All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

There are multiple ways to handle a ceiling like that to end up with texture. The easiest and in my opinion safest way is to get up there and skim coat with hot mud (setting-type joint compound that you mix up out of a bag), wait for the skim coat to harden, then apply thinned all-purpose premixed joint compound with a roller, and then dab at it repeatedly with a texturing broom to achieve a random texture. It's quite difficult to get a good smooth ceiling out of a ceiling textured like this through multiple skim coats, difficult enough to make it cheaper to just rip out even an older plaster ceiling and start again, but it's pretty easy to get a broom-textured ceiling out of a ceiling formerly textured like this.

Getting rid of a popcorn ceiling is a slightly different beast, and there are also multiple ways of doing that, some much more expensive than others, depending on whether the popcorn was painted or not. You should be able to find someone to do the job I've described to get a different texture on your ceiling for significantly less than it generally costs to get a popcorn ceiling removed.

Now let's talk about your paneled walls. They are usually there to hide a problem that will be a PITA to deal with. My advice is to paint over them and keep the problem tucked away safely behind them. If the panels are damaged in large areas, this is not possible, and you will have to remove them and likely deal with the PITA problem, which will very likely be ridiculously expensive.

Good luck, Christopher

Happy for you, Carley.

American Olean Sure Step, I suspect.

There's much easier tile you could use for a first floor tile installation, but hey, that's what you want.

If you have any questions about setting it, I will probably be able to bore you to tears with tile installation suggestions.

I have some rather bad news for you: setting any kind of floor tile with tile adhesive isn't a good idea, and setting saltillo tile with tile adhesive is a REALLY bad idea. You need to investigate floor tile installation. Saltillo tile is a low-density tile and really needs the support of real tile mortar underneath it. And it might be some other kind of terra cotta tile, and that would probably just make matters worse. If you're installing over a plywood or OSB subfloor, you need to install cement board and lay your tile with modified thinset mortar

I would use a penetrating sealer on the tile. 511 Impregnator, available at Home Depot, is probably the best-known and most effective variety of this kind of sealer. I would also use grout release on the face of the tiles before I grouted, then I would wash off the grout release and seal the floor with the 511. This is an advanced tiling technique you typically only use with this kind of tile and natural stone.

Good luck, Carley. I hope you believe me. You have no real reason to. But please take a second look at what you're planning to do. The project manager at your local HfH Restore does not seem to be an ideal resource.

@Sam Leon If you look at the directions for the polymer they encourage using a router to finish the edges. If you have a router mounted to a table that should work nicely. They say that sandpaper is only recommended in very fine grades.

On the other hand, you can try putting in a simple bevel instead of a bullnose profile. with a table saw. I personally haven't had much luck with that.

You can try building product reuse places for composite shower surround panel. They get pricey.

Here's my last idea -- get the 1/2 in. polymer panel and do up a frame for it in wood.

I'm putting in a pedestal sink in the bathroom of our latest rental renovation. Not working well. There's an arrangement with combination screw/bolts and a cap nut, and I'm doing it over a tile backing. Plus that, the faucet this pedestal sink is a widespread, so there's just a lot of hoses and parts that make accessing the cap not difficult. Not happy with what a PITA it all is. Good luck with yours!

"Highest and Best" is common with big sellers in Pittsburgh, especially, we've found, with government-owned houses: Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac properties.

My cousin has olive and lemon orchards running along the side of a steep mountain in Achaia, Greece. He lives up there full time in a no-electricity cold-water shack his grandfather built for two months during harvest season, and spends the other ten months in a town down in the valley in a regular home. During harvest season, he needs a donkey to pack olives and lemons out of the orchard and get them to his pickup truck.

You wouldn't believe how much my cousin hates that donkey. He curses the hell out of it ten months a year down the valley as it eats and eats its way through a mountain of expensive hay. During the two months he's harvesting in the mountains, of course, the donkey is indispensable -- there is no way to get around having one as long as he has his orchards. Of course his kids LOVE the donkey, and treat it like a pet, and it pisses him off even more to know they're feeding it expensive treats here and there. For him, the donkey is a business asset. For his children, the donkey is family.

