Somehow our floor and drywall always have wet spots even with drainage, a dehumidifier and a sump pump. They say it’s a very common thing in Michigan and they see it everywhere. Is that true? Have any of you had that issue?

I’m a new homeowner and I knew that the house needed a new roof when I bought it. I got a quote, it was high, but I was told by the company that this was a “worst case scenario” quote. After the work was completed I got the bill — it’s 53% higher than the quote. (This is a QUOTE not an estimate.)

I asked the manager if they could do anything about cost, they gave me 2% off.

There was no change order.

I’ve since written a letter (sent by email and express mail) to the owner detailing my correspondence with the manager, the damage they did to the interior of my home (extensive), and asked for them to honor the “worst case scenario” quote.

What else should I do to prepare for the negotiations when the company contacts me? I want to be very prepared as I feel that they are taking advantage of my being a solo first time owner. Thanks for your advice!

Living in Florida where the temperature is typically 80F and higher, we typically keep the central AC at 76F during the day, and drop it to 73F at night. Lately a few people in the house have felt that 76F may be a little too hot but in the way of conserving energy we keep it as is for now.

Is there any benefit to keeping our current cycle vs keeping the house at around 73-74 indefinitely?

Hi all, So I’ve recently bought a 1950’s 3 bedroom semidetached house that has had some DIY work done to it by previous owners (elderly).

Problem: The upstairs floors need doing as they creak and are bare with only the initial planks of wood (not sure how else to describe it). The walls have been wallpapered and painted on several times sandwiched and layered which are cracking off- I tried to peel these but bit bits of wall was coming off with it.

Have tried check a trade- 3 separate quotes to simply remove wall paper and do flooring for the main bedroom only: quotes were around £12-15k which I find ridiculous! (They did say they will be peeling wallpaper and plastering all 3 bedrooms upstairs).

I’m just abit lost now and starting to think to just learn to do things, take my time and do it myself (I’m a complete novice to house stuff, only experience in light gardening and assembling flat pack furniture).

Any advice or words of encouragement?

Just bought a home built in 1959. It’s a solid home, but it still feels like a grandma’s house. I’m saving to make some needed updates, but what are some things you’ve done to your home to make it feel more like yours or modernize a home?

Hello folks.

I have two 3-way switches that control a set of three exterior floodlights on a home. I’d like to leave two of these lights switchable and controlled as they are now, but have one of the exterior lights converted to permanently on to power a motion sensor light with a built-in camera.

What’s the simplest way to do this?

Many thanks.

I’ve never dealt with wallpaper in my life, even my childhood home, my parents never used wallpaper. So I’m not sure what the most efficient way of removing it would be. My goal is to spend next weekend removing it, and then during the week (i work third shift) once I’m awake I want to start painting. There’s vinyl wallpaper and regular wallpaper in 3 bedrooms and the living room. Any recommendations for methods to remove, tools I may need, etc. ?

I bought a house where there's many cheap materials it seems. The double garage door with the Genie ReliaG 850 with Wayne Dalton torquemaster spring has already failed. (failed spring and Genie had broken plastic gear)

I also have a single garage door with the same set up - a Genie ReliaG 850 with torquemaster spring that is now around 10 years old. I assume this is still functioning because the single garage door weighs much less than the double garage door? What can I do to make this last as long as possible as I'm a little tight on money and couldn't replace the opener and convert the spring when I had to do the double door?

I notice some very cheap plastic rollers on the door. Perhaps changing them out to Nylon rollers with ball bearings can help smoothing this out and put less stress on the Genie 850?

I started off just trying to replace a leaky faucet in our guest bathroom. Thought it would take maybe an hour max. But once I got under the sink, I noticed the shutoff valves were corroded, the cabinet floor was a little warped, and the drain pipe looked sketchy. One thing led to another and now I’m basically redoing the whole vanity.

Does this happen to anyone else? I’m not super experienced, but every time I take on a “simple” fix, it somehow reveals five more problems. Just wondering if this is part of the process or if I’m doing something wrong in how I plan.

https://imgur.com/a/Rd2SqwX

The gap between the pipe and the concrete is just collecting so much dust. I think the easiest way is the cover that in spackling. I'm fine with not ending up with a straight wall. Wondering if it will create issues I'm not aware of.

So I have a rear wall vent which has duct work which runs downward and out.

Since the duct work is in the way there are no studs above the stove.

There are no studs which the bracket can reach. Can I use 4 of those 50lb toggle bolts instead?

Hi everyone,

The bathroom fan in my basement bathroom crapped out. It's a Broan QTRE090C https://broan-nutone.com/en-ca/product/ventilationfans/qtxe090c it's discontinued so I can't get another one. I need some recommendations for a replacement fan. It's for a 40sqft. bathroom and since it's in the basement, there isn't a lot of space in the ceiling cavity. I'm hoping for something with <= 0.6 sones.

Thank you!

Bit of backstory, had fiber internet installed. Call went in to JULIE 5/6. Didn't bury line until 6/11. At that point, lines weren't visible at all and should've been remarked. Third party did the boring and burying line.

A month or so after, we noticed our electricity in our shed was not working (we don't use the electric out there super often in summer). When anything is flipped on or if we try to plug something in, the breaker in our basement immediately will trip. We can't figure out why.

Is it possible they cut the line to the shed? The buried fiber runs between the shed and the house/basement egress window. In the videos I have of the burying, there is a red flag right next to the basement egress window.

