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Original message:161 days 11 hours 43 minutes ago
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Member: Danno
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well, I've been having a crappy week and I just need to vent... Sorry this is so long...
So I'm doing a simple project: adding to small separation walls to the front entry. the small one is going just fine. The larger on requires me to cut out a large section of drywall from the wall it's attaching to so I can at studs. I also need to add an extra outlet. Trying to remove the necessary section of drywall, I'm finding all kinds of diagonal bracing. The wall is a free-standing wall-- The other side of which has kitchen cabinets and the pantry. Now I have to figure out where all this bracing is and it's going to give me problems adding studs.

Problem two--- The fans in my computer's power supply have been noisey for a while now and just recently it started smelling 'smokey'. So I got a couple fans, did what was necessary to replace them (they're not supposed to be replaced) and then found that the power supply has either a bad diode or a bad resister that is leaking 'Factory Smoke'. So I get a new power supply, plug it in, and it don't work. Try a bunch of different stuff and finally get it going only to find that one of my hard drives shit the bed. And it would be the one with all the pictures and emails on it. The drive won't power up at all. Now I'm looking for the "exact" drive so I can try changing the circuit board on it. Needless to say, I have some peeps that are unhappy with me now. There were A LOT of e-mails(like 30,000 + (recipes, crafts, etc)) and ALL the photos...

It's being a shitty week... :(
My music recommendations:
Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion--- TooL
Reply:161 days 11 hours 32 minutes ago
Member: shanejohnson2002
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geez dude...looks like Murphy was enforcing his law on you this week :(
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Reply:161 days 11 hours 27 minutes ago
Member: Danno
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Yeah, Murphy is a pecker-head lol
My music recommendations:
Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion--- TooL
Reply:161 days 10 hours 42 minutes ago
Member: G_Barber
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I would be a raving madman if I had a week like yours...hope it gets better, Danno.
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Reply:161 days 10 hours 9 minutes ago
Member: Danno
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Thanks man!
My music recommendations:
Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion--- TooL
Reply:161 days 10 hours 42 minutes ago
Member: Xarkzila
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2876
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Sucks.

I don't have problems with the construction parts. I spent a lot of years in the business and have ALL the tools. Which is what prompted me to buy a 100 year old house. I've basically rebuilt the whole thing at this point. It was amazing when I bought it. Could have pissed on it and increased the value on day one. When I was replacing the kitchen floor, I found that there were three floors in all. When I started removing the last one, the joists would just fall into the crawl space. The only thing holding up the floor was the floor itself. There were parts of the house that had no foundation as well, so I had to back-pour concrete under the house. I've completely rewired it. All new plumbing, drains and supplies. There isn't a single room that's the same as when I bought it. Wish I were done, but there's still a bunch of crap to do before I can relax. (Might have had it all finished by now if I hadn't built two studios along the way. Built the first one in the house. Then I got married and the wife wanted a living room and a dining room and a bedroom. Go figure. I then gutted the old garage and rebuilt that into a new studio while changing the house back into a house.)

Computers? Since I spend my days "fixing" them for our customers, I refuse to touch one when I get home. In fact, I don't own a computer, though my wife does. If there's a problem, it's HER problem. I work UNIX boxes and don't know crap about Windows or regular PC's and don't want to know. If there's a hardware issue on one of our systems, I dispatch a field tech to accomplish the repairs.

I've pretty much kept Murphy at bay for many years now. Don't know why that is, but it's nice to avoid all the problems. (Now I've probably jinxed myself.)
My gear recommendations:
  
"The music industry is a cruel and shallow money trench. A long plastic hallway where theives and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side..."
http://www.cleargravy.com
Reply:161 days 10 hours 3 minutes ago
Member: Danno
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Hopefully you haven't! LOL
I've done several 'projects at the house but i think this one is ass-whipping me the most right now. Looks great when you walk in the front door and the first thing you see as a wall with parts cut out and saw marks LOL
I don't have too much issue with computers. I learned a lot from my dad (though not as much as I should have). He's a field tech for IBM. They service all kinds of crazy crap... But I've built several machines. And some of them still work! LOL But I've learned that there are no simple projects when it comes to PC's. Something always goes unexpectedly... :(
My music recommendations:
Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion--- TooL
Reply:161 days 9 hours 35 minutes ago
Member: Fred Kraus
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Danno, I hear you man, I really do! My wife and I bought this house three years ago. It was built in 1950, (not too old for a house). but it's been neglected. We were told by the inspector that the roof would hold up for another year and a half to two years. After the first six months it began to leak, so, since we've have lived here, we've needed to...

