The Geek Crew - Print Page

The Geek Crew
http://www.TWNCommunications.Net/ForumOLD/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl General Category >> The Mother Board >> Home Improvement http://www.TWNCommunications.Net/ForumOLD/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1339711069 Message started by b0b on Jun 14^th, 2012 at 5:57pm

Title: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on Jun 14^th, 2012 at 5:57pm

Several of us own houses now, and I'm sure others will be in the market eventually, so I figured I would start a thread for home improvement and similar tasks. Since buying our house four years ago, I've had to quickly learn about electrical, plumbing, carpentry, etc. I figured it might be beneficial to share some of the home improvement stuff I'm doing in the hopes it might be beneficial or encouraging to others.

This doesn't necessarily need to be limited to home improvement. It'd be neat to see other types of handiwork, such as car repair, hobby-related crafting, etc.

-b0b
(...loves to tinker.)

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on Jun 14^th, 2012 at 5:58pm

Our dish disposer was getting old and worn out, and our sink had recently started draining slowly. Even with judicious plunging and plenty of Drano, I couldn't seem to get things cleared up much.

After checking under the sink, it was clear the plumbing had been installed by a pack of retarded monkeys that were hitting a bit too much acid. I'm obviously not a plumber, but it's common sense that drain pipes need to run downhill if you expect water to drain out of them. Can you spot the problem in this picture?

The horizontal pipe that connects the disposer outlet to the drain from the right-hand rinse sink is angled upward. That would explain the frequent and worsening clogs, and also the constant bad smell that emanated from the disposer. Since the pipe was angled upward, both the pipe and the disposer failed to drain completely. Also, the uphill angle caused water to drain very slowly, so particulate matter ground up by the disposer wasn't getting flushed out - hence the clog.

The idiots also used the wrong type of pipe to attach to the outlet of the disposer. This permitted leakage, which badly corroded the disposer outlet and damaged the floor of the cabinet.

The plumbing has to be replaced in it's entirety to allow the disposal outlet pipe to enter the drainage pipe at a lower point. Since the disposer is a bit worn out and the outlet is badly corroded, we've decided to buy a new unit and replace it along with the plumbing.

As a hardcore nerd, I couldn't buy just any disposer. It had to be the biggest, baddest, most powerful, and most technologically advanced disposer on the market. May I present the InSinkErator Evolution Excel 1.0HP garbage disposal: http://www.amazon.com/InSinkErator-Evolution-Excel-Household-Disposer/dp/B000G7UH3M

-b0b
(...$3.99 overnight with Amazon Prime, yeah!)

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on Jun 14^th, 2012 at 5:59pm

The new disposer arrived this afternoon. I just finished with the install, and although I didn't get everything accomplished I had hoped for, the majority of the installation went quite smoothly.

After removing the vertical piping and tee from the rinse sink, the vertical pipe broke right off the old disposer under its own weight. That's not surprising, but it's awfully scary. Had that broken at an inopportune time, we could have had a bit of a flood to deal with. I definitely found the source of the clog, though...

This is one of the things I had to give up on. I was going to replace the strainer on the rinse sink since they're inexpensive and it would improve the appearance of the sink. I absolutely could not get the retaining ring off this beast. I went back to Home Depot and bought a purpose specific wrench and some penetrating oil, and I still couldn't get this thing to budge with all my might. Since it was a purely cosmetic improvement, I eventually decided to just leave it.

The plumber's putty on the disposer drain adapter had long-since turned to dust, and was allowing water to seep around the adapter, hence the rust all over the top of the old disposer. I found an unused, unopened disposer adapter under the sink, so whoever installed this one had apparently just reused the existing adapter when they replaced a previous disposer.

Once everything was removed and the new adapter was in place, it was time to seat the new disposer. Here's a side-by-side shot, showing the size difference. The problem with buying the Cadillac model is that it was freakin' heavy, making it very difficult to get the thing attached to the adapter. It's only 20 pounds, but it is amazing how heavy twenty pounds can be when you're holding it at arm's length and trying to make fine adjustments to the placement.

