Home Improvement

BMitch

11:13 AM

@Aaron Don't blame me i voted for Kodos

of course there's the possibility that someone voted for me, and then you can blame me

Tester101

2:14 PM

Blog queue is empty.

Tim Stone

8:01 PM

> Winners are Tester101 and BMitch.

Congratulations!

Aarthi

\o/

eeeeeeeeeee @BMitch @Tester101 eeeeeeeeeeeee

Rory Alsop

Congratulations @BMitch and @Tester101

Aarthi

hugs @Rory Next time, mate.

@TimStone Thank you, btw :)

Tim Stone

Of course. I'm sure Shog will be along before long to post the results officially, but I didn't want to keep everyone in suspense ;)

Aarthi

:D

14% turnout -- that's one of the highest on the network.

2

Q: 2012 Community Moderator Election Results

Home Improvement's second moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the two new moderators are: They'll be joining the existing crew shortly - please thank them for volunteering, and share your assistance and advice with them as they learn the ropes! For detail...

Rory Alsop

8:13 PM

@Aarthi thanks (hugs back)

Aarthi

:)

BMitch

8:26 PM

Thanks @Aarthi and @RoryAlsop!

Aarthi

<3~~

@BMitch come to TL! say hi!

BMitch

I'll stop by shortly, looking over the results right now

Aarthi

ooo ok :D

WE'RE WAITING :P

BMitch

lol, now I'm worried there's a bucket of water over the door or some other hazing gag

Aarthi

lol

Chris Cudmore

8:44 PM

Congrats @Bmitch, @tester101

BMitch

Thanks!

Niall C.

9:31 PM

Congratulations from me too.

Aaron

Congrats to @Tester101 and @BMitch

shirlock homes

9:59 PM

I miss Aarthi. boo hoo.... always miss her on here

both Tester ane BMitch are great guys, Congrats. I'm sure they will do a fantastic job.

Karl Katzke

10:54 PM

Aww. No more @Aarthi?

I just wanted to say hello. I've had one hell of a year.

I had a 20 hour work day yesterday, am sleeping it off today, and this was the first free time I've had in a while.

BMitch

I think @Aarthi misses you @KarlKatzke, where ya been?

Karl Katzke

Working my day job, working on the house, working on my girlfriend's house which is a rental but which we hope to persuade the landlord to let us stay in for another year without a rent increase, and working my day job some more until I fall asleep.

BMitch

@shirlockhomes I think that's what happens when your day job conflicts with being online

Karl Katzke

Congrats on your promotion, @BMitch

BMitch

thanks

I'm just trying not to break things

Karl Katzke

10:59 PM

(nerd talk) We are almost complete trying to roll a private cloud out of leftover hardware for the company I work for.

It's taken a year, but we saved like a couple million bucks.

BMitch

nice

Karl Katzke

Yeah, it's been fun but exhausting ... mentally and physically. I spent six months without working on my house.

BMitch

I miss the joys of data centers, I'm too many layers removed these days

Karl Katzke

Heh. I hate datacenters. I'm glad I telecommute most of the time. I love being hands on with hardware in a test lab or just in my office ...

But I hate being in the DC itself.

BMitch

I'm ready for them to finish messing up the beltway

sorry, misread that, I thought you were saying Washington DC, not datacenter

Karl Katzke

11:03 PM

Pfffbt. Never will happen. After they finish the current round of messing up the beltway, there's going to be a bunch of freight rail improvements and tunnels and stuff that will mess up more.

Oh, yeah, I meant Datacenter, but DC is terrifying too.

My girlfriend's a civil engineer and some of her projects have been in that area.

BMitch

lol, very, I'm 100% telecommute myself

Karl Katzke

Me too -- love 100% telecommute.

Don't think I'll ever take another job that isn't all telecommute.

BMitch

I need a little better social life, but telecommuting has it's advantages

Karl Katzke

I hate human beings, so telecommuting is perfect.

BMitch

haha

Karl Katzke

11:06 PM

I get out to walk/run in the morning at sunup when it's all regulars and we're all fat and we all say hello to one another. I go hashing on sundays sometimes. I can go weeks without seeing another human and not get lonely.

