Quote :

"^^It took me about 6 weeks from the time I mailed it in until the time I received the check. I got the check in the mail yesterday and I sent in all the stuff (as an amended return) around February 12. I was reading through the thread in The Lounge about the housing credit and someone said that you needed to have some utilities bills and stuff too. I couldn't find anything to support that online, but I went ahead and included it too as it couldn't hurt. I threw in a copy of two utilities bills and two mortgage statements and highlighted my name and new address on both of them."

thanks for the info.


pressure washed the deck this weekend. Need to stain/seal it this coming weekend or next depending on weather. Any tips? Never done it before.

Planning on getting a roller(for the boards and rails) and a small brush(for the cracks and the vertical sections). I have to figure out how much to get too, but that should be pretty easy.

[Edited on April 6, 2010 at 3:33 PM. Reason : ]

4/6/2010 3:33:10 PM

I always use a garden sprayer to stain my deck, seems to work out well. The only catch is you need to protect your house or anything else you dont want stained with a drop cloth or plastic or something, because you will spray it.

Prevents you from having to use a brush and spend hours on it.

Since all the stain is oil based, I always go buy the cheapest garden sprayer at lowes ($8) so I can just throw it out when im done. No clean up makes me happy.

[Edited on April 6, 2010 at 3:37 PM. Reason : .]

4/6/2010 3:37:09 PM

ah ok cool, I might look into that when I am out at the store then.

4/6/2010 3:56:21 PM

^Have you ever used a sprayer for painting the exterior of a house? One of my long term summer projects is to paint my house.

4/6/2010 3:58:22 PM

If you havent bought your stain yet, make sure to spend the extra cash on the 3 or 5 year stains. They don't last 3-5 years, but they certainly last longer than the cheap shit.

If you are like me, you really want to only be pressure washing/staining the deck every 2-3 years.

4/6/2010 9:09:16 PM

CarZin,

If you want to adjust your cleanout (that is what the PVC thing is), go to lowes in the plumbing section and get a traffic rated cap (brass cap with countersunk nut) and hub x fip (hub by female iron pipe) adapter. that way you can cut the cleanout down to flush and then mow over it without hitting the PVC nub that sticks up on the plastic ones. plus since the cap is brass, it will age green and you won't have to paint the pvc. if you get into painting the white ones, they look like shit after 2 or 3 months and you have to keep re-doing it. plus the paint never sticks.

4/7/2010 12:08:08 AM

^^^ were you talking to me or did you mean to point that at Wolfmarsh? If me, no I have not.

^^ I will keep that in mind because yes you are definitely right, I don't want to be doing this often.

4/7/2010 8:00:35 AM

mdozer. Thank you very much. I'll take your advice.

4/7/2010 9:53:39 AM

^^ CalledToArms

what all do you plan on sending in with your amended return? From what I've heard, they only *really* need the HUD Settlement (and since its amended, a 1040 X to be mailed.) I could send in the copy of licenses and bills, but I'd rather get on this process sooner rather then waiting for all of this stuff to make its way in...

4/7/2010 11:47:23 AM

Well, I was able to do my Driver's License address change online and it seemed like the new one will be mailed very soon, so I hope that is true. If that is the case then I am definitely going to include a scanned copy of my driver's license with the new address and my HUD-1 statement. I am actually still debating myself about anything extra to send for the same reason you are...it requires me to wait 4 weeks or so until I get my first bills, statements, etc.

I'll probably wait 2 weeks or so to see if I get anything (since stuff like water and power is often already scheduled and not dependent on when I started, so I might get a short first statement or so) and then just mail it in with whatever I have at that point, even if its just the license and the HUD-1 since everything on their website says you only need the HUD.

4/7/2010 11:56:53 AM

FML, the title company is taking 5 days and counting to get the pre-HUD form to my lender. We've placed numerous calls and emails and still haven't heard back from them, and I'm supposed to close on 4/30.

4/8/2010 10:38:51 AM

always something. It'll work out

4/8/2010 1:14:16 PM

Has anyone ever dealt with the water heater being in the attic? I'm about to buy a townhome where thats the case and it makes me nervous as hell. I'm pretty sure it has the drip pan, but if it ever burst or sprung a major leak I doubt that would stop water from coming all down through the floors (and there are three of them for it to destroy).

