Home Improvement/Remodel Thread

[vike daddy]

On 9/25/2018 at 6:22 AM, The Gnat said:

Spent 40 minutes yesterday trying to saw through one of the posts from the fence, there was absolutely no way to pull it since the cement it's put in is under another slab of cement. Took me a while, trying to figure out why I wasn't getting to a hollow center, because when they set it in the cement the cement went up the pipe a few inches. Time to borrow a friends grinder to cut through it.

you probably will need a grinder, yes. but you could also cut the fence post first above where you think the concrete is and then whack the metal stub multiple times with a sledge to hopefully dislodge and loosen up the concrete.

[Heimdallr]

4 hours ago, vike daddy said:

you probably will need a grinder, yes. 

man I thought I clicked into the Relationship thread and got REALLY confused.

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

This seems like a good place to ask these questions.

My girlfriend and I are closing on a house and want to put in new flooring and get the entire place painted before we move in.

My question for y'all is how should we go about measuring how much flooring we need and when should we purchase/order it? We are closing on October 12 and have to move in no later than November 1. Should we wait until closing to measure everything out and order, or is that too short of a time frame?

[theJ]

2 hours ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

My question for y'all is how should we go about measuring how much flooring we need and when should we purchase/order it? We are closing on October 12 and have to move in no later than November 1. Should we wait until closing to measure everything out and order, or is that too short of a time frame?

@vike daddy can probably give some good advice here.

Are you moving in before you do the flooring, or do you need it done before you move in?

I'd check into what the lead time is for the flooring you need.  If it can get there in between closing and moving (and install if that needs done too), then i'd wait until then.  If you can't wait that long, read the fine print on the return policy.  Most stores give you 30 or 90 days for returns, and after that returns are on store credit only.  Just in case the closing doesn't go through.

As for how much to order, measure the floor and calculate the area.  Add 10% for random small cutoffs and miss-cuts.  You can usually return un-opened boxes.

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

13 minutes ago, theJ said:

@vike daddy can probably give some good advice here.

Are you moving in before you do the flooring, or do you need it done before you move in?

I'd check into what the lead time is for the flooring you need.  If it can get there in between closing and moving (and install if that needs done too), then i'd wait until then.  If you can't wait that long, read the fine print on the return policy.  Most stores give you 30 or 90 days for returns, and after that returns are on store credit only.  Just in case the closing doesn't go through.

As for how much to order, measure the floor and calculate the area.  Add 10% for random small cutoffs and miss-cuts.  You can usually return un-opened boxes.

The plan is to do the flooring and painting before we move in. We're having myself and my girflriend's dad (who is a construction contractor) install it, so installation shouldn't be an issue. I'm worried that if we wait too long it's not going to arrive on time and we'll be SOL. Also I'm worried about how to properly measure how much sq. footage we need since our place isn't exactly just squares lol

[theJ]

7 minutes ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

The plan is to do the flooring and painting before we move in. We're having myself and my girflriend's dad (who is a construction contractor) install it, so installation shouldn't be an issue. I'm worried that if we wait too long it's not going to arrive on time and we'll be SOL. Also I'm worried about how to properly measure how much sq. footage we need since our place isn't exactly just squares lol

Ah, gotcha.  So what i would do is draw out the floor plan and divide it into as many squares as you can on paper.  That should make it easier to visualize where you need measurements.  From there it's just multiplication and addition.

These stores are usually pretty good with their lead times these days.  So if they say 3 days, it's 90% chance it's really 3 days.  Just see what it is before hand.  Tricky thing is that sometimes it changes...

Like i said, if you want to be safe, just check the return policy.  I get the big boxes mixed up sometimes, but i want to say Home Depot has a 90 day return policy.  After that, you get store credit only.  I think Menards is 90 days as well.

 

EDIT: actually that second sentence should say as few squares as possible.

Edited September 27, 2018 by theJ

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

2 minutes ago, theJ said:

Ah, gotcha.  So what i would do is draw out the floor plan and divide it into as many squares as you can on paper.  That should make it easier to visualize where you need measurements.  From there it's just multiplication and addition.

These stores are usually pretty good with their lead times these days.  So if they say 3 days, it's 90% chance it's really 3 days.  Just see what it is before hand.  Tricky thing is that sometimes it changes...

Like i said, if you want to be safe, just check the return policy.  I get the big boxes mixed up sometimes, but i want to say Home Depot has a 90 day return policy.  After that, you get store credit only.  I think Menards is 90 days as well.

 

EDIT: actually that second sentence should say as few squares as possible.

Thanks for the replies J.

Home Depot is where we were looking at flooring at, but I was going to start shopping around some local places to see if there's better deals or more selection or anything. We're looking for a specific type of engineered hardwood/laminate (pad on the back + designed to be placed over concrete). But I particularly like your idea of visualizing everything into squares. I'll do that and that should really help out the estimates!

[vike daddy]

15 hours ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

Thanks for the replies J.

Home Depot is where we were looking at flooring at, but I was going to start shopping around some local places to see if there's better deals or more selection or anything. We're looking for a specific type of engineered hardwood/laminate (pad on the back + designed to be placed over concrete). But I particularly like your idea of visualizing everything into squares. I'll do that and that should really help out the estimates!

that's really making the equation in to something more complicated than it needs to be.

first of all, if your father in law is a building contractor, then why isn't he helping you with calculating what you need instead of us schleps? 

measure up the floor area, calculating it in to square feet. c'mon, that requires an understanding of 7th grade arithmetic. then multiply that times a waste factor, which is usually around 3-8%, depending on whether the floor area has a lot of oddness and angles to it or is straight forward.

you'll also need trim pieces where the new flooring meets up with carpet or other disimilar flooring materials. do you have a stairway to do also? Home Depot can help you with all this if you provide them a rough diagram of the layout.

with engineered flooring, it's also crucial that the flooring be purchased and then stored in the rooms where it's going to be installed for at least several days prior to installation, so it can acclimate to the house's humidity level. so that also means when you stack the boxes of flooring in the rooms you leave air spaces between them for circulation. do NOT open the boxes though.

