What did you do today?

[Tom King]

My answer for popcorn ceilings.  This gets put up right over them.

 

[legenddc]

Put some tools away over lunch and checked my table saw for squareness. Had some burning on the blade, away side of the fence. It appears the back of the blade is 1/32" closer towards the fence so I'll be attempting to correct that tonight.

[Chestnut]

1 hour ago, tperson said:

As you work through matching/patching the ceiling and floor, can I request some additional pictures and steps taken? I'm proficient at patching and blending drywall, but I'm a complete amateur at matching ceiling texture and have ZERO experience with patching wood floors. I don't have anything planned, but ya never know when this kind of knowledge will come in handy. 

So the floor isn't wood it's laminate so MDF with printed wood grain and what ever 11 herbs and spices aluminum oxide UV cured finish they applied. I can provide some pictures but patching in this example was currently as simple as taking the floor apart and reinstalling with pieces that weren't cut.

Popcorn ceiling texture is relatively easy to match in theory but sucks in practice. The reason it sucks in reality is because it's REALLY messy. Under new construction there isn't anything in the house to get messy so clean up is easy. For an existing house you basically have to plastic off everything. I'll be covering every inch of wall and floor when i spray the texture with my hopper gun. For small patches the rattly can stuff at home centers is ok but matching beyond 4 sq ft it becomes beneficial to buy a hopper gun.

I'll try and make a point to take pictures and post more details. People don't like my advice often when it comes to drywall fixes because i usually tell them to hire it out. It's usually faster and cheaper to hire a pro. I don't because i already have all the tools. I'm also VERY picky and have been going through each room of my house and fixing the mistakes that the "pros" left behind.

1 hour ago, drzaius said:

I suggest you get a cheap texture hopper gun to blend in the texture. It's not hard to do once you get some practice. The whole ceiling might need to be painted to get the color spot on.

I have a hopper gun from matching texture at my last house. Yes you are right painting will be mandatory. The existing ceiling color is 30 years old there is no way i can match 30 years of life with a paint color on white. The hopper guns are really easy to use if you've ever used any type of sprayer. Just turn the mess dial to 11.

 

[Chestnut]

17 minutes ago, Tom King said:

My answer for popcorn ceilings.  This gets put up right over them.

Yeah covering is an option but the acoustic benefit is appreciated in our house. It's already pretty echoy in most of our rooms and it does help out a lot on cutting down echo. Also that's a lot more work than just hitting it with a hopper gun.

[legenddc]

Got the trunnions in today. I’ll let you guess which one is original. Fortunately they fit and it’s operational again. 

[Coop]

it looks as if Meagan (sp?) is saying “ stand down, this is my room”! 

[Mark J]

@Coop, do you mean Hazel? 

[tperson]

On 12/7/2023 at 10:57 AM, drzaius said:

I suggest you get a cheap texture hopper gun to blend in the texture. It's not hard to do once you get some practice. The whole ceiling might need to be painted to get the color spot on.

yeah, I have one too. I can put texture on the ceiling/walls...but I struggle to make it match (I use it for 30 minutes every 2-3 years). 

[Chestnut]

13 hours ago, Coop said:

it looks as if Meagan (sp?) is saying “ stand down, this is my room”! 

I think she was on the phone and was taking with her hands. Hazel was defiantly contesting the ownership of the room at that point though. Or maybe just the umbrella.

Some more details on the drywall match. Removing walls is more difficult than just a patch. The inside corners tend to get built up a lot as a result I had to sand the wall to remove high spots so less blending is needed.

They make drywall sanders but i have this 6" sander that works great. I know these are thought of as woodworking sanders but they copied the sander design from DA sanders that are used often for paint prep and finishing in a lot of different markets. So why not drywall? With a strait edge most of the wall has been evened out. Most but not all.

To remove the popcon texture to make blending easier i was going to scrape it off. Then i realized the tool in my hand was basically a circular scrapper with a lot of scraper teeth (my sander) but had excellent dust collection. So i sanded off the popcorn texture and it still made some mess but was SIGNIFICANLY less than scraping or other sanding methods.

Hazel wen to bed very quickly and it left me enough time to get the first coat of mud on as well as most of the joints taped. For my first coat i always use hot mud which is especially useful in situations like this were there are large gaps and voids. Hod mud is a curing mud that doesn't shrink, so think plaster or hydrated lime. It allows me to fill large voids and get to sanding within hours instead of a day or more. I didn't get all the joints taped because i ran out of time on my mud. I bought a 45 min bag and working time is usually lower, in this instance i got about 20 min of working time. It's workable beyond that but that's when i noticed the consistency start to get thick. I like my drywall mud pretty thin. I'll add a quart of water to the premixed mud before using it.

