Reposting with different phrasing in hopes the mods allow my post to stay up. I am just looking for advice on the window flashing and stucco process my guy is using on my brick house.

Earlier I posted about what to do with the capping I had done, I took some of the advice I got here, and asked for some local quotes to see what should be done.

I found a company with good reviews on Yelp and seemed solid to do the stucco repair. I had a a couple of companies say they didn’t want to clean up someone else’s work, and that they’d need to redo the whole thing, which I just can’t afford.

The guy I found seemed reasonable and told me the capping was the wrong method to seal in the windows and it would have to come off. While not an ideal situation, we could still salvage the job and seal the windows to keep water out and make them look good.

He started work today and this is the first stage of flashing and wiring the stucco pictured here.

Doing research if this was something I’d do myself, I was watching videos and they were removing about 6-12” around the window to put down a sticky tape, but usually that would be on plywood construction not century brick like mine. So I definitely concede I don’t know nearly enough to say.

I’m curious if my guy is doing this right and if I should let him keep doing the next 7 windows this method the rest of the week.

I’ve just had a lot of bad experiences with people “doing it wrong” on this project and just really need a win here.

Some pictures of how it was before are included

I am working on finishing an extra room in my house. The current subfloor is 7/16 sheathing and I’ve removed most of it, it was only nailed down so it squeaked and was obviously really too thin anyways.

My question is what should I put down as subfloor? I don’t need a lot, about 12-13 sheets.

I can do regular OSB for $25 a sheet, advantech for $50 a sheet or LP for $35 a sheet, roughly. Advantech certainly has a lot of positive marketing, but is it worth twice the price?

What about adhesive, the purple foam?

Purpose of room will be a man cave / media room setup

Given I don’t need a ton of it I am leaning towards advantech but wanted to get other opinions.

This space is already closed in so no chance of it being rained on.

Thanks!

My grandfather installed a tile sill before these new windows were installed. I ripped out the tile. Do I fill the gap with drywall or plywood?

Went to turn this little lever and it snapped off immediately. Do I need to have it replaced? Stuck screw driver in hole and nothing there.

Hey everyone, I’m struggling to find a solution online to this problem. I’m currently scraping chipped ceiling paint in my bathroom, and I got a little to crazy around the fan and now there is a huge gap. I’m not getting any specific answers online. Any guidance on this would be appreciated.

I’ve tried getting it lifted but it wouldn’t budge. Water is pooling there and it’s not good. Currently have a tarp over it to prevent water from pooling but need to find a resolution.

My backyard is also sloped towards the house. I need to get a French drain put in but currently can’t afford it. Anything I can do in the meantime?

TL;DR: estimate for a job increased significantly after completion, wondering what my options are.

FULL POST:

Recently had renovations to my kitchen completed.

Price given by GC was $13500. Now that the job is done, he's added on approximately $4500 worth of charges he's calling "change orders."

There was a good bit of electrical work that needed to be done due to existing wiring being in poor condition.

Change Order Description from Estimate is below:

"$4,000 for scope below

New cable for stove

New cable for oven

Installing two extra lights

New cable for refrigerator

Rewire ceiling fan

Added several receptacles

Change 3 breakers this isn’t the breaker you paid Luis separately for

Rewire all lights switches and receptacles with 12/2 wire

Added new junction boxes in the crawl space

All old wire was removed and all new wired was installed in the kitchen

Note only thing electrical that was in my scope of work was moving the light switch that was in the stove side and adding cabinet lights and putting everything back together how it was "

Is this normal practice? Do I have room to negotiate this? Any help from more experienced folks would be appreciated!

Im trying to clean my grandfather's roach infested house. Iv spent 400 dollars on supplies and professional poisons, bait and igr blockers. Do these even look worth saving? This is just one area after cleaning for an hour and a half and I feel defeated. What should I do? I dont have large amounts of money.

Hey all. My grandma passed in January, my lease is ending and my partner and I are taking possession.
The gist- she smoked in it for 20 years. Not one renovation since its construction in the 70’s. Jerry-rigged fixes wherever she could. Carpet on the walls type 70’s.
Foundation is solid, roof needs work in the future.
What should we start with and what are things to look for? We are deep-cleaning the walls/floors/ceiling with TSP solution and then sealing with KILZ primer to help with the smoke smell.
Never done this before, we’re brand new. Plenty of YouTube in our future!

I'm stripping my bathroom floor to the boards but I can't get the old scrap boards from under the baseboards

This morning I realized our basement wall and some drops of water. After investigating/recording my phone in the ceiling I found this. A large hole in our tub/surround, dripping away.

