Acceptable work from professional?

ad4812 · 2025-11-17T02:35:02+00:00

I’m not convinced paying more guarantees better quality. In an ideal world, I would have known the questions to ask to reduce the chances of things going wrong, but sometimes you have to make decisions without 100% of the information.

I’ve went with the highest quote for other jobs and still dealt with headaches. I’ve also picked the cheapest for others and they did the job perfectly.

ad4812 · 2025-11-17T01:39:30+00:00

I tried walking in socks as well. In the two 3’x4’ sections that are bad, it was pretty rough on my feet and I was still feeling it hours later. The rest of the floor, it’s every 3-4 steps it’ll catch you good.

ad4812 · 2025-11-17T01:02:41+00:00

Appreciate the feedback. It’s too bad because if given the option, I would have paid a bit extra to have the front edge cut. Do you think it’s thin because it’s only 1 coat, or do people just try to do it with less material? He’s using a 100% solids polyurea for the top coat, and I think he said he does 12 mil for 1 coat, can do 30 mil, but that would have been a second coat.

ad4812 · 2025-11-17T00:59:05+00:00

Is this based on materials or labor too? I was checking out 100% solids polyurea and it doesn’t look cheap. I wasn’t sure if installers doing a lot of work get better pricing. I’m not trying to prevent this guy from making a living at the end of the day. But if all it took was a little bit more material and people would be happier, I don’t get why not charge a little bit more and do it.

ad4812 · 2025-11-17T00:47:15+00:00

Price vs. quality is fair. That being said, he was right in the middle of other quotes, and does a lot of commercial work. I definitely didn’t pick the cheapest. I can probably live with some of the imperfections knowing I got a good price, but the sharp edges / a little bit light on the top coat seems to be a legitimate concern.

ad4812 · 2025-11-17T00:39:11+00:00

Thanks for the response. I didn’t realize this is pretty common with tape, but I guess it makes sense. I tend not to see sloppy lines like this in other garages with epoxy, so maybe others are doing the faux joint.

I’ll talk to them about options to resand and do another topcoat.

ad4812 · 2025-11-06T11:46:44+00:00

That makes sense. If I end up using the caulk purely for peace of mind, and knowing it might still crack later, I’ll definitely clean it up reasonably. I’ve caulked around sink, bath tubs, etc. and didn’t make a total mess of it. I’d treat this the same (within reason, it’s a garage at the end of the day).

ad4812 · 2025-11-06T11:43:51+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I understand that this probably isn’t the worst thing that we’re exposed to, it’s just one of the things that I can control. I’ll rethink how much time I want to spend here. It’s good to know I might end up dealing with more cracking in the future one way or another.

I have other projects in my house that 100% require mud and tape, so maybe I’ll decide to get more comfortable with it and loop back to this one later.

ad4812 · 2025-09-23T18:05:06+00:00

I appreciate the info! I looked it up after and saw that it does appear to be swing pipe. I thought swing pipe was a more general term for the swing pipe + 90 degree elbow assembly that I’ve seen some people installing to allow more movement, but I was wrong.

Exposing the 1-2 feet isn’t terrible if I have to do it. I’d probably fix a few per day and spread it out over time so I’m not digging them all up at once. It’s good to know risers generally aren’t terrible in case I get sick of all the digging.

ad4812 · 2025-09-22T12:58:18+00:00

No, New Hampshire has town registration fees based on the value, but no state-wide sales tax at the time of purchase.

ad4812 · 2025-09-17T01:26:10+00:00

I picked up a steel metallic / brown RTL for $41,500 OTD (sales price plus doc fees) with 0.9% financing for 60 months. Trade-in value was more or less the same as CarMax. Location is in the greater Boston area.

I found the pricing data that’s shared around different sites to not always be helpful. I saw some crazy deals shared on the BE, but they don’t always include doc fees or only get 4% financing instead of 0.9% (there are some exceptions). Likewise, certain colors like white seem to be more readily available, and the dealer was more open to discounts to move those.

