I’d like to hear from fellow CD members if you have embarked on challenging home improvement projects. I enjoy working on such projects; however, my skills are limited and I am looking to hear from others’ experiences. My sources for learning have so far been my co-workers and YouTube.

My recent projects:

1. Deck clean and stain – my deck was severely weathered and dirty. Used Olympic brand cleaner (available at Lowe’s) to get the grime off the deck. That was a 2 hour job with my wife and son helping wash away the cleaner. The cleaner does a great job with a day and night difference once the deck is cleaned. Let the deck dry thoroughly before applying the wood stain. I estimated about 12 hours of labor to get the stain done, with the time consuming part being the railings.

2. Fixed sprinkler heads – I had a couple of sprinkler heads, one of which was broken and the other was fanning all over. This fix turned out to be easier than I imagined. I found replacement canisters on Amazon – five for $20. Then, all I had to do was to dig up about a foot diameter around the canister head until you reach the main or flexible lead line. Once you spot the elbow, or the straight connector, you unscrew the old canister, clean the threads, and screw in the new canister. Backfill with dirt and cover it up with grass, and you are set. It was a 20 minute work.

3. Brick paver repair – A section of my paver walkway had lifted up during winter due to ice under the pavers. I chiseled away the jointing compound that held the bricks and pulled them out. The base is mostly play-sand that is packed in. In my case, there was a plastic perforated pipe running underneath, which may have contributed to the freezing. So, I had to cut that away, repack with play-sand, level the surface, and re-lay the bricks. For now, I used play sand as jointing material. However, I plan on getting the proper jointing compound and cement the bricks together. This project worth only 6 or 7 paver bricks took me almost 1.5 hours since I messed up while leveling the sand surface, and had to redo.

My future projects – apply wet-look sealer on the paver walkway, try my hand at crown molding (rehearsal/practice in the garage), and finish the garage floor with peel resistant epoxy paint.

Anyone have interesting projects?

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Dimple2001

Background:

I consider DIY is something that you do it yourself (at times taking professional assistance) to make a property looking better than before and more functional. With that presumption, I am writing this down.


Before I started looking for houses, I spent extensive time in collecting various functional and decorative specs (not much technical aspect). 18ft ceiling in the family room, kitchen(with a pantry) over looking the family room, a small setup for kids to sit and study in the area connecting kitchen and family room then a secluded office in the ground floor to assist my work from home business and the most important factor Location.

With these constraints, I was able to secure one spotless, well maintained house which was short of one bedroom, before I could make a decision, some one just jumped ahead and snatched the property from me leaving me really sweating.

The next house came to the market in the area fit the bill from Functional point of view but was very poorly managed with speaker wires hanging, shabby carpet, poor illumination, strong cooking odor, dated curtains, cheap faucets etc., etc., over the years I learnt that the location and lay out is something you can't change, and invariably you could touch everything else. My real estate agent is a good friend of mine, who even discouraged me to buy the house. But looking at the trend of very limited houses of this spec hitting the market and blood thirsty (walking dead series kind of) buyers, I decided to take a plunge and did quite a research in 90 days (before the closing) to facelift the house.

The major DYI part I did is, I wrote the specs what to do where.

