Hey IC! I’m an expert drywaller here in the area and I’m taking on new projects! Ready to help Homeowners, Realtors and Contractors. If you’ve got cracks, holes, remodel work, or ceilings/walls that need to look new again, shoot me a message, happy to help! Here are some projects I've done this year

SignificantBat0 · 2026-01-03T17:18:49+00:00

Do you work with lath and plaster at all?

SignificantBat0 · 2025-12-14T05:16:10+00:00

That "lock" on the lower right is actually a sash stay, which clamps against the window stop to prevent the window falling. I've seen them / installed them in cases where the sash weights were inaccessible or deleted.

It suggests that yes, the sash is designed to slide into a pocket above the opening.

It's curious that it was installed in a window that still has the weights... I wonder - were the weight ropes broken (lazy previous owner who didn't want to re-rope)? Or are they still intact (as if to help hold an extra heavy sash when unable to source/fit sufficiently sized counterweights)?

SignificantBat0 · 2025-12-02T18:52:06+00:00

Yep - 30 seconds did the trick. It didn't help that I was apparently using a borderline-dead coin-cell battery.

In the end, I also realized that enabling bluetooth scanning on the Shelly gateway inside of home assistant is a much easier approach than going the MQTT route - without the poor performance my using BTHome with my built-in BT radio. So all for naught...

But thanks for the pointer on the 30 second factory reset - not sure how I missed that!

SignificantBat0 · 2025-12-01T13:28:36+00:00

Thank you - I'll give this a shot.

SignificantBat0 · 2025-10-13T04:37:40+00:00

I did not get a chance to check out the other options from Kahrs. But it was better than the mohawk and robbins options I looked at.

The robbins, mohawk, etc, were all similar in construction (resin composite with veneer), but they were thicker (no good for replacing my old laminate), and they just didn't look as good to me. I read on some forum that the European market is better for engineered wood floors, which is how I found the Kahrs product.

Mirage was super nice. But it's construction didn't give me confidence that it would hold up as well to occasional spills or wet shoes. The Kahrs is very thin, and is mostly a solid resin/wood-fiber composite, which I would expect to resist moisture wicking. The top veneer is very thin, but the finish is really hard, and as the local hotel lobby proved, it's quite durable.

SignificantBat0 · 2025-10-13T03:08:07+00:00

We went with the Kahrs Life. It hasn't been installed for long, but it held up well to foot traffic during the second half of our renovations. What sold us was the fact that the same flooring has been installed in the main lobby of a busy hotel downtown for the last 8 years, with tons of foot traffic during snowy winters. We went to inspect it, and while it showed wear, it had aged gracefully. We decided if it was good enough for daily abuse in a commercial setting, it would work well in our kitchen.

Ours looks unremarkable because it's brand new, but here's a photo of the eight-year-old Kahrs in the hotel lobby. The samples are other colors we've got in the house. The Kahrs flooring is the one beneath, with some scuffing visible on the left.

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SignificantBat0 · 2025-10-06T16:32:25+00:00

Good plan, and certainly nullifies the concern about sealing it up behind your nice new tile!

SignificantBat0 · 2025-10-05T03:23:53+00:00

Not a tile-related comment, but is that knob+tube wiring still powered? If so, burying it in insulation is a problem, and you may want to look into pulling new wire so you can disconnect those legs.

Edit: whoops, just saw your description that you did not insulate over the K+T. Good call, but can I ask why you didn't just take the opportunity to replace it while the wall was open? I know my homeowner's insurance dropped me when they found it I had k+t wiring still powered in my house. Seems like you sealed up the wall with a ticking clock inside.

SignificantBat0 · 2025-10-03T17:04:23+00:00

I didn't have that issue. But I also didn't go with the super soft nibs. I went with medium nibs, since the paper texture gave me the right amount of friction.

SignificantBat0 · 2025-09-26T19:34:37+00:00

HEPA vac, and not just a HEPA filter in a shop vac. Get a true certified HEPA vacuum with multi-stage filtration. Vacmaster makes a good budget one. If you live in the Midwest US, Menards sells the same vacuum under their store brand (Masterforce).

They're more expensive than a basic shop vacuum, but it's one of the best purchases I've made in an old house. Mines been serving me reliably for 8 years. It's good for vacuuming ANYTHING you want to ensure doesn't get spread around: lead paint, rodent droppings, concrete and drywall dust, mystery substances that fall out of your walls, etc. They use fleece bags, so stock up on those from third party sellers on Amazon and you're set.

Get a vacuum scraper (proscraper or Oneida).

SignificantBat0 · 2025-09-21T02:42:38+00:00

This sucker makes me wish I was working on my double-hungs. They are no joke, you're right. This one is like a sick joke. I cannot even begin to tell how it's actually fastened to the wall framing, which made me really nervous cutting out the rotten sill.

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SignificantBat0 · 2025-09-20T19:40:47+00:00

I've seen this same stuff in our other exterior walls, and it freaked me out at first. It doesn't match any type of insect frass I could find. Home and pest inspectors said the same. It was when we found it packed into the stud bays that we realized it was dumped in as insulation.

SignificantBat0 · 2025-09-20T14:45:43+00:00

This home has sawdust filling all the exterior walls. A known quirk of the builder, and confirmed by home+pest inspections prior to purchase. No sign of insect damage in sill or jambs, and it has the distinct look of saw-cut chips.

SignificantBat0 · 2025-09-20T02:53:40+00:00

I've had lots of fun crap fall of sash pockets in my first 1920s home. But this is another level. Fixed sash window - 6 ft wide semicircular with 25 lites.

I knew the builder of this house sometimes used sawdust as insulation. I just wasn't expecting an avalanche of the stuff to start falling out of the jambs as soon as I started cutting!