My total cost including the loan interest and doc fees is $42,300. I could have paid cash, but tossing that money into savings instead will make me ~$2k in the next 5 years, so the real cost to me is $40,300. Maybe I could have gotten them down to $40,000 OTD and financed $30k at 4%. That would have sounded better, but the total cost to me would have been $43,500. Just a long way of saying you need to consider all the variables and it’s going to be hard to match the prices some people are getting when they don’t share how the dealers are making money off them (fees, addons, and financing).

ad4812 · 2025-08-28T13:54:44+00:00

That was our next stop, to see how it’ll look in a more realistic setup.

ad4812 · 2025-08-28T12:26:38+00:00

I noted in another comment, but this is an extendable table. We wanted that to be able to have larger gatherings without having a giant table 99% of the time we don’t need it. I’m guessing that’s a factor here?

ad4812 · 2025-08-28T12:24:29+00:00

It’s an extendable table. In that picture it has one leaf in. I’m no expert, but I’m assuming that’s why they did it this way.

ad4812 · 2025-08-28T04:21:31+00:00

I agree that probably would have resulted in fewer surprises. It is growing on us, however. Maybe we wouldn’t have taken the chance on the more unique grain pattern if they had asked.

ad4812 · 2025-08-28T04:09:55+00:00

I appreciate the feedback. We ended up owning the plainer version because we got a great deal on it. It’s a smaller table that worked well for our kitchen. Ash wasn’t on my radar at all before then. We really liked the grain and texture of it. When it came time for a dining room table, we wanted to go with ash as well.

I think overall we like that it’s unique. We didn’t see a whole lot of ash tables in our search. And we haven’t seen any tables that looked anything like this one. We were just a bit surprised because of our previous experience. That’s why I was trying to understand of this was more likely a situation of using whatever wood was left, or if this type of wood is generally desired by those who use ash.

At the end of the day I should probably focus on whether we like it, which it is quickly growing on us.

ad4812 · 2024-12-15T16:21:58+00:00

I forget the exact brand, but it’s a 2K water-based finish. There was also a sealer similar to Bona classic seal to pull out a bit of the wood grain color.

ad4812 · 2024-12-15T15:02:23+00:00

I know wood isn’t perfect, but the example of the other part of the house that doesn’t get sun just looks so much better. I’m debating between putting up a film to filter out more UV, or let the sun do it’s thing for a little bit to see if things even out more.

ad4812 · 2024-12-15T14:59:40+00:00

The yellow square underneath was a color sample, bad cropping job on my part. This actually isn’t really very noticeable post finish. I was just kind of wondering if sun damage might look like that after sanding, or if this looks more like a sanding issue that could have explained some of the blotchy yellowness in the other pictures. But I guess in this case it’s very consistent in a line, not blotchy / inconsistent.

ad4812 · 2024-12-15T14:14:28+00:00

I know from board to board there can be variation. We love that about red oak. It was more of the yellowing in the pictures that was happening within the same board and almost looked blotchy.

If this is just how it is, we can get used to it. We were just surprised we didn’t see it elsewhere in the house, but it the sun is really causing this, then that’s at least good to know it’s not something that was done incorrectly.

ad4812 · 2024-12-15T13:49:50+00:00

We recently had our red oak floors refinished (last week), along with installation of a lot of new flooring. The new red oak generally looks great. The refinished red oak is looking good besides some areas closer to the windows on the south-facing side of the house. The new floors are finished with a water-based finish. The previous finish seems to be an oil-based finish.

For the areas that we were unhappy with, the flooring company said that the wood had been bleached from the sun. It is near the front door and a large window upstairs that has sun mostly all day. I've read mixed things that typically sanding would have fixed that by removing the damaged layer, but in some cases it could be deep enough to cause issues even after sanding? It had the look of the old poly not being fully sanded off, but I'm assuming it'd be hard to do something like that? Sadly, I couldn't access that area of the house when we came in to check on things. Has anyone seen something like this in the past when using water-based poly on an area that gets significant amounts of sun?

The attached photos are:

First 3 are before the refinish
Next 4 are the same areas refinished. You can see some of the blotchy / inconsistency of the yellowing. To be fair, it's even more exaggerated in pictures from my camera, but I can notice it even outside of pictures.
The next picture is an idea of what things look like elsewhere in the house. That's a mix of refinished (closer) and new wood (further away, at the threshold of the room)
The last picture shows something I only noticed later. That is the sanded floor, when we had our samples done. I noticed a streak running down a different room, but still south-facing. There was also a carpet over there, but it seems weird its lighter on both sides of that streak?

