Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
If 15′ wide, that would make yours 600′ long. A big driveway.
Mine is half that size. For the moment, I’m living with gravel. Just last week, I had 2 20 ton loads delivered, at $180/load. Had a choice of 1″ or 1.5″ gravel, & I picked 1″. The trucks spread it out as they dumped it, so didn’t have to do much of any spreading. Yours would probably take 4 20 ton loads.
EVENUALLY, I’ll be doing asphalt for the bulk of the driveway. I’ve heard of recent cost inflation, tied to the price of oil.
I assume you have extra ‘treated’ lumber, and want to use it for framing.
Most pressure treated lumber would be a problem around little kids, if left exposed. Kinda like the lead paint problem, only we’re talking arsenic instead of lead.
Also a problem if you’d have an extremely air tight house, or if one of the occupants is allergic. I had a discussion with one person here on this site that may have been extra sensitive to pressure treated products.
How big is your porch? Are we talking just a flat slab, or steps?
I had concrete steps that led down to a patio slab. The steps had sunk 6″; there was actually an open cavity under the steps and under part of the slab. In fact, the dirt on that whole side of the house sank about 6-12″, for about 2 feet out from the house. Took 5 years from when the house was built for that to happen.
I was able to cut 12″ of the slab around the steps, jack up the steps, and push new concrete under the steps. Took about 20 man-hours to do the job, and about 2 yards of concrete.
The island in my last house had about 12″ overhang. I plan to do the overhang for the island in my new house at about 15″. That’ll let the stools be able to tuck mostly under the counter when not used. 24″ would work, except seems kinda silly.
Note that if you go 6″ overhang or less, you’ll need electrical outlets within 12″ of the countertop, per electrical code.
Check with Home Depot & Rona, they may be able to refer you to someone that’s set up to do the cut for you. Since they don’t carry the 45’s, I’d be surprised if they don’t get requests for the service. Also, look in the phone book under ‘counter tops’ or ‘cabinets & cabinet makers’ to find a shop that’ll do it. Wouldn’t be a cheap as a precut piece, but should be do-able.
A new post on ******* may be productive. This one now shows up under a thread from a week or so ago, and will be missed by many.
If it were me, I’d buy at Ferguson. They’re a national distributor. They DO sell to walk-ins, even tho they cater to professionals. I just this week bought a furnace there (actually was a boiler, but that’s a close cousin).
Other suggestion is to look under
Furnaces-Heat-Sales & Service
in the yellow pages. My town has over 100 listings in that category.BTW, you didn’t specify whether you wanted a wall mounted furnace, a ceiling mounted furnace, a forced air central furnace, or an unvented heater such as you’d put in the middle of a room, or just what. There are a dozen or more types. Makes it hard for us to be of more help. Perhaps you can find (on the internet) a sample model of what you’re looking for.
One thought: get the model numbers for the drills for the batteries on ebay (or at other online sources). Check with Sears and see if that model uses the same battery.
My experience buying used batteries on eBay has been mixed. A few worked fine, half were junk.
I did it before I knew better, a number of years ago.
Used a conventional radial arm saw, cut from both sides, lots of rasping and filing for final adjustments. Took me several hours. Job wasn’t perfect, but was good. Had to route out a pattern in the underside for the corner bolt system. Copied the pattern from precut 45’s in the store.
I’ve seen recommendations to cut 1″ long, and trim the excess with a belt sander. Would take a lot of gradual trimming. If I had to do it again, I’d try this approach.
Anyway, it’s a difficult job, and close to impossible to get perfect in a reasonable amount of time, with common tools.
I’m trying to guess why some other balconies in your building are in worse shape. Could be they used salt to melt ice (it’s real tough on concrete); it could be they’re more exposed to weather than yours; possibly they were exposed to other chemicals (household bleach and oil come to mind); the original cement mixture may have been too wet or had too much admix. Abuse when it’s fairly new is much tougher on it than when it’s well cured (such as yours).
The key to it is really what kind of shape yours is in. If there are hairline cracks, spalling in some spots, etc, it’d make sense to do more than just mortar and tile. The mortar and tile themselves will add a lot of protection. The mortar adds some waterproofing, and a tiny bit of crack protection.
For peace of mind, if it were me, I’d put something like a layer or two of RedGard or some other crack isolation membrane. For the RedGard product, one layer will waterproof it. Better than traditional sealer. Two layers will make it thick enough that it’ll take a fair amount of cracking before the tiles would be affected.
The best reference I know for how to do tile is
http://johnbridge.com/vbulletin/index.php?
They address every topic I’ve encountered.The best indicator is what you’ve already seen on your concrete. Sounds like it’s done very well. It is probably twice as hard as it was when it was 1 year old (it gets harder and stronger with time). Traditional sealer wouldn’t do nearly as much to help as something designed to be under tile.
I was afraid I’d slip with the tightening bar and it’d whip around and break my arm. It is a LOT of force. Not for the faint of heart.
The link from Doug is the most complete I’ve seen. Excellent.No, you don’t need to seal it. You should be fine just using standard mortar for porcelain tiles directly on the concrete. Sealing would help avoid stains, etc, on the bare concrete. With the tile on it, it’ll do fine as is.
If you had cracking or separation in the concrete, I’d put in a crack isolation layer down first. But, after this much time, if there’s none of that, you’ll be fine without anthing but mortar and tile. And grout, of course.
Don’t want to be a stick in the mud… well, maybe I am anyway…
I tend to agree with most of the recommended software in the list, but if I could only use it fix ALL THE OTHER THINGS around my house, it might be more appropriate for this forum.
Actually really IS a pretty good list. As good as I’d expect from kim komando’s site, and that’s saying a lot.
Once again, Doug, you come up with a VERY good idea.
Last time I did it, I pulled the carpet first. This sounds much better.
http://www.inspectamerica.com/html/home_inspection_checklist.html
http://www.askthebuilder.com/B248_Home_Inspection_Checklist.shtml
http://www.axiom.ws/tables/condotbl.html
http://www.onlineorganizing.com/ExpertAdviceToolboxTips.asp?tipsheet=94
http://media.monster.com/moving/core/PDF/inspection_checklist.pdf
http://www.high-point.net/cd/home_inspection.cfm
http://www.inspectamerica.com/index.htmlOf course, you tend to get what you pay for. An ideal checklist would have lots of illustrations; these tend to not.
For more, search for “home inspection checklist” on google; I only checked out and copied the URLs for a few.
I talked to the guy that inspected my home (paid for by the new buyers), and he made the point that he was new at it, he used to ‘walk right by’ problems. It’d be hard to be an expert at all possible problems.