Here it is, in place and ready for the plumbing. I installed the electrical wire previously using a separate kit, and forgot to take pictures. Whoops.

Here's the final product. I'm not super happy about the odd angles of the existing PVC, but I was able to get everything lined up with a flexible tee. I squared off and sanded the ends of the PVC and made sure everything was tight. After running the sink for ten minutes, I couldn't find a drop of water that had escaped, so I think this might just do it.

Everything is held together with compression fittings and host clamps, so it is relatively trivial to take it apart again if I need to fix something. I also noticed the outlet isn't GFCI protected, which seems like a bad idea for an under-sink outlet, so I've put that on my list of things to fix this summer. The problem with home improvement projects is they inevitably lead to more projects!

-b0b
(...is going to take a long, hot shower now.)

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by X on Jun 15^th, 2012 at 7:26am

Ok so at first I thought this would make us sound really old...but I was interested in your replacement...that's when I confirmed we were old!

X

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by Stick on Jun 15^th, 2012 at 9:25am

Hahah, that uphill pipe is crazy.

This thread is a good idea, I recently purchased a home as of April. I plan to install a disposal at some point.

Total changes we've made so far:
-Painted 5 rooms
-Tile backsplash
-All electric receptacles/switches replaced and re-covered(previous owner painted over them)
-bathroom fossett upgraded/installed

Future Plans
- This would be a never ending list -

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on Jun 15^th, 2012 at 10:10am

Are you sick of painting, Stick? We painted about half of the rooms in the house when we bought it. That was four years ago, and we still haven't painted the rest of the house. I'll be a happy man if I never touch a paintbrush again!

Oh, and wallpaper? Never again. I think we spent more time removing wallpaper then we did patching, prepping, and painting (three coats!) combined. This was some of the lovely wallpaper we had to deal with:

I also replaced most of the electrical receptacles when we bought the house. The existing receptacles were ridiculously old and had 4-5 layers of paint (no kidding) on them.

I replaced most of the receptacles with surge protecting outlets. This eliminates the need for a surge strip. Sorry about the blurry shot:

-b0b
(...is tired just from looking at that wallpaper.)

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by Briney on Jun 15^th, 2012 at 7:38pm

Oooo I like this thread, nice job bob with all your upgrades!

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by The_Fat_Man on Jun 15^th, 2012 at 7:44pm

That disposal drain made me throw up in my mouth a little, thanks bob

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by X on Jun 16^th, 2012 at 12:12am

Briney, I think you should show us how you hooked up Susie's hot tub jets to the electrical system!

X

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on Jun 16^th, 2012 at 12:41am

X wrote on Jun 16^th, 2012 at 12:12am:

Briney, I think you should show us how you hooked up Susie's hot tub jets to the electrical system!

Is this going to be scary?

-b0b
(...braces for impact.)

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by Briney on Jun 16^th, 2012 at 1:13am

He is being sly cause I haven't done that yet! haha

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by pezmasterelite on Jun 16^th, 2012 at 10:36am

I recently changed the brake master cylinder on my VW jetta, stupid car. I also have a laundry list of jobs to do to my Jeep as well. If anyone is interested I can put some stuff up here this summer as I do more work.

Home improvements suck, especially re-wiring some knob and tube, good stuff.

pez

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by X on Jun 16^th, 2012 at 12:02pm

Andrew, didn't you wire up your Ford Tarus with a complete sound system? That's a tight spot, so a house shouldn't be that hard, right?

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on Jun 16^th, 2012 at 12:42pm

I pulled a ton of knob and tube wiring out of my garage a couple years back and went absolutely nuts with new light fixtures and receptacles. Fortunately, I had bare studs to work with, so running the new cabling was trivial. I think the hardest part of any electrical job in the house would involve running the new cabling. This is particularly true in our house, which has had several additions, so none of the walls line up between floors.

Here are a couple shots of the garage immediately after I finished running the wiring.

The sub-panel was a crusty old fuse box. I replaced that with a circuit breaker sub-panel. One circuit controls the regular receptacles and the other controls the lights and surge suppressing receptacle for the network/stereo equipment.

