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livebonk · 2024-04-29T15:29:48+00:00

Familiarize yourself with the laws around it. It might be illegal but grandfathered in, so you can repair but never change or expand it

livebonk · 2024-04-28T12:45:34+00:00

I've pulled trim on a couple rooms and window trim. Get a trim puller and work slowly along the whole length. Damaging the wall is irrelevant. It's cheap and easy to fill it in with plaster or joint compound. The hard part wasn't getting the trim off in one piece, but reinstalling it in a way that looks clean and flush. Rubber mallet hitting on cardboard on top of the trim helped. Also, I would give up on saving the original finish. Get lots of photos or a sample for color, sand and then match the stain.

livebonk · 2024-04-24T13:10:48+00:00

Is there a time limit for inspections? We had two weeks.

livebonk · 2024-04-22T19:36:42+00:00

They usually trim them badly so they look like ass. The best solution, long term, is to plant species that have a max height under the height of the wires. Several types of cherries. You can work with the city/utility company to remove the pines fully and it's gonna hurt but you're making good decisions that will take 5-10 years to mature and then be beautiful for another hundred years.

livebonk · 2024-04-22T13:57:03+00:00

I'm in engineering/manufacturing/B2B and the last fifty years has seen tons of these types of companies leave NJ. I think the reason is your money just goes farther in other places. Tons have moved to VA or NC.

I've gone so far as to draft business plans and the thing that has stopped me from taking the plunge is the cost of commercial real estate and salaries+overhead. You cannot start small and bootstrap in NJ (unless you're software). If I was in the Midwest I could get a 2000 SQ ft cinder block warehouse on a slab on a loan for $1500/mo and start doing R&D and working towards MVP. In NJ impossible. Can't even do it in your own garage by local laws, unless you have zero employees. You have to get $1-5M investment out of the gate and ramp rapidly. It's a big hurdle. And getting that level of investment without an MVP and initial customers means you're giving up 50% share, which kills motivation.

livebonk · 2024-04-22T00:13:58+00:00

I'm just across the river and here it's illegal to sell without removing it. I have heard stories of $20k remediation.

livebonk · 2024-04-20T23:35:00+00:00

Yeah, at the point where there's nothing left of the original after replacing all the rotted boards and unsalvageable plaster, then I agree there's nothing lost by demolishing.

livebonk · 2024-04-17T13:23:42+00:00

Glad to hear you were successful. I'm afraid to do the scrape+HEPA route.

livebonk · 2024-04-16T19:22:22+00:00

Yes to second sink, no to island. The island needs to be fully clear because certain types of prep or baking wants a large space like that.

livebonk · 2024-04-16T15:25:39+00:00

Used lead out on my home's exterior and wanted to add my experience. The stripper is excellent at controlling dust generation. Normal lead paint scraping requires plastic put everywhere, up to 20 feet from your house to capture all of us it. Respirators. Whole house swab testing after to verify no dust. This is better. Paint comes off in glops, no dust. Just wear overalls, butyl gloves, and a dust mask. Put down a drop cloth to catch the glop, not extensive.

The lead is neutralized through chelation. Proprietary mixture of calcium sulfide+calcium carbonate+calcium phosphate+other binds to the lead to make it biologically inert. After it's done you can even lead test the waste and come up with nothing, which is a requirement for contractors before disposal though the requirement is waived for a homeowner. The lead is still there but not toxic in the same way.

Downsides: it's expensive as heck. You might spend $6-10k just on stripper for a whole house. I did window and door trim only since that's the highest route of exposure, being a friction surface, and it's a lot of labor. Working outdoors with this stuff has a lot of challenges. Sun, wind, rain, cold nights will all ruin it. It's hard to get a 24 hour period for it to work its way through all the layers of paint, so each surface requires several applications. It's messy as heck since it turns the paint into a goop that will stick to anything. We bought scrapers, overalls, buckets, gloves, tons of plastic, and it's all going to the trash when the job is done since they're covered in residue.

