The Home Improvement Thread

[Bralkan]

Originally Posted by Heylel Teomim

I just worry that doing that much sheetrock is gonna be a real pain.

You can't paint over it?

[chaos]

Painting the wood paneling is tricky business though. It will either turn out awesome or it will look like ass.

[Etoille]

Heh our house is one big constant project....

We just finished repainting the entire basement (ourselves - btw MUCH love to Ralph Lauren suede finish paint), the upstairs guest bath (which I also redecorated)...reweather stripped doors and windows and sealed areas which were drafty in various ways....

Going to be building our own fence in the backyard this summer, installing screens into the basement and upstairs guest room....installing a ceiling fan and some extra outlets (going to have an electrician do that actually)...and if we can swing it we're going to rip out the door between the kitchen and the deck and put a sliding glass door in.


Last year I relandscaped the entire front of the house with bushes (would recommend talking to a nursery staff person for this) and this year I have a bunch of bulbs to plant so that basically I'll have something in bloom from about March - October (which took fucking forever to plan since its a shit ton of shade).

Also powerwashed and refinished the deck, attempted (as in if anyone has any recommendations on how to get a kick ass lawn please feel free to chime ine) to make the lawn better looking.....


Probably looking at installing a new sink and kitchen faucet soon.....regrouting the kitchen tile.......

We've only been in the house 2 years haha. And it was in awesome shape to begin with!

I think we'll be ready to move when we run out of projects.

[Etoille]

Originally Posted by Ravvenn

Pfft, don't pick on me. I grew up playing in dirt and catching crawdads for fun. I'd rather learn to build something that saves money and looks awesome than pay some asshole to do a half-assed job. I know deep down I could do cool stuff, but I need the proper tools and really, I doubt I'd ever get 'permission' to own a saw.

Where's your contributions, Mr. Wood Bumper?!

I'm going to get the white and orange stripes done today (so help me God) and hopefully the bottom trim, which I am thinking I may just replace since it's kind of cheap looking. Only problem is I have that full bedroom set boxed up in my entry way and have the guest bed being delivered today in addition to two mattress sets that I am positive will end up in my formal living room for 2 weeks if I don't speed up my decorating. I didn't even paint the guest room yet. I can't pick a 'theme'. I was going for some beachy cottage look like this one I put my mom up in a couple years back in Newport (Balboa Peninsula).

I need more local guildmates to paint for food!!


Xantium, did you paint your homemade wainscoting? I'd like that in white in my not-yet-started beachy guest room. I saw a room in a house I looked at (named Dolphin House) that had nice wainscoting and box beam ceilings (forgot the real name of it). I wanted to do this (pic below) to my formal dining room. I imagine it's better to pay someone, yeah?

Dude...so jealous.

[Heylel Teomim]

Originally Posted by chaos

Painting the wood paneling is tricky business though. It will either turn out awesome or it will look like ass.

That's why I plan to try and stain it first. The wood is pretty heavily textured, getting a smooth coat of paint would be all but impossible. If I can get a richer color, I don't mind the wood grain nearly as much.

[Ravvenn]

Originally Posted by Etoille

Dude...so jealous.

Sadly for that house, the only perk was THAT room and the curb appeal. The yard and rest of the house sucked. From the looks of it, it's still on the market. A double mortgage must suck, I know they bought a new house weeks before I saw that one back in September.

Next time they will rethink building a goddamn waterwall with dophins on it in the already small back yard!

[Etoille]

Originally Posted by Ravvenn

Sadly for that house, the only perk was THAT room and the curb appeal. The yard and rest of the house sucked. From the looks of it, it's still on the market. A double mortgage must suck, I know they bought a new house weeks before I saw that one back in September.

Next time they will rethink building a goddamn waterwall with dophins on it in the already small back yard!

haha. but its MOAR stuff!

[chaos]

I thought about doing a small waterfall/pond type thing in my backyard. Which is fine, because my backyard is massive. I think I could have made it work, but it's just such a pain in the ass. I have to do something though, I will see if I can post a pic of the back yard, it's absolutely massive.

I am considering just planting a mid size tree out there, maybe a cherry blossom, and then down the line a bit working on building my own shed. A guy who lives behind me built his own shed and it's really nice. He ran power out to it, put in an AC, long work benches, very practical.

[Heylel Teomim]

My dad has a pond in the back yard. Aside from changing the pump once, it's been totally maintenance free, and really adds a lot.

[Bralkan]

Originally Posted by chaos

Painting the wood paneling is tricky business though. It will either turn out awesome or it will look like ass.

True. Do a couple test panels. Your going to have to tare it down anyways.

I've done quite a few improvements over the years.

Laminate floors, staining concrete, landscaping, etc.

At my new house I am working on my horse fencing, my giant French drain (huge drainage issues in my main barn yard), and my climbing wall....