Here is one wall of the garage. I removed three receptacles and replaced them with ten receptacles, along with an eleventh surge suppressing receptacle that is elevated from the rest. A twelfth and final receptacle was placed on the ceiling next to the garage door opener.

The new 2x4s will support a wall-mounted network rack. The receptacle above the rack is surge suppressing to protect the network and stereo equipment. The black cabling is Cat 5e, and the shiny copper cabling is speaker wire.

This pic shows the rear left corner of the garage, where my workbench sits. I doubled up on outlets in this corner since it is where I will have the most use. I also placed two network drops in each of two boxes here. The corner box is a double-gang that also has the rear left speaker drop.

Finally, an overhead shot, and my one point of regret. I replaced one overhead light with four overhead lights, thinking that would be more than sufficient. Now I wish I had placed eight or more. The garage is quite dark, and the walls soak up the light like a sponge. Hopefully, once I put plywood on the walls, the garage will brighten up significantly.

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by Briney on Jun 16^th, 2012 at 1:02pm

I would love to see some of your guys' car projects, as that stuff is greek to me.

Here is a few outdoor things I did last year and actually took pictures of.

There was a raised flowerbed around our tree by the driveway that was sitting there with no bricks. The person that lived there before us took them all when they moved out. So I dug everything up around the bed, placed in gravel and leveling sand and built a nice wall around it. I don't have many Work in progress shots:

And finished!

We have 2 basement egress windows, that you can open to potentially escape a fire. Well the previous owners placed these tiny plastic egress walls in there, and you couldn't open the windows all the way to get out... nice. Also he put concrete at the bottom of the windowwell so when it rained, the water drained from the ground into this window well and it would fill up with water. To top that off, the ground all around the window wells actually angled back towards the house. With nowhere else to go, it would come in our windows and leak down the wall into the basement. Fail. Mold Fail. Although it was funny one time to come downstairs and see an aquarium out the window. There were a quite a few late night water bailout sessions. So I set about fixing the window wells, to allow proper escape and drainage.

I don't have a good before picture, but this will show just how tiny those window wells actually were. The window opened outward and would just smack into the wall.

So after a little bit amount of digging I started running into... Concrete!! This genius had poured concrete at various intervals around the window wells to "seal" them in. You can't see them in this pic, but I have a later pic of them. I had to use a pickaxe and a sledge to break up these massive chunks and haul them out of the hole.

I finally get down to the bottom of the windowwell. Hauling the concrete chunks out at this level was pretty tough.

But I finally cleared them out, and the plastic walls. I dug even further, because the guy had placed the concrete bottom of the well almost at the level of the bottom of the window. Not smart.

So to make sure water would flow properly I dug out a big pit, and then at the bottom I used a post hole digger to dig another 4 or more feet down to the draintile thats at the very bottom of the foundation with most houses. Modern homes may have a perforated pipe down there that goes into a sump pump or whatever, but I was pretty sure we just had the gravel.

I put in a capped piece of pvc pipe that had small holes all down the sides so that water would flow as best as possible down to the draintile. I also put in some weedbarrier for funsies and then poured in about 12 + cubic feet of drainage gravel. This would allow water to move very easily down and away from my windows.

After the gravel was in, I started laying in retaining wall brick and leveling it off. I backfilled with gravel behind the brick for further drainage.

Materials/Chaos:

Finished with the brickwork: I placed a small 6 inch step in the brick to help people step out of it.

I then hauled some of the dirt away, and used the rest of it to grade the surrounding dirt, so water would flow naturally away from the house.

Then I went ahead and did it all over again for the other window well! This one had to be smaller because we have a hose that comes out right by the window and the electrical/gas pipes that run out to our outbuilding are buried here too. Also you can see one of the concrete chunks from that window well in the picture, as well. The concrete had dried against on of the electrical conduits, so that was fun to get off.

So after that was all done, I put down weedbarrier (which does nothing, haha) and then a bunch of river rock.

I've had no leaks since then, and even in the craziest of storms there has been no water buildup. The brick has stayed level through the winter, and everything is still groovy.

