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Found your earlier post. We went to two warehouses today, Stone Collection and Granite Imports. Saw some level 1-3 granites that we liked. We have cabinet plans, PM me your email and I'll send them to you (and you can see if I got a good deal :)).Quote:
Originally Posted by Foggy_Goggles
Here goes...Bellagio & Home Depot means you are doing to wrong. There are so many hands in the stone game it is like dealing with the mob. You've got subcontract installers & templators, big box reatairs, design shops, stone yards, wholesalers, fab shops that have their own inventory, pre-fab granite, etc. etc. etc. Here is how I do it, for myself & my clients:
a. go to Arizona Tile over by I-70 and Havana. They have the most customer friendly showroom. They will give you all the price levels. All the slabs are graded 1-6 (or something). You probably want to be in the 2 to 3 range. 1 is shit like Santa Cecilia or Uba Tuba. You're options are endless what with all the composites and leathered finishes and such.
b. find a couple independent fabricators ideally through a direct referral. Provide them with a drawing on graph paper of your proposed design. Get them to estimate the job based a couple of slabs you are considering. They should have other stone yards to suggest. Most of the slabs are coming from wholesalers like Arizona, Dal-Tale, the Stone Collection, etc. You tag the slab and the fabricator gets it delivered so it doesn't really matter where you get your slab. In Denver, as a retail customer at a stone yard, you will not be able to get the price. Your GC might and you might get the price from a retail reseller but that's a different deal. Compare estimates and make a choice.
Yeah just to follow up, we got our stone from one of the biggest wholesalers in New England, not a retailer. But they are "to the trade" so it was because we had a GC that we were able to see the quotes, as they provided them to him. However they did have the price levels marked as foggy described.
But Danno, your "in the pocket" designer might be able to fill that role for you in the process. The different wholesealers play around with the product names to try to keep you from cross-shopping, similar to what goes on with mattresses, but if you go look at the stuff you can mostly tell what's what.
Home Depot and Bellagio were just starting points. FTR, though, the Bellagio guy didn't represent himself as a real stoneyard (though he did have a bunch of stone). He gave us a list of warehouses to check out for him to get and do the fabrication. I am going to contact two independent fabricators (adrenelated's guy and a name from the interior designer I mentioned earlier). But It's always good to have more names if anyone's got one.
Quick question for the collective. We are well into our home remodel which is going well. We have decided for the main level of the house to use a combination of radiant floor heat and forced air. Since this is an older house that was formerly a carriage house, the walls are just sheetrock against brick with no insulation. It has the potential to get cold, but we ultimately think the two stage heat will over come this without needing to tear out the sheetrock and build out some space to insulate the walls. Bigger worry than the cold is that if we start tearing out the walls to build out for insulation we will end up snowballing into new windows, etc., which we would prefer not to do.
Was there a question in there somewhere?Quote:
Originally Posted by Rontele
sort of? looking more for a gut check on the sheetrock against brick insulation question/statement.Quote:
Originally Posted by El Chupacabra
We'd normally tell you to PM Rontele, but in this case...
So your question is...
Q: Can I just slap some dw on an uninsulated exterior brick wall?
A: Sure, do whatever you want, it is your house.
where do you live?
There is prob 3/4 in. between sheetrock and brick so you have to think you'd never recoup your costs in energy savings if you just insulated that small space. But with the opportunity to push out 2in-3in, is that going to result in a meaningful difference?Quote:
Originally Posted by Timberridge
Austin, Massachusetts.Quote:
Originally Posted by old goat
My in-laws had very good success with a combination of radiant and forced air in their place in Santa Fe. That said, this was a custom build that was well insulated. The radiant system (hot water not electric) was a little fiddly but performed quite well in that climate.
In my limited experience, adding extra heat isn't enough to overcome poor insulation because it's difficult to get the air to mix well enough (without having it feel breezy) in the house to eliminate hot and cold spots.