 

[skywlker32]

19 hours ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

This seems like a good place to ask these questions.

My girlfriend and I are closing on a house and want to put in new flooring and get the entire place painted before we move in.

My question for y'all is how should we go about measuring how much flooring we need and when should we purchase/order it? We are closing on October 12 and have to move in no later than November 1. Should we wait until closing to measure everything out and order, or is that too short of a time frame?

Something you really want to make sure is that purchasing the flooring before closing won't affect your ability to close. They monitor everything you spend leading up to closing and I believe 72 hours after. You may have a plan for this, but I just wanted to make sure you thought through this because I am going through my own home purchase and was told to limit big spending unless necessary.

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

1 hour ago, vike daddy said:

that's really making the equation in to something more complicated than it needs to be.

first of all, if your father in law is a building contractor, then why isn't he helping you with calculating what you need instead of us schleps? 

measure up the floor area, calculating it in to square feet. c'mon, that requires an understanding of 7th grade arithmetic. then multiply that times a waste factor, which is usually around 3-8%, depending on whether the floor area has a lot of oddness and angles to it or is straight forward.

you'll also need trim pieces where the new flooring meets up with carpet or other disimilar flooring materials. do you have a stairway to do also? Home Depot can help you with all this if you provide them a rough diagram of the layout.

with engineered flooring, it's also crucial that the flooring be purchased and then stored in the rooms where it's going to be installed for at least several days prior to installation, so it can acclimate to the house's humidity level. so that also means when you stack the boxes of flooring in the rooms you leave air spaces between them for circulation. do NOT open the boxes though.

To your first question - valid point. I guess it's easier for me to ask this over the interwebs with a keyboard rather than texting it because they also live six hours away from us. I can do the measurements, I just don't have any actual diagrams or anything of the house itself, and won't be able to physically get in there and measure until we close.

We weren't planning on doing the main stairway or the upstairs just yet. Just the main floor for now.

Yep, my plan was to buy whatever and then have it ready to be installed and sitting in the dining/living room until installation!

49 minutes ago, skywlker32 said:

Something you really want to make sure is that purchasing the flooring before closing won't affect your ability to close. They monitor everything you spend leading up to closing and I believe 72 hours after. You may have a plan for this, but I just wanted to make sure you thought through this because I am going through my own home purchase and was told to limit big spending unless necessary.

They haven't given me those same instructions, but that definitely makes sense. Long story short, the funds for the down payment / closing / flooring are coming from an inherited IRA that I've already taken the funds out of.

[skywlker32]

1 hour ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

They haven't given me those same instructions, but that definitely makes sense. Long story short, the funds for the down payment / closing / flooring are coming from an inherited IRA that I've already taken the funds out of.

I would contact your realtor/mortgage lender to see if it could complicate the process. I just know they closely watch your accounts because my "hand money" check hit after I submitted pretty much all of my documents and I had to update a bunch of account info because of it.

[Hockey5djh]

1 hour ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

They haven't given me those same instructions, but that definitely makes sense. Long story short, the funds for the down payment / closing / flooring are coming from an inherited IRA that I've already taken the funds out of.

@skywlker32 isn't wrong. If they're using that IRA as part of the calculations on the house then it would affect the purchase. Honestly I'd just wait until after you close to make the purchase since you have a couple weeks between closing and moving in. Knock out the painting first and do the floor after that then move into a freshly painted and floored house.

Edited September 28, 2018 by Hockey5djh

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

12 minutes ago, skywlker32 said:

I would contact your realtor/mortgage lender to see if it could complicate the process. I just know they closely watch your accounts because my "hand money" check hit after I submitted pretty much all of my documents and I had to update a bunch of account info because of it.

 

7 minutes ago, Hockey5djh said:

@skywlker32 isn't wrong. If they're using that IRA as part of the calculations on the house then it would affect the purchase. Honestly I'd just wait until after you close to make the purchase since you have a couple weeks between closing and moving in. Knock out the painting first and do the floor after that then move into a freshly painted and floored house.

Yeah I'll probably do this. I haven't made any large purchases since we accepted their offer, and aside from moving the funds from my IRA to a newly opened account, there hasn't been much movement in my funds. I'm already providing them a comprehensive statement showing the account opening + checks being deposited and cleared, so I should be good there.

@vike daddy (or anyone else): Without being on premises, how do you calculate the square footage of common areas. The listing of the house shows Dining/Living/Kitchen sq footage, but not the hallways leading to such areas, or the main hallway at the top of our stairs. Do I just need to calculate that on-site?

[theJ]

14 hours ago, vike daddy said:

measure up the floor area, calculating it in to square feet. c'mon, that requires an understanding of 7th grade arithmetic. then multiply that times a waste factor, which is usually around 3-8%, depending on whether the floor area has a lot of oddness and angles to it or is straight forward.

 

14 hours ago, vike daddy said:

rough diagram of the layout

I think this is what i said, lol.  Just without the condescension.  

10 hours ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

@vike daddy (or anyone else): Without being on premises, how do you calculate the square footage of common areas. The listing of the house shows Dining/Living/Kitchen sq footage, but not the hallways leading to such areas, or the main hallway at the top of our stairs. Do I just need to calculate that on-site?

You may just have to swag it.  No scientific way to do it without some sort of measurement.

[vike daddy]

20 hours ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

Do I just need to calculate that on-site?

yup.