The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

Alright, time to get ripped again. Here's the latest story.

Last week the faucet in the kitchen broke. The handle that you pull up and down basically fell off. So, we hired an inexpensive handyman to fix it. He said, yeah, this is easy, no problem. So, he comes over and takes out the old faucet and tries to put the new one in. It doesn't fit. For some reason even though kitchen faucets are standard the holes in the quartz counter top are too small for the faucet we bought as the replacement. There does not appear to be any other sizes available at the Home Depot or Menard's.

So, the Handyman super glues it together and puts it back. Says it could last 10 minutes or 10 years. Who knows? Well, we find out that night that he's a horrible plumber cause something is leaking below the sink. There was no leak before he took it out and put it back in.

So, now the real plumber is coming over to look at it. Supposedly he either has a faucet that will fit OR will determine that no matter what we have to hire a different guy to come out and resize the holes in the quartz countertop.

I'm sure somehow this is all my fault and I'm going to pay way too much.

 

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

Replaced GFI if Master bath with a Levatron bought at Home depot. Load went to load and line went to line. Black went to black terminals and white went to white. Same guage on both sides.

Stumped. Only wiring done was a separate circuit to new microwave done by a licensed electrician in the spring.

One more test - disconnect gfi and turn on b7. If it still trips, then stumped. If not the new GFI is bad .

Will let you know tonight.

Last night wife declared new project - remove/replace popcorn ceiling in family room and add 6 (or more) potlights. Getting a pro.

A bad GFI wouldn't hook the two circuits together. Guessing either something is messed up in the panel, like somehow power is going out on a neutral or something similar, or the circuits are mixed somewhere else. (The former seems unlikely to me, but possible, I've seen things...) If you pull the GFI, does the verizon still come on with either breaker? I'd check to see if the load side is hot as well? Since you have two blacks there you're essentially hooking together, be sure they aren't both energized from a separate circuit. When unhooked, if the breakers don't trip and are on, the line wire should be hot, the load should be dead, the neutrals and ground should be dead, too) If you have power on a wire that shouldn't, it would be a matter of tracing that wire back to where it's messed up. But as Walrus says, don't electrocute yourself! You can get in trouble fast or melt your house if you have no idea what you're doing. Be safe!

 

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

Alright, time to get ripped again. Here's the latest story.

Last week the faucet in the kitchen broke. The handle that you pull up and down basically fell off. So, we hired an inexpensive handyman to fix it. He said, yeah, this is easy, no problem. So, he comes over and takes out the old faucet and tries to put the new one in. It doesn't fit. For some reason even though kitchen faucets are standard the holes in the quartz counter top are too small for the faucet we bought as the replacement. There does not appear to be any other sizes available at the Home Depot or Menard's.

So, the Handyman super glues it together and puts it back. Says it could last 10 minutes or 10 years. Who knows? Well, we find out that night that he's a horrible plumber cause something is leaking below the sink. There was no leak before he took it out and put it back in.

So, now the real plumber is coming over to look at it. Supposedly he either has a faucet that will fit OR will determine that no matter what we have to hire a different guy to come out and resize the holes in the quartz countertop.

I'm sure somehow this is all my fault and I'm going to pay way too much.

When you say the holes are "too small" do you mean the spacing is off, or each of the the holes are too small in diameter to fit the fixture through? If it's just the spacing you can get a single hole kitchen faucet that comes with a plate that covers the other holes and you're good.

 

[joecct]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

Somebody screwed up somewhere. The GFI has 2 blacks coming in.

We took it out again and disconnected the top black and white wires and made sure breaker 9 was off.

Top wires were cold. But the bottom black was hot. So what we had was two different circuits supplying power to the same outlet. When we reversed the situation top has hot and bottom cold.

Calling the pros.

 

[The Sicatoka]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

Fridge was pronounced dead on Monday. New one arrived Wednesday. AC and Fridge are cold.

Wife is happy.

It took me four months to find a fridge because of the way the custom cabinets in the kitchen were built around it.

