Several of us own houses now, and I'm sure others will be in the market eventually, so I figured I would start a thread for home improvement and similar tasks.  Since buying our house four years ago, I've had to quickly learn about electrical, plumbing, carpentry, etc.  I figured it might be beneficial to share some of the home improvement stuff I'm doing in the hopes it might be beneficial or encouraging to others.

This doesn't necessarily need to be limited to home improvement.  It'd be neat to see other types of handiwork, such as car repair, hobby-related crafting, etc.


-b0b
(...loves to tinker.)

The new disposer arrived this afternoon.  I just finished with the install, and although I didn't get everything accomplished I had hoped for, the majority of the installation went quite smoothly.

After removing the vertical piping and tee from the rinse sink, the vertical pipe broke right off the old disposer under its own weight.  That's not surprising, but it's awfully scary.  Had that broken at an inopportune time, we could have had a bit of a flood to deal with.  I definitely found the source of the clog, though...





This is one of the things I had to give up on.  I was going to replace the strainer on the rinse sink since they're inexpensive and it would improve the appearance of the sink.  I absolutely could not get the retaining ring off this beast.  I went back to Home Depot and bought a purpose specific wrench and some penetrating oil, and I still couldn't get this thing to budge with all my might.  Since it was a purely cosmetic improvement, I eventually decided to just leave it.




The plumber's putty on the disposer drain adapter had long-since turned to dust, and was allowing water to seep around the adapter, hence the rust all over the top of the old disposer.  I found an unused, unopened disposer adapter under the sink, so whoever installed this one had apparently just reused the existing adapter when they replaced a previous disposer.




Once everything was removed and the new adapter was in place, it was time to seat the new disposer.  Here's a side-by-side shot, showing the size difference.  The problem with buying the Cadillac model is that it was freakin' heavy, making it very difficult to get the thing attached to the adapter.  It's only 20 pounds, but it is amazing how heavy twenty pounds can be when you're holding it at arm's length and trying to make fine adjustments to the placement.




Here it is, in place and ready for the plumbing.  I installed the electrical wire previously using a separate kit, and forgot to take pictures.  Whoops.




Here's the final product.  I'm not super happy about the odd angles of the existing PVC, but I was able to get everything lined up with a flexible tee.  I squared off and sanded the ends of the PVC and made sure everything was tight.  After running the sink for ten minutes, I couldn't find a drop of water that had escaped, so I think this might just do it.




Everything is held together with compression fittings and host clamps, so it is relatively trivial to take it apart again if I need to fix something.  I also noticed the outlet isn't GFCI protected, which seems like a bad idea for an under-sink outlet, so I've put that on my list of things to fix this summer.  The problem with home improvement projects is they inevitably lead to more projects!


-b0b
(...is going to take a long, hot shower now.)

Hahah, that uphill pipe is crazy.

This thread is a good idea, I recently purchased a home as of April. I plan to install a disposal at some point.

Total changes we've made so far:
-Painted 5 rooms
-Tile backsplash
-All electric receptacles/switches replaced and re-covered(previous owner painted over them)
-bathroom fossett upgraded/installed

Future Plans
- This would be a never ending list -

Oooo I like this thread, nice job bob with all your upgrades!

Briney, I think you should show us how you hooked up Susie's hot tub jets to the electrical system!

X

He is being sly cause I haven't done that yet! haha

Andrew, didn't you wire up your Ford Tarus with a complete sound system?  That's a tight spot, so a house shouldn't be that hard, right?

I would love to see some of your guys' car projects, as that stuff is greek to me.

Here is a few outdoor things I did last year and actually took pictures of.

There was a raised flowerbed around our tree by the driveway that was sitting there with no bricks. The person that lived there before us took them all when they moved out. So I dug everything up around the bed, placed in gravel and leveling sand and built a nice wall around it. I don't have many Work in progress shots:



And finished!


We have 2 basement egress windows, that you can open to potentially escape a fire. Well the previous owners placed these tiny plastic egress walls in there, and you couldn't open the windows all the way to get out... nice. Also he put concrete at the bottom of the windowwell so when it rained, the water drained from the ground into this window well and it would fill up with water. To top that off, the ground all around the window wells actually angled back towards the house. With nowhere else to go, it would come in our windows and leak down the wall into the basement. Fail. Mold Fail.  Although it was funny one time to come downstairs and see an aquarium out the window. There were a quite a few late night water bailout sessions. So I set about fixing the window wells, to allow proper escape and drainage.

I don't have a good before picture, but this will show just how tiny those window wells actually were. The window opened outward and would just smack into the wall.



