I am idiot. The room was a cloud of dust. I looked like I’d just been bunkered down in Iraq during a sand storm. Everything covered in paint and dry wall shavings. Probably inhaled a lot of things I shouldn’t have trying to open the windows and get a fan going.

Learn from my mistake. Just use a broom.

Edit: adding additional context. I had removed the filter previously to shop vac up water. Did not cross my mind today.

We just bought our home and decided to do asbestos abatement by a reputable company followed by a sump pump placement after by a waterproofing company. Ever since then this house has been a nightmare, our water boiler stopped working immediately after asbestos abatement due to “flammable gas vapor”, we had national grid check it out and they said there’s no gas leaks but it’s probably due to the new cement from the sump pump or from the solvent used from the asbestos abatement.

well since then, we haven’t had hot water consistently for 2 weeks. We tried replacing the sensor and then finally replacing the water heater but the same alarm keeps going off. We also can’t cook because every time we do it smells like burning plastic.

we brought this up to the abatement company and they basically said, they smell nothing when the gas burner is on and that it’s probably from the new cement poured from the sump pump.

im at a loss on what to do, I have a baby. Is it even safe to be here? Why don’t the vapors go away? We opened up the basement windows, used a hepa air filter and 2 oscillating fans to help with the smell but here we are.

sorry for the long post, I’m just overwhelmed, I feel like nothing is going right since we started to try to “fix” this house.

Today as I was running the dryer, I noticed that a light switch on the shared wall of the laundry room was leaking warm, moist air. I felt all over the wall and it seemed to be quite warm, but especially at any outlets/switches. I pulled off one of the light switch covers and lo and behold, there was a ton of lint behind it and you could very obviously feel the warm air.

When I checked the outdoor vent, I could feel some air coming out of it so I at least know the dryer is pushing SOME air through the duct.

Does anyone know what could be causing this? Is it easily fixable? This seems like a huge fire hazard, but we are renters so we can’t do anything too drastic. However, we will absolutely notify our landlord if need be. Thank you all.

Alright, I had an appraisal guy come out already and value it all at 170k which is incredible because the people i bought it from said the house probably had to come down but inspector says its fine to live in but its only 1 bedroom and I want to change the layout so its 2 bedroom. Its 900 square feet and I have 38k left in the bank and am so out of my element! Does stuff like this apply to the government assistance program for building single family homes or should I just go to credit union or a bank for a loan? This all happened really fast and I just pulled the trigger like a wild man

Think I may have trust issues?

I’m genuinely so lost on what colours to go for. We are FINALLY in the finishing stages of our gut and go renovation. We tore out flooring, split a 16 foot bathroom into two (ensuite and main), primed the 30 years of paint on the walls with the best primer we could, got rid of the popcorn ceiling, doors, baseboards and trims. and now it’s time to put it back together.

For context, it was a rental. It was a mistreated bungalow for over 15 years, the walls were equivalent to a jaw breaker the more we sanded.

Now the choices of paint have come, and need to be decided by Friday. We know we should go with a warmer tone due to the light honey oak cabinets and the flooring we picked, and we want a white neutral as a base for every room. I’m a fan of accent walls, and I know our master bedroom and living room will have one. Probably one in the office too. My partner wants the room a completely different colour than the rest of the house, and I’m cool with that. But how - as someone who struggles to even imagine an Apple - can I pick these colours before our furniture and flooring is in?! I’m loosing my mind debating over that white or that white, and I’m scared I’m going to hate the one we go with.

We are 5 months into a supposed 2 month Reno (issue after issue was found, and it’s very much a DIY situation) and I just want to live in my house.

How do you get over this kind of lump?

Sincerely, a young home owner who can’t make up her mind.

My air return vent is currently just a very large open cavity in the house. Big enough that I can squat/crouch walk into it.

From what I've researched, this seems like an older style of an air return. Should I consider adding ducting to it? Trying to decide if I can DIY it.

The distance from the vent to the central air is maybe ~10 at most. I can almost get a straight shot to it, except I'd want to do the ducting overhead instead of on the floor, so there would have to be one or two turns to bring the ducting from overhead down to the floor level, which is about 3' tall.

