All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Really...because 5/8 in. Type X drywall is required for integral garage ceilings as a fireproofing measure. That's how it gets sold out here, at least. You see it in some McMansions around here used throughout.

In any case, there is no way on earth that any wall with no internal framing made entirely of drywall is a load-bearing wall. It sound straight-up nuts, like some mentally disturbed individual with no idea how to build thin internal partition walls just went at it.  The way it used to get done was with 2x2 framing, and it really sucked back in the days because 2x2s warp over time to a greater extent than 2x4s. These days, you can do a much better job with 2x2 metal framing. Easy, fireproof, and cheap.

Wait a second, Lance. 1 1/4 inch drywall sheets? That's the thickest drywall I've ever heard of. It would be almost impossible to move. Are you sure it's drywall?

Jose, I am not in your shoes. A good friend of mine here in the USA is, however. His wife is from abroad and from a very traditional university-educated background with an extremely rigid European mindset --  she simply doesn't understand why he bought a cheap place to live in and fix up. In her view, he should have taken out an enormous mortgage on a palace and paid it off slowly over thirty years with the peanut salary that he would made working tirelessly as an office drone at some faceless company.

Now get this, my buddy has already paid his little house fully off, five years after buying it. With my help, he's getting a home equity line of credit on this place and is looking for a tax foreclosure to fix up and move his growing family into in one of the top three school districts in my county, because he knows the right opportunity will come along sooner or later, and he'll be ready to jump on it and get a small, fixable property at 30-40% of ARV. He's also completely changed careers: he went from a job as a nursing assistant into an HVAC apprentice position, a lateral move with no money increase at the moment but wonderful future prospects, especially as he intends to stay in the house fixing business and continue working with me. But his wife doesn't see, can't see it, refuses to see it. And as I'm sure you understand, his wife's family back in Europe isn't helping much.

What the wife doesn't understand is that residential housing is her husband's BUSINESS, not his EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL STATUS. This is a remarkably difficult point to get across. Your parents are the same way, and there's no way you're really going to change their perception. You can show them numbers a child should be able to understand all day long -- there's a huge, monstrous, built-up mental block in them to understanding your HOME AND HEARTH is not, by conscious choice, your personal EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL STATUS. It's an entrenched cultural neurosis.

The only solutions to this, I believe, for my friend's wife, for your parents, are absurd ones.

First of all, there are temporary fixes. Buy some nice clothes. Buy a nice watch. Waste a ridiculous amount of money on a late-model car instead of a sensible used one. All this will make your parents feel a bit better when they see you outside your home. I know it's stupid but it works.

But the real solution is the crass truth that QUANTITY HAS A QUALITY ALL ITS OWN. Once you are running two properties, three properties, four properties, the blinders come off, and there is enormous intellectual liberation watching it happen. "My son owns four houses" or "my son owns and rents out six apartments" is a very powerful, complaint-stopping statement in American society. You go from being a dumb house hacker to being a smart real estate investor. Once you get to "my son runs 40 units all over the Southern Tier," you will see a deep, powerful respect glowing in their eyes when they speak to you, their endlessly brilliant son, a man they tirelessly proclaim is the best thing they've ever done with their lives, and they will go on and on and on about how much they contributed to your success through the wise choices they made during your upbringing. A great son, doing great things in the world.

It'll be more than enough to turn you into a cynic.

Chris, I just pulled almost exactly the same job on a duplex in Pittsburgh. 

After we demo-ed the 1920s-vintage 3/4 in. tongue-and groove oak and got down to the planks, we screwed 19/32 in. ply into the joists with 1/4 in gaps, filled the gaps with elastometric floor patch, laid down 1/4 in. Hardie cement board in a bed of mortar, screwed the Hardie down with the recommended wafer-head screws, and then put in two types of PEI 5 tile.

It was a bear of a job and I could not for the life of me imagine a crappier first floor tiling task to attempt. It is also now an absolute rock-solid floor for a rental that will take the next 20 years of abuse.

Richard: you'll be fine, as you've obviously been on multiple jobs. Obviously, we've got a lot of work to do in this forum explaining how to build leaktight surrounds. BTW, I prefer steel tubs and find the same slight bow.

My vote is a drip issue with those cabinets and that counter design like that. Any liquid that runs down the face of the drawer from the counter will tend to collect in that area and attack the finish. There's zero overhang on the counter. If that's what it looks like, slab granite with an eased edge, there's plenty of stuff running down the face of that cabinet. That's one of the reasons why in a standard kitchen installation, there's an overhand on the countertops.

