Home Improvement

Second guessing before I brute force this and break the cartridge. It should just pull straight out at this point?

See title. Is it the spring lifting one side off the ground or is it something else like the cable on that side? Thanks for any advice!

Edit: From what I can tell the door and the floor are both slightly off level in opposite directions. I also just replaced the bottom seal in an attempt to fix this.

Title is pretty much everything!

I have these high up windows that I'd like to clean and maybe in the future install curtains on. I guestimate the wall being 20ft (6m) tall.

For other rooms in the house I typically use an A-Frame, but it's impossible to find an A-Frame to reach that high where I am.

I plan on draping a towel over the top of the ladder to prevent scratches and scuffs on the wall, as well as getting a rubber mat or something if the floor seems slippery. I am just not sure if drywall would support a ladder? Especially near the frame of the windows. Maybe there's something else I'm not considering as well?

I am about finished with an 8 ft x 13 ft patio, and the plan is to bond the pavers with polymeric sand. It's just starting to get down to freezing temps overnight, and I'm willing to take some chances with some creative solutions to cure the sand before it gets even cooler.

I understand that it's generally a bad idea to attempt poly sand in cold weather. But entertain my dumb idea: my patio is small enough to where I can cover it with a tarp like a tent, and I can leave a space heater in there overnight so that the sand is exposed to warm air. I am personally convinced that it's stupid enough to just work. Is this a terrible idea?

I also had the thought of bringing hot water out in a watering can from my bathtub. I needed to tamp the gravel that froze at one point, so I already did this, and was able to cover the whole area in about 5 trips or so. My only concern is that this is not a conventional way to set the sand, and am concerned that the hot water would flush the polymers right out of the sand without having an opportunity to cure.

What are your thoughts? I'm willing to take silly risks on this :) Worst case scenario, I get expensive regular sand, right? That's not so bad ;)

Edit: Decided to wing it and give it a shot. I thought I would attempt to heat the paver bricks overnight, and if that plan fell apart, go ahead with typical utility sand. Well, I successfully built a tent with a steel tamper, a hand truck, and tarps, and snuck a little battery-powered temperature and humidity sensor in there that I use with my home automation.

All throughout the night, the temperature hovered around 70F during a high 20s evening with less than 40% humidity! It worked so incredibly well that I decided that there was no reason why I shouldn't take advantage of this. With the bricks bone dry and warmed up, I did the poly sand today and it turned out absolutely excellent. I put the little tent back on it, and plan to leave it on there with a ceramic space heater running for about 3 more days. It's quite literally a summer day in there minus the sun! It's covered like a tent, too, so it will be protected from the rain while it hardens!

Here's some graphs of how well this is working out from the sensor! This is the humidity! The jump and drop was when I took the tarps off, did the poly sand, and put it back together. The humidity with the situation going is the same as indoors!

And here's the temperature! Staying toasty at about 73F! The little dip on the end is from when I opened it up to crawl in and check on it :)

This is honestly better than waiting for the spring! I'm so happy how this is working out!

I recently bought my first house and I noticed some rot happening beside our garage door. It appears that when the cement driveway was poured, they got too close to the siding and now water is wicking up into the wood. I figure I can cut back the siding and replace it but how do I stop this from happening again?

An electrician 'fixed' an issue by making this hole in a basement cinder block wall.

.. how do I put that box back in or fix the wall or something?

Inside the box are two capped (hot) wires.

The pipe seems to be copper. Doesn't bend or anything. It can't (at least easily) be pushed back in.

I had wanted to use cement paste.. but like what do I do about the box? I guess I could paste everything except the metal pipe but geez: then i still have this sketchy box hanging out.

Images: https://imgur.io/a/yBh2QBD (posted from mobile and don't think the images went through)

Any ideas?

I can't find downspout extenders at my local hardware store besides the terrible accordian ones. I just want a metal 10' extension.

I am re-arranging the shelves in an old bookcase, and I'm having trouble removing a few broken shelf pins inside the holes I want to use. They don't protrude enough for me to get any kind of grip with the needle-nose pliers that I used to take out the other pins.

The shelf pins are this style. Quarter inch diameter. Not sure what kind of metal they're made out of. The pin itself is hollow, which rules out most of the common solutions for this kind of problem.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to remove these?

We're getting our house repainted, so I took down one of the hideous lamps in the bathroom to uncover this. It was certainly a choice, but I think this may have been original to the house (ca 1940). While it's a bit much, we're trying to be authentic to the original vision of the house. Does anyone know if it's possible to find old wallpapers? Are there individuals or companies that can match designs like this?

My hood fan vents into the top of this metal box, which then has a vent to the outside about halfway down the metal box. The box itself it maybe two half-height shoe boxes in size. I looked pretty hard, and the closest I could find was that it might be related to collecting condensation.

Does anyone know what this is for?

Thanks

I should say! The picture that comes up for this album is clearly the outside vent and is not what I'm talking about. Click on it to see all the pictures!

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I’m in the process of refinishing my basement, and I’ve installed the breakers. My panel uses Square D QO breakers that have a window that shows red when the breaker is in the tripped position. Breakers are then reset by turning fully off and then on.

One of the new breakers shows just a tiny bit of red in the window when it’s in the “on” position. It doesn’t instantly trip when turned on. It does this even with the breaker removed from the panel. The breaker switch moves fully to both on and off positions.

Is this something to be concerned about?

Honestly I am so bloody baffled by this.

I removed the smoke alarm that would be affected by vibration from the loft floor (which was in the room directly underneath), but the other alarms still go off when someone walks up there (they're all wired together, so when one goes off they all go off). I removed the one that's in the loft too, but it still happens.