1. Installed potlights. (prof assistance)
2. Extensively researched furniture and bought them, even used assistance to set them up after my body started giving up with this non stop assembling.
3. Compromised my preference of wooden furniture to trendy cotton based furniture .
4. Installed curios with decors (chasing the items to fit in the curios was a challenge).
5. Replaced builder lights with some chandeliers and semi flush mounts.
6. Changed certain vanities.
7. Faucets in the kitchen and powder room changed to modern looking one.
8. Non conventional looking console tables were installed (2).
9. Got rid of the 7 ft bookshelf and switched to wider but shorter bookshelf to open up the space.
10. Spent 2 months to finally find a clock to fit in the 18ft celing, the clock had 3.5 ft diameter.
11. Floating shelves installed where needed.
12. Relied on sun burst mirrors (big for the family room), small for consoles and few hometrend based 1 ft sunburst mirrors to various places.
13. Shopped appropriately themed wall art (Bot appetit / Mocha / Capucino themes to kitchen), different themes to living, some modern arts for staircase, kids room, guest room, our bedroom, study room etc., etc.,
14. Shopped many desk plants, floor plants.
15. Paid special attention to the coffee table / side tables in the living room.
16. Remodeled the washroom with the installation of extra light in the middle, installed many spa looking elements including wood / glass combo stools with hand made soaps, fancy shelves, wall decors.
17. Uplifted the laundry room with appropriately themed arts.
18. Paid special attention to the table top items (living room side tables), spent lot of time going back and forth to the Bombay store in GTA.
19. Picked many handicraft stuff from pacific mall and many other chinese malls.
20. Changed the exterior lights to fancy looking lights.
21. Redid the backyard with Gazebo and backyard furniture. The previous owner had interlocking installed, so it was easy to make the gazebo sit on top of it. Used some decorative rugs and some temporary potted tropical plants (palm tree, my fav).
Did few more stuff but we could stop here.

After 6 months of work, the previous owner visited the place and they gave a very honest opinion about complete transformation and the expression was same from realtor friend.
Some of our friends have allocated some budget, seeking my assistance to give a face lift to their house, I feel very recognized with their request.

My previous house had a 22 x 12 cedar deck, I missed the first two years but later I maintained the same way you said, wood prep and then stain, same I did with the fencing. It made a huge difference.

House decor is my passion but I am not as handy as I should be. I got a handyman assisting for the past 5-6 years esp.., in installing those thick 1.5 inch curtain rods and curtain from 18ft height and many more.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
The cowards never started,
The weak died on the way,
Only the strong arrived.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yK1i9cLAMM

Good feedback. I am hoping to hear the tricks, trials and tribulations when completing some projects, in the hopes of learning something new. For example, one of my toilets has a water saver system and hence is not the regular flush mechanism inside the tank. When I had a water leak problem, it took me a while to understand the mechanism, take it apart, and find the correct replacement part.

Has anyone taken down wallpaper? I understand it is a pain in the rear end, but any tricks you may have discovered while enduring the misery?

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Dimple2001

Quote:

---

Originally posted by dimple2001

Has anyone taken down wallpaper? I understand it is a pain in the rear end, but any tricks you may have discovered while enduring the misery?

---

My Recent DIYs
- Faux Painting in family room - great success, friends praise it, wife loves it.
- Kids room painted in two colors - orange and green.
- Changed toilet flush tank.. this was tricky but made it after few attempts. many visits to home depot.
- Installed smart occupancy sensor switches in kids room and kitchen. Planning to do same laundry , closet and washrooms.
- I have played around a lot with led lights. wife took them off :-( .

Lot many projects pending, lack of time + too much into merry making.

Gardening(including raking) is free gym membership for you. Plus you can enjoy the spring-summer-fall seasons outdoors. Shoveling would take take of the winter outdoor workouts.

Have you tried wood-working? It is worth a visit to community/summer college if you are interested in it and do not have friends to guide you. I learnt a few tricks from my neighbour. He had power-tools and a well setup garage, so it was much easier.

Made his own dining tables, chairs, beds and even a bariatric chair for his obese relative. Applying colour(acid/chemicals) to the wood can be pretty messy, so buying polished wood is an easier alternative. Attaching/putting the cushion on was the trickiest part.

You can even make decorative pieces for your drawing room to begin with and it does not require power tools.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by san-hugo


- I have played around a lot with led lights. wife took them off :-( .

---

Recent project : Fence painting with stain. Fence looks beautiful and is much more water resistant.

Next project : Painting garage door and porch / sealing driveway.

Thinking about making a paver path myself on the side of the house, however this one seems daunting. Seen a lot of youtube videos and feeling a bit more confident, however I'm still hovering between doing this myself or getting a contractor.

I have to say, they're very gratifying when they come out nicely.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Are you there?