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on Jun 16^th, 2012 at 2:23pm

Very cool, Briney! I'd love to know more about the drainage pipe you installed. How long is it? Did you drill the holes yourself, or did you find a pre-drilled PVC pipe somewhere? Is the bottom open, or did you place some sort of drilled cap on it?

That's a ton of work! If there is one thing I absolutely hate doing, it's outdoors/landscaping type work. That looks amazing!

-b0b
(...ideas!)

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by pezmasterelite on Jun 17^th, 2012 at 8:54am

Yeah briney that is some serious landscaping there, trying to make us feel bad...

X, I have wired 2 car system installs, that car is gone now though, I have a VW jetta and a Jeep Cherokee. Sadly I have had to replace brakes and front suspensions on the Jeep before moving down, now I have a list of stuff for both cars.

Bob, that garage looks awesome, I wish I had something like that for the work I do from time to time. Knob and tube sucks to replace inside walls, I hate using fish sticks and fish tape and various other things to push, pull, and twist your way though some 100 year old walls with terrible design... bah.

I will take some shots of my next car jobs and put them here.

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by spanky on Jun 18^th, 2012 at 8:27pm

I don't really have any home improvement stuff...but I do have a little car stuff.

Most things I do I don't take pictures of. When I did a little work on my moms mustang she took some pictures though.

The back story is my parents were driving around and started to smell something sweet and the windshield fogged up a little. In a foxbody that means it is time to replace the heater core!

First you tear your way through the dash...

That's the bugger!

Extra parts...

And back together the first time.

Then I replaced the foam and leather for the seats.

Strangely I don't have any pictures of how the car sits today so use your imagination.

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by X on Jun 18^th, 2012 at 10:10pm

Quote:

Strangely I don't have any pictures of how the car sits today so use your imagination.

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on Jun 18^th, 2012 at 11:07pm

spanky wrote on Jun 18^th, 2012 at 8:27pm:

The front fell off!

Those seats look amazing. Seriously, night and day difference! Did you have to stitch them in place?

-b0b
(...wow!)

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by pezmasterelite on Jun 19^th, 2012 at 4:50pm

Spanky I will have to inquire about some of your car knowledge if I get in a jam, I forget you know quite a lot about cars.

That looks nice, I imagine the dashboard was quite the pain.

pez

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by spanky on Jun 19^th, 2012 at 7:23pm

Quote:

Those seats look amazing. Seriously, night and day difference! Did you have to stitch them in place?

Nope, the leather came from a company called TMI products. They make a lot of reproduction interiors. It was pretty expensive but really good stuff. The leather has cloth loops and attachment points on the underside that connect to the metal skeleton of the seat.

Quote:

Spanky I will have to inquire about some of your car knowledge if I get in a jam, I forget you know quite a lot about cars.

That looks nice, I imagine the dashboard was quite the pain.

Well, I really know about the cars I have had. I might be able to fake it with a few other models but if you need info about a ranger, a fox body, or an e90 I could probably help.

Yeah, the dash was an experience. More than one time I said "how the hell am I supposed to reach that screw?!"

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by Briney on Jun 19^th, 2012 at 11:19pm

Thats pretty nuts man! I can't imagine that every screw was the same... how the balls did you remember all that for reassembly?

Quote:

The front fell off!

bob, was that a Clarke and Dawe reference?

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on Jun 20^th, 2012 at 9:01am

Heck yeah!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-QNAwUdHUQ

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by Cait on Jun 28^th, 2012 at 8:50pm

I went to go comment on this thread about home improvements and hacks I've done....but I just am so distracted by Spanky's one photo (the one where the front fell off):

Is that a Little Mermaid sleeping bag hanging over its side?

Cait

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on Jun 28^th, 2012 at 9:07pm

Cait wrote on Jun 28^th, 2012 at 8:50pm:

Is that a Little Mermaid sleeping bag hanging over its side?

That's how Spanky rolls.

-b0b
(...you should see his Justin Bieber comforter.)