So after a little bit amount of digging I started running into... Concrete!! This genius had poured concrete at various intervals around the window wells to "seal" them in.  You can't see them in this pic, but I have a later pic of them. I had to use a pickaxe and a sledge to break up these massive chunks and haul them out of the hole.



I finally get down to the bottom of the windowwell. Hauling the concrete chunks out at this level was pretty tough.



But I finally cleared them out, and the plastic walls. I dug even further, because the guy had placed the concrete bottom of the well almost at the level of the bottom of the window. Not smart.



So to make sure water would flow properly I dug out a big pit, and then at the bottom I used a post hole digger to dig another 4 or more feet down to the draintile thats at the very bottom of the foundation with most houses. Modern homes may have a perforated pipe down there that goes into a sump pump or whatever, but I was pretty sure we just had the gravel.



I put in a capped piece of pvc pipe that had small holes all down the sides so that water would flow as best as possible down to the draintile. I also put in some weedbarrier for funsies and then poured in about 12 + cubic feet of drainage gravel. This would allow water to move very easily down and away from my windows.



After the gravel was in, I started laying in retaining wall brick and leveling it off. I backfilled with gravel behind the brick for further drainage.



Materials/Chaos:



Finished with the brickwork: I placed a small 6 inch step in the brick to help people step out of it.



I then hauled some of the dirt away, and used the rest of it to grade the surrounding dirt, so water would flow naturally away from the house.



Then I went ahead and did it all over again for the other window well! This one had to be smaller because we have a hose that comes out right by the window and the electrical/gas pipes that run out to our outbuilding are buried here too. Also you can see one of the concrete chunks from that window well in the picture, as well. The concrete had dried against on of the electrical conduits, so that was fun to get off.



So after that was all done, I put down weedbarrier (which does nothing, haha) and then a bunch of river rock.




I've had no leaks since then, and even in the craziest of storms there has been no water buildup. The brick has stayed level through the winter, and everything is still groovy.

Yeah briney that is some serious landscaping there, trying to make us feel bad...

X, I have wired 2 car system installs, that car is gone now though, I have a VW jetta and a Jeep Cherokee.  Sadly I have had to replace brakes and front suspensions on the Jeep before moving down, now I have a list of stuff for both cars.

Bob, that garage looks awesome, I wish I had something like that for the work I do from time to time.  Knob and tube sucks to replace inside walls, I hate using fish sticks and fish tape and various other things to push, pull, and twist your way though some 100 year old walls with terrible design... bah.

I will take some shots of my next car jobs and put them here.

Quote:

Spanky I will have to inquire about some of your car knowledge if I get in a jam, I forget you know quite a lot about cars.

That looks nice, I imagine the dashboard was quite the pain.

pez

Thats pretty nuts man! I can't imagine that every screw was the same... how the balls did you remember all that for reassembly?

Quote:


bob, was that a Clarke and Dawe reference?

I went to go comment on this thread about home improvements and hacks I've done....but I just am so distracted by Spanky's one photo (the one where the front fell off):

Is that a Little Mermaid sleeping bag hanging over its side?

Cait

Here's my sink/disposal installation that I just wrapped up last night. I don't have before pictures but there was a double bowl white sink and no disposal. When we bought the home there was a microwave over the range but my wife is a bit of a tin foil hat kind of person and decided that we should take it out straight away. So I replaced it with a stainless steel range hood. The microwave was on a run of it's own so now that all those amperes were free'd up, I spliced into that run and wired in the switch to the outlet under the sink. I thought the location of my switch was pretty nifty. The wife wanted the switch under the sink for some reason. I was thinking a push button switch in the sink hole next to the fosset since the fosset is the spray type. But ya know, she's kind of in charge.

Here's the album
http://imgur.com/a/xaJL2

BTW, working under the sink sucks!

So I am back with some more stonework to post. I seem to be addicted to it.

The front of our house was pretty boring when we got it. Any areas that had once had retaining walls were removed by the previous owner.



We have this area to the left of the house that once was a nice garden. We weeded it a few times and made pathetic attempts at growing things. But the yard was pretty much taking over.



So it was time to reign that lawn in!

I decided to match the flowing lines of the previous retaining walls at other areas around the house. After looking at it for a few weeks, I decided to just get started. Once that first shovel breaks ground, you can't stop!

Like before, I dug deep into the ground, laid in some gravel/paver base, then some leveling sand and placed the stonework on top.



The sidewalk I was laying stone next to has a straight edge, so I didn't start curving until I hit the end of the concrete. Because of the gentle curve, the stonework sticks out into the yard a bit, but that is ok.



Worked my way over to the other side.