My main DIY project since starting back up on things has been fixing the things that have deteriorated since the last time I fixed anything. :(

BMitch

my morning walk is more of a lunch time walk, but my hoa gives me an excuse to be presentable once a month

Karl Katzke

Heh, it's too hot here to walk at lunchtime

BMitch

@KarlKatzke that doesn't look like proper flashing

missing a little trim too

Karl Katzke

hahahahaha. Flashing? What's flashing?

BMitch

and maybe a gutter

Karl Katzke

11:09 PM

Yeah, the trim got removed.

The gutter fell off.

BMitch

lol

Karl Katzke

Mostly because the trim was rotten and so was what it attached to.

Trim was replaced on the left so that I didn't leave that exposed, but here's the full teardown.

Someone got lazy and didn't put a kickout flashing in.

But the flashing was all toast anyway.

BMitch

at least you can get to your roof, I just look at mine and think of things that need to be done

3 level town house, one level ladder

Karl Katzke

Ouch. Yeah, I would not go up on the roof if it wasn't a ranch with only a 22.5 degree pitch.

I would want to take a class in fall protection first, at least.

BMitch

I don't think they give the day laborers a class

but watching the construction site next to me is interesting

lots of harnesses

Karl Katzke

11:13 PM

And none of them do it right. My back, spine, and head are a little more valuable to me then they might consider theirs to be.

I have several years of rock climbing experience, so I know a bit about harnesses and ropes and stuff ...

BMitch

that's part of the outdoors I haven't taken up yet, have you visited outdoors.se?

Karl Katzke

nope. I have not logged into anything except serverfault for probably six months.

Not many rocks to climb where I live right now, but we're fixin' ta change that I think in the next year or two.

BMitch

it's a recent addition to SE, still light on traffic

Aaron

I need to write a blog review for the werner ladder which could probably get me to the roof of my 2 story house

Karl Katzke

Oh, god, I own two of the werner ladders.

The multi flex ones

In the running for BEST TOOL EVER

That's just one ... I have the extending plank so I use it as scaffolding too.

(And yes, that's me taking it easy up there on the roof while my buddy cut pieces of sheathing. It was too hot to climb up and down) )

BMitch

11:18 PM

division of labor, that's the way to do it

Karl Katzke

You betcha.

That and pneumatic nailers.

BMitch

after the olympics finish, I'll start flipping breakers and replace a few switches

Karl Katzke

Bought my sixth nail gun.

BMitch

I'll take some photos and turn it into a blog

going to upgrade my bathroom fan switch to a timer

six nail guns, wow!

Karl Katzke

Yeah, if it wasn't so hot I'd have done a blog on what I did and why... but it was too hot to consider taking pictures.

@BMitch Best. Upgrade. Ever.

23 ga. pin nailer, 18 ga. finish, 15 ga. finish, stapler, framing, roofing.

BMitch

11:21 PM

I love a good framing nailer when we're doing our rough work at habitat

so much easier than trying to toe nail a second top plate

we let the volunteers use the finish nailers, once they get the taste for a nail gun, they are excited to come back

Karl Katzke

Roofing nailer has become my favorite. Re-shingling that section was taking us 15 minutes per 3 rows nailing it by hand (first roofing nailer I bought jammed)

With the roofing nailer, I completed the entire rest of it (20 rows, plus weaving) in less than 15 minutes.

BMitch

Nice, I spent all day doing a small shed

Karl Katzke

Small shed would've taken me about 30 minutes, even in heat.

BMitch

it was all the edges, the middle goes fast

but I was also learning

Karl Katzke

nod Learning's the big part

I'd done this before hand nailing it

This is the 2nd gable like this (of 2) that I replaced

Would've done the clerestory too at the time if I'd known what I know now, but I didn't replace the shingles around it.

Oh well

BMitch

11:25 PM

there's always next time :)

Karl Katzke

I bought the nail gun because I'm having leaks in two valleys over the front door when we get wind-driven rain out of the south ... I'm probably going to have to pull and weave them.

BMitch

the joys of DIY is you always have another weekend

Karl Katzke

Yeah, this is my learning house.