I am also tearing out some walls around one of my Barn bays to turn it into an open shelter. I've also built a horse stall and a little tack room to put up our saddles and what not. I love getting out and "making" shit.

The house itself is in really good shape for being built ~1918. They had some remodels. The bathroom is dated (it hasn't changed since indoor plumbing was put in in the late 70s.) and will be remodeled shortly after my honey moon. Unfortunately, I am never home and won't be there to do it. It makes me feel dirty paying someone to do work I can do.

THe climbing wall is pretty awesome. I put in recessed lighting...that was fun to wire (apparently the breaker switch there kills enough power to not do a light but something is leaking and I got shocked. Had to turn the main breaker off.)

[Etoille]

Originally Posted by chaos

I thought about doing a small waterfall/pond type thing in my backyard. Which is fine, because my backyard is massive. I think I could have made it work, but it's just such a pain in the ass. I have to do something though, I will see if I can post a pic of the back yard, it's absolutely massive.

I am considering just planting a mid size tree out there, maybe a cherry blossom, and then down the line a bit working on building my own shed. A guy who lives behind me built his own shed and it's really nice. He ran power out to it, put in an AC, long work benches, very practical.

ponds are all fun and games until you start breeding mosquitos. (i really, really hate bugs - im that person who has 100000000000 bites in 5 mins while no one else notices that there are any bugs at all. i like spiders because they eat bugs. i love winter because there are no bugs. i wear totally covering clothing all summer because of bugs)

where the hell are you at (in this area) that you have a huge backyard? im jealous heh.

[chaos]

I live in Woodbridge, about 5-10 minutes from Potomac Mills mall off exit 158. It's practically Manassas. Nice area, though if I had it to do again I would have gotten a townhouse with less updating to do. Oh well though, the house is going to rock just a lot of work to do. The people who had it before me had zero pride of ownership, allowed a lot of stuff to get way worse than it should have.

[Etoille]

Originally Posted by chaos

I live in Woodbridge, about 5-10 minutes from Potomac Mills mall off exit 158. It's practically Manassas. Nice area, though if I had it to do again I would have gotten a townhouse with less updating to do. Oh well though, the house is going to rock just a lot of work to do. The people who had it before me had zero pride of ownership, allowed a lot of stuff to get way worse than it should have.

Ah cool. Though it sucks to hear about the previous owner but on the bright side it gives you lots of stuff to do as far as projects go . The previous owner of our house had a lot of pride of ownership (we actually met him the night before close while doing the walk thru and he was showing us around the stuff he was leaving like paint and stuff that he fixed up - the owner prior to him was a complete disaster ) which was great because since he had done such an awesome job with it that we didn't need to do a lot of stuff on move in to make it feel 'home-y'. Little bit of paint goes a long way. Now however I do find that I sometimes feel constrained by what he did like in terms of color schemes and feeling like what I do in one room has to match the 'feel' of the house - that being said we loved the feel - else we wouldn't have bought it - so its not really a huge problem, or even a problem at all.

I'm not happy unless I'm workin on a project (or planning, cleaning, etc).

Did you redo a room for the nursery?

PS - I hate plugging the line because I think its completely retarded ("designer paint") but I highly recommend the martha stewart collection at lowes. Take color sample to HD for color matching to behr paint of course.

[Xantium]

I didn't paint any of the wood paneling. I had pine wood paneling from floor to ceiling painted white for god knows what reason. For the part above the chair rail I used Joint Compound to fill in any cracks or gaps were the panels meet. After sanding this led to an even surface across the walls above the chair rail, then I applied wallpaper liner horizontally over the paneling, then I painted the liner. Optionally I could have used a textured wallpaper meant for painting on top of the liner, the liner takes paint fine but has no texture i.e. flat wall. As for the bottom part I stripped the paint with a heat gun (o god never again) applied a light stain, and painted the chair rail white..ish.

Texture and depth don't mean shit cause you cover it all up, Just think of it as putting up a millimeter deep layer of drywall.


Ravvenn my wainscotting just looks like wood paneling on the bottom, not that cool box stuff. If I remember tonight I'll get some pics.

With a steamer and a pry bar I could revert the whole room back to it's old ways.

[Black_Death]

We have a pond in our backyard and it is pretty maintenance free. Other than going through a few pumps in the last 2 years, I haven't had to do much. We have goldfish in it that have survived through 2 winters. The pond will stay mosquito free as long as the water has movement. Also I think the fish eat the larva.

We have done quite a bit of work on the backyard since we moved in 2 years ago and I think it looks pretty good now.

Here is the yard...



and here is a closer picture of the pond. It is about 250 gallons.



In the back of the yard you see a wall of bamboo. It is awesome for 10 months out of the year, but during May and June I am out there every day dealing with the rhizomes that shoot out and sprout up. If I miss a day those fuckers get to be about 4 feet tall.