8 hours later it was ready to be sanded, might have even been ready sooner but i was sleeping.

The 2nd and following coats will be regular drying mud. After building the large voids out drying mud is easier to work with, ie allows wet sanding, is easier and faster to sand, dust is less awful.

20 minutes ago, tperson said:

yeah, I have one too. I can put texture on the ceiling/walls...but I struggle to make it match (I use it for 30 minutes every 2-3 years). 

Matching texture is a lot of practice. IIRC you have 3-4 variables you can change, type of material being applied, thickness of material being applied, air pressure setting on regulator, and nozzle opening on the gun. Best advice is to take a piece of drywall scrap outside or somewhere you can easily clean and just practice. Luckily drywall mud is both pretty harmless and relatively inexpensive. Instead of wasting your practice board have a wide taping knife and scrape the texture off and stick it in a pail for more practice reuse.

When i did an orange peel texture application i found the best texture was when the mud, or material, was VERY thin. I also think i had the pressure regulator set really low and also reduced the valve on the hopper gun. Too much pressure at the gun just makes a mess.

[Coop]

On 12/8/2023 at 8:54 AM, Mark J said:

@Coop, do you mean Hazel? 

Sorry, yes I did!!

[Tom King]

The non-sandable quick set compound has Portland cement in it so is really strong.  It's handy stuff too for things like filling cracks, but getting harder to find.  It shrinks some as it sets, even though the bag claims that it doesn't.

Looking good.

[Ronn W]

Nice commentary.  I like it.

[Tpt life]

I tape with 5 minute a lot. I echo what Tom says. I will add that those types of jobs are where I use fibafuse. I like continuous fiber. 

[drzaius]

I was spraying a texture paint on some speaker cabinets with the hopper gun. The paint was having trouble getting out the nozzle so I opened it up and started to spray when a thickened gob of paint broke through the nozzle and let a mighty blast of black paint fly out. The mess dial was at least at 13

[Coop]

Probably too late now but I like to use one of the big flat orange dampened  sponges instead of sanding, especially if you have feathered the edges. 

[legenddc]

I think I need to try a different, thinner product next time I need to do a drywall patch.

Had today off so I was able to get my table saw square and mill the legs for my bookshelf. Watched a video on squaring the saw they suggested using the hole in this cross beam to move the trunnion assembly. Mine didn't have a hole but it does now and it made the process super quick. Wish I had known that the last time.

[Tom King]

Yesterday did setup for pushing pipes under the driveway at the rental house including welding enough of them together to go all the way under the 22' wide pavement.  Made a good start, but need to make some stakes to drive over the pipe to keep it held down in the V trough.  First test showed that the pipe wants to rise up. We're planning to get back to it today.

The idea is to push it in with 3 foot steps and pull it back out to get the dirt out of the end.  I have a dirt auger on a hole hawg that does good at drilling into the dirt to get it out.  I'm afraid if I try to push it all the way through that it will get to a critical point that it won't push any farther.  Three feet goes pretty easily.

The worry is that we might hit a rock.

I have the bale spike on the tractor to reach down in the trench to push with.

 

[pkinneb]

On 12/9/2023 at 8:07 AM, Tom King said:

Yesterday did setup for pushing pipes under the driveway at the rental house including welding enough of them together to go all the way under the 22' wide pavement.  Made a good start, but need to make some stakes to drive over the pipe to keep it held down in the V trough.  First test showed that the pipe wants to rise up. We're planning to get back to it today.

The idea is to push it in with 3 foot steps and pull it back out to get the dirt out of the end.  I have a dirt auger on a hole hawg that does good at drilling into the dirt to get it out.  I'm afraid if I try to push it all the way through that it will get to a critical point that it won't push any farther.  Three feet goes pretty easily.

The worry is that we might hit a rock.

I have the bale spike on the tractor to reach down in the trench to push with.

 

Hey Tom can you click a picture of you pushing this with the tractor? This is awesome but trying to wrap my head around that piece of the process.

[Von]

Finally finished refinishing my coffee table top. Built it originally ~15 years ago and the finish went bad sitting in an unconditioned storage unit last summer. Happy to have it out of the shop and the piece of MDF holding its place out of the living room.

[Tom King]

On 12/9/2023 at 1:29 PM, pkinneb said:

Hey Tom can you click a picture of you pushing this with the tractor? This is awesome but trying to wrap my head around that piece of the process.

I changed from the hay spike to a single clip on forklift arm today.  The hay spike was going down at too much of an angle and I couldn't see anything in front of the bucket.  This lets me get the bucket down low to the ground.