The digging is the worst part. Luckily I have a heavy pickaxe which rips through the yard very quickly. At this point I was also finding treasures from the previous owners. Popcans, wrappers, charcoal, heavy plastic landscape liner, tin pieces (no idea), and electrical wire were found all over the place.



Here is an example of the steps I used to lay in the stone. This is the leveled out sand sitting on top of gravel (use a 4+ foot level for more accuracy/speed) . I gave myself some leeway so I could adjust the curve of the stone where I wanted it. I then backfilled behind the stone with more gravel for drainage and soil expansion, and then added the second layer of stone.





The far side is finally dug out! That was a real pain, and this whole area is lower than the rest.



Robby the Robin was hanging out with me the whole day. He got as close as 2 feet (when I didn't have the camera of course) stealing the worms/critters as I dug up the ground.



I had to add a lot of gravel here to make sure everything was level. For good measure I tamped everything down.



Done!





I also decided to add some stone along our walkway.





And since I already had dug out along the sidewalk for the stone... I decided to install low voltage landscape lighting.
Each light is about 11w, and I have a 200w transformer. I have 14 guage wire, because I plan on adding a few lights down the road. These guys are reaaaallly easy to install and I highly recommend it. The digging is the hardest part. You just run the cable, and the lights basically have an attachment that pierces the cable in an enclosure. Boom, done.

And very nice results.




I bought 4 low power floodlights to hit our pillars for funsies. Susie didn't want full fill lights on the house, so I kept it subtle. Looks very cool from the street.



That's it for now, I suppose. Next on my list this summer is burying the overhead power line and cable line, and finally getting that deck built. Let me know if you have any questions!

More home improvement!  I finally got sick of the cheap, broken light fixtures on the front of the house.  The fixture on the left side of the door had a broken glass insert, so water kept leaking into the fixture.  This would ultimately rust out the base of the bulb until it no longer made sufficient contact with the fixture, leaving me with an inoperable bulb.  Both fixtures were corroded and rusty.

I've been replacing all of the bulbs in an around the house with LEDs, and I didn't want to spend $15 on an LED bulb just to have it go bad.  Long story short, time for new fixtures!

Unfortunately I was too busy juggling stuff to take many pictures, but hopefully this will serve as inspiration.  It only took about ten minutes to replace each fixture and it was a very simple one-man job.


Step 1, turn off the breaker corresponding to the light fixtures.  Safety first!  Then, remove the retaining bolts holding the fixture to the bracket.


Step 2, carefully remove the light fixture from the bracket.  Remove the wire nuts tying the wires from the fixture to the wires from your house.  Marvel at the fact that your crappy electrical wiring hasn't resulted in a house fire.


Step 3, forget to take pictures of the rest of the job.  All you have to do is remove the old bracket that is screwed through your siding into the wall.  Then, replace it with the new bracket.  If you're lucky, the holes in the new bracket will line up with the old ones.  Once the bracket is up, use new wire nuts to connect the fixture wiring to the house wiring.  Then mount the fixture on the bracket and insert the bolts.  Turn the breaker back on and test your handiwork!


-b0b
(...really needs to wash his siding!)

Since the weather has been so nice, Meredith and I decided we'd finally get around to replacing our very primitive fire pit with a brick and steel model.  This was a project that we've been wanting to do for a couple years and it was fun (though exhausting), so I figured I'd share some pictures of the process.

The process started by dismantling the old fire pit and gathering all of the new materials.  The Jeep did an admirable job of hauling ~1,250 pounds of stuff on two different occasions.  Try doing that in a 3-series BMW!



I wanted to put plenty of drainage gravel under the fire pit to keep the walls from shifting over time.  I ended up using 25 bags totaling 12.5 cubic feet, or roughly 1,250 pounds.



The Jeep sat a wee bit low, but she took it like a champ.



Once the pit was dug, filled, and leveled, I picked up the rest of the building material.  It consisted of 120 paver blocks and 140 smaller square blocks, along with the steel fire ring.  Altogether it weighed around 1,300 pounds.



Meredith has wanted a Yoshino cherry tree for quite a while, and we found a perfect specimen in Ann Arbor.  We had to drive the thing back to Three Rivers, so I strapped it in for a safe ride. 



The tree was about 7' tall, so Meredith got to enjoy a tree in her face for the two hour drive back home.


The Jeep really needs a good cleaning after hauling all that crap, but I'm pleased with the ol' girl.  She did me proud!


-b0b
(...fire pit pics in the next post.)

That look great, bob!  Good job.

If you want some brush wood for your fire, feel free to come grab mine.  I believe I have one total buttload.

X

Nice job!  Love the shelves.

We are in painting mode and have baby's room all done.  Basement is almost done and once I have the project we started down there done I'll be posting as well.

X