I have no fecking idea what else to do 😅 should we go in under the loft floor to have a look, or into the ceiling underneath the loft floor? Any suggestions for what to look for? Should I be concerned that vibration is affecting wiring? Is it spooky ghosts?

I purchased a house back in May and this was originally missed in the inspections. I have no idea how long it's been like this, but I've been thinking of how I can fix this as soon as I noticed.

The detached garage gets its power from this buried romex wire that is exposed to the elements. It looks like it was originally protected by some sort of non-outdoor conduit at some point. It's now rusted through and exposed. The ~~romex~~ UF insulation still seems intact, but I'd obviously like to protect this more permanently.

The wire is powering a single outlet and light that is just above where this exits the ground and enters the garage.

I was thinking I could use some correct type of caulk (something for asphalt?) in combination with some correct conduit to make this safer. I can probably disconnect it from the outlet and pull it through to install conduit piping from the top. Or find something outdoor rated that is more U-shaped that can be bonded to the back wall to also protect this.

Anyone have any ideas? I'd very much like to avoid digging this up completely. If I were to server this wire in the process, there's nothing I can do other than digging up the driveway.

Edit: thanks for all the comments everyone! I did go back to check and it is actually UF cable. I assumed romex but went back to check. After removing all the cobwebs and actually rubbing away the dust, I could make it out. I didn't realize you could bury any cable right into the asphalt like that.

It takes a few minutes for my tankless water heater to warm up, so we end up wasting a lot of water in our shower. Is there a way to avoid this? A friend mentioned a “comfort valve” or something? What is it and how does it work? Or is there another solution? Thx!

Hello!

I was wanting to move my washing machine and dry to a different part of the laundry room. It's all open ceiling so my thought was to run the cold/hot/drain hoses up the wall about 3ft, then across the ceiling about 5ft and then down another 3 ft to the sink to drain (or in the case of the taps, get the hot and cold)

I was going to use pex to get the water to where it needs to be.

Is this too far? Will the washer still be able to drain at that length? Can it drain up like that first?

Thanks!

Back with a dozy. What is your favorite paint brands? Why?

There's a little gap at the bottom left and if I tug on the trim, it's loose and hollow. I can hear road noise coming in from behind it.

I just wanted to check if it's safe to caulk here before I fill that gap with a strip of foam, then caulk it off. Ie if there's any purpose to the trim being loose that I'm unaware of.

Edit: this is the interior.

First time home owner here. I stuck these vent deflectors a month ago on one of our vents and I removed it today for some other reason. I noticed these stains that looked like water stains but I think it's actually something that is growing - maybe unfortunately mold or something. I need help in understanding this situation and possibilities of this happening. Please share your experience or knowledge related to this issue if you can.

Thank you!

EDIT: Mystery solved - this seems to be the result of some chemical spray during cleaning. Not concerning.

I own a house in the midwest and recently got a spirit level for some repairs. However, I don't stay here in the winter - I go south where it's warmer. Can I leave my level here in the house? temps will probably get down to -30 or so.

A few years ago i bought a very run down mobile home and i started rebuilding it from the steel/iron frame up. Ill include a few pics of the in between in the comments, but this is my kitchen finally completed. I rehabbed some used cabinets and built a good bit of them from scratch as well as the cabinet doors. This is my first time building anything at this level. Many mistakes were made, but i learned alot.

I am a proud owner of a brand new home. I am in love with it. It's cute the yard is perfect. It is old and lived in hard. And we couldn't afford really nice. Pretty much everything we looked at had some serious issues so we chose the one we loved the most and the one we felt we could handle the issues. I have lots of questions so I will be here a lot.

I have a very basic knowledge of tools and carpentry but very little knowledge about how to apply that to a home ownership. So my first question is can you recommend books, websites, other lemmy communities that are also good resources?

And my second is how do you prioritize your home projects when under budget constraints and they are of equal importance or unimportance?

Last question (for now) how do you deal with the overwhelm/frustrations of previous owner issues or poor workmanship? (I still love it. It's ours and I love it but we are picking up on stuff that we didn't know about ex the neighbor told us there is a sinkhole under our driveway and it had already been repaired but poorly or the fact that we didn't see it empty until after close and it's obvious their pets handled the moving process poorly and have urinated in every room with carpet)

Hello, I just moved into this house and it’s a pretty major work in progress. One thing that’s perplexed me though is the front door.

We have a light switch inside that no one knows what it actually does. It’s right inside the door but it doesn’t turn on the porch light. That one is on the other side of the room.

We had a contractor over giving us quotes to install stairs and I asked his opinion. He pointed out the white around the door is not wood but a barely transparent plastic. He’s pretty sure it’s supposed to light up and the reason the switch doesn’t work is because the bulbs are probably burnt.

Issue with that is that I can’t find a way in to check that. It definitely is a very fragile plastic. Wouldn’t take much to break. But I’d like to not break it so I can replace the lights and put it back together. But I don’t see screws or anything. Anyone have any advice?

Hello, I just moved into this house and it’s a pretty major work in progress. One thing that’s perplexed me though is the front door.

We have a light switch inside that no one knows what it actually does. It’s right inside the door but it doesn’t turn on the porch light. That one is on the other side of the room.

We had a contractor over giving us quotes to install stairs and I asked his opinion. He pointed out the white around the door is not wood but a barely transparent plastic. He’s pretty sure it’s supposed to light up and the reason the switch doesn’t work is because the bulbs are probably burnt.

Issue with that is that I can’t find a way in to check that. It definitely is a very fragile plastic. Wouldn’t take much to break. But I’d like to not break it so I can replace the lights and put it back together. But I don’t see screws or anything. Anyone have any advice?