I've been googling to see if maybe there is something you can put in to make sure that (in the event of catastrophic failure) the water is retained until it drains off. But so far I can't find shit. Everything talks about paying $Texas to have it moved to the garage or switching to tankless.

4/8/2010 10:43:45 PM

i have a rock retaining wall about 4-5 ft high with BIG rocks. shit always erodes during rain. it wasnt that bad when i moved in but over a year or so it has gotten worse. ideas? I'm thinking about trying to put some bags of gravel/sand/something in there and then shoveling the dirt back behind/on top of it again. you can tell the old owners put some bricks and bags in a few spots.

walls not caving in at least.

4/9/2010 12:02:03 AM

might try a french drain to divert the water around them to keep them from eroding and eventually wearing the wall down completely.

thats assuming the rocks are eroding and breaking down and not that they're getting pushed/knocked out of place. if they're just getting knocked around perhaps some rebar embedded into the ground to anchor them more?

4/9/2010 9:17:10 AM

^^^best i've heard is that you can put in alarms to let you know if there is a leak.

something like this maybe?

http://www.smarthome.com/7115H2C/Water-Heater-Leak-Detection-FS3-4C/p.aspx

upon further reading, it also has a shutoff... granted its about $110. reviews say it works, but I doubt many have actually had it in use.

[Edited on April 9, 2010 at 9:47 AM. Reason : further reading]

4/9/2010 9:44:34 AM

^^^take some pics and post them so we have a better idea of what you are describing.

4/9/2010 10:09:39 AM

Quote :

" I've been googling to see if maybe there is something you can put in to make sure that (in the event of catastrophic failure) the water is retained until it drains off. But so far I can't find shit. Everything talks about paying $Texas to have it moved to the garage or switching to tankles"

Honestly you are better off leaving it as is and maintaining it. In a worst case scenario your homeowners policy will cover it. Moving it is going to be ridiculously expensive for little gain.

4/9/2010 10:15:02 AM

I had one in my old house in the attic. One day I came home from work to see water dripping from my kitchen light. The dome was full of water and the ceiling was starting to buckle. The water heater was on the third floor in the attic. It was a mess to clean up and come to find out the water pan that was up there just wasn't big enough. When it was all replaced they tied it into two drain lines to prevent something in the future from causing that much damage again.

4/9/2010 10:41:19 AM

ill take picks today.

it isnt that the rocks are eroding. they are some huge motherfuckers, but as a result they have gaps between them (not tightly packed). this creates spots where dirt can easily just gush through when it rains hard cuz it loses strength. thats why filling the "holes" was my idea.

4/9/2010 12:23:34 PM

i has a new furnace. picked a good day to have it changed. nice, mild temperatures, lol. well have to check out the may utility bill to see if it pays off

4/10/2010 10:15:57 PM

stained the deck today. Used some Behr 3-year semi-transparent with a Cedar tint. The deck is only 7 years old but looked 10+ because the only previous owner had never washed or stained or sealed it. Looks a ton better. Probably going to put the 2nd coat on tomorrow...planned on doing it today but I was pretty tired after the first one

[Edited on April 10, 2010 at 10:52 PM. Reason : ]

4/10/2010 10:51:27 PM

Alright, I had talked about the back yard at this new house before, finally got around to taking some pictures. Some weeds have grown between the time we toured the house in late January and moved in, but other than that (ie at least there are some roots so its not eroding as bad atm ) its pretty bad.

It is a very wide backyard but not very deep(red lines in these pics show approx property line)



and zoomed in on that far corner with the pines. We own that corner with the pines and I am going to leave them growing and make that whole corner a natural area:


views from the other direction:




Hard to tell the kind of slope it has in these pictures, but from the deck to the end of the property line it probably drops a little over 4 ft at worst and averages around 3 I think. I had thought about putting sod down, but the more I thought about it and after living here, I am seriously considering spending that money on getting a retaining wall built along the back-middle of the property. The reason I say along the middle is that if you look in the first and 2nd pics...the back-left side of the lot is fairly level (or will be once it gets graded and the erosion and uneven land is smoothed out). And, on the back right side of the lot it actually slopes up. So the middle is really where it slopes down.

