Show us your home reno / weekend Projects

[glaswegian]

Just thought I'll start a thread looking at renos and weekend projects. We ahve been busy this weekend painting our oak staircase in this new house, and I must say it looks good so far.

We sanded down the stairs and used Benjamin Moore cloud white for the spindles, and BM Mink for the banister. This tied in with our berber carpet and pictures on the wall in the hallway. The hallway itself will be getting a BM roxbury caramel after our 1yr inspection.

Before and after pics coming soon


What have you folks been up to lately indoors and outdoors?

cheers

[BuildingHomes]

Going on my 8th month of building my home theatre room.. Got the foundation leak stopped now.

Someday it will be done, but I'm busy working on everyone else's home theatres these days

[JetLi]

Over the last 3 years, we've done some major "weekend" projects that have taken us months in some cases, and sometimes, the simplest things, take us a whole weekend. Off the top of my head, the last 3 years of summers have allowed us to

1) Put in a 80' long retaining wall around 2 sides of the house - using allan blocks and pea gravel.
2) Put in a concrete product that looks like slate (3' wide) (between the retaining wall and the walkway, we spent 18 weekends)
3) We also had a friend cement the concrete product to cover the front porch to give it a more majestic look.
4) We've planted about $500 worth of shrubs, plants, and flowers.
5) We built 2 patios and added a shed on top of one of them.
6) Updated the 32' x 16' deck, new railing, new stairs, new lattice to cover the side facing the street.
7) Restained the deck
8) working on stripping and sanding the fence, going to stain it afterwards
9) Re did all the outdoor plumbing.
10) Re-routed some down spouts for 3 rain barrels
11) Put in an out of box Arbour (I don't recommend these, they SUCK!)
12) Put in 3 additional flower beds
13) Built a flower box
14) Refurbished a BBQ (New grills, scrapped off the paint and repainted)
15) Enjoyed everything!

[CompWizrd]

something like two years just to replace a shower and put a new floor in a 10x8 bathroom.. that count as 104 weekends?

not my project, obviously.

[Quick_lude]

bought a house with a deck and whomever built it before spaced the joists 24" apart AND used 5/4 decking board, all of which makes for a very bouncy deck. Plus they also used regular yellow floor screws which rusted and in some cases disintegrated. So unscrewed most of the deck boards, tried to salvage what we could, added 9 joists. Some decking was a biatch to remove, had to use a wrecking/pry bar on the rusted screws. Tomorrow attach the end board, replace and screw the decking down and if I have time, wrap around stairs.

[glaswegian]

As promised


before:






after:

[glaswegian]

Don't forget the before and after picture folks, they do help put things into perspective

bought a house with a deck and whomever built it before spaced the joists 24" apart AND used 5/4 decking board, all of which makes for a very bouncy deck. Plus they also used regular yellow floor screws which rusted and in some cases disintegrated. So unscrewed most of the deck boards, tried to salvage what we could, added 9 joists. Some decking was a biatch to remove, had to use a wrecking/pry bar on the rusted screws. Tomorrow attach the end board, replace and screw the decking down and if I have time, wrap around stairs.

[mrcantrell]

I'm in the midst of finishing my basement. So far:

i) 98% of the framing.
ii) Plumbing for sink and toilet.
iii) Ductwork.
iv) Exhaust fan for powder room.
v) Wired all electrical outlets.
vi) Wired and installed 95% of lighting.
vii) Installed central vacuum outlet.

I'm currently on a "summer hiatus"

[trixstar]

i would really like to make a home theatre room as well.. i'm planning to build it in the basement since it has 8ft ceilings.. I have a temporary HT setup in my living room and its not handling well.. There is too much vibration with the subwoofer on. I'll start building once the tarion warranty expires..

[BuildingHomes]

I have a temporary HT setup in my living room and its not handling well.. There is too much vibration with the subwoofer on. I'll start building once the tarion warranty expires..

Is it a sound distrobrion? Could be the cross over is not set up properly and your bass is doubled, or the level for the sub is up too high.

Or is it more of all the stuff in the room is vibrating?

[trixstar]

Is it a sound distrobrion? Could be the cross over is not set up properly and your bass is doubled, or the level for the sub is up too high.

Or is it more of all the stuff in the room is vibrating?

crossover frequency is correct. There is a decent undistorted amount of bass. The walls still shake and something inside is shaking too... I can try listening to music and watching movies with lower bass, but thats not amusing...

[macdonlg]

hi Glaswegian,

I have often looked at the BM paints & thought they are very expensive. Now that you have used them do you think they are value for money considering you can get BEHR or CIL etc premium paints for about 30% less?

[spdztr]

I'm in the midst of finishing my basement. So far:

i) 98% of the framing.
ii) Plumbing for sink and toilet.
iii) Ductwork.
iv) Exhaust fan for powder room.
v) Wired all electrical outlets.
vi) Wired and installed 95% of lighting.
vii) Installed central vacuum outlet.

I'm currently on a "summer hiatus"

Did you do all of this yourself? I'm looking at doing al lof the above in the next year or so, so if you have any contacts of people that helped you it would be appreciated. Do you have any pictures of what you've done?

[kaos25000]

Anyone poured some concrete steps, from your back entrance into your backyard ? We're looking to do this but some contractors told us it's a really big job (6 steps, 7 feet wide, 5 inches deep and 4 inches high each) and offered to do it themselves for 4.5k. Is this hard to do ? Is this price standard ? Anyone RFDer did it on their own ?

[mart242]

i would really like to make a home theatre room as well.. i'm planning to build it in the basement since it has 8ft ceilings.. I have a temporary HT setup in my living room and its not handling well.. There is too much vibration with the subwoofer on. I'll start building once the tarion warranty expires..

Based on the pictures you posted last week, wait at least a year before doing anything since a leaky basement wouldn't surprise me.