 

[The Sicatoka]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

If you think your faucet, microwave, stove, washer, dryer, garbage disposal, etc. is going to last as long as you remember as a kid growing up in the '80's and '90's I've got news for you. It isn't.

I figure the earlier it was built the longer it'll last and the newer stuff is getting shorter and shorter life expectancy.

At this rate, I figure every appliance on earth will fail sometime in 2023.

 

[The Sicatoka]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

Built the backyard fire pit and sitting area this spring. I had to have a custom fire ring built for it because nobody carries one of the diameter I need. (Me like fire, ugh. ) I got that installed and broke it in Saturday.

Did you know that if you substitute a Reese's PB cup for the Hershey bar you've improved the s'more?
And did you know you can put bacon on a s'more? Or pineapple? Or strawberries?

I have to move my WiFi extender so I can be out there and still surf.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

Built the backyard fire pit and sitting area this spring.

Curious how you installed it. Is it just pavers or did you do something fancier?

 

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

Somebody screwed up somewhere. The GFI has 2 blacks coming in.

We took it out again and disconnected the top black and white wires and made sure breaker 9 was off.

Top wires were cold. But the bottom black was hot. So what we had was two different circuits supplying power to the same outlet. When we reversed the situation top has hot and bottom cold.

Calling the pros.

Sounds like it was a split receptacle that someone stuck a GFI in. If everything else works correctly, you could just cap one feed and use the other to supply that outlet. Or you could put a regular split receptacle in and change to GFI breakers. Or the best thing in this case maybe to just call the pros, as they will be sure to check for any other possibilities where something maybe messed up. Hate to see someone melt their house on internet advice.

 

[The Sicatoka]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

Curious how you installed it. Is it just pavers or did you do something fancier?

I had a 20' diameter pad poured (concrete) with a 6' hole left in the center and a 3' wide path to existing concrete at my yard shed. No stamping, no color, those two would've doubled the price.

I put a retaining wall block sitting wall on the outside diameter on the 180 degrees that face the house and yard shed.

I used the same block and put in a block ring for the fire pit. I had a steel ring made to keep direct fire/heat off the block. The 6' hole turned out more like 6'2" (74") and the block is 8" deep so my 74"-16" gives me 58" functional diameter so a 57" ring. Yes, that sounds big, but I need that as I have trees (happy's head just exploded) and need to burn downed branches after storms.

Sitting there Saturday night is when guests pointed out my WiFi extender (no longer needed in basement as I now have a better primary WiFi device) could be put in the shed and a screen could be put onto the facing side of the shed and I could make s'mores and stream projection video. (They also complained that I should have plastic wine glasses for them out there. < sigh > )

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

Somebody screwed up somewhere. The GFI has 2 blacks coming in.

When we did the home inspection of our new place, our inspector carried around sharpies and whenever he found ambiguous wiring he'd carefully mark the wires. Said he'd been doing it for 25 years and was "saving Reston 1 house at a time." He'd done 10k houses, and there are only 60k people in town, so he must be getting close.

 

[The Sicatoka]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

Sounds like it was a split receptacle that someone stuck a GFI in. If everything else works correctly, you could just cap one feed and use the other to supply that outlet. Or you could put a regular split receptacle in and change to GFI breakers. Or the best thing in this case maybe to just call the pros, as they will be sure to check for any other possibilities where something maybe messed up. Hate to see someone melt their house on internet advice.

Seconded on all accords (the "split receptacle suspicion" and the "call the pros").

My favorite was the house I had in upstate NY that someone had wired 240 VAC to a standard 120 VAC outlet.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

I had a 20' diameter pad poured (concrete) with a 6' hole left in the center and a 3' wide path to existing concrete at my yard shed. No stamping, no color, those two would've doubled the price.

I put a retaining wall block sitting wall on the outside diameter on the 180 degrees that face the house and yard shed.

I used the same block and put in a block ring for the fire pit. I had a steel ring made to keep direct fire/heat off the block. The 6' hole turned out more like 6'2" (74") and the block is 8" deep so my 74"-16" gives me 58" functional diameter so a 57" ring. Yes, that sounds big, but I need that as I have trees (happy's head just exploded) and need to burn downed branches after storms.