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by Stick on Jul 25^th, 2012 at 9:17am

Here's my sink/disposal installation that I just wrapped up last night. I don't have before pictures but there was a double bowl white sink and no disposal. When we bought the home there was a microwave over the range but my wife is a bit of a tin foil hat kind of person and decided that we should take it out straight away. So I replaced it with a stainless steel range hood. The microwave was on a run of it's own so now that all those amperes were free'd up, I spliced into that run and wired in the switch to the outlet under the sink. I thought the location of my switch was pretty nifty. The wife wanted the switch under the sink for some reason. I was thinking a push button switch in the sink hole next to the fosset since the fosset is the spray type. But ya know, she's kind of in charge.

Here's the album
http://imgur.com/a/xaJL2

BTW, working under the sink sucks!

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on Jul 25^th, 2012 at 9:23am

I love the hidden switch, very cool! You should screw a holster into the sidewall and throw in some serious firepower. ;p

I agree about working under the sink. I replaced our kitchen faucet about a year ago and had to buy a special wrench that would fit into the tiny space between the rear of the sink and the back wall.

Next time I replace a faucet, I'm replacing the whole frickin' sink along with it!

-b0b
(...nice work!)

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by MediaMaster on Jun 17^th, 2013 at 12:32am

So I am back with some more stonework to post. I seem to be addicted to it.

The front of our house was pretty boring when we got it. Any areas that had once had retaining walls were removed by the previous owner.

We have this area to the left of the house that once was a nice garden. We weeded it a few times and made pathetic attempts at growing things. But the yard was pretty much taking over.

So it was time to reign that lawn in!

I decided to match the flowing lines of the previous retaining walls at other areas around the house. After looking at it for a few weeks, I decided to just get started. Once that first shovel breaks ground, you can't stop!

Like before, I dug deep into the ground, laid in some gravel/paver base, then some leveling sand and placed the stonework on top.

The sidewalk I was laying stone next to has a straight edge, so I didn't start curving until I hit the end of the concrete. Because of the gentle curve, the stonework sticks out into the yard a bit, but that is ok.

Worked my way over to the other side.

The digging is the worst part. Luckily I have a heavy pickaxe which rips through the yard very quickly. At this point I was also finding treasures from the previous owners. Popcans, wrappers, charcoal, heavy plastic landscape liner, tin pieces (no idea), and electrical wire were found all over the place.

Here is an example of the steps I used to lay in the stone. This is the leveled out sand sitting on top of gravel (use a 4+ foot level for more accuracy/speed) . I gave myself some leeway so I could adjust the curve of the stone where I wanted it. I then backfilled behind the stone with more gravel for drainage and soil expansion, and then added the second layer of stone.

The far side is finally dug out! That was a real pain, and this whole area is lower than the rest.

Robby the Robin was hanging out with me the whole day. He got as close as 2 feet (when I didn't have the camera of course) stealing the worms/critters as I dug up the ground.

I had to add a lot of gravel here to make sure everything was level. For good measure I tamped everything down.

Done!

I also decided to add some stone along our walkway.

And since I already had dug out along the sidewalk for the stone... I decided to install low voltage landscape lighting.
Each light is about 11w, and I have a 200w transformer. I have 14 guage wire, because I plan on adding a few lights down the road. These guys are reaaaallly easy to install and I highly recommend it. The digging is the hardest part. You just run the cable, and the lights basically have an attachment that pierces the cable in an enclosure. Boom, done.

And very nice results.

I bought 4 low power floodlights to hit our pillars for funsies. Susie didn't want full fill lights on the house, so I kept it subtle. Looks very cool from the street.

That's it for now, I suppose. Next on my list this summer is burying the overhead power line and cable line, and finally getting that deck built. Let me know if you have any questions!

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on Jun 20^th, 2013 at 12:35pm

Damn, Briney, that looks amazing! Outside of basic maintenance, we haven't done anything too aesthetically thrilling to the house this year.

I've been going crazy working on the Jeeperator over the past few weeks, though. It's all basic maintenance for the most part, but even basic maintenance can be pretty daunting on a car with 166,000 miles on the odometer. I've been upgrading components wherever possible in the hopes of eeking out a few more miles before I need to buy Jeep 3.0.

