Exterous' home project thread

[jtvang125]

Great job!

I'm looking to replace 3 chandeliers, all on high ceilings with one of them over a staircase. These are the ugly brass and fake glass chandeliers from the 90s. Not comfortable going up a ladder that high and it's going to be even trickier with the one over the staircase. Called a few electricians and the cheapest was $400 to all 3 so I've decided I'm going to rent a truck and pick up a 12' scaffold to do it myself. With the scaffolding I'll also be able to touch up some spots from the painting I just done too.

 

[Exterous]

Called a few electricians and the cheapest was $400 to all 3 so I've decided I'm going to rent a truck and pick up a 12' scaffold to do it myself. With the scaffolding I'll also be able to touch up some spots from the painting I just done too.

Good luck!

 

[Exterous]

So in the continuing saga of 'Other shit getting in the way of my home theater project' I had to replace the ERG valve on my car as it was stuck open causing it to stall at idle. Also, per the thread below we were having moisture problems in our master bath. So I went ahead and got a better fan and a timer and I installed them
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/bathroom-ventilation-fan-question.2488938/

Like most of my projects nothing went smoothly. The jerkwads that installed the fan previously had screws at shit angles and had stripped two making my life miserable trying to get the old enclosure out. I cut one of the screws but I couldn't get my sawzall or dremel at the correct angle to get the last one. Using a hammer to get a coarse screw attached to some cheap sheet metal out is NOT fun.

Old dinky 50cfm fan:


Cheap fan compared to nice expensive fan:


My attic is all lose fill insulation so I shoved some cardboard up there to try and keep it from raining down on me as I worked. It worked well until I had to start wrestling with those last two screws. From that point on everything I did resulted in a rain of insulation to the arms and face (I was wearing goggles, mask and gloves but still). I think I would have been better off to just let it all fall down at once as opposed to trying to keep it clean

Look how clean I kept things!!


One super awesome thing I noticed when I was taking the old fan down is that they left the 4" to 3" adapter on the Broan fan but then had a 3" to 4" adapter on the duct. Thanks guys!

New fan:


Also put in a cheap timer so the fan can be left running for a while after I leave in the mornings. Seems to work pretty well:


Overall it took me waaaay longer than I intended but mainly because I spend 1.5 hours getting the damn old fan out.

 

[Exterous]

So after a crazy busy fall and winter we've resumed the house projects. Found I needed to order a custom door to finish framing the basement as no one carries anything other than 80" doors these days. Finally got it today after 6 weeks of waiting for the order. Hopefully the home theater project will move forward now.

In the meantime we decided to have a nice, easy weekend of painting our entryway. A couple of weeks ago we tried a few of the pole mounted edging tools and they were terrible. So this was option #2:

(Thats my 6' ladder in front of it)

If I ever have to do anything with the chandelier again I am definitely getting scaffolding as opposed to a large A frame ladder. A bit more of a PITA to setup but so much easier to do work on - although a bit more wobbly. The height is independently adjustable on the sides so it also worked well on the stairs although we had to disassemble it every time we needed to move it down a few stairs. 5 minutes of painting followed by 20 min of moving the scaffolding. Unfortunately during the project we noticed the entry door, window and chandelier are not centered in the entry way - its 2' off center towards the left. Obvisouly not very noticeable since we just noticed that after 16 months in the house but I have a feeling it will be one of those things we will see every time we look at the door now

Side note - the fan has greatly improved the master bathroom situation so that project has worked out very well.

 

[Exterous]

Great job!

I'm looking to replace 3 chandeliers, all on high ceilings with one of them over a staircase. These are the ugly brass and fake glass chandeliers from the 90s. Not comfortable going up a ladder that high and it's going to be even trickier with the one over the staircase. Called a few electricians and the cheapest was $400 to all 3 so I've decided I'm going to rent a truck and pick up a 12' scaffold to do it myself. With the scaffolding I'll also be able to touch up some spots from the painting I just done too.