I bought it to make those mistakes on

Next house that my GF and I have .. which we will have together in and will live in together, unlike our current commuting relationship .. will be gorgeous and perfectly done

BMitch

haha, same here, but then I worried about screwing it up too much, so I started volunteering with Habitat to screw up their places :)

Karl Katzke

heh ... yeah, after hiring a few people to do things that I thought I couldn't do, I keep finding that I often know more than the pros, so I don't bother anymore.

Even when I screw it up, I screw it up less than they do

BMitch

11:28 PM

I outsource the roof work, but when I did my first plumbing project, I got an appointment for the next morning, shutoff the water, tried it myself, and then canceled the appointment

Karl Katzke

Ah, plumbing's easy for me -- I can handle most of it myself, but my girlfriend's dad is also a master plumber and can always offer advice.

If he doesn't just outright show up with all the parts and do it.

BMitch

after I did my first solder job, it was all cake

Karl Katzke

Yeah, I learned how to sweat pipe at my daddy's knee back in the early 90's

Letting a 12 year old play with a blowtorch is usually best under supervised conditions

BMitch

I was rewiring outlets as a young kid :)

dad's are the best teachers for diy

Karl Katzke

Yeah, I graduated from puling nails to replacing outlets and doing minor plumbing when I was 12, which made my day. Learned roofing and some minor masonry about that time too.

Learned drainage in Oregon

BMitch

11:31 PM

The roof on my family home was slate, so there was never anything for me to learn there

hence my small shed

how's the soil in Oregon?

Karl Katzke

I find roofing from an existing (i.e. having done the tearoff to see how it was done) to be easier.

Oregon soil varies -- greatly

clay in the river bottoms, good loam on the hilltops, but lots of springs.

We had a spring reroute itself and pop up under our house.

BMitch

those springs will get you

yikes

Karl Katzke

So we had to, without disturbing the piers, regrade the crawlspace and put in french drains with pea gravel. In a crawlspace.

BMitch

were you the young kid that got into all the crawl spaces?

I was still designated for that job when I was taller than everyone else :)

Karl Katzke

Well, I was 16 at the time, but still about 4' tall. :(

i did put on a lot of nice muscle bulk hauling 5 gallon buckets of pea gravel down into the crawlspace

Aaron

11:34 PM

@KarlKatzke I do like the werner I have, but it is bleeping heavy compared to the little giant

if I lay it on the ground in full-on extension ladder mode, it's difficult to wrestle it upright (mt-22)

Karl Katzke

@Aaron I have the same MT-22, and you're right; the best way is to put it up with the top extended and then push the bottom half up until it's extended.

Aaron

That's exactly what I do, using the side of the house to lean it against

Karl Katzke

Yeah, you just get good at it after a while.

Actually, what helped me learn how to manage it was taking Citizens' Fire Academy a few years back.

They had us wrangling ladders

In full bunker gear

BMitch

I'm always amazed by the construction workers that adjust an extension ladder, while it's vertical... without a rope

Karl Katzke

Just experience

And yeah, I say "just" -- it takes lots of time and effort to do it

To pick it up I mean

BMitch

11:37 PM

One crazy guy goes up the ladder, pulls it away from the house, and shoves it up and down while he's on it

Karl Katzke

Until the OSHA inspector drives by. ;)

BMitch

I think they are more worried about immigration

Karl Katzke

Yeah, you wanna have a good time and don't care about the consequences? Get a bullhorn, walk around the back of a restaurant, pound on the door, and yell "LA MIGRA!" through the megaphone. And make sure your getaway car is handy.

BMitch

hahaha

Karl Katzke

Sad thing is that all the illegals work so much harder than the legals.

BMitch

11:42 PM

one of the bosses was telling us an inspector showed up early at one site, sat in his car for about 15 minutes looking through paperwork, and when he looked back up all the workers had disappeared

Karl Katzke

LOL

BMitch

someone finally walked by and realized who he was and called everyone back

Karl Katzke

Anyway, that's about it for me today. I was up from 8am -> 5am yesterday; I'm gonna go back to bed.

BMitch

great hearing from you @KarlKatzke, hope you get some more free time soon

Karl Katzke

(and by "up" I mean "working on work stuff")

thanks, and congrats to the new moderators.

BMitch

11:43 PM

@Aarthi is going to be sad that she missed you and @shirlockhomes

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