The cross 2x4's to hold the pipe down didn't work.  It lifted them out of the ground with the first start of the first push.  I backed my 1 ton pickup so that the rear end was right above the pipe and blocked the X in place over the pipe with short boards.  That worked like a charm.

BIL and I got a little over halfway, but the red clay got harder and harder.  We were taking 16" bites and cleaning it out of the pulled out pipe, but by the time we stopped we were only getting 8" bites and it felt like it was taking too much pressure to do that.   We dammed up the hole and filled it with water to wait for another day, but before we did that we pushed an 1-1/4 galvanized pipe in as far as we could and pulled it back out leaving the dirt in it.

It's supposed to rain all day tomorrow, so maybe that will help.

I'll try to get a picture, but we're both fully engaged when I'm pushing.  Harry watching and signaling, and me feathering the pushing.  The tractor is straddling the ditch and pushing straight in line with the pipe.  Low range, low gear, 7,000 pound tractor.

We didn't hit a single rock, and all has been clear red clay so far.

[Chestnut]

On 12/8/2023 at 8:15 PM, legenddc said:

I think I need to try a different, thinner product next time I need to do a drywall patch

What do you use? The sheetrock brand plus 3 is my go to. Just thin with water. Its far to thick out of the can.

On 12/9/2023 at 8:07 AM, Tom King said:

The idea is to push it in with 3 foot steps and pull it back out to get the dirt out of the end

This is the premise behind the construction method called jack and bore. Its a common way to get large utilities under roadways. Were designing a project to do this for an 18" sewer line 35' under ground. They have specialized equipment though.

[Coop]

Our city ran a new 18” water line, 10’ below grade down our side of the street using a diagonal drilling machine, followed by larger and lager bits. Being amazed by the operation, I spent an hour or so for a couple of days, watching and questioning. They had to dig a new hole every 100’ or so as that was as far as they could drill and push pipe. The day before they got to my yard, I bought the crew burgers and fries. The next day, they dug holes in front of both of my neighbors yards, skipping over mine. Best money on burgers I ever spent!

Tom, I know your project is not like running 3/4” pipe under a sidewalk but, would a straight stream nozzle on the end of a water hose help wash out the dirt ahead of your pipe? 

[Tom King]

We tried that first using a pressure washer hose and just the 1" PVC pipe.  It was going, but really slow and a lot more work for us than the push and clean out method , plus it was really messy with all the water in the ditch.

I've come up with a new plan now.  The dirt auger I was using to dig out the dirt from the pushed in pipe was working so good that tomorrow I'm going to weld it up into a 25' long drill bit and see if we can just drill a hole all the way through.

I have a 3/4" spade handle drill to use that can just lay on top of the V boards we have as a guide for the push pipe.

We had several inches of rain today, so probably the most we can do tomorrow is go to town to get the rebar and fabricate the drill bit.

BIL has to leave Tuesday morning, so this might be something I can do by myself.  It will take days for the standing water to soak in, but hopefully the red clay under the road will be a lot softer.

Here's the auger I've been using.  I think the one I have is 2" diameter and eats right into the red clay.  It's the heavier one of these:

https://powerplanter.com/drills-and-augers/heavy-duty-augers/224-tree-auger/

 

[Tom King]

[legenddc]

On 12/10/2023 at 1:39 PM, Chestnut said:

What do you use? The sheetrock brand plus 3 is my go to. Just thin with water. Its far to thick out of the can.

This is the premise behind the construction method called jack and bore. Its a common way to get large utilities under roadways. Were designing a project to do this for an 18" sewer line 35' under ground. They have specialized equipment though.

Whatever the stuff is that turns from pink to white when it dries.  I've saved your recommendation for the next time I have to do any work. Also will need to pick up some wider knives.

On 12/10/2023 at 8:17 PM, Coop said:

Our city ran a new 18” water line, 10’ below grade down our side of the street using a diagonal drilling machine, followed by larger and lager bits. Being amazed by the operation, I spent an hour or so for a couple of days, watching and questioning. They had to dig a new hole every 100’ or so as that was as far as they could drill and push pipe. The day before they got to my yard, I bought the crew burgers and fries. The next day, they dug holes in front of both of my neighbors yards, skipping over mine. Best money on burgers I ever spent!

Tom, I know your project is not like running 3/4” pipe under a sidewalk but, would a straight stream nozzle on the end of a water hose help wash out the dirt ahead of your pipe? 

Always smart to bribe the crews working by your property. Our neighborhood had some trees coming down and the guy 50' in the air was joking with my wife he wanted a coffee. We bought them all doughnuts and coffee a couple of hours later. They moved all of our deck furniture to make sure nothing got hit, moved it back and blew all the sawdust from our property. 

They still wave at us if we see them out here 3 years later.