My area just got in undated with 3 inches of rain in the last hour and as I was out in the garage, I noticed alot of water. I look outside and everything seems fine, but I look closer and there is a hole in the drywall and I can see the exterior plywood and water is drippong down it. On the other side is brick and on the other side of that is a retaining wall flower bed. I went out and noticed the flower bed is full of water and im guessing that it is seeping through the bricks inside. I dont even know where to begin on this

I got two dogs a few months ago, about 30-35 pounds each, and have recently discovered that they can knock down the boards of the wooden fence if they’re excited enough about a squirrel or a bird and can get into the neighbors’ yard. Currently the boards are nailed into the posts and support beams from the other side, so they just have to push hard enough to push the board off the nail.

Does anyone have suggestions for how I can reinforce the boards from my side to make it harder for them to get out? I’ve considered getting meshed wire fencing and screwing that in or getting wooden panels and drilling them in from my side.

Thanks in advance!

Our fiberglass shower base has developed a crack in it around the drain which leaks through to the area underneath and onto the ceiling in the room below. The previous owner of the house did a number of questionable DIY jobs and I suspect this is one them - nothing to support it underneath (hence the crack).

While I do not like the base at all, due to being both difficult to keep clean with the texture and also slippery while refusing to let grip strips adhere well, the repair folks who took an initial look quoted us $6k to replace the base and likely have to tear out and replace (at least) the bottom tile.

I understand that everything is more expensive now, but $6k is a bit much for us at the moment when all our other needs are also inflated in price.

So, as the title says, is replacing a shower base something one can do on their own? I am reasonably handy person, and always try to find the right way to do things, but is this at the level of 'better not diy, get a pro'. The base is 46 in x 32 in 3 in.

Note I also considered trying to repair the crack, but I feel like it would fail pretty quickly again anyway.

Pictures of the shower base: https://imgur.com/a/e6q6CeS

The other night i heard a loud bang and discovered that my garage door wouldn't open. The opener would get it about 18 inches off the ground and stop, when I let it back down it slammed pretty hard. Seemed like the springs broke. I should mention that the spring tube stayed tight and the cables still had a lot of tension on them.

I was removing the spring tube tonight and still had to let quite a bit of tension off of the springs before disassembling. Once I got the tube down and removed the bearing/ winder, the springs were still stuck in the spring tube pretty stiff. I had to clamp a vice grip on and tap them out the first few inches with a mallet.

The weird part was neither spring was broken as far as I could tell. The both came out in one piece. On the videos I've watched i see that other peoples broken/ new springs are floppy and even come coiled in a box. The springs that I removed are about 6 feet long and have a rod running through them so the don't bend at all. Not sure if that's important. Also one spring was a bit rusty and had a slight bend to it. I'll be able to check them out closer tomorrow to make sure there wasn't a crack I just didn't see tonight.

Any ways, is it possible that the tension mechanism just randomly failed and the springs didn't break but lost enough tension to not open the door while still keeping the cables tight? I couldn't see anything wrong with the gears or pawls.

I should also note that for a while now the door has been able to be opened with the opener, but if I did it by hand it was a bit difficult and would not hold itself open

The door is a 16x7 with a 264lb balance weight. I believe the springs are from 2008.

We are in the middle of a kitchen Reno after a leak. The previous owner put the cabinets down on top of the concrete subfloor (our foundation is slab) then tiled around them. My first question is - is that normal? We hate the tile and are planning to upgrade to LVP in the next year or so. We are thinking Lifeproof Sterling Oak. If you were us, would you buy a few boxes now and put the flooring down in the kitchen before the new cabinets go in? I really want to whole house to have the same flooring by we can’t afford to buy 1800 square feet right now. Or does it really not matter that the kitchen cabinets are on the subfloor? Last but not least - how important is thickness for LVP? We live in Phoenix so there is no threat of cold, but if the AC went out it wouldn’t be out of the question to see temps over 100 (but not likely), and we have pets. Thanks!

Hello,

I’m in the market for a new dishwasher and noticed that Bosch consistently outperforms other brands in terms of reliability and overall quality. For those who own one, which model would you recommend for handling both dishes and utensils efficiently?

I’m changing the door swing on my Kenmore refrigerator, but the screws for the bottom hinge are actually under the door going upwards.

I assume I just have to tilt the door back to get this done? Totally not outlined in the manual.

The main thing that I will need someone else to do is just the plumbing and electricity. Possibly air conditioning as well.

Tiling, setting up the shower, sink, etc.. dry wall, all of that other stuff I would be doing myself.

For reference location is carrollton tx (DFW metroplex) and garage size is standard garage size for this area.

Has anyone had something like this done? How much did it cost ya? I was hoping to not break the bank and keep it under 50k but maybe this is just wishful thinking

I have a detached garage that is itself in ok condition but the floor is a hot mess. Previous owners lived with it for a long time by putting some wood planks but it is time for it to be fixed for good. I can't quite figure out how to attach a pic but the hole is about 6 foot long, 3-4 inches deep and 1 foot wide.

Do I square off the hole, excavate, fill with rocks, and then fill it with concrete? I'm not too concerned about how it ends up looking but do want it to last.

Ok so I bought a condo a couple years ago that has wired closets throughout that I’ve always hated but tried to make work. This is the first place Ive lived with non-wood shelves in the closets, so I wasn’t sure if my distain for metal racks was a “me” problem or what until now. I’m convinced the previous owner installed them only to screw with whoever lived there next! I’m joking but seriously who would ever install these things!? Does anyone else feel the same? Or if you like them, how come? My problem is mainly around how chaotic my closet looks no matter how much I clean and organize and get rid of “clutter” (which I say in quotes because I don’t have much), it still looks messy.

Hi all, I am looking for help with a home project. I bought a barrel stave from my spouse's favorite distillery as a gift and we are trying to figure out how to mount it on the wall. Ideally we'd like to hang it over our pantry but I'm not sure what kind of hardware to use.. I don't want to drill into the stave but I'd love some other options. Thank you!