Hope that worked out well. Good call on the scaffolding - it would have made our lighting project much easier if we had done that instead of a ladder

 

[Micrornd]

Unfortunately during the project we noticed the entry door, window and chandelier are not centered in the entry way - its 2' off center towards the left.

Looks more like 1' from your original chandelier photo, but I'm sure it was done that way to center the front door in the exterior recess/overhang for exterior looks/curb appeal.

Great job on the improvements

 

[rsachoc]

New here, but love this thread, following! Great work, and it seems that there is hope for me, the DIY noob.

 

[Exterous]

Between a mix of being busy and being lazy things haven't moved along much until recently. I've got some exterior wood trim that needs to be fixed so we're going to do that and repaint all the exterior trim a year early. In my last house I rented a boom lift and did it all myself. Unfortunately there are some areas that the easily rentable ones won't reach on this one so it'll be a mix of me doing the easy stuff and hiring the rest out.

I finally finished framing the basement. One huge annoyance was trying to deal with the metal I-beam and mutliple support posts in the way. I did't want to lose 2" of room space so I had to frame around it while still keeping the walls sturdy and decoupled from the ceiling. 2" might not sound like a lot but I have a water meter to frame around (and have an access panel to) and its roughly across from the door. The way the door opening, water meter, front screen wall and soffit come together 2" could make things a lot easier when it comes to getting standard sized home theater furniture and\or figuring out how to not bang my head on the soffit. I hope it ends up helping because otherwise I'm going to regret all the time I wasted doing it





At first the wall was wobbly - not enough to come down but enough it might vibrate against the metal I-beam. Since that would be easier to fix before the soffit and drywall went up I tried adding some toe nailed screws in but that didn't help enough so I added some L brackets. Unfortunately due to some of the space restrictions there was an order of operations required for everything to fit together so if I needed to re-do or add something I usually had to take a decent chunk of the wall apart.



Electrical is largely run. I'll have a 20amp circuit for the equipment room, a 15 for the outlets and a 15 for the lights. Its a little overkill but if\when we finish more of the basement I'll be able to run more lights off the lighting circuit. The downside is that meant 3 runs to the box on the other side of the house with the furnace, water heater and associated ducts, gas lines, AC lines etc in the way

 

[Exterous]

So in my last post I said 'electrical is largely run'. I don't know why I said that. Wiring had been run to the room for lights but nothing run from the three switches to the nine lights... Anyway thats done now



I also ran all the wires for the 5.2.4 setup. I don't plan to do .2 right away or maybe ever but I wanted an extra cable run to the back wall just in case (I can use a Y in front if I need to). I would have loved to run conduit but with the location of the stairs, I-beam and how packed the joist spaces are on either side of the stair case the run would need to have (3) 90 bends in less than 2' plus be a pretty small conduit. I ran ethernet to the front and the projector as there is a decent history for ethernet adapters for various hookups being made so hopefully that will take care of any additions I want to make down the road.

I ran about 150' of speaker wire, 50' subwoofer cable, 25' HDMI and 50' of ethernet in the room


(speaker wire grouped together and labeled)

New space for the router and cable modem. I'm getting surprisingly great signal upstairs despite it being in the basement



With all the wire run through the soffitt area I started cutting plywood to frame the soffitt with. Yet another occasion where I wish I had a nice table saw. Sadly I have zero room for one in my garage so I make do with this Kreg tool



Honestly its pretty awesome and makes it about as easy as it gets without a table saw - but its still not a table saw

 

[Exterous]

Our house had a 'nice' slightly yellow brown color - which was also the same color as next 6 houses along the same road. Some sap had leaked through and a lot of the caulk was pulling and cracking so it was time to do something about it. I re-did all of the wood trim and caulk on the last house with the help of a rented boom lift but this was going to be a bit much so we hired out the higher stuff

The old color on the garage new color above



old color


new color with navy blue door


Basement is moving along. I've got a decent chunk of the inwall insulation in. I forgot how much I dislike working with insulation

 

[SLU Aequitas]

Awesome work Ex! Fiberglass insulation is fun, especially when you're a bald dude and the bat above you is extra sheddy lol.

