<p>“I am not only going to die in this place, I’ve figured out it is legal be buried on the property and have already told the kids I’m going to be haunting it.” :)</p>
<p>“edit:dstark: re. the hvac - unbelievable - or at least it should be unbelievable. and illustrates why I don’t really think permits, licensing, etc all that useful…
unless you live someplace where there are actual consequences like fines”</p>
<p>Uhhh…I used to live in an area where there were consequences…even if things were permitted…that wasn’t good enough …lol</p>
<p>alh, I agree with you on permits. Apparently, one can bury an electrical line without a conduit if it is 2 ft underground. My neighbor’s contractor only dug a 4-inch deep trench. It was all licensed and permitted and the whole nine yards… :rolleyes:</p>
<p>dstark, I think she was probably the first woman licensed in NJ who wasn’t fronting for her husband/father or who hadn’t inherited a business. Along the way, she had some fabulous male biz partners and a few loyal bankers who believed in women’s abilities. She was small scale and got into it after exerience in real estate. I still love the smell of fresh-cut lumber.</p>
<p>But, seriously, working on a house can be mind-bending. Each family has to make its own best decisions. When our contractor buddy re-did the kitchen, to save some $, DH and I demo’d the interior walls. I kept thinking, this is the dumbest thing I ever did to save money. (No matter how much fun it seems on DIY tv to swing a sledge hammer at a wall.)</p>
<p>Actually, unless you have a huge moisture problem in a bathroom, most current interior paint can hold up. Semi-gloss or eggshell beats flat, though.</p>
<p>As for painters’ experience- ever follow one of their forums? Lots of disagreement. I ended up just calling BM and getting their staight scoop for their product.</p>
<p>Not if you have perfect surface. I had to remove wall paper that was glued on with real glues, re plaster most of the house, fill cracks and remove layors of bright yellow oil based paint on moldings, that is hard and requires a lot of trial and error. come to think of it, it might be more efficient if I re-sheetrock the whole house with new electrical wires…</p>
<p>I live in just about the middle of nowhere. People just build houses on land they inherited. Unless they have to deal with a bank they don’t bother with permits. My house is very old and phase I was permitted because I was dealing with licensed contractors but we were able to avoid most code issues since we were grandfathered and because we had a very enthusiastic and sympathetic building inspector. And because I spent a whole lot of time reading the fine print in the code book and getting letters for the state insurance office. I probably couldn’t even do phase II if it had to be permitted. I am putting an late 18th c structure back together almost exactly as it was originally. Except for adding plumbing, electric and maybe hvac (none of these systems ever existed) if I can find an hvac system that works. They are digging the trench next week for phase II - let me rephrase, they “scheduled” to dig the trench next week lol. At this point H & I just go on line and figure out best building practices ourselves. If we don’t, we still have to figure it out… just after the job is already screwed up.</p>
<p>Like dstark’s hvac - BTW - it sounds like you are pursuing this?</p>
<p>artsloversplus: many love plaster walls and embrace the imperfections. a matter of taste? I am willing to pay a whole lot more for original plaster and I really don’t care how patched up it is.</p>
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<p>depending on your locale – YES–
I just happen to know a whole lot about this
skim coats on blueboard vs replacing original lath and what about that wire mesh,
on and on and on…</p>
<p>Artlover- so you actually can replaster a whole wall- I’m in awe.
