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spezjag

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About spezjag

  • Birthday 12/22/1958

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    No. Virginia

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  1. Fantastic news! So sad for his father to have to sit through both trials - I hope these verdicts bring him some form of peace, even in the face of his loss.
  2. So, do I understand that if I pay shipping, you'll send these to me for no additional cost? If so, can you take them to a UPS Store and let me know what they will charge to pack and ship these to VA? Thanks!
  3. The nasty forty year old padding is almost all up. The ancient glue is taking a far greater effort to pull up, even with copious soaking with the Henry's solvent. In turn, this has put back the next visit by the electrician to clean up the wiring. I re-looked at it in the hope that I could start the framing before then, but upon further consideration realized that the electric clean up really is a critical path to the next step. Bummer.
  4. Wow - even having soaked the old, nasty padding and adhesive with the solvent for several hours (per the instructions), it is tough work scraping that mess off the concrete floor. There are patches that I think will require another soak tomorrow. The good news is that I have received the radiant heat materials, and once the electricians clean up the existing wiring, I am confident that I can make good progress in framing, wiring, and installing the pocket doors.
  5. Okay, so all the ceiling debris has been hauled to the curb and whisked away by the County. I am at one of those points where I am wondering what to do next. Here are my possible courses of action for the weekend: (1) The existing wiring is such a mess that I am thinking that I should bring back the electricians (who installed the new panel shown in the pics), to clean up the existing wiring. I see the wiring clean up as a necessary precursor to not only installing the new wiring (per the diagram above), but this would also allow me to begin framing: - the wall between the small "den" and the bath/laundry room, - the boxes around the new air ducts, and - the wall next to the stairs for the sliding door. (2) I also need to clean all that nasty old rubber padding and adhesive from the old carpet. This is a necessary precursor to leveling the floor, prior to installation of the radiant heating elements and tile. I have ordered the sliding door hardware as well as the bypass door hardware for the cedar closet in the small room (johnsonhardware.com). As I want not only solid, heavy doors, but also the benefit of the ball bearing rollers for that hardware, I sprung for the heaviest-duty kits they offered. Decision: My sense is that I can begin the removal of the floor padding/adhesive without entailing any additional purchases this weekend - I have the adhesive remover (made by a company called Henry's) that is easy to mix with water in a bucket and applied to the floor. This will allow me to then prepare for the next step, leveling the floor, which I think I should do before begining the framing work described above. This schedule will also allow me to schedule the electricians to come back at a time convenient to me (hopefully on MLK Day on Monday, the 18th, when I have a day off from work). More pics to follow!
  6. Thanks for the comments!As to evidence of any water damage, about ten years ago, a supply pipe burst causing some water damage inside the basement, especially to the carpet (as if that needed any help in becoming even more gross), but there is absolutely no evidence of intrusion from the outside. However, to prevent any such intrusion in the future, I planned on applying "red seal" from Home Depot prior to finishing the walls. The walls will get a layer of veneer brick (real brick, with real mortar, but less than half the thickness), with the corners, as shown in the diagram, getting floor to ceiling boxes of dual-layer drywall and green glue. The brick is designed to create the look of antique brick walls, and looks fabulous. At first I was going to drywall the ceiling throughout the entire basement, but when I began pulling sections down in the big room, I discovered that the joists in that room were in great shape (unlike in the small room and bathroom), and opening it up really mitigated the sense of how low the ceiling is. Additionally, the joists run perpendicular to the direction of the sound from the speakers, and I am thinking that for such a small room, this may act as sound treatment, trapping the sound waves and preventing it from being an echo chamber. My concerns are how to block sound intrusion from upstairs, as well as how to do the room lighting. Again, thanks, I appreciate the input and feedback! If I understand correctly, it sounds like you're thinking of leaving the joists exposed in the ceiling. They do look good, but that sound will bleed through like a sieve. As much as it may pain you, I would encourage you to go ahead and "spend the space" on the ceiling and double wall + green glue, you may even run a track perpendicular to the joists to separate the drywall and give another key break.Bass will still be your biggest sound escapee - but it should help out a lot. Depending on the family situation, sound bleed may not be that big a deal. Run a portable radio and go upstairs and hear how much bleed through you get. Then imagine the sound escape of the big setup. Not to hijack at all, but I posted some pics of my ceiling here. https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/145598-addition-theater-room-sound-insulation/page-2 Still not done either, but happy with the progress! Good luck! It looks like you are going to have a wonderful new room on your hands! Congrats! Thanks for the link! I appreciate the feedback.I am a bachelor, and intend on remaining one, so bleed is not much of an issue. However, I gave some thought to sealing the boards between the joists with Duratex or a similar material. I will give your comments serious thought, though. From your link, it is not clear how high your ceilings are; are they less than 8' high?