Put on a new roof
Put in new basement steps, (some friggin' genius thought having 7" treads was a good idea)
Someone painted the basement a day-glow, Linda Blair-Green color, had to be repainted.
The back door had to be replaced, it was literally falling apart.
Put in a utility sink in the basement. There wasn't one when we bought it.
Replaced the septic pump. The one they had in there was a really cheap one from Sears that died about 8 months after we moved in.
The basement windows were a discrace. The previous owners had tarnished plexiglass where actual glass used to be. Some of the windows were partially covered with the ground. They were all raised and replaced with glass block.
We had to add five motion sensor lights because the house across the road was robbed and my wife got scared.
Several rooms have receptacles tied to one line, so if I want to run an AC in one room, and my wife another, it throws the breaker. We have three rooms like that, (we're working on that this weekend)
The side porch is collapsing and separating from the wall, we'll have to fix that soon.
The roof gutters need to be replaced. The water is overflowing, or just dropping through because it's so old. As a result, we have water coming in to the basement.
The block in our backyard retaining wall is separating and is ready to fall down, (but I can only do one thing at a time)
The garage has two levels for extra rooms. The upper level is built on 8" block. I expect the garage to fall into the cornfield one day.
We have hard water and need a better purification system, but one catastrophe at a time. It's turning the sink and tub green.
The kitchen sink is leaking because of the hard water. I'll be working on that next week.
We need all new windows.

I feel for you guy, I really do!
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Reply:161 days 8 hours 33 minutes ago
Member: Xarkzila
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2876
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Sounds like you bought my house!

100 years and no one took care of it at all. My roofs are OK so far, but they need to be replaced soon. I've done all the inside work, mostly. I still have two rooms upstairs to complete, but compared to everything else that's nothing.

I had checked with the city after I bought it and was told that there is no record of a permit EVER being pulled on the property. It was built 3 years before the town was there, but there was obviously work done over the years. At least on some of it.

The electrical was still knob and tube with cloth covered wire. I just rewired the whole place and left all the old wiring behind the plaster. Just too much work to pull it all out. The main power box was a knife switch with two screw-in 15 amp fuses. Yeah, really up to code there.

It was funny when I went to switch the power to the new breaker box. There were two wires coming from the meter, up the side of the house into the knife switch. To power the new box I had to cut these wires and reroute them into the new breaker box. Live. No way to kill the power at that point unless you pull the meter. I laid out a rubber mat and asked my son to help. I didn't have a clue which wire was hot and which was neutral, so needed him to hold a probe on the neutral at the mast head so I could find the neutral at the meter. His response was, "Wait a minute!" He ran into the house and came back with the phone. He took it off hook and dialed, "9-1..." Then he looked at me and said, "OK. Go ahead and start cutting!" Real confidence there!

Yeah, it's a second job all right. Never ending. Most of the interior is finally done. I've still got some foundation issues, but they're not critical as the house has stood there for 104 years, so I don't think it will be falling down tomorrow. Thankfully, Denver is pretty dry, so I don't have any water issues. I still have about 3000sf of yard to landscape. I've already finished about twice that. So far it's all gone great. It will be nice to have the outside completed. I haven't needed a permit to do anything I've done as it was all considered "repair." Even the sprinkler system had been installed, (incorrectly to boot,) so redoing the entire thing to make it right didn't require a permit. Neither did adding as much as I have. I took it from two zones to nine. My vegetable garden is even on the sprinkler system.

At some point I know I'm going to have to pull a permit. I want to wrap the porch around the house. Being a corner lot, having a wrap around porch will help the house stand out and make it look larger than it really is.
My gear recommendations:
  
"The music industry is a cruel and shallow money trench. A long plastic hallway where theives and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side..."
http://www.cleargravy.com
Reply:161 days 6 hours 59 minutes ago
Member: Fred Kraus
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LOL..Go in peace my son, for I know the valley you tremble through!
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Reply:161 days 9 hours 26 minutes ago
Member: Danno
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Thanks Fred.
Owning an old house is like having a second job! LOL.
Fortunately this house isn't old, so I don't have to worry about some of the stuff. My biggest projest was replacing the sliding glass door to the back patio with a set of french doors and replacing the front door and side lights also with a french doors. That one turned out well...
My music recommendations:
Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion--- TooL
Reply:161 days 9 hours 18 minutes ago
Member: Fred Kraus
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The fun never ends here! I went to lower the venetian blinds last night. I pulled on the cord to lower them, but they're old. The top support piece broke in half and the whole thing fell off the wall. I'm so happy at times, I could just shit.
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Reply:161 days 9 hours 12 minutes ago
Member: Danno
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LOL I hear ya !!
My music recommendations:
Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion--- TooL
Reply:161 days 32 minutes ago
Member: eds1275
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629
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My house when I moved in had the upstairs completey reno'd [fresh renovation], looked good except the colour of the master bedroom [which is that horrible VW burnt orange colour]. The basement was one 1000sq foot room with a staircase in the middle. AKA a blank slate. I redid all of the electrical in the entire house though, because it really just sucked. Someone can't add. I also only have a 100 amp box... typical for a 600 square foot home, but not a 2000 like it is. So I'm gonna get a bigger one.
Reply:161 days 9 minutes ago
Member: Danno
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