Shannon, that kind of strange allergy attack happens all the time when you work on older houses...well, at least it's constantly happening to me. Stuff lingers behind the walls and under the floors. Right now I have a particularly nasty case of contact dermatitis from God knows where and am here in front of my computer instead of at my current project because of it.

But what I'd really like to talk about is the mask you mentioned. The cheapest rated particulate mask you can but, and if you buy 20 a pop you can get them for fifty cents each off Amazon and other places, is an N95 mask. That's good for pretty much 90% of the work I do. Whenever I'm in a situation like yours where I suspect there might be some kind of asbestos contamination, I wear something heavier than than. What the EPA recommends for asbestos-remediation work and what I do is wear a half-mask respirator (I really like mine, a 3M 7500-series http://a.co/jkTKaZG) with P100 pink-colored cartridges. I use the same mask when Iam forced to work with stuff that has nasty fumes in enclosed spaces, but switch out the round pink particulate filters for organic vapor cartridges.

It's a bit Breaking Baddish, but it gets the job done.

It's mineral wool, or rock wool.

Holy smokes. You're in what seems to be a world of crap. Let me show you the door out. This is what I would do in your situation. I live and work in waterlogged western Pennsylvania and I am a PA-registered and insured home improvement contractor. I am extremely familiar with this sort of issue.

Your first step is to say buh-bye to the mold contractor. Spend some time on Wikipedia checking out black mold, and you'll see that the big black mold scare is almost completely public hysteria. Get a gallon sprayer, fill it halfway up, and dump two cups of concentrated household bleach on it. Spray out the basement, paying special attention to the area you found the evil mold at. Your mold contractor doesn't seem to be a very bad guy other than overemphasizing how important his role is -- he gave you some useful advice, as you'll see

You mention vents, so if you've got vents, we're talking forced-air. If we're talking forced-air, you've got a filter. Switch out your existing filter for a new one, anything above a MERV 7 rating. Run the blower fan continuously for a day. Turn off the blower fan. Do a walk-through of the house with your bleach sprayer at a lower concentration, one cup per gallon, lighting misting all surfaces and the air. Drop the nozzle of the sprayer into each of the vents and let 'er rip for a bit. Open the fan access, spray the blower fan lightly and the exhaust heavily. Run the blower fan continuously for another day. Switch out the MERV 7 filter for a new filter. Your mold problem is gone like it never existed.

Actually, if you just spray out the basement with bleach solution and wait two weeks, you'll probably be fine anyway on any AQT. But go the extra mile. It's cheap.

Now you need to fix the dampness issue. Yes, the dehumidifier will help, and probably completely eradicate the problem. Over the long haul, when there are heavy rains, with any sort of continued erosion in the area, chances are the dampness issue will get worse. Your best long-term permanent solution is the interior French drain running into the sump pump along the bottom of the exterior wall that's weeping. This is expensive, as you've found, and you'll want to avoid that, even though the cost is really all labor -- putting in French drains that drain into sump pits is quite profitable for basement contractors. Anyone who quoted you the external excavation solution...wow. You might do that for a historical building with constant standing water in the basement. Retrofitting an existing basement like that on a flipped house with a minor problem...come on.

Make sure that the ground outside is sloping gently away from the house for 12 inches out on all sides. If that's a problem for one person to do easily with a few buckets of topsoil, well congrats, there's at least a 90% chance that you've found the source of all your woes. Dig it out and redo some basic landscaping with the help of inexpensive, unlicensed, unskilled guys you find off Craigslist (or perhaps standing around in a group outside your local home improvement supercenter that responds enthusiastically with ¡Vámonos! to the secret contractor code phrase ¿Estáis disponsible?) The $200-$300 dumpster rental you'll also need to get rid of the excess soil around your house will be well worth the expense. If you would prefer to forego that expense, there are always 4-mil contractor garbage bags at Big Lots that you can load in a van and empty at the edge of any unlighted strip mall parking lot in the middle of the night.

Make sure you don't have a downspout draining right over the area of the leak. This happens surprisingly often. If this is what's happening, use a downspout extension to move the drainage further out from your exterior wall.

Get the $200 dehumidifier.  Paint the interior walls and floor of the basement with a product called Dry-Lok. Dry-Lok is a controversial product and will not solve all your woes. But with the dehumidifier and proper earth grading on your exterior, Dry-Lok will buy you more than enough time to sell the house and have it operate trouble-free for a good long time, and perhaps permanently.

If you do all that and you still have water leakage, the expense of the interior French drain draining into a bigger sump pit is perfectly justified.