And, I would say there is little Zen to be found in stripping old wallpaper that’s been glued on. Ugh. I used to joke that it was the wallpaper against us. You know, the first few trial pieces would pull off a few feet in one piece. Then, when we committed to the job, it took the rest of the afternoon to clear a 2x2 space. I could hear the walls laughing at us, how easily we’d been lulled into thinking it would be easy. We ended up paying someone to replaster, because of all the damage spots.</p>
<p>Drywall is not always the choice. We had beautiful baseboards we did not want to remove/replace. We did have them re-board the ceilings because of Calcimine painted over whatever, decades earlier. Like being in a cavern full of peeling ceiling paint stalactites.</p>
<p>Dstark, I do daydream about moving into a warm-in-winter, cool-in-summer, freshly painted and updated townhouse.</p>
<p>Yest, I did a lot of the re-plastering myself and believe it or not, I did a perfect job, only took a week or so for EACH wall… I had to hose down the walls to remove some glued down wallpapers, I put a garden hose on the water heater and pulled it to the room to hose it down, I flooded the house but the paper is removed. It is much easier to have running hot water to remove the wall papers and at one time I was thinking to burn it off. :)</p>
<p>My wire meshed plastered walls are 6 inches thick. It took us a whole day to remove the walls and the floor in our master bathroom and it was SMALL, like 5x10. We had to redo it because it has pink tile and black trim and the bathtub was beyond repair.</p>
<p>So much for getting contractor’s professional advice. Exterior paint is harmful when using it in interior applications. It’s all over the internet.</p>
<p>Yeah… but what about the wiring? Do you wish to risk fire to have those 1930’s wires in the wall? I had 1950’s wire and the Romex still can last for a while. Anyway, the old house is out of my hand, no more headaches with this one built in 1998…</p>
<p>Re: replacing the wiring. Fish tape is a great tool, but depending on the length/location, the wires have to be stapled to the studs. Once we had to take a chunk of drywall to perform this operation. Replacing drywall is so much easier than re-plastering!</p>
<p>We have a 1998 house, too, and we are bracing for impact. Water heaters and furnaces have 12-yr average lifespans. :)</p>
<p>I just got more educated on paint. I read the labels on most of my “leftover” Dunn-Edwards paint cans, both the most recent and ones from when my interior was painted about 8-9 years ago:</p>
<p>The interesting part of my discovery was that interior flat paint from 8-9 years ago had 100 VOC g/l (Volatile Organic Compounds, grams per litre) and my exterior low-sheen paint, used to paint my bathroom just recently, only has 50 VOC g/l and “reactivity-adjusted” VOCs of 25. Glossier paints generally have more VOCs than flat paints, so this differential is even greater if I was comparing apples to apples. Even though it says “Exterior” on the front of the can, on the back it says “it is for exterior or interior use”. </p>
<p>Layman’s conclusion: the interior paints from a few years back are more toxic than the newest exterior paints of today. What’s confusing is that, according to Wikipedia, lower VOC doesn’t necessarily mean lower toxicity without measuring the “emissions” given off by the paint. </p>
<p>At any rate, I just got off the phone with my painter and he’s going to prime and re-paint both my bathrooms using an interior paint. I owe you one, Bunsen!</p>
<p>Sorry, but this is incorrect. VOC’s are not the most “toxic” ingredients in housepaint as it is used. The push to lower VOC has been driven by regulations (mostly from SCAQMD – southern CA) to improve air quality. While it would be toxic to drink any of the solvents that are contributing to VOC in a paint, they are not really toxic for inhalation at typical painting conditions.</p>
<p>The main reason that you don’t want to use exterior house paint inside is the mildewcides in an exterior paint. One of the ways that paints fail outside is when they become unslightly due to mildew growth on the paint film. We combat this in exterior paints with various active ingredients (that are not VOC’s). These active ingredients are toxic at high levels and in some cases are sensitizers (meaning that with repeated exposure, a person builds up sensitivity to the compound and could eventually have an adverse reaction). So you do not want to put an exterior paint on an interior wall.</p>
<p>The cans you see that say “interior / exterior” are probably higher sheen (i.e. “gloss”) paints. Many paint companies produce only one line for gloss paints, because the uses and requirements for int/ext gloss are very similar. Usually for trim, not broad spaces. These paints have mildew protection in such a way that is not as toxic as a broad-wall flat exterior paint would have.</p>
<p>Many paint companies now offer a “Kitchen & Bath” paint. These paints are formulated to have better stain / grease resistance, and better mildew protection than a typical interior paint. So if you currently have mold/mildew issues in your bathroom, here are two recommendations:</p>
<h1>1 – Get the moisture out of the room. Either install an exhaust fan, open the window, or leave the door open during showers</h1>
<h1>2 – buy a little “insurance” by using a Kitchen & Bath paint</h1>
<p>Ok. I’ll get down from the soapbox now. After 20+ years of formulating and testing paints, I sometimes can’t help myself.</p>