Good morning! @TheEvilGreebo your avatar keeps blinking at me :) I think the system can't transparentify straight black :)

lol

its reverting today

soon as gravatar wakes up

It's very striking though on the left...

Why do we tend to miss the easiest methods, when it comes to electrical work.

Good answer on the hazards of this situation, not so much on detecting it.

Well it was a two part question :)

@SteveJackson This time, yes. But I've seen some interesting testing techniques, since becoming a member of the site.

It's always funny the stuff you come up with on your own or gets passed down. My father-in-law won't put warm food in the refrigerator because he had an ice box growing up.

The problem with a voltage tester is the false positives. I guess if it definitely doesn't go off on the hot you'd feel pretty good about it.

Though the stretch the probes in the air method - I've seen that done before :)

So, how "correct" is it when wiring a through-wire switch, instead of pigtailing the incoming, outgoing, and switch hot wires together, instead, pigtail the incoming and outgoing together, and then strip off a 1/2" of wire and wrap that around the screw pot?

yeah on that Q about reverse polarity I just use my noncontact tester to tell me which is the actual hot

That's an interesting question. I wouldn't want to do it, but I have no idea the correct-ness of it.

I need an easy one touch iphone -> imgur app

And I just found one

Pictures will be made tonight

Welcome to Project Update Thursday

Why thank you

So I have a question: how do I fix outlet box holes that are too big in plaster?

ugh plaster. Bad memories.

The way I did it was tell my wife to fix it :)

I would just patch it with joint compound, if the gaps are really big I would cut it back enough (basically to a stuf) and replace it with drywall.

@Aaron Cut a bigger hole, and put in a drywall patch

It's kinda irregular though

@BMitch I'm trying to do less work here

cut a new square hole

@Aaron repeat until you have to drywall the entire house :)

I don't think the joint compound would really work, it's kinda just a jagged edge on one side

pics!

Yeah now that I have the iphone -> imgur app they will be there soon

do you really need to fill in all the way around the box, or just enough that it will be coverd by a faceplate?

Also the outlet box isn't attached to a stud, it just kinda moves around and I can push it in, out, up down etc

@auujay just to be covered by the faceplate

do you have room to stick some extra lathe back behind the wall?

you could put a strip behind the wall and try to hit it with a few screws from the the front

but I bet it would be tough (or impossible) to hold it in place before getting the screws into it because the you want it to cover the hole...

if you can get extra lathe installed, that would give you something to "plaster" over (I would still just use joint compound)

@auujay wrap a piece of string around your filler, or if it's thick enough, stick a screw in the middle that's sticking out so you can hold it. Then just pull back on the string/screw while you drive a screw through the plaster to each side

nice

Remove string/screw when both ends of your filler board are secure

last weekend i grouted my shower surround, now we can ALMOST shower in the remodeled bathroom

unfortunatly I don't have new pics up to share

i still need to get the glass guys to come out and put in a custom partition wall at the end of the tub

i need that in place so we can put up the shower curtain

so for now we still have to go to the basement to shower...

I finally insulated the new exterior wall in my basement. <3 spray foam!

did you use all spray foam?

No, just around all of the edges.

Pink 'glass in the bays.

But the foam alone made a huge difference.

just with the "great stuf" type cans of it?

Yep. This was the 'low expanding' stuff meant for doors and windows. In a blue can.

Since the wall was there to take up the gap left when I took out the 12' glass sliders, and put in a 6' French door.

what size drill bit do I need for "drywall" screws in plaster to pre-drill a hole?

I've never predrilled drywall, but maybe it will help with patching plaster...

just find a bit slightly smaller than the non-threaded part of the screw

yeah that was going to be my plan

@Aaron 1/8th or a skosh smaller, I'd guess.

Ha!

there, I fixed the door stopper

cause I tried putting up the doorbell, and the plaster wall does not want to be screwed into

the doorbell chime that is

lol

ok, you guys are too quite today, here's another...

Anyone seen a small profile LED nighlight?

amazon.com/gp/product/B001CYMGM8/…

got something like that

I have these, they're good, but too big. I need a smaller one for my bathroom

It's basically GFI crammed under "medicine cabinet".

hmm, mine is bigger than that, guess it's time to go amazon searching

I need it to be fairly flat, like these, and basically cover only the outlet so I can close the medicine cabinet.

I searched on amazon first, just thought i'd throw it out there

I really like decora switches and receptacles because you can use the same faceplates for both

We'll be starting on boring projects here soon, need to move some bedrooms around.

I don't like them because the screw holes for the faceplates are outside the mounting holes, and my wall holes are "all jacked up (tm)"

I need to do this to my front door

@BMitch Any new discoveries from the neighborhood job site?