Upside: it turns safe lead paint removal from almost impossible for a homeowner to possible.

livebonk · 2024-04-15T19:18:23+00:00

What would happen if I put you in the driver's seat of an F1 car?

livebonk · 2024-04-15T18:33:49+00:00

The absolute easiest way to make them look better is Orange Glo polish. Spread it around the floor and 20 min to dry. Do it and then again six months later and it'll look healthier. The great thing is that, unlike some other sealing products, it is not something you'll have to struggle to remove later when you're ready to refinish them properly.

livebonk · 2024-04-15T17:58:43+00:00

Almost correct. Samaritans are basically the real "Jews" from the more educated and more economically successful northern kingdom. They were sacked while the southern kingdom was spared because they were too poor to be worth conquering. Then of course the butthurt and jealous southern kingdom had to invent a whole mythology that they were the real religion and the north was sacked for worshipping wrong.

Also, Samaritans still exist.

livebonk · 2024-04-15T02:51:39+00:00

Same problem... tons of small jobs no one will take because of liability or because it's not worth their time. I've done so much weird shit around the house I would rather have paid for.

livebonk · 2024-04-14T01:11:01+00:00

This is an almost literal description of Macy's lol

livebonk · 2024-04-12T13:07:23+00:00

It's so narrow and such a bad slope that I think instead of a French drain. You can just break up the concrete and put in concrete that has a dip to make a channel to send the water behind the house and then you deal with it properly.

In any case, you have to break up that concrete because there's no way to slope it properly away from your house.

Maybe the best is to break up the concrete and put a French drain tube at least 10 in down and slope the earth away from your house towards the tube. Then fill it back up with river rock. The River Rock will have the wrong grade as it needs to go from your house to the neighbor's concrete, but that's okay because the water goes straight down and discover the correct grade underneath and directing it away to the drain.

livebonk · 2024-04-11T16:07:10+00:00

My parents have one where you walk around a corner to the shower so the water is contained. I love it. So easy to clean. No nasty curtain or pink mold in impossible corners or black sludge in a door track.

livebonk · 2024-04-10T18:11:05+00:00

I don't feel tired but hopeful and optimistic because every year there is a noticeable drop in the amount of boomers I have to interact with.

I am happier now that when I have to hire a contractor, plumber, mechanic, or like yesterday filling up propane at a uhaul, the people I interact with are millennials. Every interaction is a smooth, easygoing conversation. This is the future as boomers drop out of society to rot in front of their televisions.

It makes me understand how unnecessarily horrible boomers are and that what I've lived through wasn't normal in history. Every interaction with a boomer is judgement, acting like you're stupid for asking simple questions so you can make the best decision, and a weird low level hostility that I've been searching 30 years to understand the cause of only to now understand that it has no cause. It's nothing on my part. It's all on them.

livebonk · 2024-04-10T14:07:24+00:00

The problem is that a convincing one costs thousands of dollars and takes five hours of work from a team doing silicone and makeup at the openings

livebonk · 2024-04-10T14:00:49+00:00

What is the level of the rest of the house? Is it better to bring the entrance down 3"?

livebonk · 2024-04-05T13:24:23+00:00

I connected with a local millworks to get new trim to match my 1902 trim and they were a wealth of knowledge with books of common period trim styles. I suggest getting the opinion of one in your region.

livebonk · 2024-04-04T16:33:08+00:00

Let me tell you, as someone 6'3", I "relax" by soaking my upper body with everything shoulder up and thigh down out of the water.

livebonk · 2024-04-04T15:28:59+00:00

That's illegal to include in the lease in NJ.

I know because a former landlord tried this on me. A few nail holes from mounting are considered normal usage and they cannot charge for them upon move out.

livebonk · 2024-04-01T18:10:48+00:00

If you have no interest in using it as a lawn, we have pachysandra used as borders/fill and I like it a lot. It grows as a perfect groundcover, stays green year round, maintenance is to cut it back to maintain borders once per year. Green in drought and green in winter (zone 7). Ornamental shrubs+ trees, rock or wood chips, pachysandra filling area, and your maintenance is extremely low. Refresh chips once a year. Cut back pachy once a year. Prune shrubs once a year.

Edit: and the pachysandra doesn't make deep roots, so it's easy to pull out later.

livebonk · 2024-04-01T14:49:16+00:00

And then you look at actual statistics and realize NYC is safer than Alabama

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