Looks great but kind of liked the way it looked before you stained it.

And I personally love it with the stain.

works either way for me I guess. I had bounced back n' fourth on it...then I got the bright idea to take the orbital sander to a couple of the rougher boards...bad idea.

Going to give the check book a rest for a couple weeks before placing my lumber order for the pergola.

In the meantime, it is on to the next project.

Subpanel time!

http://www.diychatroom.com/f18/subpa...ircuit-205983/

Anyone here ever done Vinyl Siding before?

We have Wood Shingles, original to the house. They were painted 5 years ago and the paint is peeling pretty bad. We got an estimate for painting which was upwards of $5K if we wanted paint that would last more than a few years. I talked to a few other painting companies and they estimated around the same, maybe a little less.

So now we are looking into Vinyl siding. I've read that it costs between $3-5 per square foot depending on a lot of things. Our house is a 1700 sq ft ranch, so not sure how much exterior, but we should be hearing back from a few estimates tomorrow. I'm expecting between $8-12K but I'm worried it will be much more.

Anyone have it done recently?

I'd get an estimate for stucco as well, or maybe stone/stucco combo. Certainly better for resale and I've seen some people do their whole homes for ~10k.

If the paint is peeling after only five years you may need to fix your gutters or flashing at the roofline.

This depends on where he lives

I had my house sided in 2012 , I had no paint peeling, but it needed painted again, it was all faded and I HATE paint. Paint looks nice for awhile then it needs it again. I bought my house in 2004, had it painted, needed repainted 7 years later. I Never did end up painting it again, waited til 2012 to get all new windows, fascia, gutters, soffits, and siding all at the same time.

My house was 19 squares total of siding. I got the good siding which was around 110$ a square. Some stuff can cost as low as 50-60$ and would advise against it because of warping when hot. and just plain cheap looking. I paid 2.5k for siding installation and 1,200 for new fascia, soffits, and around 650$ for gutter and soffit under my garage portico. This was just what i paid to have it installed.

I know your area is different and prices vary greatly, but that's just an idea of cost. I paid for the materials separately, and just paid the contractor to install it. I hate getting ripped off, He was there almost 2.5 weeks. I paid him all 100$ bills too so he didn't have to pay tax on it, which saved him.

I Paid around 220$ and window for installation and to buy the window. These were just replacement windows and he did 11 windows in 6 hours or so.

Hope this helps.

Estimate came in at $11.8K. I live on Long Island in NY so I would surmise its close to the highest Vinyl Siding costs in the US.

This is right under my max, so I am not sure if we will move forward.

Your probally right about the highest costs. Does this include wrapping the windows in metal to meet up with the siding? I had wood before around my windows so i had to have them build it out and wrap with metal. Here is a pic of my window. Hard to see, i had to crop it from other pics.

It's the same size window, just looks different because of camera.

We live in an older house and went with vinyl siding 7 or 8 years ago. I'm not sure I can even find a record of the costs. I do remember that we preferred to go with Hardiboard (sp?) instead at the time, but there were issues with our particular house that would have made that far more expensive than it should have. We are quite happy with the vinyl siding we have and the price we paid, but if I were you, I'd at least investigate Hardiboard as well.

I love my vinyl siding too. Hardiboard looks nice though.

My uncle has hardiboard on his house which is approx. 5,000 sq. ft. Seems like it's every 5 years he has to get it painted. I'm sure he's paying 4-5k to get it done.

We have a big kitchen in terms of square footage, but not much counter space. So this week's project was putting in an island.







It's just a couple cabinets from the Habitat store and a slab of butcher block from Ikea cut to size. The cabinet on the left did not have drawers or a shelf, so I built some drawers and installed those. Presto, counter and storage space.

Down the road some we're going to update the countertops and cabinets, so this is kind of a stand-in for a few years until we put in an island with electrical and plumbing.

I dig the island. My kitchen is the sore spot of the entire house, but I knew it going in. Very (very) small. Have a few ideas for expansion though, but it will be a while down the line.

Have made good progress on the electrical install to the shed. Tons of updates on the diy link, but here are the pics...