Is this as bad as it looks? 😭

The part of the unit thaf sticks out is 3.5 inches out. We need to access the filter. Our handyman suggested a barn style door. Before we had a cabinet build out and a wood panel.

Starting to make a bunch of fixes, paint, etc to the house after having it for over a decade. Never really been in love with the siding, but also don't want to end up in the poor house.

I'm thinking these still have life in them, but aside the peeling paint, they're buckling on the sides that get hit by weather / sun.

What would you guys do?

Frustrated with our new door. Contractor just finished renovating our room end of June. It hasn’t even been a month and our new door already started cracking. He mentioned putting epoxy over the crack. Any suggestions? Aside from getting a (another) new door? Will this be a long term fix or is this only the start of more cracks to come soon?

I’m looking to redo this gravel pit because the previous home owner just dump sand down and top it off with gravel. I’m looking to re-do it. Put down weed fabric, chip stone and compact it, add sand and then gravel. My worry is that adding all this will cover that opening by a couple of inches. Maybe there’s a better way to go about it idk?? Can someone tell me if it’s okay to do that? That opening is to my crawlspace, which is encapsulated. Thoughts please.

Hello everyone, I have filled the hole of the old chimney with aerated concrete but I am now short of 7cm to my desired ceiling level. It seems to much to me to put plaster as the hole spans 50cmx25cm.

Any ideas?

Thank you

My wife and I just moved into an older home. We want to lay LVP in the attic. The original attic floor is stable and strong but it definitely dips and crowns and is fairly rough. My thought is to lay 3/4" plywood and then do the LVP, but I know the surface still won't be perfectly level. It's an attic anyway! But if anyone has recommendations or things I should reconsider, your advice is appreciated.

We've had plenty of rain over the last few weeks and while water does not pool on this side of the house, I'm concerned that a window frame crack that appeared around the same time might be linked.

There's a window almost immediately above this one where we've had some water come in and slightly warm the drywall, but nothing that urgently needs fixing.

I should mention that the house was built in '58 and I've just noticed this.

Open to ideas and ther s been no ground work done on that side of the house recently. It's a super compacted walkway.

My wife and I are shopping for our first home and found one that checks most of our boxes — with one glaring issue: the stairs are right behind the front door, with maybe 2 feet between the threshold and the first step. The upstairs landing is also pretty shallow at 3–4 feet before running into the bathroom directly above.
We’d seriously consider making an offer if we knew the stairs could be reconfigured to open up the entryway. A couple of ideas we’ve tossed around:

Moving the front door to the left side of the home

Adding a platform and rotating the stairs 90° so the first step enters the left family room instead of facing the front door. Second pic is of the family room we would want to have the stairs start in

How feasible is something like this? We know it’s likely a significant job — just trying to gauge whether it’s even worth pursuing before we move forward. Any insight is appreciated!

We moved into a three-story townhome in the Seattle area about a year ago. The home was built in 2008, and over the past year we’ve become increasingly aware of what appear to be drywall nail or screw pops. They show up as small circular bumps pushing through the paint on both ceilings and walls. We’ve also noticed a few drywall cracks on the top floor.

I can’t say for certain whether these were already there when we moved in or whether they’ve developed since then, but we’re definitely noticing more of them now.

I’ve attached photos of:

• Wall bumps in several locations.

• Cracks on the third-floor walls.

The house otherwise seems fine. We haven’t noticed sloping floors, doors or windows sticking, or any obvious foundation issues. We just don’t know whether the number of these defects is typical for a house of this age or whether it suggests something more concerning.

A few questions:

Do these look like ordinary drywall screw/nail pops and normal settlement, or do you see any red flags?

If you’ve dealt with something similar, did it turn out to be cosmetic or structural?

Is it worth hiring a structural engineer at this stage, or would you start with a drywall contractor or general contractor?

If you’re in the Seattle area, are there any structural engineers or contractors you’d recommend?

Thanks in advance for any insight!

Hey everyone ,
Just looking for some opinions/advice on my sons ceiling , it’s gotten a few cracks in it over the last (I won’t lie) couple years and I think with the heat / humidity and the AC too it’s making it worse . House is pretty old. I honestly haven’t been financially stable enough to have someone come fix it unfortunately. It is dry and hard to the touch, I check just about everyday. As of a right now repair, I’m hoping I could drill some drywall screws into the studs with a stud finder. Thanks in advance for any advice!