  7. You, sir, are a genius. Never change. I salute you!
  8. Coytee - Thanks for the input! I like the switch idea, as well as the doubling up. Are those orange outlets the Synergistic Research Teslas? If so, how do you like them?
  9. Thanks for the feedback! Like you note, my plan is to mount the brick directly onto the block wall - the block offers a really solid surface onto which to mount the mortar/veneer brick, and it also eats up less acreage in terms of remaining floor space.
  10. The company I am looking at for the brick veneer is called Eldorado Stone. Most of what they offer is like you have done - creating the appearance of stone walls. However, they also offer a line of veneer brick of various styles. The one I like is called "Roma Brick," and is designed to look like warehouse-style brickwork.
  11. I own a 2005 TJ Rubicon - I love it. I-6, 6-speed transmission. Roll-up windows, a relatively severe vehicle, not designed to cater to the softer crowd. However, with the JKs, once the public got it in their minds that the Rubicon was the high-end Jeep, they morphed into a soccer mom vehicle - something they could haul the kids in without feeling like they had succumbed to a mini-van. No roll-up windows, plusher interiors, overly complicated dashboards, heated seats/steering wheels, stupid three-piece hard top. A few years ago, I tried to get a deal on a stripper 4-door Rubicon, and was basically told they do not exist. Even a vehicle with minimum options came with some sort of "connectivity package" and other things I did not think a Jeep should have. Truth is, I doubt anyone makes a vehicle like my 2005 anymore. =( I will stick with my eleven year old TJ. =) Decide what you want, make a list of things you really like / absolutely do not want, and go shopping.
  12. Thanks! Having a clean palate has certainly made my planning easier! I think a lot of folks in my neighborhood who have re-done their basements have simply covered over the previous mistakes, and so despite having spent a butt-load of money, all they really have is a nice veneer over the bad execution in plumbing and electric from the 1970s. If for no other reason, doing it my way allowed me to clean a ton of dirt, debris, and other garbage from behind the wood paneling walls. I would suspect that in my neighbors' homes, all that crap is still lurking back there. Gross. Speaking of electric, here is my plan for the electric supply going forward: The blue outlets represent 110v, 15 amp outlets, using the standard gauge wiring; these are for things like lamps, vacuum cleaners, computers, phone chargers, etc. The red outlets in the main room represent the discrete electric supply for the audio-video system, on two separate circuits, and are 110 volt, 20 amps, using 10 gauge wiring, with PS Audio hospital-grade outlets. There will also be a separate 240 volt circuit for a two-zone radiant heat set-up that will go under the ceramic tile floor. I found some pics online of architectural renovation projects, of warehouses turned into loft apartments, that show how I want to run galvanized conduit pipes for those outlets, on top of the brick veneer, for a commercial/industrial look. The outlet boxes for five of the six A/V outlets will be exposed on top of the brickwork. It should look pretty cool.
  13. Oops - I forgot to show you what the main room looks like now that I have pulled down the ceiling in that room. as you can see, the wiring in this room is generally much cleaner (though I still want to re-do it completely). Here I am looking along the staircase line from the front wall: This is the same section, from the opposite view: Here, I am looking from the front wall near the window along the wall into the former "den" space: And here I am looking at the pile of drywall awaiting the next "big trash" day (early on Thursday morning in my neighborhood): Smaller pieces go in boxes, big pieces get carried up the stairs and leaned against a street-side tree. By the time i come home from work Thursday evening, it will all be a mere memory.
  14. Okay, as promised, here is the next step - What it looks like after the demolition, and how I go about figuring out the wiring for the new space. Here are a series of shots before I dropped the drywall ceiling in the main room. In the third and fourth pics, you can see the new ducts I installed to improve airflow into the space: As you can see, I removed all the framing and have taken everything in this space back to the foundation block walls. The space is fundamentally sound - the walls are solid, the floor is intact (if not quite level), the the space is relatively free from major compromises. The existing wiring, however, as shown in the next series of pics, is a real mess, as I stated in my first post above. These pics are in the bathroom and "den" space: While all the wiring is proper clad copper, it's like they rushed through this project, and didn't care about how much wire they were using. As I said to a friend, if they had taken a little extra time in planning up front, they could have saved themselves a bunch of money and come up with a better living space. But that is not my problem, now, it's how to get the maximum use out of the space afforded to me. I think based on the mess of wiring, my next step is to bring back the electricians to clean up the existing wiring. I will then commence with some framing, then bring back the electricians for a third visit to complete their rough-ins. More to follow in my next post.
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