Sitting there Saturday night is when guests pointed out my WiFi extender (no longer needed in basement as I now have a better primary WiFi device) could be put in the shed and a screen could be put onto the facing side of the shed and I could make s'mores and stream projection video. (They also complained that I should have plastic wine glasses for them out there. < sigh > )

Wow. That sound awesome and way more than I'm looking to do. I was looking at doing a more simple paver design. Was curious if it's worth the time and effort to go through compacting. If it is, I might just go to a pro once I pull the trigger on a firepit.

Can I ask what the pad ended up costing you?

 

[The Sicatoka]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

Can I ask what the pad ended up costing you?

I honestly can't answer that because I had a whole bunch of concrete bid out as one job: the pit pad, the 3' walkway, and a pad and a walkway for the shed. If I guess that the cost split is nominally 50/50, the pit pad and walk was about $3000. Effectively you're just getting 4" thick concrete installed. Your local install price per square will vary (greatly).

The block was pretty cheap at Menards. The wall is six courses and 30' long and the ring is three and 18' long. (I bury a course for stability.) Add in four decent (just decent) wood Adirondack chair's from Walmart and the custom fire ring and finishing the pad out was under $1000.

If you put in pavers and don't pack the < bleep > out of the sand they'll be moving in 72 hours. The dirt I'm on (river bank) that's a guarantee even with a great compaction. If you put in concrete it'll turn grey, turn hard, and crack.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

Sitting there Saturday night is when guests pointed out my WiFi extender (no longer needed in basement as I now have a better primary WiFi device) could be put in the shed and a screen could be put onto the facing side of the shed and I could make s'mores and stream projection video. (They also complained that I should have plastic wine glasses for them out there. < sigh > )

Was that when you told your guests what a great idea now that will be $20 each cover?

 

[The Sicatoka]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

Was that when you told your guests what a great idea now that will be $20 each cover?

It was the Grand Opening.

Next time.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

I honestly can't answer that because I had a whole bunch of concrete bid out as one job: the pit pad, the 3' walkway, and a pad and a walkway for the shed. If I guess that the cost split is nominally 50/50, the pit pad and walk was about $3000. Effectively you're just getting 4" thick concrete installed. Your local install price per square will vary (greatly).

The block was pretty cheap at Menards. The wall is six courses and 30' long and the ring is three and 18' long. (I bury a course for stability.) Add in four decent (just decent) wood Adirondack chair's from Walmart and the custom fire ring and finishing the pad out was under $1000.

If you put in pavers and don't pack the < bleep > out of the sand they'll be moving in 72 hours. The dirt I'm on (river bank) that's a guarantee even with a great compaction. If you put in concrete it'll turn grey, turn hard, and crack.

I have horrible soil. It's hard clay. I've seen a garden rake bounce off the soil in my front yard after three days without water. I need to get it aerated this fall and again in the spring.

 

[joecct]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

Sounds like it was a split receptacle that someone stuck a GFI in. If everything else works correctly, you could just cap one feed and use the other to supply that outlet. Or you could put a regular split receptacle in and change to GFI breakers. Or the best thing in this case maybe to just call the pros, as they will be sure to check for any other possibilities where something maybe messed up. Hate to see someone melt their house on internet advice.

The outlet is in a bathroom. GFI circuit required.
Nearest we can tell from testing lights/outlets is from breaker 9
Goes to deck receptacle
Then to master bath. All the other plugs in all the other bathrooms are hot.
All the other outside plugs are hot.

There are at least 3 other GFI outlets in the house, but none connected to breaker 9.

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

MORE POWER! You're DARN RIGHT more power!

Oh wait, wrong Home Improvement...

In all seriousness, though, good to see this thread around; may need it in the near future.

 

[The Sicatoka]

Re: The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

I have horrible soil. It's hard clay.

Parts of my yard are sandy loam and soft like a beach. Other parts you need a pick ax to plant a flower.