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Fearful
Participant[quote=svelte]I’ve only talked to one person who has used a home warranty successfully. He had been in his place a few months in RB when the furnace went out. He did indeed get a new furnace for free.[/quote]
The only problem with that is that the warranty company buys the absolute minimum furnace and pays the installer the absolute minimum. Thus you get a shoddy replacement and shoddy – or at least minimalist – workmanship. The service company is also usually disgruntled because they dislike dealing with the warranty company.ParticipantOuch.
A too-little-too-late piece of advice: Home warranties are not worth jack. I am astonished by how much money they make for the companies. And I have been suckered in multiple times myself. Never again.
It is really unpleasant to contemplate, but you ought to re-pipe in the attic (assuming you are in a single story). Furthermore, do it right; this is plumbing that will be there for the remaining life of the house. Also, it involves tearing apart walls to access the bibbs; don’t settle for lousy drywall work.
Sorry for your predicament. Again, ouch; I feel your pain.
ParticipantIsn’t blatant photo alteration a violation of some sort of code of ethics?
Participant[quote=briansd1]Whatever you do, don’t be taking protein shakes and supplements. If you do, you will paying for it later in terms of health problems. And if you build muscle mass with dietary supplement, when you slow down, in older age, it will all get replaced with fat.
[/quote]Sorry, man, you’re out to lunch on this one. Maybe you’re thinking about steroids. Simply eating a bunch of extra protein is not going to hurt anyone. And muscled does not “turn into” fat. Expanded eating habits may mean adding fat as muscle atrophies, but muscle does not create fat.
Check out anastrozole for quasi-natural testosterone increase. It blocks the conversion of testosterone into estrogen (actually estradiol). Men turn bitchy in middle age because they get better at converting testosterone into female hormones. Sick, ain’t it?
Participant[quote=walterwhite]
I never snort asbestos particles knowingly …[/quote]
When I removed an in-wall flue from my 1940’s era house, it was made of this funny gray fibrous stuff. Just to freak out my wife, I held it up to my face and inhaled deeply.Then I chased her around the house with it, intoning “EEEEEVIL! EEEEEVIL!”
Participant[quote=enron_by_the_sea]Can someone educate me on why there is this drive to get popcorn ceilings removed? Why does everyone hate them? Aesthetics?[/quote]
Mostly just aesthetics. They are visually busy, where the eye wants to see the smoothness of sky, and they can’t be cleaned. If you bump or mar it, it dings easily and can’t be repaired, and crumbly white stuff falls to the floor and causes the dust mites living in the carpet to develop asbestosis.Participant[quote=UCGal]
I agree it’s not a bad DIY job – but do you want to risk asbestosis if there is asbestis in it? I don’t. But the risk is relatively easily mitigated with filter masks and containment of the debris from the rest of the house.Also there’s the fact that it is illegal to put asbestos in the regular landfill.
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Boy I’m really gonna get torched for this one, but: If you don’t have any reason to believe there is any asbestos in your ceiling scrapings, just put the stuff in trash bags in your regular curbside pickup. It’ll go to a landfill where it will be buried under a mountain of other trash and dirt and no one will ever, ever get asbestosis from it.A whiff of asbestos particles will not give you asbestosis, just like smoking a few cigarettes will not give you lung cancer. Truth be told, both might kill you, but both are low probability. Work with asbestos or smoke regularly and you are taking a real chance. It’s hard to imagine just how many people worked regularly with asbestos for many years, sanding and scraping the stuff daily. The stuff ain’t cyanide. Personally I would rather risk a day’s worth of exposure to asbestos than go through the headaches and expense of hiring an asbestos mitigation contractor. But everyone chooses their own risk.
I speed regularly, but I don’t smoke, and I wear ear plugs when sawing tile. I also use a wet saw, and it sickens me to see hardscape contractors using dry diamond saws to cut concrete bricks. You know how much nice, fine silica dust is thrown into the air from a dry diamond saw? Silicosis, anyone? Cough, cough.
Participant[quote=UCGal]What is the age of the home?