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So, we bought a new home and my wife wants to install new kitchen cabinets. The ones in the house right now are pretty decent. But she complains that the knobs are loose, cabinets are congested etc. Looks like these new cabinets will cost around $3k. When selling this house in a few years, will these fancy kitchen cabinets add enough value to justify $3k?

I'm not sure what you consider fancy but $3k doesn't buy much in the way of kitchen cabinets. You can get some very basic ones and put them in yourself for that. But then consider the cost of the countertops, new sink, faucet, drawer pulls, OTR microwave and so forth. Any cabinet extras will come at a cost. Will you have to cap the water lines? New garbage disposal? While you're tearing everything out, are you going to change out kitchen flooring too? Paying any laborers? Are you doing demo and hauling of the old stuff? So that's the first thing.

Whether the new cabinets will give you a decent ROI depends on what you have now, what you buy, style, how much wear you put on the new ones and how well they're installed, and the finish expectations for buyers looking in your neighborhood. And how much you actually spend.

Which will almost certainly more than $3,000 unless you have an absurdly small kitchen or your Dad owns a custom cabinet shop. And that's if you're not buying anything else. Kitchens are hard to reno one thing at a time, especially when replacing cabinets.

Loose knobs are a horrible reason to replace otherwise decent cabinets, just tighten them or replace them if you want. And if the space isn't working well then see if you can hang certain things under the cabinets and rework how you use space you do have. There's all kinds of things you can do in most kitchens.

Also you just bought the place and are already talking about selling in a few years, so you have more to think about than your own preferences with any upgrades you make. And when you make them.

First things first, I'd get a couple of real estimates for what you want. Get your measurements, including your appliances and where your plumbing, vent and range power stuff is. See what the costs actually look like with and without installation for the stuff you want with the options you want (these add up quickly).

Ask the realtor you worked with instead of a bunch of people who've never seen your house

You can delay, but once she has made up her mind it's a done deal.

how did you not have this conversation before you bought the house?

Installed an exhaust fan in one of the bathrooms last weekend and it was easier than I expected it to be. The bathroom has a shower but never had a fan so in order to keep the mirror from fogging up when showering we would have to keep the door wide open.
The fan works great! Haven't had a fogged up mirror since. After the fan itself and all the install materials it only cost me around $150.

Try refacing cabinets rather than full replacement...my parents did it like 15 years ago at their old house and it still looks great today

Anyone out there overseeding their yard with rye? Just dropped 75 lbs on my backyard to make it look like a golf course back there!

So, I purchased a 2 bed/2 bath condo in a Portland suburb about 3 years ago at the low point in the market. This was a bank owned property that had been abandoned for about a year before I picked it up for $93k. I'm going to attach some pictures from the home inspection, but they still won't do the place justice. To keep it short, the place was not liveable upon purchase.





I did extensive remodeling the first two years. Replaced the dry rotted floors in both bathrooms, re-painted every square inch of wall and ceiling, remodeled the en suite with new floors, door, light, and exhaust fan. Replaced all the carpeting that looked like there was a murder in the living room. Replaced the existing pergo floor with new laminate and extended it to the back sliding door (was carpet at first and was a sponge for my dog to track in all the dirt).

After two years, I turned my place into a rental. Once my renters turned out, I've decided to sell the place in the hot market. But first... The kitchen needed help.

The crappy tile countertop and dated cabinets had to go.



Sent the doors and drawer fronts to be professionally stripped, while I stripped the uppers and bases. Re-finished using Minwax Polyshades Mission Oak. I highly advise against using this product. It's crap, and I'm absolutely unsatisfied with my finished product. This stuff is garbage, and left huge drips down the face of my cabinets that didn't show up until after it dried. Do the stain and then apply the poly if you're going to take on this type of project.




Now the place is on the market for $140k, and my a-hole neighbors are busy telling my realtor that she shouldn't sell to young people.





All-in-all, I've probably sunk about $6k (not counting replacing water heater and fridge while the place was a rental) into the remodeling effort, and self performed all but the counter top and carpet install.

Durango do you use the winter rye to fix nitrogen in your lawn instead of fertilizing? I'm about to drop a similar amount of soybean meal on my lawn for end of season fertilizer (have kids/dog so I don't want to use chemical ferts).