I was that way when I buried the drainage pipes to the gutter downspouts and sump pump discharge. For some reason, I found French Drain Man's videos fascinating.
I have a question about how to deal with contractors in a professional manner. First off, getting someone out to look at a job and then give you a price is like friggin pulling teeth around here. I got a general contractor out here last October to look at a job. We paid to have the old hot water heater taken out and a new heat pump model put in a different spot. When he got out here to look and I told him what we wanted to do, the general contractor immediately cut holes in my ceilings and walls to look at the pipes and figure out what needed to be done. He recommended a plumber and electrician for the work itself. The first plumber's number was too high, he req another, who was a little lower but still kinda high. That second guy also didn't respond when I tried to schedule work so I found my own plumber who has now already completed the job, for less than half what the first guy quoted. I did use the general contractor's electrician. Now. I am not an expert in these types of jobs, but the number he quoted to patch and re-texture all the holes he cut (which I will then paint) seems really high. Is it unprofessional to find someone else? I am worried about burning a bridge but on the other hand, if he's so expensive, I probably wouldn't want to use him in the future anyway.
Nothing at all wrong with getting another quote or using someone else. That being said... Be aware that with COVID, at least in my neck of the woods, Home Repair is THE thing that everyone is spending their money on now that travel, vacations, etc are out the window, and people are stuck at home so much. That means that supplies, and contractors, especially good ones, are crazy hard to find and getting more and more expensive. For a while there, it was impossible to find pressure treated lumber. I needed 4 1x6 boards, and had to wait almost 6 weeks for inventory, and even then it was a feeding frenzy. My sister needed a few rooms painted after some remodelling, and she had a 8 week waiting period, until a family friend offered to do it for her. Supply and demand is in full force right now... so if you let someone go for being a little expensive, you may not be able to find a suitable replacement in time, or for cheaper.
My partner's a general contractor. He has more work than he can deal with just for the reasons Nett said. It all comes down to whether you're willing to wait or not. Anyone who is any good and has reasonable rates is going to be busy as all hell.
I did the home kits, i have done my parents garage and part of my shop. I love it, absolutely nothing sticks or absorbs into the floor makes for really easy clean up. with the home kits after 10 years or so it will start to wear off where the tires hit where you park it.
My buddy’s garage floor was professionally epoxyed with the fancy paint chips and shit. It wore off in a couple of years. I epoxyed my own garage floor (sorry I can’t remember the brand) maybe 5 years ago, and it is still in good shape except for a couple of high traffic spots exposed to salt in the winter. It was an old floor so I didn’t have to rough it up or acid etch it - the epoxy held tight immediately. I cleaned the fuck out of it prior to application- multiple rounds of sweeping and vacuuming and a scrub. Any dirt or dust will screw up the adhesive ness. And yes, definitely worth it. It looks a lot better, but more important to me it seals our concrete garage floor from the corrosive effects of the massive amount of salt the car picks up from the driveway and roads. The floor was slowly being eaten away. Now I just have those spots I mentioned that I’ll touch up.
Depends on the cost, but yeah, if it's a good job with high end products then it's well worth it. A friend of mine has a shop that he empties out once a year to get redone by a professional company with the Big Boy chemicals, and it's phenomenal. He got me a deal for my last garage floor and it looked pristine right up until I moved. Nothing stuck to it, and it took a solid beating. I also had a friend who tried the DIY stuff and we think he fucked up the prep, because it didn't come out good at all. Didn't last more than 4 months. He then hired a company to come in and do it (for under a couple grand), and they had the pro gear to do the prep (proper concrete sanders and chemical etching), and he's super happy with the results. I plan on getting my garage done this summer, after I reno it a bit.
Cool, thanks all. Yeah, my garage concrete is a mess and there are dog paw prints from some prior owner who apparently let his mutt in there before it dried. I was thinking about having it done in a few months by a local company, but I don’t want to have it turn into a skating rink when it gets wet.
FYI my friend recommends polyaspartic instead of epoxy. Smellier cure, but done in a day vs a week. Cost him $2500 CDN all in for a double garage and he loves it.
I have been ignoring my basement/shop for a very long time. So today i just put up one wall first(i know i should do the ceiling first) but this was going to be the only wall with slat board, and i wanted to start cleaning and hanging shit up. It felt good to actually be doing something down there.
Nice! I actually finished painting my home office reno today. Can finally get to laying the flooring tomorrow after it’s dried, my back stops screaming, and I’ve sobered up.
Ha. No. That’s a “do not drive a nail or screw here” zone. Mom had a “contractor” do up that wall as part of a bathroom remodel. They hacked studs and ran electrical, network, coax cables all in that area with zero thoughts to nail plates, etc. If you try to hang a picture in that area odds are you’ll fry a breaker, the TV will die, or the Internet will fuck off. Rather than a bunch of drywall, electrical, framing work, I opted to just mark it a no fly zone.
Now time for the flooring. Some parts of the ceiling are raw as I’m putting up a big custom light box that will cover the holes.
Once the floors are in, I'll be milling up and mounting the floor trim, followed by the wall panels. All the plywood sections will be covered with various hardwoods. I've got all my desks/etc on wheels in the office, so I can move all my stuff in while the office is unfinished, then wheel it easily out of the way when it's time to work on the specific wall. The new Festool miter saw means ZERO sawdust for cutting the trim down there. It's actually coming together not too badly so far... the end is in sight. I'm optimistically lookingat moving my shit back in on Monday afternoon, thanks to a long weekend this weekend.
And of course the last thing to go in will be new custom window and door casings, black walnut and mahogany.
I had to do some exploration on that wall with the blue tape because I just could not find the studs, and I wanted to be sure, so I popped in some small exploration holes. That quickly led to some bigger exploration holes. The contractor didn't want to extend any lengths of cables that were in the previous wall that he pushed out, so rather than going horizontal, then a 90 into vertical, he cut the shit out of the studs so that they could kind of go 45° and still fit, without having to splice/extend any lengths. The end result is a web of various wires, some held in place with drywall screws, and a bunch of studs that had 2/3 of the sides hacked out to allow the cable to lay below the drywall, rather than disconnecting the wires and drilling holes through the studs as a normal fucking person would. It fucking sucks. But not as much as the work involved to fix it properly. So yeah, the blue tape is just a reminder to me "this area here is FUCKED... tread with caution. I have plans of actually making it a permanent reminder by mixing up the hardwood in that area... either put a small strip on the edges, or doing the whole area in some contrasting wood... don't know yet. Regardless, I swore a blue streak at that piece of shit contractor that did shitty work for my mom way before i moved back to the province. Took her for $80k of renos, which could have, and should have, been done for about $40k. Ignore the blurry screencap... but I took video of all the findings, complete with dimensions, so that I have a future record of what's behind the drywall and stuff.