I am thinking of getting a retaining wall built across that middle and having dirt brought in to try and level the backyard out some. (Doesnt need to be completely flat, but reducing it to a 1-2 ft drop from deck to the back line of the lot would be great. Of course I will make sure drainage is taken care of as well.

Trying to figure out if that is the best solution though because I am waiting to figure that out to plant some privacy trees/shrubs (green giants maybe?) along the back of the lot. If I go with the retaining wall I will plant them a few feet inside of the wall. As far as grass goes..if I spend the money on the wall and level the land out I will obviously have them grade the entire back yard once they bring some dirt in and at that point I will just seed since the slope won't be much of an issue.

[Edited on April 11, 2010 at 10:05 PM. Reason : ]

4/11/2010 9:51:56 PM

I had a mini disaster to deal with this past weekend. Had some work done on repairing random drywall damage (peeling tape, uneven seems, etc) in preparing for me to paint the entire house. At some point just after they started the work, I had a circuit popped. I thought, "Great, the put a nail through a wire." At that point they had only put in 6 nails, so I checked them with a meter, as well as verifying by cutting out drywall, that they were not the cause. The circuit was tripping everytime I threw it on.

Replaced the fuse, no help. Took a meter to an outlet, and confirmed a short.

This happens to be the most fucked up, jacklegged circuit in the house. It was beyond my abilities to troubleshoot it. It took a GOOD electrician 8 hours of work to find out that the original electrician
1) used ground to try and simulate a 3 wire dual switch setup (not sure if I am saying that correctly)
2) burried a major junction box behind the drywall that had a short
3) had double fed part of the circuit
4) that the doorbell transformer had also shorted
5) one of the legs of the circuit had the polarity reversed

I had had little gremlins with this circuit for a while, so all this work explained all the shit that was going on.

$400 worth of work And I have to repair some drywall after we had to excise parts of one interior wall to find a junction box.

4/12/2010 10:23:29 AM

CalltoArms:

Have you priced a retaining wall? Its probably going to be super expensive. You have a large area to cover, and it looks like you are going to need to bring it a lot of soil to backfill.

I have had estimated for a small retainer wall in my front yard that exceeded $5000, and the wall would be about 25 feet long and 3 feet high. You could use the cheapest ass retainer bricks (not worry about looks) for the backyard since only your neighbor will be looking at it, and that would save, but I am guessing still a small fortune.

I think I'd bring in several great dump loads of soil to flatten it out a little, put down sod, and water the hell out of it. You'd be amazed at how well it wont erode when you have good grass established.

4/12/2010 10:29:13 AM

I have gotten some prelim estimates, but I am going to try and get a few landscaping contractors out to the lot in person to get their opinion and a more accurate estimate. I'm basically going to tell them I have a set budget (not tell them the exact amount) that would only be enough to cover one of the two possible scenarios, but not both:

1) Bringing in dirt, grading, and laying sod like you said (which was my first thought)
2) Building a retaining wall and backfilling with dirt (which is what I started thinking about more recently)

I'll see if I can get an honest opinion from a few of them on which is the better option assuming my max budget is the same for each and can only accommodate one. The other thing to keep in mind is that if I lay sod, I may end up having to eat the cost for installing an irrigation system as well. ie neither option will be super cheap but the yard has a lot of potential if it can get leveled out a little bit.

4/12/2010 1:07:33 PM

The wall is definitely pimpin, and will add a lot more to the value of your house if you flatten the back yard grade, and turn it into usable space, but you'll be hard pressed to recover that costs until some time passes.

4/12/2010 2:24:58 PM

Yea no doubt; I definitely understand that. Obviously nothing is ever certain, but we plan to be in this house for awhile (we bought plenty big enough to start a family here) so I am trying to think long term with the yard.

Planning to turn both the corners of the lot into natural areas, putting a raised garden back there somewhere, planting the privacy trees along the back and sides of the lot and try to get usable grass area everywhere else behind the back of the house. Will definitely take some work, and a lot of patience, but I really think it will pay off in value to us as homeowners and in resale years down the line.

