What home improvement work did you do today?

@Fotnot These are perfect for those rooms over the garage and what-not. This is for my whole 1180 Sq ft... but mainly kitchen and living room.

 

No more house projects for me. We went under contract to sell our home for $18000 over asking. Gotta love that Colorado springs housing market. New home being built and the only projects on the new house will be garage and hot tub mods.

 

Garage clean out day yesterday...feels soooo good

 

I hacked, chopped, cursed and cut these bastards out from around our bedroom window. These are the spawn of Satan himself...

 

They really are miserable to deal with. They are commonly planted under and around low windows to prevent peeking through and breaking in.

 

And I've done more in the back yard this summer than in the last 4 years we've owned the house. With everything we've gone through since 2016, we just haven't had time to get it done until this year.

 

you mind sharing link with what ya got or message me? we got about 700 sqft to cool/heat(mostly cool, we live in south louisiana lol).

 

I'm not that dude...but we've got one as well. We had an addition added to our house in 2016, but it sits on a concrete slab; so the regular heat pump ductwork couldn't be extended, essentially, without completely reworking things.

Ours cost us about $3K to have installed, but it's been absolutely fantastic. Bedroom is right around 550 sq ft; and even in the coldest part of winter, it works just fine (though it does defrost a bit more). Were I to buy it again, I'd likely do two things;

1. Have a 'capsule' minisplit installed - where they essentially have that part in the ceiling hidden.
2. Go with a Mitsubishi, Fujitsu or Daikin instead of a Samsung.

 

We had a Mitsubishi mini-split put in our attic room a few months after we moved here. It originally had a single AC unit for the 2nd story and the attic room above it and it wasn't very efficient. This mini-split runs constantly and I think it actually lowered our electric bill from the stress it took off of the 2nd story unit. I'm thinking about adding one to my workshop.

 

My HVAC guy recommended Pioneer mini-split units for our use case, where we converted our 3rd car garage into an office space. I picked up the smallest one they had for about $750 and did the install myself, minus the vacuuming of the lines and that end of it. The main pro of the Pioneer units is they are very quiet, both at the head and at the outside unit, just in case that's a factor in what you're looking for. We've been very happy with it, and it keeps up great in the AZ summer heat.

 

I chopped an X into the root ball and poured total vegetation killer in there. If that doesn't work, I'll find something that does

 

Our neighbors have some kind of weed tree (can't remember the name) that roots like crazy (I want to say they can travel 50ft from the mother tree) and sends shoots up from the roots. Damn things kept popping up overnight. I'd pull one and week later it'd be back with a buddy. I tried everything but napalm to kill them and nothing worked until I bought this stuff from Amazon: Dow AgroSciences RTU548 Tordon RTU Herbicide. I pull or cut the shoot and then put on my hazmat suit and put a few drops of this on whatever is still in the ground. It seems to be doing the trick.

 

Ours didn't lower our bill, so to speak, as it was intended to handle the HVAC for our extension. With that said, it's so efficient that the bill *might* go up maybe $10-$15 in the winter, and it essentially stays the same in the summer time.

I need to have my shop insulated, but yeah, once that's done, this (or something like it) will be next on the list.

 

I 2nd the Tordon, that stuff works great..only local place I could find it was tractor supply

 

Wood paneling all done joints filled. On to fixtures and mirrors

 

COSTCO !!

 

I don't have any personal experience with them but another forum I frequent has a few using these with good results for garages/workshops.

https://mrcool.com/

 

It’s a disaster; had to take breaks for zoom calls today. Otherwise I would have had it completed. A couple more hours tomorrow and then clean up.

 

You got it , love it

 

Had a new fence installed yesterday and today. This one borders my neighbor, who can't afford to help cover the cost, more on that later.

The old fence and second gate. There's a total of 4 gates. 2 at the front then there's about 15 feet of the garage walls and a common area then another 2 gates that split to each property.











What the neighbor did to repair the fence.




Install!





New front gates:











So I have to rant because this has been eating at me for that last 2 hours.... feel free to skip it.

The day we (the girlfriend and I) bought the house I met my neighbor and she wanted to talk about the fence. She had been trying for at least 2 years to get the previous owner to replace the fence. He obviously said no. So a month after we move in and get settled, we decide the fence needs to be replaced ASAFP and go talk to my neighbor. She's on disability with a destroyed ankle. She also works at Lowe's, so when we gave her a price for the quote, $7000, that we got she thought it was a ripoff. "The plastic fence is much cheaper at Lowe's" yada yada yada. I had to talk her into this company as they were the only ones who showed up to quote. I asked if she could front $1400 to cover the price for her 2 gates, and she said she couldn't with all she has going on. We told her that we get it, it's tough times all around and we'll foot the bill to get it done and she can pay us back in several payments, etc. Fast forward to today. She just got out of the hospital after having surgery on her ankle and has her daughter over to help. The fence guys have already left as their job is done. Fence came out great btw.

As I'm taking the trash out I walk through my new gate and there's the daughter yelling to her mom in the house about some debris that's still in the backyard. I'm in shorts and flip flops and she asks me if I'm with the fence company. I say no I'm the neighbor. She then goes on to say that's there's all kind of trash and debris that the workers left. "We raked this the other day so my mom wouldn't have to, because she can't." I look at the fence line and there's literally 3 tiny bits of wood and some old concrete (that the mom used to try to fix the old fence). So she then asks if I can get the workers back to clean it up or if I can. Mind you, she's perfectly capable of doing this. So not only did I just drop $7000 on this fence that her mom has yet to spend a dime on, she has the balls to ask me to clean up her mom's property. Not even a "thank you for paying for this fence." Not even an introduction. Just a "I'm the daughter."

Now my backyard is a bit of a mess because that's where all the material and cutting was done. They spent as little time as possible on her property and made almost no mess there.

I'm just pissed that after all that she had this look on her face of "That's not enough, do more for my mom for nothing."

 

My line probably would have been more like this:
https://youtu.be/KleseAAmUKw

 

This was a great response.

my home improvement was somewhat like that. A tree on the border(I’m pretty sure it’s the neighbors) was dying for the last year. We took it out as the neighbor two elderly women there had their problems. One just passed due to cancer recurrence and the other woman moved to her sisters 2000 miles away. We spoke with the people who inherited it and said we spoke with the two women and said we would take care of it as we had another tree and 9 Laurel bushes Being removed. I just wanted it out before it fell and caused damage to something else.

 

House alarm started chiming every 10 seconds this morning.
Had to leave a note for the wife on how to silence the chiming if it goes off when I'm not home.

Left for work early to run by Batteries Plus for another backup battery.
$35 later.................................

Just got home from work and swapped it out..
System light went off, not bad for a workday..

 

I wouldn't have even said that; I'd have just said "I'm not trying to be rude, but I literally spent $7K of the money on this fence." I'd probably have then said "Tell you what - why don't we clean it up together?" You know, teamwork and all that.

 

Very true; with her initial conversation, odds are that she's not exactly big on teamwork anyways. LOL

With that said it's ALSO possible that her mom didn't give her the full story. Ya never know.