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The Home Renovation Thread

ddxu said:
My wife and I recently moved to KC and are starting to look at buying a house here. The area we are interested in has houses that are 60-90 years old (wife loves the charm of them and the area). The one constant we are seeing is that many still have the old Knob & Tube electrical setup. Has anyone replaced this themselves or brought in contractors to do the work? Rough estimate for a 2 story 2000 sq foot home?
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What area are you looking at? What are some close cross streets?
 
Signed a contract last night to waterproof my basement. I am pumped! Should be done mid-january and then I can start thinking about what I'm going to do for the remodel. Going to be a ton of work, but I'm really excited to see how it ends up. Trying to figure out some plans at the moment.

Starting this weekend by ripping off all the paneling and built in shelving on the 1/3 of the basement that is finished. That all needs to go so the crew can get to the base of the wall to put the drainage system in.
 
This week we have the electricians in. We are having them go through both floors and put in 6-inch recessed lighting cans with LED lights. Hoping they are done tomorrow.
 
Why the LED lights, looper? How do they compare for lighting ability and cost?
 
Hawk said:
Why the LED lights, looper? How do they compare for lighting ability and cost?
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Good question, Hawk. A couple reasons for the LED lights. Now that the manufacturers have improved LED lights for home/space lighting, I like the lighting better (i.e. not as blueish as they used to be). I find the new LED lighting technology comes off fairly natural.

But... it is generally more expensive to buy the LED lights rather than the normal lights for the cans. I was able to offset those upfront costs with a couple things. First, I found a great sale 2 weeks ago at menards for LED lights with a retrofit trim attached. On top of that, my work has a program where they essentially eat some of the costs for replacing the bulbs in your house with LED (it is a feel-good-about-your-company-program). So, with the sale and the work contribution, the upfront costs were not that much higher than the traditional route. By my math, I hit the break even point in a little over a year... and the LEDs will last much longer than the traditional bulbs.
 
Excellent info. I wouldn't have thought to even look that direction. My issue at the moment is that our basement is just plain dark. Tiny windows, wood paneling, dark carpet, etc. I want to brighten it up a lot.
 
I recently had the builder exhaust fans in my house replaced with Panasonic whisper fans. I know, it's a little uninteresting project, but boy what a difference. The old fans were like helicopters, the new barely audible.

I also installed timer switches so we let them run for 10 minutes or so after a shower is over. Silly I know, but we love the setup after hating those builder grade fans for years. Lol.
 
Gutted the finished part of my basement yesterday. Tore out paneling, drywall, carpet, and a bunch of shelving. It was pretty fun to smash stuff, but I'll be damned if I'm not a sore dude today. Glad it's done, but it looks like Buffalo Bill's dungeon down there. Next up is waterproofing and then I need to start making a plan for what I'm going to do with the space. Here's what it looked like after the massacre.

20121215_144920-L.jpg
 
Great work Hawk! I'm a project type person and will enjoy watching what you do here.

We recently put up a privacy fence (cat-proofed at top so they can't get out) in a small portion of our back yard (30' x 40'). I've been spending this rainy day looking at landscaping ideas. I'm going to make the entire area a garden of some sort. It will probably take a few years to get it like I want. The idea is no grass, only trees, shrubs, and perennials. We still have plenty of yard outside of this area but I think I'll like having a small private garden to work/sit in with my cats while they play safely outdoors.
 
That sounds relaxing!
 
Hawk said:
Gutted the finished part of my basement yesterday. Tore out paneling, drywall, carpet, and a bunch of shelving. It was pretty fun to smash stuff, but I'll be damned if I'm not a sore dude today. Glad it's done, but it looks like Buffalo Bill's dungeon down there. Next up is waterproofing and then I need to start making a plan for what I'm going to do with the space. Here's what it looked like after the massacre.

20121215_144920-L.jpg
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hawk Dri look makes a good product for the walls. A bit pricey but if the water proof guys don't do it, you may want to look into it.
 
Y'all are some busy folks.
We're in the middle of building a new house here in Texas. I did new construction in a past life, my Dad is an electrical contractor, but with a new job & no help & few tools, I haven't done a thing except take pictures & check on it once a week.
In our last home, after building it from the ground up including building the cabinets, we tore out the carpet & put down hard wood floors, built new cabinet doors, built & screened in a new back porch, built several book shelve sets & a few other projects.
I like doing construction work, building wood fence & the like. My Dad was giving me a hard time at Thanksgiving about not working on the new house. I told him if I had all of my tools & wasn't in the middle of a new job, I'd be happy to build it. I guess a new fence is all I have to look forward to on this one.
 
