This Old #%&@*$ House

Chaz wrote:

I goddamn hate bifolds. I've got two big mirrored ones in the basement bathroom/laundry room on the storage closets. One of them's developed some problem where one of the hinge pins is hopping, so it doesn't open all the way unless you hold it with your foot. You also have to shove them to get them closed, and they have no actual pull handles to open them. Plus they weigh a ton. One day, I'll replace them, but I don't know with what. Possibly some curtains or something. But since they're in the basement and don't get opened very often, it's way down the priority list.

First would be replacing all four upstairs interior doors with something solid. The current hollow core ones let too much sound through, which matters now that one of the kids sleeps in there and we watch TV after he goes to bed.

We tore out the bifolds without even replacing them. One set was in the laundry room/garage entryway, the other was in the finished basement bar area.

Our house also originally had french doors for the master bedroom, which we replaced with a normal door.

LeapingGnome wrote:

I love pocket doors. What is the downside to them vs regular swing doors? Just harder to install? If I built a house I would be tempted to just make all of the doors pocket doors.

I just find them annoying to slide open and closed, and also to lock.

[quote="Quintin_Stone"]

Chaz wrote:

I just find them annoying to slide open and closed, and also to lock.

Yeah, but every time you open or close them you can say "fwshhh!" like you're on The Enterprise.

Yeah I could see that locking would be annoying. For me I can't remember the last time I locked an interior door, it has to have been at least a decade.

When you have a (now 15yo) autistic son that NEVER remembers to knock first... you lock doors.

Chaz wrote:

For the smell thing, try Poo-Porri. It sounds like a gag gift, but my wife's office uses it, and she got some for the house. Stuff legit works.

Agreed. Got some holiday scented ones for Christmas gifts a few years ago and now we keep the stuff stocked.

LeapingGnome wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

Pocket doors. Pocket doors are where it's at.

Very popular in bathrooms at hotels, but I prefer a normal door.

I love pocket doors. What is the downside to them vs regular swing doors? Just harder to install? If I built a house I would be tempted to just make all of the doors pocket doors.

Can't hang pictures on the walls either side of it without nailing the door in place?

Jonman wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

Pocket doors. Pocket doors are where it's at.

Very popular in bathrooms at hotels, but I prefer a normal door.

I love pocket doors. What is the downside to them vs regular swing doors? Just harder to install? If I built a house I would be tempted to just make all of the doors pocket doors.

Can't hang pictures on the walls either side of it without nailing the door in place?

Command Strips?

Flimsy wall, wobbly door, no plumbing or electrical (in that hollow section)...

I've always assumed it was the structural piece of pocket doors that made them expensive. You need to have a wall area that's twice as wide as the door itself, with support on either side and a header to carry the load. I assume there's also consideration of where the load above that is coming from, plus the actual hardware itself. Basically, every door opening has to be a double door opening.

We have a pocket door for our master bathroom, and for the most part it's great. The only problem is that the door is suspended from the track above by two screws. If/when one of them starts to back out (which happens after years of use) the door begins to hang crooked in the jamb, and there is a gap at either the top or bottom when the door is closed. Locking it becomes impossible. The only way to fix it is to remove the trim, unhook and remove the door, and re-seat screws or re-attach the hanger hardware on the top of the door. Which is doable, but it's a pain in the ass.

Speaking of which...

mudbunny wrote:

I've had to replace bifold doors in my house.

Pain in the ass that required some very careful use of a circular saw to trim the doors to the non-standard size of the door-holes.

All of our house's bedroom closets use sliding doors, which are heavy and overlap in the middle, so there is always a part of the closet you can't get to. I've been replacing them with bifold doors, and I'm amazed that all of the closets are about a half-inch off of standard bifold sizing. I can't fit two 36" bifold doors because the closet opening is 71.5". Frustrating. I have basically learned to use a block plane while shaving down the width of bifold door panels.

Seriously, builders - think about standards when you're designing your houses.

Boudreaux could you use some loctite threadlocker or similar on the screws to prevent that problem?

Yeah I'll have to try something like that. We lived with it for years before I got fed up and dismantled everything to fix it. I think I filled the screw holes and redrilled new ones. It's been fine for a long time but I just noticed a few months ago that it's crooked again. So at some point I'll have to tear it apart and fix it again.

Boudreaux wrote:

Seriously, builders - think about standards when you're designing your houses.

I'm all for blaming builders, but don't discount that what was standard when a house was built isn't standard by the time you need to replace something. We have a cabinet that's mounted above the fridge. The fridge that came with the house died two years ago, and while shopping for a new one, we discovered that fridges now are an inch or two taller than they were when the broken one was new. Of course, the cabinet above was built to just fit, so any new fridge wouldn't fit under.

We wound up taking the cabinet down to get the new fridge in. One of these days, we'll find a carpenter or something that can resize it so that it'll fit above the new fridge, and we can hang it again. Dunno when, because it's spent the last two years sitting in a closet taking up space.

Storing a cabinets in a closet, there's a recursion joke in there somewhere.

It turns out having mice (at least 2 so far) isn't fun. It's also not fun that they are routinely getting into the silverware drawer which leads to a solid 30 minutes of washing everything.

It also turns out that 6 year olds will demand that you let them live which started out fine but if I find 1 more mouse I make no promises.

