Home Improvement Show-Off Thread

[autococker04]

I recently got a new house with the agreement that my wife is responsible for all cosmetic decisions, and I am responsible for making sure we don’t go broke hiring contractors.

A week ago I had never heard of Wayne Scott in my life, but apparently the man liked rectangles on his walls, and I can only assume he never had to put them there.

I travel a ton for work, and these rectangles were apparently crucial to making the house livable, so we went straight from closing to Home Depot to get about a hundred pieces of trim so that I could get these walls covered before I left for the month.

https://imgur.com/a/e4n44n2

This whole room and all my wainscoting will be painted some other color by the time I get back. But about 30 hours of work at about 1 beer per hour, 3 tubes of liquid nails, and all of my most creative curses later, we have rectangles.

So what are you guys working on? We don’t have a home improvement sub forum, so I figure here’s about as good a place as any to show off your most creative solutions to household problems (real or imagined).

[Cdn_Cuda]

Wow, looks very nice! Did you just buy panels and put them up or did you do the rectangles just out of trim?

We did some renos just before Christmas.

Turned this: actually worse than this. Used to be open attic with no floor abs very poor insulation.


Into this:

[autococker04]

Nice! You got a ton of square footage out of that. Is it all insulated now?

[Cdn_Cuda]

Yes, originally only had a single layer of pink paperback insulation. We properly insulated the walls, floor and ceiling with Roxol, and get up into the main attic (not above this room) to properly insulate the house as well. Make a huge difference. We've got a larger attic space on the other side of the house that needs to be properly insulated and likely turned into another room as well. Just need to sort and organize all the crap that now lives there. We kept a cold storage area in the eaves on the other side of the walls in the new room so lots of space for Christmas stuff etc. It's a 1970s house so bit by bit making improvements and modernizing.

[Memornix]

We have an area that looks alot like your unfinished photo over our garage. We are in the planning phases to finish it and do a play/climbing wall/GYM room. We figure the angled roof will make an awesome bouldering wall

[Shaftski]

Prepping a house to move into right now. It was built in 1914 and added onto several times so there has been no shortage of surprises and WTF yelling as I've opened walls.

Started with zero insulation. Not one scrap in any wall or ceiling. Walls of horsehair/plaster mix with no metal reinforcement so every wall and ceiling cracked in multiple areas.

Room I'm turning into the LR/Theater had dog urine soaked carpeting, all the way through to the subfloor. Dodgy wiring everywhere.

Whole house has been rewired and town inspected. All walls filled with spray foam, eventually. Crew came out in May, took a week, and barely filled the walls. Drilled holes in some walls and zero foam. Made them come back and redo the whole job from scratch at their expense. Watched them personally as they worked. Looks like they may have got it right this time.

Cleaned up the dog piss in living room, got everything ripped out and dried out. New laminate floor/underlayment is in. Most of the blue board I'm doing for now is up, area that will be library/study and the living room including ceilings. In plaster/trim mode now.

Still have the upstairs bedrooms to redo in the future. Blue board the walls and ceilings, trim and plaster like downstairs. Doing most of this after we move in though.

Only doing all this work because it's my wife's family home of several generations, all the way back to when it was built. More room than where we are and I can make a nice profit when I finally get out of where we are. And I get my dream 2 bay detached heated garage to man cave up as I wish when we move. I can't wait.

[Cdn_Cuda]

My first house was kinda like that. Random hodgepodge of additions, horsehair plaster etc. The put a large two room extension but never put a forced air vent into it so was always cold. Our main bedroom’s floor was massively slopped as well. Had to shim the dresser so it would stand straight.

[Siress]

I'm bad about taking 'before' and 'after' pictures. Just 'need a record of this' videos/pictures during the job that I reference to get the supplies needed to finish the job, then move onto the next job. My wife and I sold our starter home that I'd been fixing up and bought a home about twice the finished space, a 2 bay garage, and unfinished basement. I put a lot of work into the start home to get it staged well, which paid off. Here's some of the highlights from the old house.

First major renovation was adding a home office. Previous owner had already framed this room (poorly) and ran electrical (poorly).

I gutted it, leveled the floor, sealed the concrete with drylok, built a wall around the foundation wall, insulated everything, added drywall, drywalled the ceiling as well since there wasn't any plumbing overhead, built a crazy mahogany ledge and 5ft wide bookshelf 1ft deep, as well as a tchotchke shelf to camouflage some sins the previous owner committed while framing under the king brace, installed LVP flooring, wire for CAT6 to the home server, made the coax moca compatible before framing it in... lot of jazz. In the end it looked like this:

(note the WFH work shirt for conference calls... this was when we were showing the house, so most items had been removed.)