Hawk, are you planning on having any bedrooms down there? If so, might need to check into Egress windows.
 
T2GRN18 said:
hawk Dri look makes a good product for the walls. A bit pricey but if the water proof guys don't do it, you may want to look into it.
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Excellent. I will look into that. I'm going to have to do that part myself and didn't really know where to go with it. I do know that the existing paint is crap. It's flaking off and needs to go.
 
Jjmorris said:
Hawk, are you planning on having any bedrooms down there? If so, might need to check into Egress windows.
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I'm not sure yet. I do know that we had egress windows quoted and they cost ALOT lol. I know we'll need to do something though.
 
Hawk said:
I'm not sure yet. I do know that we had egress windows quoted and they cost ALOT lol. I know we'll need to do something though.
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Egress windows are expensive, well actually it's roughly 1500 to 2k for the bilco style window well plus excavation. The window can be as expensive as you want to go. The installation and prep work for the builder is labor intensive. But normally if your not putting a bedroom in then you will be fine. Also if your putting a bedroom down there there are requirements for combination smoke and Co2 detectors. So it can creep pretty quickly into a budget
 
Nice space Hawk! Ceilings high enough to swing a club?
 
mcook77 said:
Nice space Hawk! Ceilings high enough to swing a club?
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Doesn't look like it, but looks like a perfect place for a Dart board!
 
T2GRN18 said:
Egress windows are expensive, well actually it's roughly 1500 to 2k for the bilco style window well plus excavation. The window can be as expensive as you want to go. The installation and prep work for the builder is labor intensive. But normally if your not putting a bedroom in then you will be fine. Also if your putting a bedroom down there there are requirements for combination smoke and Co2 detectors. So it can creep pretty quickly into a budget
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Thanks for the info.

mcook77 said:
Nice space Hawk! Ceilings high enough to swing a club?
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Nope booooo. Only 7 feet.



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Waterproofers are at it today. Installing the Hydraway drainage system.

http://www.hydraway.net/residential/hydraway_2000.php

H_200_install.jpg


My wallet is crying, but I'm very excited to know that I'll be done with the first step towards the new basement in a few short hours.
 
Thanks for the bump hawk. Does hat just go around the edge of the basement floor?
 
Hawk said:
Waterproofers are at it today. Installing the Hydraway drainage system.

http://www.hydraway.net/residential/hydraway_2000.php

H_200_install.jpg


My wallet is crying, but I'm very excited to know that I'll be done with the first step towards the new basement in a few short hours.
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Awesome man. We live in a really bad flood zone but thankfully are way up on a mountain. We have had water in the basement twice from the sump pump dieing and a pipe breaking and it is a nightmare. I literally have a knot in my stomach every time I go in the basement and fear the worst. It's great that you are getting rid of that fear. I hope when we buy a house we dont have to deal with that. It's terrible.
 
Jjmorris said:
Thanks for the bump hawk. Does hat just go around the edge of the basement floor?
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In our case, it's on the two walls that take in water. It feeds to a sump and out the house. There's cheaper ways to do it than this with standard drain tile, but I wanted a little peace of mind, so I spent a little more.

DevRickus said:
Awesome man. We live in a really bad flood zone but thankfully are way up on a mountain. We have had water in the basement twice from the sump pump dieing and a pipe breaking and it is a nightmare. I literally have a knot in my stomach every time I go in the basement and fear the worst. It's great that you are getting rid of that fear. I hope when we buy a house we dont have to deal with that. It's terrible.
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Yea buddy. They did a pretty half-a$$ed job on it before we bought the place, so I was stuck with a basement I couldn't really finish. This should basically double the livable area of the house by the time we're done.
 
Hawk said:
In our case, it's on the two walls that take in water. It feeds to a sump and out the house. There's cheaper ways to do it than this with standard drain tile, but I wanted a little peace of mind, so I spent a little more.



Yea buddy. They did a pretty half-a$$ed job on it before we bought the place, so I was stuck with a basement I couldn't really finish. This should basically double the livable area of the house by the time we're done.
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Yeah man, We have a finished basement with a storage area which is where the water comes from. It's a nightmare. Thankfully we put all our stuff in rubbermaid containers 2 days before we had water the first time. Good luck!
 
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