The radiant system is a tried and true design my father in law has developed and refined over the past 20 years. He's pushing for the insulation for the reasons you noted above, Cruiser.
Can you punch holes in the wall and fill with insulation?
If you build out that wall with a 2x4 frame and add insulation you would certainly see a benefit, especially if that is an exterior brick wall. The downside is some extra work if you have windows, you would need to build out the casing, But that can provide a nice shelf for your battery powered Christmas candles.
Insulating any space much less than that won't do much.
How is the current sheetrock attached to the brick wall? Furring strips?
@ Danno: Doubt he'd see much benefit with <1" of space between the brick and drywall to work with...
That is right. Timberridge; yes, furring strips. I am starting to think that the insulation will make sense, but need to see how it works around the windows, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cruiser
If you try to force insulation in there as it exists, you will just end up bowing the drywall.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rontele
One other thing on a 2x4 wall. If the ceiling joists run perpendicular to that wall its an easy job to anchor that wall up top. If they are parallel and the wall sits in between joists, its just a bit more work.
1" of polyurethane spray foam performs significantly better than a full wall's worth of fiberglass. If you were to furr it out even one more inch and fill the entire thing with poly spray foam, your insulation performance will exceed 99% of homes currently being built in the US.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cruiser
Insulate it.
How big is this place? Might not be too bad if it's a fairly compact format, ya know? Get a good dual stage forced air unit and then leave the recirc setting on all the time to keep the air mixing in between heating cycles while the radiant chugs along. Sure would be a lot cheaper in the short term than replacing all the interior drywall, particularly if this is a house that you're not planning to stay in it forever...
They do run perpendicularQuote:
Originally Posted by Timberridge
YESQuote:
Originally Posted by Rontele
Don't fill 3/4" even if it's high density foam insul--- not worth the expense. The air space is probably better than filling a tiny cavity (for breathability & mold reasons). But, ultimately, it's a bad configuration and should be improved when you are able to do it correctly. I hope that drywall is at least damp-rated because it's likely wet that close to a masonry wall.
Trim was laid down on our new wood floor last week. There is a small gap for long parts of the wall, between the bottom of the trim and the new floors. My guess this is normal as getting floors perfect in our 70 year old house would be insanely hard to do.
My question is, what do we do to fill in these gaps before painting, if anything at all? Caulk seems like a bad idea since it will bond to the new nice floor, but what do I know. So do I just ignore it and stop looking at the floors constantly?
In many older homes, the floor is not flat, so trying to set tall pieces of base against a curved surface isn't going to turn out that great. Gaps are inevitable. Typically, a quarter round (or "base shoe") is added to cover the final gap to the floor. It is small enough that it can flex and follow the floor surface.Quote:
Originally Posted by muted
there are different shapes availabl. this is just one type:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...0dacb89979.jpg
[and the reason they don't set the flooring tight to the wall is that it needs room to expand and contract with temp/humidity changes thru the seasons]
You're on the right track... insulation almost always pays for itself when starting with none.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rontele
This. But please for the love of all that is holy buy shoe molding rather than quarter round. Quarter round is never the right answer for anything. Did you have a trim carpenter install the base? Did he discuss this issue with you first?Quote:
Originally Posted by acinpdx
Also, depending on the size of the gaps, it's not the end of the world to leave it in an older house. It's likely that no one will ever notice.
Not a big house, but one we are committed to living in for a long time (A+ location and lot) and given the scope of the other work I think we are going to head down the insulation path, esp since I don't think the drywall is damp rated, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cruiser
Thanks RootSkier and acinpdx, I'm just going to leave it and try to look at the ceiling more often. Good to know what my options are if I change my mind many years down the road.Quote:
Originally Posted by RootSkier
Two points where I'll offer a different opinion.Quote:
Originally Posted by RootSkier
Quarter round looks better that shoe molding. Never figured out why exactly, maybe it's the symmetry. Maybe it's the way light reflects off the finishes, you have to get the matte/sheen level right in relation to the wall.