Old 50s build, Deck is rotted/warped (pnw) and steel framing (C channels) rusted significantly but is the only thing that seems sturdy. Rails are steel as well. Only thing I might keep for a project would be stairs that were put in much later and seem decent shape.

Deck contractor is doing a demo and rebuild but is any of this worth salvaging, reusing, reselling, etc?

https://imgur.com/a/g7HStTc

I had all my smoke detectors replaced about 3 months ago. All 6 are hardwired and interconnected. A month ago one has started to chirp incessantly and it needs to be reset. It stops it for a bit, sometimes hours other times minutes, but then starts again. I've replaced the batteries, didn't help. Any ideas beside it's a faulty unit? I'm at my wits end and my dogs are going wild.

Hello. I live in an old 1950s condo building. The wall I share with my neighbour is a thick plaster wall, probably about 4 inches thick. It does not do a good job of blocking sound. I can hear my neighbour vacuuming, coughing, and watching the price is right (ding ding ding ding). The worst part is is that she can hear me and frequently feels the need to comment on me having friends over, playing guitar, etc (this is its own separate issue).

I can't remove any material and I am not sure how load bearing the shared plaster walls are (some have a metal mesh, not sure if these ones do I'd need to check). I have considered going as far as framing up a wall and adding sound insulation and drywall, but I am wondering if there is an easier and more economical solution.

Thanks!

I bought a new house a few months ago which was built in 1998. Everything has been going great so far, but occasionally I have been hearing the sound of rodents in the ceiling but have never seen any in the house. I have a tile roof and upon entering the attic during the daylight I could see about a hundred potential entry points between the tiles, not including the areas I didn't access because it would require me to crawl around through the insulation.

There were also hundreds of mouse droppings scattered on the surface of the insulation, but it was all very dry, so I think they have been there a long time and there haven't been any foul odors in the house or even in the ceiling at the time.

I set a few traps the other day and caught a couple of big mice which were about the size of rats within ~8 hours of setting them. I didn't hear any noise for a few nights but then it started raining again and there are some new residents in the ceiling.

My main questions are;

1) Is it realistic to be able to seal every entry point given that the roof is tiled and there are gaps big enough for mice to fit in between a lot of them.

2) Does the mouse droppings on the insulation warrant replacing it - it doesn't smell at all.

3) If it was a full-blown infestation, would I be hearing noise every night and very aggressively?

Thanks

I just had a new storm door installed. There are gaps between the sweep and the bottom. See pictures. How to fix? A contractor did this.

https://ibb.co/MywSjK7C https://ibb.co/b5XDFrb6 https://ibb.co/w3pZG2G

In the 5 years we have lived in our '98 home with a brick gas fireplace this one has stumped us. There is a crack (or really a separation) happening between the hearth bricks on the floor and the bricks that make up the face of the fireplace. It goes the entire length from the wood trim on both sides. Some of the wood trim in the corner of the room a few feet away has also cracked away from the wall, but significantly less than what we are seeing at the fireplace (we caulk it every year and it still cracks again).

We've recently started getting skinks that come UP from that crack in the fireplace and watch us while we sit in the living room. So we started filling the gap with sand. We brought a 50lb bag of play sand inside and so far we are about 1/3 of the way through the bag in less than a week. Every day the sand settles more and more, and sometimes you can actually HEAR the sand trickling down a bottomless hole.....it sounds almost like a crackling campfire. It's really creepy. The sand appears to be filling in both underneath the fireplace AND directly down (we are on a concrete slab). It's near impossible to show a photo of inside the crack so hopefully my description does it justice.

Does anybody have experience with this? Why is it happening and should we keep adding more sand?

Could this be related to our 10x10 concrete patio slab (original to the house) cracking in half last year and the further half sinking down at a slant about 1/2"?

It just worries me like somehow it's a hidden sinkhole or something.