I released that little monster 8 miles away into the snow. GOOD LUCK, BUDDY.

Check for cracks and gaps where the mouse found it's way into your house. That's the only way to ensure you won't have more mice friends.

Pulled out of my driveway this morning, and my wife's shrieks alerted me to a gigantic opossum playing dead (I hope, it was clearly still breathing) underneath where my car just was - scouting out making a nest in my car somewhere? Really hoping that guy is not still lying there when I get home.

oilypenguin wrote:

It turns out having mice (at least 2 so far) isn't fun. It's also not fun that they are routinely getting into the silverware drawer which leads to a solid 30 minutes of washing everything.

It also turns out that 6 year olds will demand that you let them live which started out fine but if I find 1 more mouse I make no promises.

I released that little monster 8 miles away into the snow. GOOD LUCK, BUDDY.

Time to teach the 6yo about the circle of life.

How the hell are they getting in your silverware drawer?
I've had them in basements and even some low cabinets, but never higher drawers

oilypenguin wrote:

It turns out having mice (at least 2 so far) isn't fun. It's also not fun that they are routinely getting into the silverware drawer which leads to a solid 30 minutes of washing everything.

It also turns out that 6 year olds will demand that you let them live which started out fine but if I find 1 more mouse I make no promises.

I released that little monster 8 miles away into the snow. GOOD LUCK, BUDDY.

Yuck... had that at a previous residence. They got into the attic and tried to evict me. Had to bring in the experts to relocate them, to the great beyond.

lunchbox12682 wrote:
oilypenguin wrote:

It turns out having mice (at least 2 so far) isn't fun. It's also not fun that they are routinely getting into the silverware drawer which leads to a solid 30 minutes of washing everything.

It also turns out that 6 year olds will demand that you let them live which started out fine but if I find 1 more mouse I make no promises.

I released that little monster 8 miles away into the snow. GOOD LUCK, BUDDY.

Time to teach the 6yo about the circle of life.

How the hell are they getting in your silverware drawer?
I've had them in basements and even some low cabinets, but never higher drawers

I found a hole in the back of the cabinet under the drawer. That’s getting taken care of Saturday.

So my stove died last night. Or rather shot out some sparks from the top and tripped the breaker. I took the back off this morning and sure enough there is a nice melted connector on the red wire from the plug. It tripped the break once a couple of weeks ago so I was just waiting to see if it happened again. Ugh.

For mice I found that the decon poison bait food worked pretty well for me. The downside was finding a couple of rotting dead mice bodies in corners of the basement for the next year afterward. I did catch one live one and put it out in the woods a couple of hundred feet away.

LeapingGnome wrote:

For mice I found that the decon poison bait food worked pretty well for me. The downside was finding a couple of rotting dead mice bodies in corners of the basement for the next year afterward. I did catch one live one and put it out in the woods a couple of hundred feet away.

I went with reusable traps and peanut butter then checking then regularly.
So glad, my new place doesn't seem to have this issue.

My furnace died sometime on Wednesday, as outside temps plummeted from the mid 60's to the low 30's in about 24 hours. I'm home now, trying not to freeze, as the new furnace gets installed. The old one was about 50 years old ... I knew it was inevitable that I would be replacing it. Looking forward to having heat again in the near future!!

Second the vote for decon poison. Last time I needed to use it, I never saw the mice again, and never found corpses either. Theoretically, the poison also causes their bodies to dry and mummify instead of rotting, so maybe wouldn't make any bad smells? I should probably put some boxes of it around my garage. I've got no direct evidence I've got mice, but I did have a mouse nest on top of the gas tank in my car over the summer. It doesn't ever get parked in the garage, but better safe than sorry, because my wife's does.

SillyRabbit, I feel for you on that one. The first winter after we bought our house, the main furnace crapped out once in November, but was a cheap fix, then crapped out again in January. It was north of 25 years old, so we replaced it. Thank goodness for the gas fireplace. Then, the following winter, the secondary furnace that heats the master bedroom crapped out. It was over twenty years old too, so that got swapped. Heat's expensive, and always craps out at the worst time.

Yeah the fully replaceable fixable furnace that's what I want to kickstart. Something that has many key easily replacable pieces. Thought mine went out again but had a blocked airflow due to sound baffling falling into the fan so the firebox was overheating.

For mice if you can't seem to get to the bottom my favorite method as I got tired of having traps go off on me was the drowning bucket method. Fill a bucket just high enough they can't stand in it, add a ramp, smear pb just low enough. Some people add a string and paper towels or to cardboard roll but I never had any issues and check it every day or two. Got all the persistent mice at the old house.

New house has mice or squirrels int he walls and attic. Some bait in between the floors seems to have done the trick.

I am not going to be able to sneak a murder pool past the children but yes, the traps are annoying to deal with.

See you build a pool with a gummy bear in the middle. No ladder and only a ramp in....

Hobear wrote:

See you build a pool with a gummy bear in the middle. No ladder and only a ramp in....

I'm guessing you did this a lot in The Sims.

I swear by these things:

IMAGE(https://www.tomcatbrand.com/sites/g/files/oydgjc146/files/asset_images/Press%20N%20Set.png)

They're cheap and disposable. Or you can use 'em again.

There's a larger size for rats if you happen to live next door to the type of neighbor who has rats living under his house.