The Home Improvement Thread

[Silverback]

We had a small tornado thing hit the area this morning. It took my back fence and moved it about 80'-100' and put it in pieces near the back of the house! One of the panels hit a 4x4 post I had placed in a whisky barrel that was anchored into the ground with rebar and had 90lbs of concrete plus 50 lbs of dirt.. knocked it over. I think that if it didn't hit it then it would have hit the back of the house. Another piece went sailing over the pool and landed on the other side near the house. There are trees uprooted, windows broken, shingles and roofs damaged and of course fences down all over the area. So feeling lucky that its only a fence at the moment. Hell it even removed the metal trim I have that is around the fridge opening (in the brick) on the outdoor kitchen which is under the patio. But the storm only lasted maybe a minute... not even. I was laying in bed.... heard what sounded like a train. Jumped out of bed to look out the window, couldn't see shit. Went to the living room to look and it was pretty much over. Just rain at that point.

 

[Anathollo]

We had a small tornado thing hit the area this morning. It took my back fence and moved it about 80'-100' and put it in pieces near the back of the house! One of the panels hit a 4x4 post I had placed in a whisky barrel that was anchored into the ground with rebar and had 90lbs of concrete plus 50 lbs of dirt.. knocked it over. I think that if it didn't hit it then it would have hit the back of the house. Another piece went sailing over the pool and landed on the other side near the house. There are trees uprooted, windows broken, shingles and roofs damaged and of course fences down all over the area. So feeling lucky that its only a fence at the moment. Hell it even removed the metal trim I have that is around the fridge opening (in the brick) on the outdoor kitchen which is under the patio. But the storm only lasted maybe a minute... not even. I was laying in bed.... heard what sounded like a train. Jumped out of bed to look out the window, couldn't see shit. Went to the living room to look and it was pretty much over. Just rain at that point.

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Damn! Glad it wasn't worse for you!

 

[Silverback]

Yeah, seen photos on the book of faces and there was a lot more damage in the hood. We got lucky IMO.

 

[Silverback]

When I brought the kid home from school we found broken fence pieces in my front yard... 175' from where they started! I did manage to get all the fence debris cleaned up and put up by the side of the house. Need to figure out what to do with it now. I don't think my trash pickup will take that much "construction material". Might just dry it out, cut it into manageable pieces and burn it in a firepit.

 

[Taco Loco]

When I brought the kid home from school we found broken fence pieces in my front yard... 175' from where they started! I did manage to get all the fence debris cleaned up and put up by the side of the house. Need to figure out what to do with it now. I don't think my trash pickup will take that much "construction material". Might just dry it out, cut it into manageable pieces and burn it in a firepit.

Great wood for smores and hotdogs

Glad y'all were somewhat spared from the heavy destruction.

 

[Silverback]

For a 30-45 second "storm".. she was a doozy! I have been through a couple mild tornados before and they lasted 2-3 minutes I guess.. but this was seconds.. Just crazy the amount of damage.

 

[Anathollo]

For a 30-45 second "storm".. she was a doozy! I have been through a couple mild tornados before and they lasted 2-3 minutes I guess.. but this was seconds.. Just crazy the amount of damage.

It was like the tornado that blew through Robbie's neighborhood. It fucked that whole neighborhood up.

 

[Silverback]

Oh yeah, very similar. Luckily my roof stayed on.

 

[balakay]

Wife wants a couple more cameras at the house. Not super impressed with our Nest camera we currently have and don't really want to pay per camera for cloud storage. So after looking around, I'm going to get a Reolink PoE camera system with an NVR. So they won't be connected to the Internet in any way and none of my videos will be stored anywhere except on a drive at my house. That's how the idea started... Now I'm reworking my entire home network and putting a wall mount server rack in the closet in my gaming room. If I'm running Cat6 through my attic I'm going to go ahead and put in a couple drops in the living room and master bedroom as well as four drops at my desk. Also going to run a couple ceiling mount Ubiquiti access points. One in the hall for the bedrooms and one in the kitchen for kitchen, dining room, garage. They should overlap plenty to cover the living room. Down the line, I'll add a NAS and mini-PC running Home Assistant. Ordered the rack, 1000ft of Cat6 (way more than I need but I'll use the rest at my parents house they're building), patch panel, and keystones today. Trying to figure out which PoE switch I want. Once I get it all in I'll have ATT rerun my fiber to the closet and get it all going then I'll add the camera system and access points.