If it’s older – you need to test it for asbestos. Homes from the 60’s and 70’s often had asbestos in the popcorn ceiling. This adds *significantly* to the cost.If the house is older, you can buy a test kit at Home Depot -scrape a little and mail it off.[/quote]
I may get scorched for this, but: If you discover your ceiling contains asbestos, you have gained information you really could have done without. Do it yourself or find a contractor that wants to be paid cash and does not mention the a-word. If you discover it has asbestos in it, you are then obliged to disclose that to the contractors and to subsequent buyers. Do yourself a favor: Ignorance is bliss.You get the stuff off by wetting, scraping, and putting it into plastic bags, whereupon it quietly disappears back to the ground from whence it came.
You’ll probably have to sand a little bit; do so with a vacuum sander, wear at least a nuisance dust mask, and ventilate the house well.
You probably will have to have a drywall guy re-tape some of the seams. One motivation for sprayed-on ceilings is the shoddy work they hide.
One alternative, though it is not at all cheap, is to cover the popcorn ceiling with a 1/4″ drywall layer, thereby entombing the suspected nasty stuff.
Participant[quote=jimklinge]I can only tell you what I see in my little world.
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Hey Jim, thanks for continuing to provide straightforward reporting from the field. I for one have never found you to engage in the sort of I-will-sell-this-house-today hooey that distinguishes your profession.Participant[quote=evolusd]
Sounds expensive! It seems to me that raised floor houses are much easier to fix when things go wrong beneath the floor. Why the trend to mostly slab foundations?[/quote]More expensive to build a raised wood floor. Also, because the soil is usually left at the same height, the raised floor is 18″ above grade, meaning you have to go up steps to get in the house.
Raised floors are just a cheap evolution from the most desirable, which is a full basement.
When post tension slabs came into use, the slab became a truly long term viable foundation.
One partial solution is to run the water and gas supply lines in the space above the first floor.
Participant[quote=jimmyle]$9 mil is about right, but the seller needs to pay for the demolition and removal of the three houses. Then you can build 26 nice Sorrento Valley houses and sell them at $650k-$700k each.
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Hahahaha … That’s $350K for each plot. How much do $700K Sorrento Valley houses cost to build, when you build 26 at once? Maybe you could build them for $100/sf? $300K build cost each? Take away commissions to buyers, and you are left with almost no profit. How long would a clump of 26 houses sit on the market in Sorrento Valley?Raw land ain’t worth jack on the open market.
September 15, 2011 at 8:57 PM in reply to: P&G’s Hour Glass Strategy: Shrinking Middle Class #729199Participant[quote=flyer]The report I read in the WSJ actually put the number at 5.5M with investable assets of $1M+ out of around 114M households in the US, but 5.6M is even better.
Instead of saying this number “amazes” me, I should have said it alarms me, as it reveals how millions of people are still financially unprepared–for the many reasons other posters mentioned, along with many more we haven’t even touched upon. Just speaking for myself and my family, I know I’d be very concerned if we were below that seven-figure mark.[/quote]
The numbers I picked up were from the Census (2006-2009) and a UBS presentation. Probably older data. I would believe that both the number of households with more than $1M has gone down and that the number of households has gone up.You wouldn’t believe how many people have essentially $zero midway through their careers. I wasn’t even particularly fortunate, just frugal and halfway wise about my investing.
September 15, 2011 at 4:31 PM in reply to: P&G’s Hour Glass Strategy: Shrinking Middle Class #729181Participant[quote=Fearful][quote=flyer]Another stat to support this strategy reveals that less than 5% of US households have “investable assets” (obviously excluding real estate) of $1M+. It really amazes me that this percentage is so low.[/quote]
1 out of 20 households have investable assets of more than $1M? If that’s true I am shocked it’s that high.[/quote]
I’ll be damned. 5.6M households out of 113M.September 15, 2011 at 4:26 PM in reply to: P&G’s Hour Glass Strategy: Shrinking Middle Class #729180Participant[quote=flyer]Another stat to support this strategy reveals that less than 5% of US households have “investable assets” (obviously excluding real estate) of $1M+. It really amazes me that this percentage is so low.[/quote]
1 out of 20 households have investable assets of more than $1M? If that’s true I am shocked it’s that high. -
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