Wouldn't worry about the lack of conduit. I ran 1" flex to all speakers and projector and can't think of a situation where I'll need them. Maybe the projector but I (had to) use CAT6 and the HDBaseT adapters are already doing 4K on a single run (plus they can run IR as well).

 

[Exterous]

Awesome work Ex! Fiberglass insulation is fun, especially when you're a bald dude and the bat above you is extra sheddy lol.

Wouldn't worry about the lack of conduit. I ran 1" flex to all speakers and projector and can't think of a situation where I'll need them. Maybe the projector but I (had to) use CAT6 and the HDBaseT adapters are already doing 4K on a single run (plus they can run IR as well).

The bat wasn't terrible but for some reason there is a ton of crumbly stuff (reasonably sure its concrete) on a good chunk of my floor joists that likes to fall in my eyes while shoving insulation over my head. This is one of the less covered joists:



My last HT room was fine without conduit but it would be nice to be able to run. Partly just to have but also partly because it would mean I wasn't having to work around a bunch of other crap.

I'm about 4/5 done with the insulation but ran out so I'll need to get more. A lot of my ceiling joists are less than 16" OC So there was some folding of the insulation involved to get it in the spaces because I didn't feel like cutting 2-3" down the 13' length of insulation I was putting overhead. Not acoustically idea but it is what it is

 

[Exterous]

Believe it or not I am actually still making progress. (And stupid photobucket for their hosting rule change)

Anyway here is one of the pictures from my last post. A bit farther on insulation being done than shown here but I still have a few spots that still need some.

I had changed the design slightly since I ordered my sound isolation clips so I had to order some more and wait for them to arrive. Now all the furring stips are up and screwed together. Took the end off the vent and connected some insualted flex duct and ran it to the side of the room. It'll do a 90 bend to run along the wall for a few feet and then another 90 into the room. Those are the only bends off the main branch so I'm not too worried about airflow and that should cut down on sound transmission.

The front soffit is up. Even though it will be behind the screen wall there is an HVAC run below the ceiling, some pipes and two water shut off valves I need access to. I'll run insulation in there and put an access panel so I can get at the shutoff valves. Since the speakers and sub will be in that area I'm hoping the added insulation will block with any gaps from the water and HVAC runs and maybe dampen the sound going to the floor above a bit more

One 8' section of soffit with insulation is completely up on the side walls (upper left of pic). I was concerned about the weight of the plywood breaking it if I hung the bottom section on the wall without support on the far side so I assembled them on the floor, put in the lighting cover box (to keep the insulation 3" off the light that will go in there) and insulation and then lifted the whole thing into place. Those things are a bitch to get up there by myself, especially when I also have to feed the electrical wires through the box cover. I might find a way to support it in place with a couple of 2x4s instead of doing it on the ground. We'll see

Here's another 8' section in the back with the return vent. 3 more 8' sections to go and the rest will be shorter and easier

 

[Exterous]

Insulation is done. Soffit is done. Moving the light in the room that was on a main floor circuit is done. Home security hookup is moved. Floor has been cleaned. Messy collection of tools relocated.

Here you can see some of the access panels I need to have for the security system and old light. I'll also need one to reach the water shutoff valves in the front soffit. The front soffit will also only be drywall instead of drywall and plywood. I'm doing the plywood + drywall along the other walls to add some rigidity due to my work around the I-beam on the left and all the access holes needed on the left.

Drywall was supposed to be delivered today and I was hoping to start hanging it this weekend. Just got a call that their truck broke down and they are not sure if they can deliver today...

On the positive side the wife and a few friends who have seen it have commented on how quiet the room is already even without the door or drywall

 

[Greenman]

There should be fire blocks at the low edge of the sofit, unless it's fire stopped behind the OSB.

 

[Exterous]

There should be fire blocks at the low edge of the sofit, unless it's fire stopped behind the OSB.

Good point. Unfaced fiberglass (tightly packed), 3/4" OSB in the soffit or 2x4s on the wall for fire blocking