4/12/2010 3:00:57 PM

I definitely second the retaining wall if you can get it in your budget.

ROI would be probably close to 100% in a few years

4/12/2010 3:20:13 PM

Nail rubbing against refrigerant line, caused a leak. So that's why my A/C wasn't working.

4/12/2010 5:23:47 PM

has anyone ever installed windows? my buddy is telling me it's crazy easy, and is gonna show me how to do it.

also, where did you purchase your windows, what did you get and how much? any advice on how to shop for them?

4/12/2010 6:06:39 PM

There are some great videos on youtube. It doesnt look to hard to me...

4/12/2010 6:44:06 PM

yea it's not hard

4/12/2010 8:25:47 PM

Figured out why the new house didn't have AC.... well, a call to the AC company did.
There was a hole in a line, and there was no freon. That explains why it was 85 degrees in the house, even though the AC had been on for a week

Not looking forward to that power bill. At least the house is cool again.

4/12/2010 9:58:23 PM

^ we musta had the same builder

4/12/2010 10:21:52 PM

I really want my own place and a two car garage, but that would mean I am settling for living in the midwest, and I am just not cool with that.

4/12/2010 10:48:39 PM

Why can't you do that here?

4/13/2010 10:32:18 AM

he prob lives in midwest but doesnt want the commitment to stay that a house entails.

i rather like madison.

4/13/2010 12:33:24 PM

4/13/2010 7:10:37 PM

fail

4/13/2010 8:38:51 PM

Quote :

"has anyone ever installed windows? my buddy is telling me it's crazy easy, and is gonna show me how to do it. also, where did you purchase your windows, what did you get and how much? any advice on how to shop for them?"

I've been considering doing this in a piecemeal fashion as we acquire excess currency.

-Every video I've seen makes it look impossibly easy. You won't even have to replace the trim around the window.

-I'm still not sure about where/how to buy windows. Most of the manufacturers have you buy through a dealer, and I seriously don't want to have to deal with salesmen. Especially when I don't want installation.

4/14/2010 11:42:41 AM

Windows salesmen....just take your order. Deliver to your house. It's pretty straightforward. Just make sure you have the measurements correct or you'll be f'd.

[Edited on April 14, 2010 at 12:00 PM. Reason : e]

4/14/2010 12:00:16 PM

update on the retaining wall. i gave sandbags a shot. i double bagged a couple of lawn/leaf bags and filled them with a bit of sand. molded them as best i could into the holes that were causing problems and then shoveled the dirt back on top (making sure to pack it like a motherfucker).

dumped some grass seed on top to hopefully help a bit. we'll see how well it holds up.

4/17/2010 9:53:18 PM

Doorbell stopped working. I'm guessing the 55 year old transformer for the old chime finally died... I can't locate the damn thing either, so I'm left to guess it's inside a wall somewhere...

4/20/2010 4:06:16 AM

^Yeah same thing happened to me. I'm not entirely sure what to do. I've had to put a piece of tape over the doorbell though cause people keep trying to ring it and think I'm not home when I don't answer.

4/20/2010 9:07:28 AM

http://www.thathomesite.com/forums/load/wiring/msg1019350127415.html?15

Some ideas there. Have you taken the chimes down to check behind them? I know at least on mine, everything is wired within the box. Not sure on older stuff, though.

4/20/2010 9:13:38 AM

The transformer for my doorbell is in the crawlspace. You should be able to follow the wire if you have a crawlspace.

4/20/2010 12:11:44 PM

I planted a weeping japanese maple last fall.

It started budding a couple weeks ago, but has done nothing since. Is it dead?

4/20/2010 4:20:45 PM

Probably related to the hot spell we had a bit back, but it won't hurt to water it. It's been dry and if you planted last fall the roots probably/might not be established yet.

4/20/2010 9:26:00 PM

Ants around the sink in the kitchen. Found where I think they are getting in from out side of the house, but cant figure out how they are winding up in and around my sink.

4/20/2010 11:23:43 PM