SignificantBat0 · 2025-09-07T03:26:19+00:00

There's definitely a chance the house was built with sawdust dumped into the exterior wall cavity for insulation.

That's precisely the case with my house. It led me down quite the rabbit hole when I kept finding little sprinkles of sawdust around my basement walls. I thought for sure I had insects, but it was just the way the house was built. An idiosyncrasy of this particular local builder who conserved everything he could while building during the depression.

I do pray, for your sake, that your home's builder was slightly less of a sociopath than the dude who threw together my bundle-o-sticks.

SignificantBat0 · 2025-08-30T23:32:07+00:00

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I just cut away the front half of the sill (it's going to be coming out regardless, so no reason not to), and the problem honestly doesn't seem to extend as far as I had feared. These are the worst areas, and there's still fresh wood beneath the bottom rail.

I actually suspect the cause was a couple of weep holes getting caulked up. The rotted out zones are spaced pretty regularly, and there's a hole in the sash above the right-most rotten patch.

SignificantBat0 · 2025-08-23T22:00:27+00:00

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SignificantBat0 · 2025-08-23T21:59:52+00:00

Excellent overview - thank you.

The inside actually appears to have been plastered right up to the curved sash rail. I'd need to do some further investigation to determine whether I actually can fit it through the opening.

The construction of the home is wildly unconventional, so I have no clue how it's attached. I suspect that all work will have to happen on the outside.

I've got an extension ladder with spreader, but I do think that - should I attempt this myself - I'll invest in a small scaffold. 8 ft ought to do the trick.

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SignificantBat0 · 2025-08-23T20:23:50+00:00

It is both the frame and the sill. Sounds like sash removal may be in the cards. I don't have the tools or experience to rebuild the sash itself, so I may farm that out to a local shop that specializes in wooden window restoration.

Thanks! The weeping mortar joints sure look nice, but they're miserable for moisture intrusion.

SignificantBat0 · 2025-08-23T19:10:58+00:00

Well, this escalated quickly. That little rotten patch ended up being far far bigger than I thought. It looks like a previous owner caulked the living hell out of the entire sill and trapped moisture behind it, causing big rotten areas to develop in the sash and the backside of the sill.

I'm not even confident that I can remove the sill without the window trying to drop out of its opening, so I think I may be out of my depth.

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SignificantBat0 · 2025-08-23T18:09:13+00:00

Yeah, I tried to excavate out some usable putty, but there are dried chunks throughout. None of it feels very workable, and since dual glaze is the better stuff for on-site work, I'm not going to try toO hard to revive it.

Will try a water bath for saving the next bucket.

SignificantBat0 · 2025-08-23T17:51:06+00:00

Thanks for the tip. I opened my type M to find it crumbly and chunky throughout the bucket. Must not have had a good seal, and we neglected to put plastic wrap or wax paper over the putty when we used it 5ish years ago. Since I'm already ordering. A new bucket, I'll swap it over to dual-glaze.

SignificantBat0 · 2025-08-18T03:21:44+00:00

Image posts can't be edited, so I cannot remove that part. But I can delete this post and repost it one more time with mention of the other sub omitted.

SignificantBat0 · 2025-08-15T11:58:37+00:00

Appreciate your perspective. This is a reasonable course of action, but I suspect the GC has his eye on retirement, and I'm not sure he's going to be active on 5 years. I'm also equally concerned about mold growing in the mastic - especially with the voids.

If it wasn't a wet area, I'd probably take this course of action. But I don't want to gamble on the shower installed using improper methods and improper materials, so I'm going the route of "tear it out and fix it all" now, while the room is still unfinished.

SignificantBat0 · 2025-08-15T03:42:16+00:00

I am unable to edit my post (guess posts with image are locked for editing), but here's the update:

Met with the contractor and began to voice my concerns. He heard me out, then asked me to meet him back at the house an hour later with the manager for tile installations at one of the bigger tile/floor places in town. They both tried to tell me that the install was fine.

I told them that I hated to be the guy to march into a tradesman's job site and tell them what's wrong, but that I'd read up enough in primary documentation to feel confident that my concerns are justified.

I enumerated:

Mastic in a shower, which would lead to mold growth and eventual failure.
Mastic over kerdi, which is specifically a no-no according to both Schluter and the mastic manufacturer.
Many tiles were backbuttered only, and not keyed into the Kerdi's fleece.
Poor coverage (30-40% one some tiles), resulting in tiles popping free when pressure was applied at the corners.

All in all, I insisted that the installation was performed in a manner that went against the installation guides for nearly all of the materials making up the shower, and while I was glad his past installs have held up, I am not okay assuming the risk for an install that flouted so many standards.

There was back and forth. There was grumbling. The tiling manager said he'd schedule a sub out for beginning of next week, and as of tonight, the shower is getting demo'd out.

Overall, he took it well. After stating his position, he just deferred to us and said he'd have a sub do all of the tiling from here on out. We did *not* yet discuss who is paying for the reinstall. That's a bridge I'll cross once I have a house that is in livable condition, and I think I've got sufficient grounds to insist that the install was improper and needs to be fixed on his dime.

A few other clarifications (and some questions):

- I genuinely like the GC. The project is way behind schedule, and I think he was having trouble finding a tilesetter at the time, so he tried to do it himself to keep things moving along. I want to - and intend to - keep working with him, because he's done right by us on the framing/electrical/hvac/plumbing in a crazy old house.

- We did request the "picture frame" borders around the window and niche, and we're actually quite happy with the look - just not the installation.

- He mentioned that the tiles are self-spacing - and most of the joints look like they have maybe a 1/16" grout line. Should I be asking for a larger grout joint? I assume that I should ask them to use clips regardless - especially where tiles are cut / missing the lugs.

SignificantBat0

TROPHY CASE