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Deck project is complete! They finished all the railing, and they are super sturdy.
All new railings
Yesterday the got 2 sets of balusters up, and the finished look looks SO good
They also were able to work with the siding and replicate what was there when the vinyl siding went up, looks perfect.
And here's the finished product!
All brand new, and looks so nice
It's nice having it all rebuilt and sturdy, knowing that it will last now
And here is where they tied into the siding on the other end
The stairs all finished
And here's a couple pictures from the back. I will need to powerwash the remaining paint off the lower beams before we stain it, but for now it's whatever.
The plan is to stain it the same color/stain as the fence so it all matches in the fall or spring
Looks really nice and man, you've spent a fortune on wood lately. I may have missed it but any plans to put some sort of "waterproofing" sheet under the deck to keep the entry door area dry? I guess it's just the play space but I saw a YT'er did it and made for a nice area under.
Looks really nice and man, you've spent a fortune on wood lately. I may have missed it but any plans to put some sort of "waterproofing" sheet under the deck to keep the entry door area dry? I guess it's just the play space but I saw a YT'er did it and made for a nice area under.
Yes we do plan to do that, my Father-In-Law did that to his deck and we're planning to do the same. It's actually a carport for my wife's car so we'd like to weather proof it as much as possible.
The nosey annoying ones are, they're always staring at my workers and watching everything that we are doing. We've dumped a ton of money on projects in under 2 years, so lots of our neighbors are always interested and come to see what project we are doing next. Most are cool and like seeing the upgrades and improvements and we've gotten tons of compliments on the siding and other projects we've been doing. They know we're not F'ing around with the amount of money we've dropped on the roof, siding, yard, fence, deck, etc that's for sure.
Couple small house updates, I mounted the other 65" in the playroom because the kiddo kept trying to climb the glass shelves of my TV stand, here's a before
Marked the height we wanted
And got the mount screwed into the studs and the TV mounted
Got a free TV stand from a neighbor and baby proofed the edges
Also ran some wire track to hide the wires and clean it up
Also our attic only had an access hole and a piece of plywood so we added a fold down ladder. We had to remove the trim and widen the hole by about a foot and brace with some more 2x4's
The legs had to be cut and shortened
All mounted up!
Finished product, we also put new trim molding around the bigger hole,
Still needs primed and painted, but happy with the ladder addition. It also has a nice gasket seal and some insulation foam so it helps keep the heat in the top floor way better than the piece of plywood that we had before
Looks awesome! Word of advice for painting MDF, make sure you brush on some wood sealer like you would for staining pine or whatever before painting it, especially on the outside edges. Makes the coats of paint go down super easy otherwise MDF just soaks it up and it looks like sh1t.
I miss my old attic ladder, I would put one in in my current home but with the way my bank account is set up trusses run and where the ladder lands in the hallway, I can't do it easily.
Looks awesome! Word of advice for painting MDF, make sure you brush on some wood sealer like you would for staining pine or whatever before painting it, especially on the outside edges. Makes the coats of paint go down super easy otherwise MDF just soaks it up and it looks like sh1t.
Good info thanks, I did some research after reading your post and found a primer that works well with MDF, hoping it will do the trick
Another small project, but an important one, had to add a gate to the stairs on our deck for the little one. This was my FIL's project and it was his design, but I worked with him on every step of the construction.
First step was the framing
The original design, this was not how the final product came out exactly due to an error in measurement, but this was what we were going for.
We cut and angled all the spindles to match what was done on the deck railing
The finished product, due to the difference in height of the 2 sides of the railing we had to make some adjustments, hence the slight gap between the 2x4's, but this thing is super sturdy
Next we added the hinges
And the finished product mounted to the top of the stairs
The final piece was the top railing which we sanded and made super smooth to ensure no splinters would occur
As you can see here the reason for the gap between the 2x4's was due to the difference in height of the 2 posts and the way we had to mount to the 4x4. Not a big deal though, we also had to add a 2x4 on the left side in order to get the gate straight and be able to latch properly
As I mentioned this was not my design so the gap was not my mistake, but I cut some 2x4's to fill in the gap so that it would look as originally intended. This is the view from the stairs coming up. I also sanded the edges smooth so that once stained the gap won't be as noticeable.
Quick and dirty project but very happy with the overall look and function of the gate.
Another small update, one of the dusk to dawn LED lights on the front of the house started crapping out, it was only showing dim and then eventually died all together. These lights were there when we bought the house but weren't even installed properly on the cedar siding, but they were probably the only light fixtures that I liked. Here's a before of the lights properly mounted on the vinyl siding.
We shopped around and couldn't find much that we liked, and nothing at the same larger size, so I ordered a set of these. I feel like the frosted glass helps blend into the gray siding well.
Here's a side by side of the old and new, I wanted to make sure that the new light worked before swapping the working one out.
And here's the side by side at night, everything works good.
And here's the finished product of both being swapped out, the lights are smaller but still are pretty bright at 750 lumens each. I wasn't sure about the smaller lights but I don't mind them now that they're up. The older ones were actually a bit too big.
And here are the new lights all working, they are dusk to dawn and come on and turn off on their own, very happy with the final result.
Nice, the before looks similar to the lights we have on the front of our house, but they aren't automatic.
Have one on the back porch as well, but it's not mounted properly & is tilted outward from the wall
Nice, the before looks similar to the lights we have on the front of our house, but they aren't automatic.
Have one on the back porch as well, but it's not mounted properly & is tilted outward from the wall
Yeah these fixtures were mounted to the cedar siding on an angle tilting outward and that drove me crazy, I was going to cut the siding and install boxes but we did that as part of the vinyl siding install, so nice to have them mounted flush and flat
Yeah, we don't use the back porch too much, yet. Hoping to go get a big table this weekend, since we're hosting Thanksgiving.
Right on man, we discovered that none of our outside lights were mounted with junction boxes, they literally were just a drilled hole with wires and the fixtures were mounted to the cedar siding with wood screws. When we replaced the siding we had all the light fixtures installed and mounted to junction boxes, so at least that's not an issue anymore.
Realized I haven't updated this thread in a while, today is our 3 year anniversary of closing on this house and we've been doing lots of fixes and updates so figured I'd post some updates.
In December and January we had 2 pinhole pipe leaks about 10 feet apart so we had to cut out the wall in the closet and ceiling to replace the bad pipes. (fun times)
This is the ceiling in our entryway....
Both the wall and ceiling had different textures so matching them was a bit of a challenge, but we were able to get pretty close.
And here's the finished product, just needs painted
Another update is in May, we ripped the old mirror off the wall in our daughter's hallway bathroom. The mirror chrome was starting to peel all around the frame, and needed to go.
The mirror was glued to the wall with 40+ globs of construction adhesive
Those holes all had to be patched and sanded... I didn't get any pics except this one, and since we removed the light fixture I got to paint in the dark lol. This was the first coat
06-16-2022, 10:28 AM
, sir.
They're jealous over all of our projects . We've done SO much work on this house in 2 years