IMO lots of people will notice the gap. If you live in a place you'll take it for granted (either gap or no gap) but if you go from a room or a whole home with a gap to one with no gap it becomes very obvious. Although many people can't explicitly say why.
Any advice on gate construction? I have to build a new one ASAP, my dog finally ruined my first attempt after years of me doing quick fixes every few months as he tested me and the gate every day. He leans against it with all his weight, so I need to build a strong one. Whatever wood I used before does not hold the screws after a couple years, they slowly pull out. What type of Home Depot/Lowes wood should I buy? My concern is if I overbuild it with heavy wood that holds a screw, it will sag too much from being too heavy. Lose-lose, I think.
I'll try to post pics tonight of exactly what I have to rebuild. Wood glue for the screws will be mandatory this time around, any other quick tips for me? Gate is about chest high and maybe 4 feet wide.
Any advice is appreciated, unfortunately I don't have a lot of time to slowly think this through.
If the posts are going in the ground and you don't want spend a ton a dough on wood then PT lumber is going to be your best bet for those. For the gate, short of using exotic woods, oak is fairly rot resistant and available. I'd avoid what passes today as pine, and also maple and poplar. Even with a hefty paint or sealer they'll rot quickly.Quote:
Originally Posted by muted
To avoid screws pulling out use galvanized lag screws on the post hinge and thru bolts on the gate hinge.
is the gate next to your house or is there a section(s) in between? ideally you want to lag the post the gate is hanging on to the house.
i've doubled up on 4x4 post before, lagging them together. or move to a bigger post. also upgrading hardware when attaching the hinges makes sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEig1GkLSMYQuote:
Originally Posted by Rontele
I'd fur it out, spray foam insulate it and deal with the casing on the windows and doors if I was staying there a while, not so much if I was going to try to sell it soon.
That small window in time when Tom Greene was just fucking hilarious. As noted above, long termism is at play for the Rontele clan. Sad to be leaving the city, but not moving very far and will be nice to have some space and a yard.Quote:
Originally Posted by iceman
Posts are in, bolted the concrete and only slightly wobbly now(just bolted them correctly a few weeks ago, fucking dog! Fixed one issue and he created another.) or it's bolted to the brick house which is extremely solid. I'll try galvanized lags, do i still need wood glue if I do this?Quote:
Originally Posted by Timberridge
I will lag the gate to the house, i haven't done that. The hinge side is on the rock-solid post attached to the house (just switched it from the other side a few weeks ago.)Quote:
Originally Posted by shroom
Does anti-sag hardware work, anyone know? Thanks everyone.
a metal framed gate kit can help with the door panel itselfQuote:
Originally Posted by muted
buy the burliest hinges & hardware you can
use lag screws if possible (or a big screw like a #14) into a nice stiff meaty substrate
Good to know. Problem with putting together the frame (and also narrow decoration wood to the front of it), is lag screws are way too long and wide for it. Some thick and meaty, but short, wood screws with wood glue may be my only choice???Quote:
Originally Posted by acinpdx
No wood glue is needed, but without knowing what on the house you are attaching it to I'd avoid bolting it directly to the house--if the house is wood--just because of siding etc. But if you have an exposed concrete foundation or brick, you can run a couple of lag sleeves into it and and seal it up good and tight around the sleeve.Quote:
Originally Posted by muted
If you can't thru bolt the gate then EZ Lok inserts might be a choice...tey are similar to ski inserts but brass.
photo of condtition will helpQuote:
Originally Posted by muted
glue + short screws doesn't sound good
Wood PT post that the gate attaches to is bolted to house already and is rock solid. thanks! the posts are not being replaced, they are fine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Timberridge
photo coming tonight. So what would the minimum length screw/lag bolt would you recommend going through oak? I can't have a 1 foot thick gate, ha.Quote:
Originally Posted by acinpdx
And anything similar to oak but not so heavy?