I'm discovering that construction workers put a lot of holes in the roof

everyone that goes up there puts up their own harness and takes it back down when done

I'm pretty sure none of them seal up the holes when they are done, so if any water gets under the shingle, they're getting wet

Oh great.

I've warned my friend who's having hardi plank done about that. :-P He was like, "No way, I can't believe that." And then guess what happened.

(Sorry, I was in a work call since project update thurs started.)

As for me: I finally got the grout halfway done on my kitchen floor. Only laid the tile in, like, October.

I'll finish it up tonight.

yeah, the pump jacks also get nailed into the roof, everyone puts holes up there

"Eyyy... roof, it don't need to be no seeeealed, senor..."

so there's little tile on the bathroom floor

do I just need to get the dremel with the grout removal blade, a prybar, and go to work?

Even the scaffolding guys put holes in the roof

@Aaron What're you trying to do again? Remove it?

That's my view out the office window today, always a distraction

@KarlKatzke, yeah, it looked in OK condition, but some of the pieces are starting to come up and we're like, we just need to do this correctly

@BMitch "Hey - are you going to seal those holes up when you're done???"

@Aaron What's underneath it? Wood, or concrete?

@KarlKatzke a friend of mine refers to that sort of thing as the "it's ok" guys - "eeess ok"

@KarlKatzke Unknown!

@Aaron Air chisel is quick and easy - did you buy the compressor?

@Aaron Well, is it slab-on-grade foundation, or is it pier on beam foundation or 2nd story? :-P

@SteveJackson yes I do have the little pancake compressor

@KarlKatzke first floor, and there is a basement

Mmmm, pancakes.

OK, so it's probably a wood subfloor if there's a basement below it. Are you removing the tub and vanity as well in there?

If you're removing the tub and vanity, what I would do is use a circular saw or a toe kick saw to cut all around the edges, and then peel up the subfloor and the tile as one.

It's a half bath, so no tub

and the sink doesn't actually touch the floor - it's just held into the wall and no vanity

Even easier.

So yeah, I'd just pull the tile and wood that's down up, and then put down new tongue and groove plywood, paying attention to the screwing schedule. Then tile over it.

Note that you need to use modified thinset when you're tiling to plywood, and I would definitely use an anti-fracture membrane.

You don't use durock?

Oh god no.

Every floor I've seen done with durock has cracked at the edges of the panels of durock.

Hence the specific advice to use tongue and groove subfloor plywood.

Interesting. My brother is a tile mechanic, I'll have to bring it up. I assumed he always uses durock since he's usually complaining about carrying tons of it.

Yeah, a lot of tile guys do it anyway. I don't think it's a good idea based on the houses I've seen done with it, but those houses probably had insufficient structure to boot.

Heading out for a bit, I'll probably miss the cutoff to close up the PUT, but I can always do it late if no one else beats me to it. Have a good weekend folks!

Which meant that it's actually the deflection of the floor as people walk on it that caused the shifts in the durock that caused the cracks.

There's definitely a lot of "we do it this way because we do it this way" in construction companies.

Later @BMitch

i used DITRA for underlayment when I layed my tile floor

it costs more than CBU but it is lighter and not particularly hard to work with

/me nods. The solution I know is properly screwing down tongue and groove and putting an anti-fracture membrane over it, because the toungue-and-groove arrangement keeps the floor from rising at the edges of panels, and the anti fracture underlayment (DITRA or other) allows the wood to move laterally as temperatures and humidities in the structure changed.

auujay: You still, if you're applying DITRA to plywood, need to use modified thinset despite what Schluter says about it. Unmodified don't stick to plywood too hot.

they say to use modified between the plywood and ditra, use the un-modified between the ditra and tile

that is what the directions in my package said and what I did

it has held up great so far, but it has only been about 2 months :)

Oh, they changed the directions then. :) About time. The old directions said don't use modified anywhere.

Yeah, I just finished my floor with the DITRA on it. Slab on grade... in TX on clay soil, so 'slab' isn't as descriptive as it might otherwise be.

I'd take pictures and make a blog entry, but I'm working by myself, and the stuff sets up as fast as I can put it down. :-P

(Using epoxy grout)

bummer

Thanks for joining us for this week's Project Update Thursday!

2-2-2

@SteveJackson Thanks!

I am so installing one of these in the bedroom:

Man, it is deep though

I wonder if it's too big for my little boxes

Depends on how much wire's in the box. If there's only one, you're probably fine. if there's more than one you might be hosed.

yeah if it's a middle of the run box maybe no

I should have notated that on my diagram

I might just do this instead:

because on that wall I only have the single duplex outlet anyways

and there's 2 bedside lamps, 2 clocks etc

Yeah, that's closer to what we have, except ours is an older fashioned power strip on the floor.