Last night I installed a new rear sway bar. This component is responsible for reducing body roll when taking a corner. The factory sway bar is a laughably small 9/16" bar that weighs about 8lbs. The replacement is 1" in diameter and weighs about 23lbs. I also installed greasable polyurethane bushings to help keep the new sway bar nice and quiet. I can't wait to give this thing a try!

Since the sway bar is right in front of the rear differential cover, I decided to flush the fluid in the rear differential while I had the sway bar removed. I bought a new heavy duty diff cover to replace the badly rusted factory cover. The old gear oil was about 30oz low, which is pretty scary. Fortunately, the inside of the differential housing looked great with no chipped teeth or metal shavings.

Here is a shot of the old and new diff covers side-by-side. The new diff cover must weigh about 18lbs. You could beat somebody to death with this thing without even breaking a sweat!

Last week I installed a new steering stabilizer. The stabilizer is a gas shock that absorbs any jolts that would jostle the steering wheel when hitting a bump. It also helps firm up your steering wheel. The old steering stabilizer was the original model that shipped from the factory, so it was long overdue for replacement. It's amazing how much better the steering wheel feels with the new stabilizer!

I also replaced the idle air controller (IAC) and the throttle position sensor (TPS) to correct a bad idle variability. The Jeep would rev all over the place when idling from 500 RPM to 2,200 RPM. This is really annoying, particularly when sitting in a fast food drive through lane because people would think I was revving my engine intentionally. I forgot to take a pic of the TPS, but here is a pic of the new and old IACs side-by-side.

I also bought five new tires (including spare) and installed new high-performance brake pads and rotors, but I paid a shop to install those so it doesn't really count.

-b0b
(...piiiiiimpmobile.)

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on Aug 11^th, 2014 at 5:07pm

More home improvement! I finally got sick of the cheap, broken light fixtures on the front of the house. The fixture on the left side of the door had a broken glass insert, so water kept leaking into the fixture. This would ultimately rust out the base of the bulb until it no longer made sufficient contact with the fixture, leaving me with an inoperable bulb. Both fixtures were corroded and rusty.

I've been replacing all of the bulbs in an around the house with LEDs, and I didn't want to spend $15 on an LED bulb just to have it go bad. Long story short, time for new fixtures!

Unfortunately I was too busy juggling stuff to take many pictures, but hopefully this will serve as inspiration. It only took about ten minutes to replace each fixture and it was a very simple one-man job.

Step 1, turn off the breaker corresponding to the light fixtures. Safety first! Then, remove the retaining bolts holding the fixture to the bracket.

Step 2, carefully remove the light fixture from the bracket. Remove the wire nuts tying the wires from the fixture to the wires from your house. Marvel at the fact that your crappy electrical wiring hasn't resulted in a house fire.

Step 3, forget to take pictures of the rest of the job. All you have to do is remove the old bracket that is screwed through your siding into the wall. Then, replace it with the new bracket. If you're lucky, the holes in the new bracket will line up with the old ones. Once the bracket is up, use new wire nuts to connect the fixture wiring to the house wiring. Then mount the fixture on the bracket and insert the bolts. Turn the breaker back on and test your handiwork!

-b0b
(...really needs to wash his siding!)

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by X on Aug 11^th, 2014 at 5:32pm

Very nice!

We just an internal light today and started the painting project. The 70s whore house hallway is dead.

Like the fixture you guys got.

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on May 6^th, 2015 at 2:56pm

Since the weather has been so nice, Meredith and I decided we'd finally get around to replacing our very primitive fire pit with a brick and steel model. This was a project that we've been wanting to do for a couple years and it was fun (though exhausting), so I figured I'd share some pictures of the process.

The process started by dismantling the old fire pit and gathering all of the new materials. The Jeep did an admirable job of hauling ~1,250 pounds of stuff on two different occasions. Try doing that in a 3-series BMW!