[Siress]

Here's a quadrant of the basement in the starter house that I began work on in mid 2020 - when the quarantine felt like it'd last forever. I evened out the disruptions and sealed the foundation with drylok, hired a carpenter for the framing, then took over again for the electrical (2x heat with thermostat, lights, outlets, switches, and a new breaker). Ran coax and CAT6 from my "home server" to opposing sides of the room as well. Contractor for the drywall and drop ceiling that came later.

These low-profile LED drop lights were awesome on paper, but they were a PITA to complete the wiring due to the cramped junction box. I'm shocked these things are to code based on how little volume there is to cram the wires into... This image is from when I was roughing it in and expecting the knock outs on order to be split to slide over the cable...no dice on that split...

Only way to cram it all in was to use these spring-loaded terminals the lights came with instead of wire nuts... not a fan of this mechanism at all - particularly for the stranded wire coming from the light itself. I soldered the strands to give it something to bite into. Added firestop foam around all junction boxes and a lot of other areas while I had access, then installed rock wool insulation around the adjacent office and paper backed fiberglass for the framed walls adjacent the foundation.




Anyway, here's a picture after the drywall was up and waiting on paint to arrive. The contractor got a jump start on the stair treads. He convinced us to go with glued down LVP flooring for this... I know it's not recommended, but it worked out great. Pretty sure he added a few brad nails as well.

[Cdn_Cuda]

I need to redo my carpeted stairs. Wondering is VLP useable. What do you put on the nose of the stair? Basically a transition piece?

[Siress]

Had to pick a finish that had an available nose trim component. Not all do, but there's still a good selection.

[Siress]

Here's a random picture after the installing drywall, painting, installing the ceiling, the flooring, and heating. It appears I was hanging the door for the storage space under the stairs at this point. A contractor and I were taking turns with the job at this point. He had day shift, I had night shift after my day job... fun times. This room was designed to be a kid-friendly play room. The heating unit is called 'softheat' and is safe to the touch even when running. Had to install about 15ft of it to heat the ~300sqft room (IIRC), but it did a great job...highly recommend it for this application.



skipping to the end, here's an attempted panoramic shot...


We sold that house and moved into our "forever home" in August. The new home... mid-80's, all original. Now, what I think you're imagining is that I mean they didn't do any renovations or remodels since the mid-80's. No. I mean it was all original. Every single appliance was installed in the mid-80's. Every peeling strip of wall paper, every corroding mirror adhered to the wall, every cracked single-pane window, every squeaky stair, every seized and leaking shut-off valve... they did have the upstairs carpeting replaced at least once and installed AC a decade ago, so that's something I guess. The amount of work done has been staggering. And the work left to go isn't a short list either. I'll have to document it's highlights another time.


Also, this warning should pop-up when you need it...not after you've been on your soap box for past hour and it's like 'lol, I only got the first 5 minutes.'

[Roger7pball]

My last house I gutted the whole thing and rebuilt it. This house it’s just been a ton of light fixtures and chainsawing. LED shop lights in to the attic and basement.

Top tip, if your ladder isn’t tall enough to reach the wiring of a chandelier use some stools.

[autococker04]

Right out of the OSHA handbook

[evilfishsticks]

When we bought our house it needed alot of updating. I've gutted and refinished both bathrooms on the main floor. Every room had wallpaper so I ripped that all out and repainted the whole house. I've replaced every light fixture and all the switches and outlets. I have redone most of the landscaping as it was so overgrown and overplanted. Ripped out and poured a new patio the day after my last daughter was born.

My biggest project so far has been finishing the unfinished basement. When my wife found out we were pregnant with child number 3 I got to work chopping up the floor to add an extra full bathroom and bedroom in the basement. The only thing i had a contractor do was cut an egress window into the foundation, a few buddies from the trades did some work for beers and favors. Then i framed the walls did all the electrical with a panel upgrade while i was at it. None of that romex garbage either, all conduit as it's code here anyways(easiest part for me because i used to be a union residential electrician). Had a buddy do the plumbing. Insulated, hung drywall had a buddy tape and mud, then i painted and laid the vinyl floor and did trim. One of my friends did the tile on the bathroom and that was about it. Thankfully I finished it right at the beginning of covid before the prices of everything went bonkers.

Right before Christmas i built my first bookcase. I couldn't find one shallow enough to fit the space i wanted, so i made my own. I think it turned out really nice.

My next project starting this summer is ripping out this kitchen and all the mismatched flooring on the main floor and installing new.

[Siress]

Awesome work! any regrets using drywall for the finished basement ceiling? As quick as drywall repair is for me now, and as long as it's an easy finish to re-apply like the paint you have, I'm thinking I'll go this route as well. Just leave some access ports for shut-off valves and such.

[evilfishsticks]

No regrets whatsoever, it feels like a much nicer space instead of going with a ceiling tile system. I did leave some access panels under plumbing and other strategic spots for future access. The house is a ranch so anything i can't access from below i can get to from the attic.