 

[SecretSquirrel]

Suggest adding a sync tool from whatever NAS you have to upload videos to cheap online storage like AWS S3.

That way, when you're robbed and they take your NVR & NAS.... you'll know who rawdogged your shit

 

[tx_shooter]

I spent the day knocking out some of the to-do list that had been stacking up. This simple shelf under the cabinets but above the washer/dryer was really well received as it got all the little stuff off the dryer top and freed up some space in the cabinets.

 

[balakay]

Thoughts on this? We're getting ready to remodel our master bathroom. We have this half wall between the vanity area and the toilet that we're going to remove. It's tied into this "beam" for lack of a better word that goes all the way up the height of the wall. I'm assuming this is tructhral and will need to remain which is fine. But I noticed on one side it is almost 8" wide but the other side (toward the vanity) it's only 4.5" wide. Anyone have any ideas why they would have built that area up? My first thought is it's a 3.5" difference so it's like theres a double thickness wall there. Guess we'll find out when the sheetrock comes out. Hoping it's something I can undo and gain that 3.5" back because the bathroom is already narrow enough. There's only 36" between the back wall and the front edge of the countertop currently. If I'm standing at my sink, my wife can't even open the door all the way so even 3.5" would be a nice "extension" of the room.

 

[Taco Loco]

Thoughts on this? We're getting ready to remodel our master bathroom. We have this half wall between the vanity area and the toilet that we're going to remove. It's tied into this "beam" for lack of a better word that goes all the way up the height of the wall. I'm assuming this is tructhral and will need to remain which is fine. But I noticed on one side it is almost 8" wide but the other side (toward the vanity) it's only 4.5" wide. Anyone have any ideas why they would have built that area up? My first thought is it's a 3.5" difference so it's like theres a double thickness wall there. Guess we'll find out when the sheetrock comes out. Hoping it's something I can undo and gain that 3.5" back because the bathroom is already narrow enough. There's only 36" between the back wall and the front edge of the countertop currently. If I'm standing at my sink, my wife can't even open the door all the way so even 3.5" would be a nice "extension" of the room. View attachment 64565View attachment 64566View attachment 64567

What is behind that wall? Outside wall? Adjoins a bedroom or living space?

 

[Taco Loco]

Most likely it's just a void, non load bearing, the older homes built in late 70s and 80s did a ton of void spaces behind bathroom cabinets and drop down void space for lighting.

 

[balakay]

It's an exterior brick wall. And the house was built in the late 70s so that would fit. Definitely going to try and gain that space back if it s nothing structural.

 

[AlienXtx]

I hope they didn't run the venting for the plumbing in there.

 

[balakay]

The vent is about at the middle of that mirror in the first pic.

 

[Anathollo]

It's an exterior brick wall. And the house was built in the late 70s so that would fit. Definitely going to try and gain that space back if it s nothing structural.

That's what I hate about houses, you just never know what they did until you tear out sheetrock.

 

[Anathollo]

Haven't gotten much done in the past few weeks. Been on vacation or been under the weather.
But I was working from home yesterday and stuck my foot out and accidentally hit the power strip cord and made the outlet fry out. So I finally found the source of what was causing random interruptions on this circuit (originally I thought it was a bad GFCI). Looks like the ground wire was touching the hot side terminal.
So I replaced that outlet with a new one and packed the wiring back in the box more carefully.

I also swapped out a broken 15A circuit break that was in my panel. One leg popped off when I was putting it back in after testing this circuit a month ago looking for this random fault.

 

[tx_shooter]

Using the Tacoma to do "truck stuff" today. I am doing a loose stack dry wall with the rocks and going to back fill with some gravel and dirt. I moved three loads like this and stacked them.

This morning I had to cut the brush and dig the roots out in the area I am stacking rocks.