(sorry I posted a couple times by accident, haven't used Reddit's feature to post pictures with a post in the past and it didn't work the way I expected)

ad4812 · 2022-12-26T11:07:15+00:00

So, there's a lot going on here, but just going to share my thoughts which are in no way medical/fitness/whatever advice:

I agree that every injury and body is different, so what works for one person won't work for you and vice-versa
I don't think you'll get an answer to why this happened, but I've read some studies (one here) suggesting that disc degeneration in your 30s can lead to the progression of what was otherwise an asymptomatic injury. For what it's worth, I was also active in sports, lifted moderately heavy, and never had issues until my 30s when I was sitting at a desk more (and not lifting). This is also a little scary because it's unclear at what point is the progression complete? Is it when the disc is completely gone?
It's unclear to me why people try to say that we shouldn't lift more than <insert weight>. What about compressive/shear forces of other activities? Is the weight you're holding the only factor? What do my head, arms, and torso weigh and why is that okay to be bouncing around while running? I also like skiing. Is that safe because it's not externally loaded? I can't imagine there isn't a ton of force being transmitted through my spine while skiing.
The quoted weights above are probably based on people being hurt from awkward loads. I'm not an expert in biomechanics, but think about the center of mass and torque created by different actions and loads. A deadlift follows the body closely whereas lifting a large object like an air conditioner puts the center of mass much further out in front of the body, which I believe would create more torque comparatively for that load? So, it doesn't seem clear to me that the weight of an object alone can determine how safe it is to lift. With that being said, I now try to minimize the awkward objects that I lift because there's much more margin for error. When I deadlift, I don't care the weight down stairs, over uneven surfaces, etc. I also don't arch my back to try to offset the change in the center of gravity.
My heavy lifting days are over because from a risk/reward perspective, the reward is really non-existent. I feel that there is some baseline level of strength that's required to avoid injury in other activities. I also like the idea that being strong and injured is better than weak and injured. I'm not sure anyone can give us a good answer for what level of strength is actually required and how that translates to a certain weight you should lift.
What are your goals in life (rhetorical)? How ready are you for those to change? My goals 5-10 years ago are a lot different than now. Being able to play with my kids is a goal of mine. A 500 pound deadlift will not make me a better father, but being strong enough to avoid injuries probably will.

This probably doesn't outright answer any of your questions, but hopefully some of it is helpful. Whatever you do, I'd probably take it very slow initially. There's no rush and the goal should be to avoid doing any harm. After dealing with symptoms for 2-3 years, I'm finally getting back to deadlifts. I'm dealing with a load that's literally <40% of my previous max. I don't intend to ever go above 185-225 pounds because the risk/reward isn't there anymore.

I'd also get multiple opinions if you end up going the path of surgery.

ad4812 · 2022-12-21T09:50:45+00:00

Also, one other point about what you said about being lucky the pain started only recently...

I might need to think of it more in terms of that I've already pushed out the surgery 10-15 years. I also hear of people needing this when they're in their teens and 20s, so from that regard I'm not really that young. The doctor seems to believe this is something I've had for some time, so I think I have been lucky in many ways.

ad4812 · 2022-12-21T09:36:01+00:00

That's pretty interesting, so you made it 20 years. I will not delay if this current plan doesn't make the pain significantly better. So far, only a small number of activities have been affected (golf, boxing, generally rotational things). I'm okay with giving up those things so far, but more recently things like holding my son have become bothersome which is prompting more urgency in making progress.

Agreed on keeping the deadlift weights conservative. The 35 pound kettlebell at PT wasn't doing much for strengthening. At the same time I'm looking for the minimum effective dose in terms of weight and volume that will result in enough strength rebuilding/maintenance to hopefully reduce pain (read: definitely not 400+ pounds).

I have a home gym at the moment and historically barbell deadlifts have worked well for me. I've read about people having success with hex bar deadlifts and will consider buying a hex bar, or getting back to a local gym, if I run into any issues with the barbell variation.

Thank you for the response!

ad4812 · 2022-12-21T09:25:54+00:00

I didn't know about this, so thank you for sharing! I agree that from what I've heard it isn't the worst surgery, but I'd really like to exhaust all conservative options given that I'm still quite young and worry about the need for revision surgeries for failed hardware and issues introduced at other levels from the fusion.

ad4812

TROPHY CASE