Treat your current house less like family and more like a business asset.

Put in a cheap acrylic surround. You'd be surprised how many people like them. Put in vinyl plank flooring -- it has many advantages over laminate. When it comes times to SELL the house, that's when you put in the tile surround and refinish the floor.

If its really important to you to "make it your own home" during the 2-3 years you're planning on living there, then you're planning on getting into the wrong business.

Can you give us a shot of the current layout and can you mark where the current vent stacks are? Does the house have forced air or hot water heating, and if so, where are the vents/radiators?

You need to start developing a lot of strategies if you're going to keep on renovating houses. Store anything that's usable, and that means you're going to need to develop at least one major storage site. Return what you can. Recycle what what you can, where you can. Find a good junkyard. Become familiar with dumper rental permit issues and prices in your target area. Think outside the box.

@Shaun R.

You're in trouble. This thread is like the old joke about the man who waits up on his roof as the flood waters rise. Three boats come to save him, and he piously insists that he is sure God will help him. Then a helicopter shows up, and he refuses to leave, insisting that God will help him. When he drowns in the flood, the man goes before God and asks Him why He didn't help. And God loses it and screams at him: "I SENT THREE BOATS AND A HELICOPTER!"

The three boats have come and gone, with the excellent points the others have made. So I guess I'm the helicopter. Here's one last point you should be aware of: if they were experienced flooring contractors they most likely would have started in the closets and in low-visibility areas. Instead, they're doing the most visible area, the showpiece, first. This is a common pattern among bad flooring contractors.

You did 70% of the job for them with the prep work. The big question now is the baseboard/floor trim. If you feel you can handle the work by yourself or through someone else, get rid of them now. Laying floating laminate plank flooring isn't difficult at all, and requires much less general technical skill than you've already shown through prep work. Pergo has a great free guide online.

@Ami Sapir, I very much doubt that I can easily convince you to become a small-scale hands-on investor, let along go whole hog and get your contracting license and insurance like me. But there is certain something you CAN do in this time period if you have any sense of wanting to own rental property, wholesaling, or organizing quick renovations for resale (flips). Illinois is a judicial foreclosure state, just like Pennsylvania. That means foreclosed properties in Cook County have to go through the court system.

With at least two years to wait before you start doing any sort of your-money deals, you can definitely start studying up on foreclosure procedure in Cook County. Many real estate advisers and gurus don't tell you much about foreclosures because laws very from state to state and county to county so much, but learning how the foreclosure process works in judicial foreclosure states and specifically, in heavily populated counties like Cook County in Illinois, is really a great way to target distressed property, from the initial filing of foreclosure through the sale all the way to picking up tax derelict properties or REOs (bank owned properties). Because it's such a technical process, and involves understanding multiple points of law, court process, property valuation, and how loans are made and satisfied, lots of investors prefer to stay far away and find acceptable deals through the MLS, bandit signs, or other lower-return moves. The perception in much of the general REI community is that foreclosures are for high-risk gamblers, which, at least in my county, I've found to be a complete lie. The most successful buyers at foreclosure auctions are the most informed and decisive ones, just as they are everywhere else.

Learn the web sites and county offices you'll need to quickly spot an obvious cloud on a title by yourself, learn to investigate individuals through public records, learn the tedious auction procedures. Go to the sales.

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A second thing you can do is figure out WHERE you're going to operate, if you're going to operate locally (which has significant advantages). How is the real estate landscape in Cook County changing? Which areas are on the rise, and why? What are the forces driving gentrification in some areas, and what's the history behind how the slums became slums? Drive around. Look at these neighborhoods. Check their demographics. Get information on public transportation and snow removal. You can start by going to take a look at Winthrop Harbor, Beach Park, Homewood, and Flossmoor. The Interwebs tell me they're the four hottest suburban markets in Chicago. What are the school districts like? Why do people want to live there and not in other places? How do you find out who owns a house, what they paid for it, and when they bought it?

Traditional investors train their memory on their target areas this way. There's nothing to stop you from starting now, while you still have plenty of time before you make your first moves.