[evilfishsticks]

So begins the updating of my kitchen/ main floor. The Mrs. and I started day one of demo today, I will update sporadically throughout the project.

[flyweightnate]

The kitchen, 4 years later. Had to take this one down to the studs and subfloor. A word of advice - when making cabinets, just buy the doors and drawer faces. It's worth the extra money.

[Marauder_Pilot]

These low-profile LED drop lights were awesome on paper, but they were a PITA to complete the wiring due to the cramped junction box. I'm shocked these things are to code based on how little volume there is to cram the wires into... This image is from when I was roughing it in and expecting the knock outs on order to be split to slide over the cable...no dice on that split...

Only way to cram it all in was to use these spring-loaded terminals the lights came with instead of wire nuts... not a fan of this mechanism at all - particularly for the stranded wire coming from the light itself. I soldered the strands to give it something to bite into. Added firestop foam around all junction boxes and a lot of other areas while I had access, then installed rock wool insulation around the adjacent office and paper backed fiberglass for the framed walls adjacent the foundation.

Holy shit this is one of the worst things I've ever seen.

1: That sprayfoam should NOT be there.
2: Retrofit wafer lights are rated for 2 cables. There's a reason they have small JBs with 3-place wagos.
3: You've got bare conductor poking out of the line. This is asking for a breaker trip at best and a house fire at worse.

Dude, man. Hire an electrician. At least someone to check over your work because what you did here is terrifying.

[Siress]

Holy shit this is one of the worst things I've ever seen.

1: That sprayfoam should NOT be there.
2: Retrofit wafer lights are rated for 2 cables. There's a reason they have small JBs with 3-place wagos.
3: You've got bare conductor poking out of the line. This is asking for a breaker trip at best and a house fire at worse.

Dude, man. Hire an electrician. At least someone to check over your work because what you did here is terrifying.

1. That foam was required by the inspectors - electrical and building inspectors that cleared this work. I'm not a fan as it seems like the second-most flammable fuel source within the JB (first being the paper within the romex) which gives it a fuel source to carry a flame out of the JB... but again, inspector required it. Inspector also required some other stuff that wasn't required by the NEC, of which I did obtain a copy to reference. Do you know the MA residential building codes well enough to weigh in on this one, because I would like to stop adding it if it's not required.
2. Shockingly, that is the within the rating for this JB. That was the PSA portion of my post, because I will never use these again for anything more than in and out. And, having gone through this now, I realize I should have just spent the money and doubled back on the circuit rather than creating the branch.
3. This wasn't the final config. I took an in-process picture to share my frustration. Under loading (to cram everything into the tiny space of the JB) it's possible for the wires to slip out of the spring-loaded terminal blocks, particularly the stranded conductors. For the final config, I had to check every one of them closely before closing the cover. This is why I tried to use wire nuts instead of these blocks - but they just wouldn't fit due to their girth.

[cougar20th]

I'm going to start with I know nothing of current mass codes. Been out of the state since 2006. But I can tell you that you need to research your local codes as in the past I've found when doing things that each inspector seems to have his own interpretation of the codes and his own way of checking. From driving by and all is good to busting you balls over the slightest thing out of code. To making up things as they go. I don't mind the one that busts your balls about things as long as they are truely code. The others in my opinion are useless.

[autococker04]

Bring this back from the dead because the bathroom is DONE. My wife got multiple quotes on this bathroom and that inspired me to become an amateur electrician/carpenter/plumber/tiler/drywaller/painter. The only thing I had to outsource was glass cutting for the shower. There is a mirror behind the sink, just imagine that’s there.

[tyronejk]

Looks awesome! I made a similar decision after getting quotes for new deck. But this is significantly more complex. How was the learning curve and process?

[autococker04]

tyronejk thanks! I actually think a deck is going to next on my list of things to do as well. But I’ll try to put that off as long as possible. I’d say I probably took 3-5x as long at any given task as a professional would, but I had a little bit of experience in everything already. If you take your time and watch enough YouTube videos, just about any project is manageable. Working by yourself you have to get very creative for a lot of things though.

[JeepDVLZ45]

I lost my before pics…but this was my kitchen at the old house (had to go in Zillow to find them) I replaced my cabinets (and added some) countertops, some sheet rock and the shelving. Fresh coat of paint. The paint was still drying when they took these pictures for the listing 😂. The floor desperately needed to be refinished, but this was only to get my house on the market….sold the house in 5 days,
so it got the job done!

[The Hobbit]

My new living room floor. It started out as rough cut hemlock from an Amish mill. My wife and I planed it, router cut a tongue and groove, then stained it. We just payed it the beginning of this month. It was an experience and one I don’t think I want to do again.