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Have you actually looked into the sump pit? If the water is coming in that fast then you have some serious foundation problems and some serious ground water problems! If you have three major cracks that you know about you might have more you don’t know about.
In a house only eight months old you shouldn’t have ANY cracks! Is your house on old landfill or sand? I can’t believe it has settled that fast and that badly!
I would suggest getting an inspection by someone other than your warranty people first to find out what’s going on. It will probably cost you some money, but not nearly as much as having your basement flood.
As for the builder’s warranty they generally have more holes than a bowl of Cheerios. Hopefully your warranty is worth the paper it’s written on.
The ground around the house might not be sloped properly, but your main issue is still the cracking that shouldn’t be happening already.
If the stove, set as low as it goes, is STILL above the counter tops then your counter tops are way below normal height! It would be easier to raise all the counters 1/2 of an inch than it would be to monkey around with the floor under the stove. You don’t want to drop the stove into a shallow pit. It makes moving it impossible.
Either someone didn’t plan the cabinet height properly, or the tops are too thin. I doubt that the counter tops are wrong.
Like yours, double glazed, Low E glass. 14 of them in fact. Over the next few years I had a number of panes rupture the air-tight seal and actually had a few on the south side crack the inner glass. Anderson’s answer? A big service truck showed up and they replaced every sash! Every one!
By ‘heaters’ do you mean electrical heaters or baseboard hot water or steam radiators?
Baseboard radiators can be painted with any normal paint. Spray enamels or lacquers, latex house paint, almost anything. They never get above 150 degrees so it’s not a problem. Just scrape off any loose paint, clean them with a good degreaser like alcohol or lacquer thinner but make sure to keep the windows open and wear heavy vinyl gloves. Dry them or let them dry normally and paint. Job done.
If they are electrical heaters they do get warmer than radiators so using a ‘high heat’ lacquer in a spray can is your best bet. Clean as above, mask off the floors and walls with newspaper and masking tape and spray away.
With either set up use gloss paints. They hold up better and look better.
Somehow you ponied up the money to buy this place? And then, to save money, and knowing it was wrong, you spent a vast amount of time gutting the house without any permits?
You do realize that your “friends” in the trade could lose their licenses and livelihood if their names are even mentioned, don’t you? Not only are you in trouble, you could get them in deep trouble too.
How did you expect to hide this ‘remodeling’, which is actually a full gutting and rebuild, from the city? You can’t just take the plywood off the windows and say “There! It’s done! Put the ‘For Rent’ sign out!” The city isn’t that stupid!
The inspector was out there because someone probably turned you in for working past the approved hours. Without any permits displayed in the front window, a standard requirement, you are already dead in the water. Not showing the permits raised a huge red flag for the neighbors and the Inspector. Yes, the City Inspector is just waiting for you and he didn’t ‘set you up’. You set yourself up. Your names are on the purchase agreement, and you can’t hide. You did something stupid and costly and you were hoping you wouldn’t get caught. It was impossible for you NOT to get caught!
How many different colors are you spraying? How familar are you with the gun?
Prep time is crucial. Tape and plastic the windows, the doors, any trim that won’t be painted, and any walls or ceilings that won’t be painted. Tape off the doorways between rooms because over-spray is going to be problem. Are the floors protected and will the protection hold up to traffic and dragging the sprayer around on it? Prep time, depending on how you do it, could be 75% of your actual time spent spraying.Plan on each color change to add an hour to the job.
The wall texture can double the painting time. Popcorn or heavily textured walls take twice as long to paint properly as opposed to smooth plaster walls.
Factor in all of that and a good spray painter can cover 100 sq. ft. in about 5 minutes. Figure one normal wall every 7-8 minutes. A ‘normal’ living room can have all four walls covered well in about 30 minutes.
Add 20 minutes if you are painting the ceiling. Paint all the ceilings first. Then mask off the ceiling for at least two feet in the first room painted and mask all the ceilings in turn. Then change to your wall color and shoot the first room.
This is all based on you knowing your spraygun and working hard and smart. When I was a professional painter my partner and I could mask/paint/clean up a typical 2 bedroom 1000 sq. ft. apartment in about 4 hours. That was for your standard flat light tan walls and semi-gloss white ceilings/bathrooms/and kitchens. We worked fast and hard but it wasn’t hard to do two apartments a day if you coordinated your efforts.
And don’t forget to wear a hood and face mask and a breather. Those paint fumes and particles will kill you in hurry if you don’t! Just a word of warning from someone who has lost about 40% of my lung capacity to latex.
Not the gels. The cheap old white stuff that’s been around for years. Take a soft cloth like an old T-Shirt and put some toothpaste on it and start rubbing in a circular motion. It may take a while but you should be able to buff the plastic area smooth if it’s not etched too deeply. If it doesn’t return to a full shine clean it to remove any trace of the toothpaste and look around for some Johnson’s Wax Pledge with Future Shine in the floor care area. It’s a clear acrylic floor coating. Pour some on a rag and rub it into the plastic. It should return the area to a nice shiny condition. The Future isn’t permanent but having to wax the microwave every couple of weeks isn’t so bad.
You HAVE to have permits for the work. ALL the work! No exceptions, no second chances. ESPECIALLY if you plan to rent it! You do not need licensed contractors or plumbers or electricians but it wouldn’t hurt if they inspected the work and gave their approval before the city inspector showed up. However, you have already compromised the structure, the wiring, the plumbing, and heaven knows what else at this point.
Worst case scenario? The city revokes your occupancy permit, they lock you up for a few months, they fine you a couple of hundred thousand, and THEN they get nasty and make you return the entire property to the original condition on your own dime. Without a city inspection you will NEVER get a rental permit. You will NEVER get power, water, or sewer hooked up. You will NEVER get insurance. You will NEVER get an occupancy permit. You will NEVER be able to resell the property.
At this point all you can hope for is some mercy from the city. You probably won’t get it. They tend to frown on illegal activities of this magnitude.
Permits are not a punishment or a means to generate money from poor slobs. Permits are required because too many people figure “this wall is strong enough” or the plumbing and wiring are “close enough”. If they aren’t they will kill someone. In your case you won’t kill yourselves, you will kill whomever was living in this building.
Being ‘creative’ is good, but not applying for the necessary permits is dangerous, stupid, and illegal. You are not going to come out of this well. Even if the work passed code it doesn’t make up for not having the permits to do the work in the first place.
Sadly, being in a ‘historic district’ would have probably only meant that you had to have the proper paint colors in front and the proper type of front door and window shape. It wouldn’t have affected the remodeling inside. You are about to lose the whole thing and end up owing the city a LOT of money and there is no excuse you can offer that will change that.
You might just as well get your affairs in order and go down to city hall and face the music. With luck you won’t be thrown into jail.
In Wisconsin I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a locality that prohibits it. The connection has to be inside a junction box and the junction box has to be accessable, not hidden behind drywall or anything, and it SHOULD be as far away from water connections as possible. A GFI feed wouldn’t hurt but I don’t believe it is necessary. Again, check with your local city codes to be sure.
The most likely bad connection would be in the white neutral wire because that’s the only one that would affect both the lights and the fan motor. Turn off the power and open the switch box and lower the fan so you can reach the wiring. Remove the wire nuts and make sure all the white wires are even at the bare end and twisted tightly together. I’m fairly sure you will find the wires in the fan uneven or maybe not even touching when you remove the wire nut. If you have to, restrip the wires carefully and twist them together again before you put the wire nut back on. Hang the fan again and test it again. Hopefully the second try will fix the problem.