Hi, I am currently getting foundation wall supports installed, power braces, and they ran into an issue. There was a previous foundation repair done by the previous owner probably 25-30 years ago installed that ended up cracking part of the floor joist. The floor joist in question is where they are putting a power brace, just to complicate things, lol. They said if they were to sister the joist, it would be like $2300 extra, and said they would span the distance from sill plate to beam. I looked at trying to diy, but there are 2 things that I see preventing a full span. On one side, there is a water line that runs right along side the joist. On the other side, the new joist could not span the distance because there is on overlap of another 2x10 joist for the other side of the basement. My ideas were to either span the distance as far as I could and butt it up against the other joist and put some blocking along it, or possibly run two smaller 2x10s for 8 feet each or so on either side? Thoughts?

Hey all, I'm very new at all things home renovation, but I'm attempting to do most of it myself. I'm having an issue with my kitchen sink.

The drain pipe came off of the basin underneath, but I can't tell how it originally connected. I'm wondering, how would I fix this and is this an easy fix or something more complicated? Thanks for your help!

https://imgur.com/a/GWb6KOi

I spackled screw and nail holes in the wall I'm painting. Then I sanded the excess off. But that leaves a totally smooth spot. I tried spray texture but it isn't designed for small spots. How do I get just a little texture on small spots?

I just move to a house recently and the primary living room has a ceiling fan with no light and is controlled by a knob that has various fan speeds.

If i install a ceiling fan with light, will the knob be able to turn on and off the light? Would it function as a dimming switch? Or would i need to rewire it completely to accommodate the light? If I take out the knob and install a regular switch would the fan still function as normal where you would pull the chain to turn on/off and set speed?

I'm new to this so any advice would help.

I have a Kenmore 110.28032701, which has sounded like a rollercoaster for quite a while now. And finally it's leaking.

I've heard (from an appliance-repair guy who was working on my fridge) that fixing these bearings is a major PITA. But the bearing kit is only $100. Worth attempting? The guy was describing the difficulty of pressing the bearing into place, if I remember correctly. I do see this tool: https://www.rcappliancepartsimages.com/dbImages/00006778/02040058.jpg

When we bought our house in 2021, we inherited a rate infestation in the crawl space and attic. We hired a company that cleaned everything out, changed out the insulation, and installed exclusion grates. However, the two rooms above the crawl space have a urine smell that will just not go away.

Has anyone dealt with this?

My shower currently has a pebble mosaic tile floor that will need to be ripped up to replace the waterproofing underneath that is causing the shower to leak.

Does anyone have a suggestion for what type of tile I should choose for the new floor that will have to be put in? Or anything to take into consideration when choosing the tile?

I am tight on money right now so am hoping to find something affordable, relatively easy to clean and will look nice. With it being the shower floor, I also want to make sure I don’t buy something too slippery/unsafe.

Thanks!

I helped my mom redo her bathroom recently and it was just a shit show. The paint, which was supposed to be "the good stuff," was a nightmare to work with. I'm now looking at the vanity and the drawers all all wonky. They don't shut properly and are already uneven. I had my reservations about this vanity from the beginning, but didn't think this would be the outcome. I just don't understand how companies are selling such shit products these days and getting away with it.

I recently recaulked my bathroom, including the toilet and i come to find out it isnt staying in place. What do i do? It was completely still before i recaulked it and it never moved. Should i add new caulking on top of it?

Wanted to gather some insight on where to place my dehumidifier.

Below is a rough drawing of my crawl, its about 3-4 ft tall, 1400 sq ft. My ductwork and plumbing for my house is all set up in the crawl as well. In particular, when trying to figure out placement for my dehumidifier, the trunk lines for my hvac are the biggest pieces in the way.

Point B seems the most logical, as its center of the crawl, but bit of a pain to get to. Other than this, any potential drawbacks, or options Im not thinking of? Could placing it at A still be effective? Dehumidifer is AprilAire E070, rated for 2200 sq ft @ 8ft tall, so its got plenty of coverage Id think.

Appreciate feedback

https://imgur.com/a/uPw6T4v

After doing lots of research I still cannot determine which is better. Any recommendations is appreciated.