What home improvement work did you do today?

Thanks, the guy in charge of the concrete crews seems to be interested in delivering a good product.

 

I got one of these on prime. Trying to kill the breaker to it and can't figure out where the f*(k the doorbell is wired into!
Planning on adding it soon tho!

 

I ran into that on mine...wound up being wired into the hot to the one light in the crawlspace, opposite end.of the house from either front or back door!

 

your doorbell will be wired to a 12V transformer that is hiding somewhere not to far from the door (usually right next to the actual "bell"). that transformer will be the one that is wired to house power. You shouldn't need to worry about disconnecting/reconnecting the doorbell - the 12V won't light you up if you touch it like the house power will

 

Well I’ve wanted to redo my back patio for a while and finally tore into it yesterday. Existing is 38.5ft long by 10ft deep. I plan on going 12 wide now as well. Some issues I’ve seen already:
No flashing
No butyl tape on the joists so most if not all are unusable due to rotting
The cantilever of the joists (2x8) from the beam are 2.5ft

so now I’m gonna have to tear everything including the ledger boards off and basically start from scratch which will allow me to move the beam placement for a long span of the joists so I can get my 2ft cantilever and get 12ft of depth total.

 

What's wrong with it? (I know literally almost nothing about concrete and the like.)

 

You’re lucky the house skirt board isn’t dry rotted out. That’s what happened on a huge section of mine when I discovered the flashing issue

 

It’s funny cause the ledger boards look the best compared to everything else. But I realized today they didn’t even cut the siding. They just screwed the boards right over it into the house.

 

Spent since last weekend cleaning, pressure washing, sanding, and vacuuming the deck.preparing to stain. Before and after...

 

That looks great but must have been a miserable endeavor. This is why I replaced our deck with Trex in the last house. I swore I would never do a wood deck again

 

Yeah, I hear ya! I checked into Trex, but it would've meant replacing all the joists (or at least running another set in between to pull the span in enough to not flex), so I just replaced with wood...then neglected it for a few years until I had to do all this work to stain it proper!

 

Well, that protected the house skirt at least!

 

Thought mine was too when we redid ours. Thankfully just the siding and osb was ruined.

 

I have some photos on this post:

https://www.tundras.com/threads/wha...-did-you-do-today.25160/page-338#post-3054100

when the dry weather hit this summer, the concrete seemingly never cured right, our tires would bring in the pepples and sand into the garage. The driveway was on a slow dissolve. It was a form of “spalling” I believe. 14 months ago, We were thinking about adding an onto our back patio and one concrete contractor’s first words last year were “your driveway is crap”. That kept us, and my wife being persistent on the drive way issues. We decided to go with pavers for the back…. They are also going to replace the back patio, which I hope does not turn out to destroy our landscaping in back.

With regard to wood decks others are replacing, I’ve been through that 35 years ago…. I do concrete or pavers now. That being said, I do have an upper deck, completely covered with roof except for the steps. It’s all pressure treated or cedar wood. I stained it after 6 months of moving in, but the sun exposed wood looks like it needs another treatment again. It will most likely last more than me.

 

Got the blink doorbell knocked out quick last night. Quick install. The jackass that did my original door bell drilled a pretty big hole, so I had to mount the bracket with thr screws angled to hit the wood through the Hardie board. Got it installed and like how panoramic the view is with the birds eye lens

 

I will never build a deck that physically attaches to the wood structure of a house ever again. I don’t think I’ll ever build one out of woods again either, but I tend to overbuild things anyway

 

Honest question for my knowledge, is that black tubing ok to bury under concrete? I thought it was better to go with something like PVC?

 

I wanted to re-do the master bathroom-

 

All done.

 

Is it just me or does that look like an absolutely gigantic TP roll?

 

I’d say “depends”

As long as it is bedded well with appropriate fill, at a sufficient depth, and compacted correctly, there’s no structural reasons to be concerned. The corrugated stuff is theoretically stronger than regular drainage PVC because of the ribbing.

I would normally not run perforated lines under a slab unless I was dealing with high ground water that I was trying to evacuate out of the area (basically the purpose of a French drain). If it is perforated, then you’ll want to make sure it is bedded in good porous fill so that the water will leach out without causing potential washout/erosion under the slab… Sort of like a French drain in reverse.

 

I guess I will find out, …. A lot of homes have their roof drains hooked to the foundation French drains via the black tubing but I’m not sure if it goes under the driveway. Most likely not. I had a piece of wood over the black tubing but the guys removed it. There is a layer of gravel over the tube now, and I hope it is ok. It’s just a sidewalk thickness of concrete, so the load will not be much. They are actually using rebar unlike the original build.
This correlated pipe was of an accordion type, fits 6 to 25 ft. There are sections of the pipe not expanded under the sidewalk so it should be more rigid.
I was at the point I wanted to try and get the water from that gutter drain away from the house. We have all the drains from the roof now going away from the house.
New photo from today, they just finished the gravel and rebar. One small section of form to complete imo.

 

Tried to snake the tub drain. Unsuccessful. Need to pull the drain switch off and go in through there. More direct route.

 

if she's into long and black, sure...

 

Grouted, painted, installed baseboards, and closed in the eaves.