The Home Improvement Thread

Space wrote:
My wife thinks raking leaves is completely unnecessary. She thinks if you just leave it, it will all turn to mulch.

few things on this
lots of animals thrive and lay their eggs in leaves, so it's recommended to leave the leaves at very least in all your beds until the spring

also if you are mowing, just keep mowing, it will break the leaves into small pieces that will mulch and break down easier
You might have to do an extra pass to really break them down
Although, if you have a lot of leaves…this may not work

but if you just leave them and they are Oak leaves, those things last forever and may take years to break down

Hatch, wrote:

Hatch, wrote:

hutch wrote:
My style is more just not mowing at all….

can confirm

hutch wrote:
My lawn mower broke like three months ago….yard is looking rough

I don’t give a shit

confirmed

I am who I am.

Many documented and undocumented people find productive work in landscaping, and rely on the faster and more powerful gas-powered leaf blowers (and other noisy machines) to maximize the number of jobs they can finish in a day. The NIMBYs won the battle to eliminate the top tier tools of the trade. When it starts taking longer to finish their lawns and the price goes up, they'll begin complaining about that too, without realizing they're the cause of their own misery.

What would they do if someone told them they had to use Windows 95 to finish their Excel spreadsheets, and the better / faster / more advanced tools were now illegal?

there is the noise, but 2 stroke Mot0rs on the blowers pollute more than a dozen cars

Using a gas leaf blower for an hour creates as much pollution as driving a car for 1,100 miles.

I just had to replace a microwave, washer, dishwasher, and now the outside AC unit.

Do yourself a favor . . . get, a decent home warranty plan.

Blow, wrote:
Do yourself a favor . . . get, a decent home warranty plan.

not sure about that, have heard its actually hard to get paid on those
A good thing to add as a Value Add when selling a home, but was told to not renew as they rarely pay out

I just dropped a lot of Benjamin's on a new dishwasher and would be curious if they would have covered that…my thought it no

We got one when we bought our home and it really paid off.  $60 for any service, no matter how long…had a guy here for like 8 hours snaking our main kitchen drain to get rid of a clog the previous owner left for us, and it didn't cost us a cent more.  Covered a bunch of HVAC and other stuff.  Got so much out of it they refused to pick us up for the second year.

I finally had a handyman out to look at some of my current issues last week. Doors, drywall, roof leak, The guy came out and said he has crews that can do it all. He said he would email me an estimate and they'd be able to do the work this week.

In spite of my follow up email, I've received no further contact. This is pretty typical with these handymen, isn't it?

nkotb wrote:
We got one when we bought our home and it really paid off.  $60 for any service, no matter how long…had a guy here for like 8 hours snaking our main kitchen drain to get rid of a clog the previous owner left for us, and it didn't cost us a cent more.  Covered a bunch of HVAC and other stuff.  Got so much out of it they refused to pick us up for the second year.

first person I heard who made out on one of these, IMO they are like the "electronics warranties" at best buy, almost never pay off

It's good to get when buying home…as you really have no idea what the life span will be, interesting that they dropped you
there are tons of providers out there, why didn't you just get a new policy

Hatch, wrote:

Blow, wrote:
Do yourself a favor . . . get, a decent home warranty plan.

not sure about that, have heard its actually hard to get paid on those

I used to run group homes for adults with intellectual disabilities and we had these on all of our houses and I was stunned how many free appliances we got with virtually no questions asked. I have no idea why they kept renewing our policy.

YMMV.

Space wrote:
I finally had a handyman out to look at some of my current issues last week. Doors, drywall, roof leak, The guy came out and said he has crews that can do it all. He said he would email me an estimate and they'd be able to do the work this week.

In spite of my follow up email, I've received no further contact. This is pretty typical with these handymen, isn't it?

We have had people come over to look at our bamboo growth and removing it. None of them bothered to follow up with estimates. And this is a very expensive job I am talking about.

This country is going to hell.

Space wrote:
I finally had a handyman out to look at some of my current issues last week. Doors, drywall, roof leak, The guy came out and said he has crews that can do it all. He said he would email me an estimate and they'd be able to do the work this week.

In spite of my follow up email, I've received no further contact. This is pretty typical with these handymen, isn't it?

I finally got an estimate from the first place. Re-hang one door, three new doors, probably some work on the frames of each. Three small-ish drywall repairs. $7500. WTF? Moving on.

Company number two, same work, except they suggest repairing the three doors rather than replacing them. $1600. I know it's not apples to apples, but three plain new doors aint worth an extra 6K, right?

It seems like the first place is just assuming I'm stupid (I am, but not that stupid) and willing to pay anything.

I'd like to hear what your wife thinks.

Do we need a "Quotable Quotes: Missus Freeley edition" thread?

grateful wrote:
I'd like to hear what your wife thinks.

Do we need a "Quotable Quotes: Missus Freeley edition" thread?

She thinks home improvement, including dealing with contractors, is the man's job.

seems about as good as any thread to discuss

I'm curious of those out there who don't work for the Gov't who are either self employed or work for an SMB

My new employer said he'd cover the first $350 of my health/dental insurance

welp to get my family of 4 covered is going to cost me $22k a year!!!
at least it's pre-tax deduction, but ultimately is taking a HUGE chunk out of my take home pay


is that insane or normal?

also, I'd appreciate those of you with zero costs for your insurance to just step away from the keyboard and not comment

That’s insaaaane

I hate to say it but You need to look for a new job…what if someone in your family gets really sick? My medication is 20k a month!

I mean unless I am missing something that’s like not having insurance

I must be missing something

my employer is contributing $4200 a year (which is about 75% of my insurance)

they, like just about every other SMB I have worked for in the last decade, do not cover my family


Health insurance costs have gone up soo much
there is the factor that my wife and I are older now an the girls are 'birthing' age
so that probably is having an impact


the rub is I make too much to benefit from an ACA subsidy

Ok so you mean the insurance premiums. Got it.

I guess it comes down to whether they pay you more to compensate or not.

Soooo, I've been putting off a major-ish HVAC project for about five years (while we've spent approx. $45K over the same time on roof, structural and water intrusion work). We get exorbitant electrical bills during winter because we have an electric heat pump system ill equipped for our 50s built rambler. Talking upwards of $600 to $800 a month on occasion (running the HVAC and space heaters). Wondering if folks have experience with upgrading insulation vs./plus what they're paying with a newer gas furnace for heat and if anyone has HVAC recs. around DMV. 
  Had folks bail, ghost and offer wild estimates on the HVAC and want to maybe get at least the main living area insulated with foam along with assessing our unfinished attic's insulation levels. This year's summer also killed us on electricity so maybe it's time to check our heating/cooling loss. Homeownership is a blast.