.
Fuck no, that shit will freeze so quick it isn't funny. There is no exposed pipe anywhere, none run on the outside of the exterior wall. If it is on the exterior wall it is run near the gyprock/drywall. I live in a climate that doesn't get super cold really that often, and we have to burry our pipe at least 3 feet below surface so they don't freeze.
We can run them, they just can’t have water in them when it’s below freezing. Water expands when it turns into ice, busting the pipes. I have thick walled metal pipes on the exterior for natural gas, and water, but the water is turned off inside and drained/vented/blown empty before the weather turns.
Working on some home office renos. It's been "fun". Been a bitch and a half finding studs, even with the "good" stud finders, as the drywall was put on over top of some ancient wood panelling... what a gong show. I'm putting some custom hardwood panels up that I'm re-sawing from some rough cut lumber; dark walnut, mahogany, and curly maple. I'm mounting plywood sheets to the wall, then brad nailing/gluing the hardwood boards to the plywood. Think of it like mounting hardwood floors to the walls. The space below the plywood is below desk height, so will be painted a nice dark red colour. along with the ceiling. In order to ensure that I hit studs, I just said "fuck it" and cut a strip out of the whole room so I could see what I was dealing with; where electrical lines were, cable/phone lines, hot and cold air vents, etc. Glad I did it because there were some surprises. It's a work in progress, but I'm pretty excited about how it will finish out. I have a trailer in the garage full of rough cut hardwood: that I am re-sawing down to basically 2 thin boards per plank sawing into wooden boards (cut in half, 2 boards per plank) with a bit of an edge treatment to, so they sit nicely on the wall (a simple bevelled tongue in groove)
The finished boards are fucking amazing... SO glad I upgraded to the helical cutter head in the planer. ALL the wood you see here is unsanded... just straight out of the jointer and planer. (I did pick up a drum sander to help with the sanding of the pieces before mounting them to the walls). Some examples of the black walnut and mahogany that I'm building a custom ceiling light/fan box out of, to match the walls, window casing, door frames I'll also be doing in the hardwood.