What home improvement work did you do today?

\
my first water feature, this past spring, much smaller lol.

 

Floored the kitchen. Finally.

100sf took the afternoon due to moving all appliances to floor under them. Last piece of visible flooring that needed to be done. Woot.

 

Been real busy with my house chores this Spring/Summer, and love seeing all yours as well. This really made me laugh,...I won't tell you who this is in my family, but i think we all might have one among us...

https://youtu.be/CwGrC0KicSo?t=2

 

I could work off that. That's actually better than alot of prints I deal with at work. At least it has dimensions. something our so-called engineers routinely neglect to include.

 

So a few months back I asked for advice on building a retaining wall. For the most part this thing is 6ft tall (except near the ends like in the picture below) and roughly 225 feet long. They built it with a rough rock wall on the backside, concrete with 3 layers of rebar in the center and a finished looking wall for the outside. It's actually taller than 6 feet since about another 2 ft of wall is in the ground. It's pretty stout.

Anyway, the advice I got was to let someone qualified do the work. And boy, I'm so glad for that advice and that I actually listened... I'll take a photo of the thing after it's completed.

But I need advice on one more part. My wife has decided she is afraid someone or one of the German Shepherds that we have, could fall off. So I am planning to build a wrought iron fence along the top.

The picture below is when they first started and has not been capped yet. They will lay about 3 inch flat stone on top with concrete to finish it. The contractor says about every 8 feet he will stick a piece of angle iron in so I can weld my steel posts to the angle iron. I will probably use 1.5 inch square tubing. These pieces of angle will be concreted in 3 inches.

My question is this, will the angle buried in the concrete 3 inches be strong enough to hold this fence? I'm no expert, but I'm a little concerned about that. The wall does curves several times, so I would imagine this will help with holding it in place. Is there a better way to anchor the fence? I sure don't need any mistakes here.

Thanks!


Also, no, I don't own a sparkly purple phone case... It's my wife's!

 

Wow, I am jealous you can do all that fixing!! Good for you for knowing how...

If you found active termites I highly recommend going to doyourownpestcontrol.com and getting some termite bait stations (will be expensive, but worth it) to put around the periphery of your house (about ten feet from the foundation) and also some Taurus SC to spray all the wood with. The new wood can be sprayed with Boracare, I believe they also sell that. I am not sure if you can inject the brick foundation because that is where your major issue is since they can go up from the ground in-between the holes in the brick where you cannot even see them, but if you cannot inject them the baits should work, otherwise they may be back when they find another area of the house that is good eating. (I have learned a lot over the past four years about pest control owning my house in the woods ). I am just thankful that we don't have the dry wood termites here in the north, in addition to the subterranean!!!

-T

 

If you wanting to put a fence above the retaining wall, I would recommend having your main support post anchored behind the wall versus anchored into the wall. When I put fence post on top of or into a wall I make sure I have enough rebar in the concrete footings to reinforce the extra fence post. I have had the concrete cored out for galvanized fence post and I’ve also had steel anchor plates embedded into the concrete. I’m actually doing both of these applications for a horse facility I’m building now. Your wall appears to be only stone, mortar and concrete, so I would not recommend transferring your post into that wall. I could see you having issues with this wall later down the road if you anchor your post into the wall. This would be fine if the stone was secured to a concrete retaining wall with reinforced rebar in it but that is not the case here. At least what I can tell from your photos.

This photo shows the embedded steel anchor plates. These were set when the concrete was poured with rebar and stirrups in the concrete footings.

The fencing after the post were welded to the anchor plates.

These post I had the holes cored into the concrete. Then the galvanized post were set in the concrete footing.

 

Thanks! Yes, that's how it's built, but does have a bottom, middle and top layer of vertical rebar running the entire length of the wall.

So securing the fence to the back of the wall.. I wondered if I could put the steel fence posts directly behind the wall 3 foot below and concrete them in with the concrete bonding to the back of the wall.

Is that what you mean by securing them behind, or something different?

I really appreciate the advice!

In these pictures you can see some of the rebar in the concrete between the rough and finished part of the wall.

 

Very nice!! Good work!

 

At my last house I drilled two holes into a 2700lb rock to make a little water feature out front. Put some lights under it as well.

 

Look great! You can buy a simple water tunneling kit from Home Depot or Lowe’s to run the conduit under your driveway. It’s only $5!

 

I use something similar to dig up my sprinkler heads, never seen this! Badass! Thanks for posting!!
This is def my favorite thread I follow online.
Always cool shit to learn!

 

If I started a thread for cool home improvement ideas you guys wouldn’t ever have time to work on your trucks anymore. Lol

 

Well I think you should start one anyways! House mods are just as important as the trucks if not more so.

 

Worth the risk, IMO.

 

Please don’t!!!

If you do, wait a few months so I can get through my already long list


ETA - what a pain in the ass!!!
Cutting 6” depth doesn’t sound like much, but I’m on bucket #12 - which I end up shoveling by hand at least half of, because the big ass tractor isn’t precise...and I’m trying not to go back and forth on the grass, which is required if you want a full scoop.
F’d up the grass - wife was not happy.

I love the sun, but 88 degrees is a tad too hot for this shit.

 

That is awesome!!! Nice work, and props on drilling yourself!

Thankfully I’m not working with a 2700# pc! That’s what all 5 of the rocks I’m using weigh...together! Lol
That’s a really cool rock.
Did you use your sprinkler system drip line to fill the reservoir??
I heard there some type of auto fill plunger system that can be used, but it sure seemed like a lot of unnecessary work and cost.
Since I already have drip plumbed in this bed like you do, I had planned to drop either a 2 to 4 gallon per hour dripper into the tank. Since I normally only water during the warm summer months, the reservoir would be filled when my plants get watered every day. Of course in the remaining months, it rains around here and I won’t need to fill.

 

Jeeze!!!! That's impressive!

 

Thank you! I guess some photos of my barn project have gone viral now. At least that’s what the owners told me. I don’t do social media.

 

I believe it, and not surprised!
HGTV needs to pick you up!

 

Holmes on Homes, Lonestar edition

 

What's with you Military women wanting to punch people? @4x4_Angel

 

Because it solves problems. Only I don't go for the nuts first.... Throat then nuts. but in order to get hot in the nuts from me you have to piss me off pretty bad.

 

NICE work!

On a funny side note, the house I owned previous to this one had some likewise riDICulous issues with it. A few months after we purchased it, I asked some of our neighbors (great people, whom we're friends with to this day) if they knew why it was so messed up.

"Well, the foreman for the house was later arrested for meth usage and distribution...."



Thankfully, the house itself was pretty sturdy, and nothing 'wrong' with the house that couldn't be fixed - just a LOT of dumb decisions we had to go back and resolve/fix.

 

When it comes to houses, I dunno if it's a military *women* thing. I too would have punched the previous owner/builder of our previous house had I the chance.

There were also some questionable decisions made in our current house. HOWEVER, the guy who built it

a) lives next door
b) is super helpful
c) is Guamanian, bigger than me, and has a large family.

 

Just watch out for cameras.

 

On a serious note I've never intentionally nailed a dude in the balls in my entire life. I say intentional because I accidentally elbowed a buddy of mine and just grazed the twins and he hit the deck. Said a light graze is worse than a direct hit I guess?
I'm just saying the prior owner of this place probably needed one good hit though. Place was dirt cheap with lake access though so I can't complain.. Doesn't mean I'm not going to though.