I wanted to put plenty of drainage gravel under the fire pit to keep the walls from shifting over time. I ended up using 25 bags totaling 12.5 cubic feet, or roughly 1,250 pounds.

The Jeep sat a wee bit low, but she took it like a champ.

Once the pit was dug, filled, and leveled, I picked up the rest of the building material. It consisted of 120 paver blocks and 140 smaller square blocks, along with the steel fire ring. Altogether it weighed around 1,300 pounds.

Meredith has wanted a Yoshino cherry tree for quite a while, and we found a perfect specimen in Ann Arbor. We had to drive the thing back to Three Rivers, so I strapped it in for a safe ride.

The tree was about 7' tall, so Meredith got to enjoy a tree in her face for the two hour drive back home.

The Jeep really needs a good cleaning after hauling all that crap, but I'm pleased with the ol' girl. She did me proud!

-b0b
(...fire pit pics in the next post.)

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on May 6^th, 2015 at 3:39pm

I completely forgot to take pictures of the old fire pit (it was just a bunch of big rocks laid out in something approximating a circle), as well as the digging and leveling that I did before I poured in the gravel. Long story short, dig a hole roughly 5' in diameter and nine inches deep, and level out the bottom of the hole as best as you can. Make sure you use an actual level (4' level FTW) and don't try to eyeball it, as the surface of your yard is probably not terribly level to begin with.

I bought and assembled a heavy duty wheelbarrow for this project. You absolute do not want to try doing this kind of project without one! If you don't already have a wheelbarrow, I'd recommend buying one that has two wheels as you're going to be moving a lot of weight. I bought this wheelbarrow as part of a "mix and match" kit (you buy the tray, handles, and wheels/accessories separately and have multiple options for each) at Menards for about $100, but there are plenty of cheaper options.

After leveling the bottom of the pit and checking depth throughout, start adding gravel. It took me 25 bags of 3/4" drainage gravel to add get ~7" of depth. Each bag is 0.5 cubic feet. Use a steel-tined gardening rake to keep the gravel level, and double-check this using the 4' level mentioned earlier.

Here's a quick shot showing the finished hole filled with gravel and all of the bricks needed to build the walls of the pit.

I completely zoned out on providing pictures of setting the first course (row) of bricks. The fire pit comes with instructions that show the ordering for each course and how to offset the upper courses from the previous course. The first course is the most important. Each brick needs to be leveled from front to back, as a minor forward or backward tilt can result in substantial gaps as the courses stack up. Bricks also need to be leveled across the course (e.g. from the 12:00 brick to the 6:00 brick) to make sure the entire pit doesn't end up crooked, but this shouldn't be a problem if you leveled the base of the hole and the gravel before building the wall. A heavy rubber mallet is very useful for this stage of the project.

The bricks within a course are not glued together, but each course is glued to the one below it as shown above.

Here's a shot of my beautiful wife laying down the final bricks. I couldn't have completed this project without her help!

I used a battery-powered Ryobi caulk gun and six tubes of landscaping adhesive. The battery-powered caulk gun is reeeeally nice to have, but completely unnecessary if you don't other projects requiring one.

Here's about half of the dirt we dug out of the pit. It's amazing how much dirt came out of that hole. One of the hardest parts of the entire project was figuring out where to put all of this dirt when we were done. I filled every hole in the yard, placed some near the base of the garage, and threw a bunch of it at the base of our trees. You can also see the sticks that I pulled out of the old pit, and the stones that used to ring the old pit in the background.

Here's the finished product. Once the last course of bricks is set, the fire ring is inserted. Just in case 12.5 cubic feet of drainage gravel wasn't enough, another 2.5 cubic feet of pea gravel is added to the bottom of the pit. This finer gravel allows ashes to be washed down with a hose while retaining any unburnt material. I filled in the exposed drainage gravel outside of the bricks and seeded it with grass seed and fertilizer, so hopefully it will look better in a few weeks!

So there it is. This is the "Ashwell" fire pit kit from Menards, which costs ~$500. They have much cheaper kits as well, and there are a variety of shapes and sizes available. The kit includes the bricks, steel fire ring, 5 tubes of landscaping adhesive and 5 bags of pea gravel. The 25 bags of 3/4" drainage gravel were not included and cost ~$125.

You'll also need a good shovel, a wheelbarrow, a caulk gun, and some decent gloves. I also used a tamper, a steel-tined garden rake, and a hoe (insert Wes's Mom joke here), but these tools aren't strictly necessary.

-b0b
(...exhausting, but totally worth it!)

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by X on May 9^th, 2015 at 2:30pm

That look great, bob! Good job.

If you want some brush wood for your fire, feel free to come grab mine. I believe I have one total buttload.

X

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by b0b on Sep 30^th, 2015 at 11:06am

The Garage.

The never-ending project.

I've been working on remodeling our garage off and on for about six years now, and I'm finally in the home stretch. When we bought the house, the garage was nearly useless. It had absolutely no shelving or storage space and the walls were open studs.

The garage had one light fixture (for a dark 24x24' garage), two receptacles, and knob-and-tube wiring that was likely installed in the late 30s or early 40s. Knob-and-tube is pretty scary, so I ripped all of that out and replaced it with modern Romex wiring. I also replaced the fuse box with a modern breaker box. I also installed twelve receptacles, a dimming switch, four light fixtures (really should have gone with eight or more), twelve Cat5 Ethernet drops, six audio speaker drops, and installed a network rack. Some old pictures of previous work can be found here: http://www.twncommunications.net/Forum/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1339711069/12#12

Two years ago, I started insulating the garage walls with fiberglass. I have nurtured an intense hatred for fiberglass, and would use denim (or pay someone to spray in foam insulation) for future insulation projects.

Here you can see the cutout that I left for my network rack, along with the Cat5 Ethernet cable ready to be seated and crimped. I've drawn on the insulation with permanent marker to indicate where the wiring is located, with each wire labeled S for speaker, N for network, or P for power. The power cabling is separated from the speaker and network cable as much as possible to reduce EMI.

Last year, I finally began finishing the walls by covering them with 3/4" sanded plywood. It's a bit intense for a garage, but I wanted something that would last longer than I will. Before putting the walls up, I tacked on metal wire protector plates so that I don't inadvertently put a screw through a wire down the road.

I used 4" stainless steel deck screws to hold the plywood in place, so each sheet is incredibly sturdy. This section has additional electrical receptacles to accommodate my forthcoming workbench.

I finished hanging the majority of the plywood earlier this year, so I was finally able to get to a long-awaited milestone - shelving! The garage had no shelving originally and I'd only purchased a single stand-alone shelf, so as you can see, stuff is all over the floor. This made it a pain to do anything in the garage. In this picture, I had nearly finished hanging the first section of shelving.

Here's a shot of the mostly-finished shelf after loading it up with the first batch of stuff. I used three full-length 8' shelving sections on the bottom and ended up with four 4' sections on the top two rows (three shown here). This is the Rubbermaid Tough Stuff shelving. Each section can be moved independently and you can buy different shelf lengths (4' and 8') and depths (16" and 20"), so you can build exactly the kind of shelving you're looking for. The big black box on the wall is my network rack.

Here's the opposing wall, showing the second section of shelving. I figured 68 linear feet of shelving would be way more than sufficient, but I'm already thinking about adding another section of shelves next year. Hopefully, the completion of my workbench will help eliminate some of the clutter!

Here's one final shot showing the current layout. I added some additional rear rails and shelf brackets to accommodate areas where shelves ended more than 12" from a wall stud (and an existing rail/brace), as the shelf ends tended to be a bit floppy without them.

I really enjoyed putting the shelving together and it has vastly improved the appearance and usability of the garage. I liked it so much that I'm considering doing the same thing in our basement to eliminate the ugly plastic free-standing shelving.

-b0b
(...always needs more garage space.)

Title: Re: Home Improvement
Post by X on Oct 1^st, 2015 at 10:54am

Nice job! Love the shelves.

We are in painting mode and have baby's room all done. Basement is almost done and once I have the project we started down there done I'll be posting as well.

X